ArchPundit

That tying a guy’s salary to purely statistical goals he self reports could lead to a scandal:

But year after year, Pless reportedly met or exceeded the goals by falsifying data, concluded a 114-page report by the university’s legal counsel, its ethics office, law firm Jones Day; and Duff & Phelps, a financial advisory and data analysis firm. The university also released thousands of pages of supporting material, including the email exchanges.

U. of I. hired the two firms after the university’s ethics office received a tip in late August that erroneous information had been reported about the Class of 2014, a group the college touted as “the most academically distinguished” in school history, with a median LSAT score of 168 that bumped the college into a “rarefied level.” The class’s actual median LSAT score was 163, a significant drop from the previous year’s honestly reported score of 167.

The report, released Monday, concluded Pless inflated academic credentials for the class of 2008 and the classes of 2010 through 2014. The acceptance rates of four of those classes also were manipulated. Pless “knowingly and intentionally” submitted false data by changing individual students’ grades and test scores or inflating the overall class median, according to the report.

To understand what a drop of 167 to 163 means, a 167 is around the 95th percentile on the most recent test (percentiles do move around on the test,so these previous year’s tests are probably off a bit here) to a 163 which is around the 88th percentile.  That’s a pretty big drop, but part of the problem is the Illinois Law School seems heavily focused on using a mediocre measure of quality in the US News & World Report rankings.

Grades and scores could both change significantly by year regardless of what the Law School does.  Being a slave to USN&WR rankings makes the school a slave to random fluctuations and specifically is an invalid measure to base a strategic plan.  A law school, as any educational institution should, should have a vision of what it does and do that the best it can.   Being a slave to measures that will necessarily fluctuate from year to year creates a situation where the institution is chasing statistical artifacts that have little to no meaning.  That is a corruption of the institution in the worst possible way and a surefire method to eventually turn into a mediocre institution.

I’ve been listening to The Beer Report which is an unpretentious and generally funny beer podcast from a couple guys in Central Illinois.  In recent podcasts they have covered some good beers, but also had some funny riffs on the Beer Advocate and Dick Cheney.

For all the time I’ve been away, he pretty much wins for any number of mind numbingly stupid things the dumbass has done in just a to remain very short Congressional Career.  Even Mike Flanagan had better sense then Walsh.  I, of course, want Walsh returned to Congress, but I doubt even Illinois Republicans will do anything that stupid.

But for all of his stupid utterances, the stupidest and most uncredible is:

Walsh’s ex-wife says Walsh owes more than $100,000 in back child support for their three children. Walsh counters that he and his wife had a “verbal agreement” that he didn’t have to pay child support during years when he wasn’t earning as much.

So, let’s get this clear Congressman.  Your ex-wife, the one who has sued you multiple times for lack of child support payment, just agreed to you not paying child support.

What everyone seems to forget is that Walsh wasn’t just running for Congress and loaning his own campaign thousands of dollars, but he had two homes at the time:

Questions about Walsh’s finances have recently dogged his campaign. After the primary, news surfaced that Walsh lost his Evanston condominium to foreclosure last June, because he owed more than $300,000 on the property. Walsh says he’s a venture capitalist who averaged $40,000 in income the last two years but then fell on tough financial times. However, he still managed to scrape together enough money to rent a $3,300 per month house in upscale Winnetka.

Now, he didn’t pay his child support and he had a condo foreclosed on, but he paid $3,300 a month in rent for a house in Winnetka.  Has he ever heard of Schaumburg?  I have no brief with someone who makes financial mistakes–I have more than a few under my belt.  However, I do find it odd to spend $3,300 a month on a house while  going into a foreclosure and claiming to be too poor to pay child support.

What an amazing douchebag.

New version of the video–the real craziness starts about 8 minutes in, but even before then the humor starts.

Also–District 116 posted it and deserves credit–I didn’t quite realize it was a blog at first.  My apologies for bad netiquette.

It would be much cuter if it wasn’t Normal.

I’m trying to figure out what exactly ArchPundit is going to be going forward and I’ll probably have some sense in the next week or two and will post when I get a few things out of the way that have been keeping me from the site.  I can say, I’m not going away, but I certainly can’t post like I used to.

Just passing along this from Progressive Change Campaign Committee.  I haven’t taken a position in this race, but Ilya is good people.

We saw over the last couple years that just electing “Democrats” is not enough.

Even with full Democratic control of government — including 60 seats in the Senate — corporate Democrats killed the public option and watered down Wall Street reform.Â

In 2012, we can’t just focus on electing Democrats. We need to focus on electing bold progressive fighters. 

Today, we’re proud to endorse Ilya Sheyman in the 10th Congressional District of Illinois.

Can you chip in $3 to Ilya’s campaign before tonight’s national fundraising deadline at midnight? Click here.

We’ve spoken with Ilya many times and watched his campaign grow from its infancy to the strong people-powered army that it is today. Ilya has built a campaign that can win — and win big.

He supports government investment in jobs, Medicare for all, holding Wall Street accountable — and pretty much every progressive position you can think of.

He says, ”I am sick and tired of Democrats who refuse to stand up and fight back for progressive values that make a difference in people’s lives.”

In addition, we spoke with Ilya this week about Elizabeth Warren — and his enthusiasm for her candidacy is palpable. Ilya vows to be a strong ally of hers in Congress, and she will need that.Â

Can you chip in $3 to Ilya’s campaign before tonight’s national fundraising deadline at midnight? Click here.

We will be mobilizing our 36,000 Illinois members on Ilya’s behalf in the days ahead. Please share this email with at least 5 of your neighbors today — so others join the fight.

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

– Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, PCCC co-founders

Grifters are gonna grift:

The unsuccessful 2011 mayoral campaign of Carol Moseley Braun has failed to file documentation on how $315,000 in campaign funds was spent, something that is required by state law.

Illinois Board of Elections officials told the Chicago Sun-Times and NBC5 News they have been unsuccessful in getting either Braun or her now-defunct campaign to explain how the money was spent.

Candidates are required by law to file quarterly campaign disclosure statements. In an April 15 filing, Braun reported raising $323,000 and spending $315,000.

In the report, the Braun campaign listed “Vendors Multiple” instead of itemizing expenditures over $150.

If  you make a joke about it’s the end of the world I’ll ban you forever.

sigh–all good things must come to an end.

“To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.” R.E.M.

Still swamped for a few days.  Deciding how to go forward with much more limited time.

The institution that went into bankruptcy is very concerned about the sustainability of the CPS because it has to increase property taxes modestly.

They issue a series of questions that are mostly easy to answer and have been answered by anyone who bothers to look at actual data.

•Why are expenses rising as enrollment decreases?

It’s that thing that they teach in high school economics called inflation, but looking at the numbers it’s not hard to understand this.  Students leaving the CPS tend to be students who have fewer problems.  Limited english proficiency, students with IEPs, high poverty students, tend to not leave at the same rate as students without those challenges and thus, it’s more expensive to educate them because they need individualized attention.  The rate of LEP is nearly twice that of the state depending on the year and poverty rate is just about twice the state average.  So add to this the need to deal with these students in smaller class size settings and yet the CPS has more students on average per classroom than the state.

Making all of this more difficult is that personnel costs and especially health care are increasing faster than the rate of inflation and you end up with avery modest enrollment increases leading to higher costs per student.

One of the things to keep in mind, the CPS keeps pretty close to state averages on expenditures except for students services which is higher because of the types of students overrepresented in the CPS as mentioned above.  Given that the instructional and overall spending isn’t that outrageous:

That’s pretty good for a district with the sort of challenges CPS has.  All bureaucracies can be made more efficient, but the know nothings at the Trib Editorial Board would be well served to understand that education costs money.

Why hasn’t CPS controlled costs better by outsourcing more jobs, including central office jobs that could be more efficiently and economically run by outside contractors?

This is baffling and largely not consistent with evidence regarding the costs of outsourcing.  Central office jobs mostly maintaining programmatic support and monitoring.  Some aspects of schools might be served by some outside services, but those are essential to running an effective district.  Making broad claims about outsourcing is a meaningless trope that makes the great white guys feel smart, but has no meaning.

So CPS proposes a tax increase — and even more troubling, a raid on reserve funds. There are some efforts at discipline. CPS will deny teachers a scheduled 4 percent raise, cut scores of central office middle managers and streamline departments. It will slash many popular programs, including mentoring for at-risk students; bilingual education; literacy initiatives; extracurricular math, science and technology clubs; and other after-school programs.

Perhaps they need more revenue?  How long do you think you can run an effective organization without raises? Sustainability isn’t about cutting things when you are trying to reach students who are harder to educate than the average student.  These cuts are exactly what leads to a District like CPS offering fewer opportunities and attracting less qualified teachers and it happens where the students need those the most.

Excellent

Quinn regularly plugs Illinois’ network of 48 community colleges — the country’s third-largest community college system. For every student at at a public four-year-college in Illinois, two attend a community college, Quinn notes.

Giannoulias, 35, served as state treasurer and narrowly lost a race for U.S. Senate last year to Republican Mark Kirk. Giannoulias ran just two percentage points behind his Democratic ticket-mate, Quinn.

Since losing, Giannoulias has been putting together a political science class he will teach at Northwestern University this fall called “Campaigning versus governing.” He said Tuesday he plans to announce next month a full-time job he’ll be taking.

The part-time post as chairman of the community colleges board is unpaid.

“I’m incredibly excited to help reform our community colleges here in Illinois,” Giannoulias said. “Putting Americans back to work is the single greatest challenge facing our country. A well-educated work force is crucial to that. This meshes my two passions: education and creating jobs.”

This and Sheila Simon’s efforts to visit all of the community colleges are a very good sign of an essential element of economic development being prioritiezed by Quinn.

Wait for it–the Tribune Ed Board wants a detailed accounting of each bureaucrat and how fast Alexi will fire them regardless of how clueless the Editorial Board is about the subject.

Community colleges several important functions.  They provide affordable education to students who can’t afford attending a full university and allows less mature students to remain at home while still making progress.  They provide a variety of programs that improve skills prepare those who won’t go on to a full BA/BS for skilled work.  They provide excellent places for students who need to rehabilitate their academic careers.

A higher profile chair can push these issues far more than the usual chairs who are competent professionals, but don’t have the same level of political access.