Gobbledygook generator

Somehow I surfed up on this UN Gobbledygook Generator, apparently put up on the web by an English expat who has a blog in Hanoi, in Vietnam.Rather than try to explain it, I'll just quote from this tongue-in-cheek instroduction on the UNFG (United Nations Foundation for Gobbledygook) website:

A staggering 800 million adults possess no writing skills at all, leaving them on the margins of all development opportunities. Evidence-based assessments suggest that this occurs mainly at the provincial and local level, however even at the international level writing skills are being challenged  by a lack of proper training and ICT-enabled drafting and authoring tools.
 
In this context, the UNFG developed the Program for Capacity-Building in the Field of Language Transparency Impact. The program assists in dispensing with harmful idiomatic practices, and promotes the use of a standardized international framework for document authoring. Designed as a Public-Private-Sector Partnership within the Framework of the Global Compact, and supported through supplemental grants from individual donors, the program has made a significant contribution in this field.

This web-based application is useful for people who feel that report drafting skills are important in a UN context, and are in need of occasional assistance in order to carry out their duties.  It may also be of  help for citizens aspiring to become officials, particularly at the international level. The tool can be accessed through this website at no cost, by simply clicking on the button below.

The button says "Generate Some Gobbledygook." And it does. I clicked, and got:

In the context of decentralization, the Chief Technical Adviser will work to unlock clusters, through culturally sensitive outcome-oriented stakeholder awareness and ownership.

Wow! "[O]utcome-oriented stakeholder awareness!" I can't wait to show this to SCI's Assessment Committee. Click again, and I get:

Evidence-based assessments suggest that effective Government interventions include evaluative governance-related socio-economic policy advocacy activities.

This is marvelous! Click again:

In the context of improving the legal and regulatory framework, the Member States will develop cross-sectorial organisational Education for All policies targeted at improving enrolment and retention rates amongst marginalized groups.

Of course, it's designed for multinational non-governmental organizations rather than small liberal arts colleges. Click:

The relevant modules of the project are, at the inter-governmental level, mapped onto sector-wide governance-related feasibility studies of recommendations for change to be implemented.

Click again:

The Honorable Representative concluded that this approach is based on context-specific governance-related poverty reduction and sustainable growth strategies.

So, yeah, it's clearly from the world of NGOs and third-world economic development planning. But this honorable veteran of small-college faculty committees recognizes the language. Worse yet, he wonders if he's beginning to speak it ...

Puns, pundits and Molly the cat

Why is it? There's nothing like a cat story to bring out the puns. Now that Molly has been rescued, the puns and the punditry have gone worldwide. Molly, an 11-month-old cat that was trapped behind a wall in a New York City deli, was rescued last night and made the headlines from My favorite is the tabloid New York Post, which reported in today's online edition:

PURR-FECT END

By BRIGITTE WILLIAMS, BRIAN HAMACHER and HEIDI SINGER

April 15, 2006 -- Meow-alleluia!

Curiosity did not kill the cat after all as Molly was finally rescued last night from inside a brick wall after being stuck in the basement of a Greenwich Village store for two weeks.

The miracle feline - looking slightly dehydrated and dirty - was freed at 10:15 p.m. after a group of volunteer rescue workers dismantled the wall of the landmark building, guided by her meows and an acoustics expert.

"It feels like I won the lottery," her proud owner, Peter Myers declared after giving his prized purrer a big cuddle.

"She needs something to drink. I know I do," he added, before feeding the famished feline a plate of roast pork and sardines marinated in oil and water.

What's not to like in this story? Pungent puns, a lot of alliteration. Even the cutlines began: "FELINE GROOVY ..."

The story was carried by news outlets worldwide, including stories in Mainichi Daily News of Japan, almost all the national British papers, The Independent in South Africa, The Age in Sydney, Australia, The Washington Post and TV networks including CNN, ABC, CBS and BBC News. Even Forbes, the business wire service, carried this bulletin last night: "Update 1: Day 14: NYC Cat Finally Rescued From Wall. ... 04.14.2006, 11:00 PM.:

Not to be outdone by its sister tab (and competitor) for the hearts of New Yorkers if not necessarily their minds, The New York Daily News weighed in with "Ending is Cat's Meow" in the headline and "In a purr-fect ending, a miner with a heart of gold searched until he rescued Molly the cat last night" in the lede. Alliteration, too, as The Daily News went on to report the city's "famous fur ball was safe and sound and eating sardines" after her ordeal. Even The New York Times, ever the gray lady, weighed in with "The Fraidy-Cat of Hudson Street Is Yanked to Safety."

So it went worldwide. The Chicago Tribune, ever on the alert for a good (or not-so-good) pun, headlined, "NYC rescuers' best-laid plans no match so far for trapped cat." And icWales.co.uk, which bills itself as the Welsh national website, had, "Deli-cat mouser safe and sound." Alliteration, too, hit the headlines as The Independent of South Africa proclaimed "Rescuers team up to save plucky pussy," and The Times of London chronicled the weeklong "Bid to save Molly the mouser."

In the end it fell to The New York Times to put it all in historical context. No doubt taking seriously its role as the nation's newspaper of record, The Times searched its morgue, along with clips from its competitors, and reported Sunday:

It is easy to hide in New York City. Sometimes it is even easy to get trapped. Ask the cats.

One October day in 1941, a black Persian named Mickey climbed out of his owner's apartment at 178 Fifth Avenue, went as high as he could and fell five stories down an inaccessible part of the chimney, the start of a 24-hour ordeal that ended when a restaurant owner next door gave rescuers permission to break through his storeroom to pull Mickey out to safety. In 1947, another cat, Suzie, was trapped for five days under a Brooklyn pier until she was rescued. The bait: milk and doughnuts. The reward: She got her picture in the paper.

The saga of Molly — the black cat freed from the wall of a Greenwich Village deli Friday night after a frenzied two-week spectacle — was merely the latest chapter in a rather old New York story, the Story of the Trapped Cat. No one knows how many cats have gotten stuck in the chimneys, walls and crevices of this city, but one thing is certain: Molly was not the first to cause a scene and attract the attention of onlookers, the authorities and reporters.

The story, by staff writer Manny Fernandez, was headlined "Want to Captivate New Yorkers? Try the Story of the (Latest) Trapped Cat." In its thoroughness, if nothing else, it was fully worthy of the Sunday Times.

Bear facts -- add 1

Last month we linked to a feature story about grizzly bear sightings in Anchorage, Alaska. Actually, they weren't sightings (not that this should make you feel any better). They were electronic records of tagged and collared grizzlies wandering through the city, including one that got into a residential neighborhood not far from the motel where Debi and I stayed when we were in Alaska last year.

Well, there's a set of photos going around the internet lately of a bear getting into a bird feeder. I tracked it back to a website called geekbase.org. Love the headline.

More details on federal testing

While it came out just before the President Bush's Commission on the Future of Higher Education's latest position papers changed the terms of debate, The Philadelphia Inquirer had a detailed article on the commission last week. Written by staff writer Patrick Kerkstra, it was published March 28 under the headline "Colleges Pushed to Prove Worth: Standardized Testing at the University Level." It fills in some of the gaps in what we've learned so far, both about the commission and the standardized test its chairman has touted, called the Collegiate Learning Assessment developed by RAND Corp., the military research and development contractor, and a RAND subsidiary known as the Council for Aid to Education.

Among other people on both sides of the issue, Kerkstra interviewed commission chair Charles Miller, its leading advocate of standardized testing. And his report suggests more details of Miller's background and current thinking than we had before:

"The pressures for accountability are everywhere," Miller, a former Bush-appointed leader of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, said in a recent interview. "Evidence of the need to improve student learning is pretty clear."

He offered a litany of examples: "softening curricula," "grade inflation," and insufficient literacy skills in half of all four-year college graduates, as detailed in a study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts released in January. Meanwhile, annual tuition hikes are outpacing inflation.

To his critic's ears, Miller's case for collegiate testing has a familiar ring. They say similar arguments were used to turn the No Child Left Behind program into a federal fiat, mandating extensive testing in secondary and elementary grades. Miller, in fact, helped design a K-12 testing system in Texas for then-Gov. Bush that became the model for the federal program.

Miller dismissed the comparison. The states, not Washington, should take the lead on collegiate testing by requiring it at public universities, he said. Once the big state systems prove its value, he predicted, testing will be swept by market demand into private schools.

Also, unlike No Child Left Behind, federal funding would not be tied to test results, he said.

Miller has been saying this consistently. But both he and U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings also say financial aid can be used to leverage accountablity. Adds the Inquirer's Kerkstra:

Money, however, is undeniably part of the issue. When the commission was formed, Spellings noted that the federal government provides a third of all higher-education funding and has a right to "maximize" its investment.

"We're missing valuable information on how the system works today," she said, "and what can be improved."

That baffles some ivory tower habitues who see higher education as too preoccupied with self-examination and ranking.

One is Pennsylvania State University president Graham Spanier. Kerkstra quoted him:

"There is no enterprise in America that I know of that assesses itself so carefully and so frequently," said Penn State's Spanier, calling it "both a science and an obsession."

He cited the arduous reviews that faculty members endure to make tenure, the accreditation process, the student-satisfaction surveys, and the monitoring of graduates' efforts to get jobs.

Better known to the public are the college comparisons made by popular publications such as U.S. News & World Report. Those rankings are based on such factors as faculty-to-student ratios, SAT scores, and alumni giving. But they say little, if anything, about how well students are learning in the classroom.

Kerkstra's citation of U.S. News & World Report rankings hardly inspires confidence in his knowledge of assessment issues, but he talked to at least some of the right people. He says:

The solution is not standardized testing, many academics say, but assessments that gauge each student's mastery of a discipline. For instance, a "capstone" course, or a senior-year research paper, or a portfolio of work covering a college career.

Trudy Banta, a professor of higher education at Indiana University and an assessment expert, said that such assignments - combined with satisfaction surveys and scores on graduate and professional school exams - are better indicators of student achievement.

"We all love simple, easy answers," she said. "But this isn't a simple, easy issue."

Kerkstra devoted the most space to a description of Lehigh University's experiment with the Collegiate Learning Assessment, the RAND Corp. standardized test that Miller favors. His discussion is of interest because it gives more details of the preferred test. He says:

Can standardized testing fill in the blanks?

That's what Lehigh University wanted to find out when it administered a standardized exam known as the Collegiate Learning Assessment for the first time last fall to about 100 randomly selected freshmen, according to Carl Moses, deputy provost for academic affairs.

Lehigh is the only Pennsylvania school to acknowledge experimenting with the assessment; none in New Jersey is known to be trying it. Most of the pilot schools are in states where college testing has become a prominent policy debate, such as Texas, New York and California.

The exam is made up of two 90-minute writing exercises. In one, students are given an opinionated statement and asked to compose an essay supporting or disputing it. The second is a real-life "performance task," such as producing a memo from newspaper clips and documents.

The test was developed by two think tanks, the Rand Corporation and the Council for Aid to Education. They employ graduate students to grade the task portion, but a software program called "e-rater" scores the essays. The same program is used to assess writing samples in the entrance exams for both business and graduate schools.

At Lehigh, it's too early to know whether the test has value, Moses said.

Kerkstra doesn't mention the connection, but the Council for Aid to Education is a RAND Corp. subsidiary set up to "enhance the effectiveness of corporate and other private sector support in improving education at all levels and to help education institutions more effectively acquire private support for their programs." All of this bears watching.

Kerkstra's story in The Inquirer also includes a brief description of the CLA and sample test questions, provided by the Council for Aid to Education:

The Collegiate Learning Assessment, a new standardized exam, is supposed to measure college students' communication and reasoning skills. It consists of two 90-minute writing tests. On one, students are presented with an opinionated statement, or "prompt," and asked to respond in an essay. On the other, they are given a real-life task, such as writing a memo based on documentation provided.

Sample Writing Prompt

Public figures such as actors, politicians and athletes should expect people to be interested in their private lives. When they seek a public role, they should expect that they will lose at least some of their privacy.

Sample Performance Task

You are the assistant to Pat Williams, the president of DynaTech, a company that makes precision electronic instruments and navigational equipment. Sally Evans, a member of DynaTech's sales force, recommended that DynaTech buy a small private plane (a SwiftAir 235) that she and other members of the sales force could use to visit customers. Pat was about to approve the purchase when there was an accident involving a SwiftAir 235.

You are provided with the following documentation:

1. Newspaper articles about the accident

2. Federal accident report on in-flight breakups in single-engine planes

3. Pat's e-mail to you and Sally's e-mail to Pat

4. Charts on SwiftAir's performance characteristics

5. Amateur Pilot article comparing SwiftAir 235 to similar planes

6. Pictures and description of SwiftAir Models 180 and 235

Please prepare a memo that addresses several questions, including what data support or refute the claim that the type of wing on the SwiftAir 235 leads to more in-flight breakups, what other factors might have contributed to the accident and should be taken into account, and your overall recommendation about whether DynaTech should purchase the plane.

Miller says the test measures college-level "critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communications." But if the sample questions in the Inquirer are representative, I don't see how it can.

I guess a computerized "e-rater" might be programmed to score the essay, but the whole test strikes me as breathtakingly superficial. The first question obviously calls for a high school-level five-paragraph essay format (a paragraph each for actors, politicians and athletes, an introduction and a conclusion). And the second "Performance Task" question looks equally superficial, although it would make a dandy prompt for a high school essay with a paragraph each for technicial features of the airplane, liability issues and purchasing procedures.

I'll bet this won't be on the test ...

A wonderful quote from Arnold Joseph Toynbee, longtime professor of Greek language and history at the University of London and author of a 12-volume Study of History that detailed the rise and fall of some 20-odd civilizations, cited in the March issue of BBC History magazine. And one the U.S. Commission on the Future of Higher Education well might pay heed to:

"Civilisations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardisation and uniformity."

What more can I say?

No limit Texas hold'em testing?

President Bush's blue-ribbon Commission on the Future of Higher Education has posted a half dozen position papers on financial, accountability and accreditation issues to its website. And The Chronicle of Higher Education says, I think quite correctly, the papers "may have just given colleges more reason to be worried."

In post to its News Blog dated Thursday, the Chronicle notes:

In an e-mail message announcing the release of the papers, the Education Department said the reports “are not formal recommendations by the commission, nor are they intended to reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Education.” Rather, it said, “their purpose is to inform and energize the public about key postsecondary issues and inspire continued national dialogue around the future of higher education in America.” The papers “may assist the commission in forming consensus around these issues,” the department said.

For all of the department’s protestations, however, people in higher education are likely to regard the papers as the first draft of the commission’s final report. And what they read may worry them.

Here's why. The papers look like opinion pieces. They have titles like "Assuring Quality in Higher Education: Key Issues and Questions for Changing Accreditation in the United States," "The Need for Accreditation Reform" and "A Transparent Approach to Higher Education Accountability: Developed and Implemented by The University of Texas System." The commission is holding hearings around the country, but this sounds like the work of people who have already made up their minds.

In fact, it sounds like the work of people who want to extend No Child Left Behind to higher education. It may sound like that because it is the work of people who want to extend NCLB to higher ed. Margaret Spellings, Bush's Secretary of Education, had a key role drafting the NCLB bill when she was a White House aide. And Charles Miller, who chairs the blue-ribbon commission, has a big stake in NCLB-style testing. When the commission was empaneled, The Chronicle reported in its Oct. 14 issue:

... if the chairman's past work is any indication, a major focus of the panel will be accountability. Mr. Miller has been promoting that concept since the late 1980s, when he chaired a Texas task force that developed a state accountability program that became a model for the No Child Left Behind Act.

As a member and later chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents from 1994 to 2004, he proposed new reporting requirements for the nine undergraduate colleges in the system and endorsed testing for all freshmen and seniors. The reporting system went statewide last year, and a test of students' analytical and verbal skills is now in the pilot stage.

And when he testified before Congress in 2003, Mr. Miller suggested that colleges test students in their first two years "to measure student learning at the undergraduate level across institutions."

"I don't have a middle name, but if I did, it would probably be accountability," Mr. Miller says.

The chairman insists he is not out to regulate colleges, but only to hold them accountable to taxpayers. He says policy makers and parents alike need better information about how colleges are performing. "I believe in giving institutions the maximum freedom to operate themselves," he says, "but we do want to see what the results are."

Whatever he means by that.

The position papers suggest it may mean replacing the regional accrediting bodies we have now with a single federal agency "governed by representatives of the public, institutions of postsecondary education, business and industry, and state and federal governments." It would be called the National Accreditation Foundation, and it would oversee a thorough revamp of accreditation procedures.

In October, The Chronicle listed the commission's 19 members and noted, " in addition to four [academic presidents emeritus, three professors, and an association president, includes five executives from such corporate giants as Microsoft, the Boeing Company, and IBM." Among the members are the CEO of Kaplan Inc., the standardized test prep company, and the president of Western Governors University, which describes itself as an "online, competency-based university." But the main tilt seems to be to think tanks and large corporations.

This kind of lineup led Ruth Flower, director of the office of public policy and communications at the American Association of University Professors, to tell The Chronicle she suspected, ""This panel looks like it's poised to move us away from a concentration on comprehensive education and toward a concentration on training for big business."

Well, we'll have to see how that shakes out. In the meantime, there are just enough Texans behind the panel's work, and they have just enough of a stake in the type of test-driven school reform that led to NCLB, it look's like we're in for a round of no limit Texas hold'em standardized testing in higher ed.