Only our highest achieving children being left behind.
August 28, 2009
In a recent post by Tom Loveless and Michael Petrilli on the NY Times editorial page they go into a detailed analysis of a recently touted study that showed that our highest achieving children were also benefitting from NCLB (the No Child Left Behind Act). In a rather thorough debunking they showed that, in fact, the rate of growth in achievement of these highest performing children had decreased over time (not the growth - the rate of growth) and that it fell far behind the improvement curve of the bottom section of the bell curve. While our lowest performing children improved by as much as 25% under the new system - higher performing children improved by no more than 5%, a slower rate of growth than in times previous to the enactment of NCLB.
Furthermore the studies had some significant statistical WTFs. Improvements in states such as North Dakota were weighted the same as states such as California - despite the fact that California has 60x the students of North Dakota.
As a parent of a high-performing child I can tell you from personal experience that the NCLB program and “experiential learning” experiments like “fuzzy math” are failing our high performing children. The saving grace is that private enterprise and colleges are stepping in to assist where schools are leaving off with programs like FIRST Robotics and John Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. The fact of the matter is though that these programs - which generally require either substantial financial resources or corporate sponsorship - are having trouble helping bright children in the most economically challenged sections of our country. Think what could happen if the government got behind not just lifing up the lower 1/3 of our performers, but in enhancing the education of the top 1/2 of our performers. How much more productive could we be if our best and brightest were even better and brighter and were encouraged to succeed rather than beaten down into the general average population? Programs like FIRST and CTY show that it can be done - we just need to produce the will to do it.
If you don’t believe this is true look at your local school’s budget. How much of that budget is dedicated to assisting children with disabilities of one kind or another vs enhancing the education of our top performers. Now I’m not suggesting we reduce help for children with IEPs - they need that help to make them productive members of society. Is it so hard to envision though a scenario where we not only help our disabled children but we truly challenge our smart and creative ones? These are our next CEO’s, entrepreneurs, engineers, software developers, and visionaries. Our current educational system fails these kids in a fundamental way - by forcing them into an environment where they must “conform to the norm” instead of “exceed to succeed”. My son’s public school for instance (a well funded suburban school) fails to offer advanced software development classes, entrepreneurial programs or other challenges for high end performance. Getting teachers involved and reimbursed for helping with these programs is always last on the agenda, because the state and federal government mandate that they must spend so much on servicing the bottom 50% of performers.
So how do we change this? We need to take action at the grass roots level - every entrepreneur in America - to encourage our leadership to look at how we can best enhance programs like FIRST and CTY to push them into every school, even the disadvantaged ones. My son’s FIRST (Penfield Robotics team 1511) team adopted an inner-city team (team 2999) and helped them through their rookie year with money, mentors and facilities - if our children can step up to help why can’t we? Take some of your entrepreneurial dollars and dedicate them to your future by sponsoring a FIRST team, creating a CTY scholarship, or just volunteer to help and assist a program like Science Olympiad or Mathletes. It’s a great way to give back to the community and help create the next generation of employees, entrepreneurial partners, and industry visionaries.
Monroe Community College offers entrepreneur scholarship
July 28, 2009
Monroe Community College is offering a 15 week tuition, fees and books scholarship for their Entrepreneurial Studies class. The scholarship is for the entire class cost (100% of tuition, textbooks and student fees) for this 3 credit hour course. The classes will run September 8th through December 23rd, 2009. The Business 110 Entrepreneurial studies course will cover small business opportunities, management of a small business, marketing and resources. They are particularly interested in bringing students in who are interested in starting a company in the following fields:
- Health
- Medical Services
- Tourism
- Construction
- Food Industry
- Arts and Culture
To be eligible for the scholarship a candidate must be a US Citizen, National, Refugee Alien or Permanent Resident Alien, be interested in opening a business in the next 12 months, commit to successfully completing the entire 11 week course, be a resident of Monroe County for at least the last 6 months, and NOT already receiving funding from another program or programs that pays full tuition. The scholarship is open to all and under represented or minority groups are encourage to apply. You must COMPLETE the course to be eligible for the tuition waver. You must apply by August 3rd.
The College is awarding 38 scholarships this fall! Find out more at http://www.monroecc.edu/depts/business/entrepreneurs/ or Contact Sherry Tshibangu
Sherry Tshibangu
Director, Emerging Entrepreneur Scholarship Program
Building 5, Room 52l
Monroe Community College
1000 E. Henrietta Rd.
Rochester, NY 14623
Fax: 585.292.3828
Email: Newbiz@monroecc.edu
To submit an application by AUGUST 3RD you must fill in the following enrollment forms: http://www.monroecc.edu/depts/business/entrepreneurs/enroll.htm
Infotonics sponsors tech summer camp
June 22, 2009
INFOTONICS TECHNOLOGY CENTER TO HOST SEMI HIGH TECH UNIVERSITY SUMMER PROGRAM FEATURING INDUSTRY-LED INTRODUCTION TO SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY AND HIGH-TECH JOBS.
The Infotonics Technology Center (ITC) announced today that they are accepting applications from area high school students who are currently 16 or 17 years in age (or who will be 16 in 2009) for the SEMI High Tech U. program. High Tech U. provides students with an intensive, three-day, industry-led introduction to the semiconductor industry, potential career paths, and educational requirements. The program will be hosted at ITC’s facility on Route 332 in Canandaigua, and runs August 11th through the 13th.
Any student in the Rochester/Finger Lakes region who has an interest in high-tech is encouraged to apply. There is no cost for students to attend, and two students will by chosen to receive $1000 college scholarships at the conclusion of the program.
Students will participate in several hands-on activities that focus on topics including statistics, nano-technology, solar and alternative energy technologies, mathematics, and problem solving. Students will also participate in mock interviews and hear from a panel of area colleges and universities about local educational options. The program culminates with a graduation ceremony to be held at Finger Lakes Community College. Last year, 28 students from Canandaigua, Geneva and Victor high schools attended the program.
For more information, or to apply to the program, call David Gottfried, ITC Public Affairs, at (585) 919-3081 or email david.gottfried@itcmems.com. Applications will be accepted until Friday, July 31st.
Local Young Entrepreneurs to Debut Start-Up Ventures to the Public
May 18, 2009
Young Entrepreneurs Academy Logo
Local middle and high school students from the Young Entrepreneurs Academy Class of 2009 at both the University of Rochester and SUNY Geneseo will reveal more than two dozen new businesses to the public, at the YEA! Trade Show on Wednesday, May 27th, from 5:00PM to 7:00 PM, at the University of Rochester’s Wilson Commons.
The presentation is a culmination of nine months of hard work, resulting in the graduates owning and operating their own businesses or social movements.
At YEA! Students learn how to make a job-not take a job. They are taught by local entrepreneurs and with the help of business mentors from within the community they are able to brainstorm ideas, write business plans and actually launch their own real company.
YEA! runs during the academic year from October to June, with classes meeting on a weekly basis for a period of three hours. The program is now currently accepting applications for next year’s YEA! Class of 2010.
The Trade Show is free and open to the public, and is a great way to check out all the new innovations and services developed right in your own backyard! To learn more or to R.S.V.P, please call the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, Inc, at (585) 272-3535 or visit us online at www.yeausa.org
FIRST founder Woodie Flowers on Educational Reform
May 11, 2009
MIT Professor Emeritus Woodie Flowers discusses how and why science and engineering eductation must transform - and how he is working to achieve that goal through FIRST and other elements of education. The presentation was given at Olin College of Engineering. If you are an entrepreneur that is looking to hire Engineers or scientists in the future, this is a “must see” video:
He posits that training is a commodity, education confers comparative advantage, and much of what we call education is actually training. Learning spelling and grammar is training, learning to communicate with it is education. Learning calculus is training, learning to solve problems with it is education, etc.
FIRST is one of the best ways to promote this type of education - he says that learning WITH is always better than learning ABOUT something. Team 1511 (Penfield Robotics) is a woman-lead FIRST team that has a program called “Project Girl Wrench” that addresses attracting women to the FIRST team.
RIT to host innovation + creativity festival 2009
April 28, 2009
May 2nd from 10am-5pm RIT will host the ImagineRIT creativity festival on campus. The festival, which is free and open to the public, is held throughout the RIT campus in Henrietta, NY. There are also free shuttles from the MCC campus to the festival running all day, of the RIT parking lots fill. There will be food avaiable (for an extra charge) on campus, so you can plan to stay all day. The event will exposes thousands to the hundreds of examples of student, faculty and staff creativity and innovation. ImagineRIT is targeted at all ages from small children to high school, college and adults. The entire campus is involved in the festival with more than 400 events going on all over campus.
YEA to host student entrepreneur competition at RIT
April 27, 2009
The Young Entrepreneurs Academy, a program run by a variety of local colleges including the U of R, RIT and Geneseo, is holding a business plan competition on Friday May 1st at RIT. The program will feature student finalists between 11 and 17 who will present their business plans to a panel of judges and a public audience. The competition will award a college scholarship and a chance to showcase their business at the upcoming Innovation Creativity Festival May 2nd at RIT. To attend the presentation, which is being held from 4-6pm May 1st at the Golisano Auditorium on the RIT campus you must sign up by either calling 585-272-3535 or emailing khanna@yeausa.orgby the end of day on Tuesday April 28th.
For more information about YEA see their website at www.yeausa.org
The chilling effect of bandwidth caps on Entrepreneurial Culture
April 14, 2009
Coming soon to a city near you, imagine this scenario:
Your city, one of the first to be wired with Roadrunner cable has a highly concentrated available pool of engineers, software programmers, business owners, small businesses and over 6 excellent, nationally known schools pumping out hundreds of entrepreneur-ready highly-educated students. The region has enjoyed the ability to use Broadband internet for reasonable though not inexpensive prices through Time Warner Roadrunner. When initially introduced the service was rolled out at 10mb/s but that was quickly scaled back to 1 (the speed of DSL at the time) and then slowly increased to remain competitive with the local DSL provider - always one step faster than they were. A higher bandwidth option was offered, which restored the original 10mb/s speed at a higher price point, but most people settled for just slightly faster than DSL.
Then suddenly - your cable company, who now has essentially a lock on anything faster than about 4mb/s down, announces a new policy: They are going to cap usage and make users pay not only by the speed of their connection but by their consumption of bandwidth. Various “tiers” are offered in which users get a “bucket of usage” which, if they exceed, they pay between $2 and $1 per gigabyte of usage over the amount. Your bill, currently at $40-50/month, could easily max out at over $150. The “buckets” are so small that even with the largest, fastest plan an advanced user family of 3 could easily blow through the entire $150 in bandwidth in the first week or so of usage. 100gb (3gb/day) would cost over $75/month and 150gb or more would cost $150. The cable company isn’t offering this “tiered usage plan” to people outside your region, because outside your region they have competition like Verizon FiOS to keep it in check. But here - a monopoly on the high speed Internet prevents penetration by other vendors. They justify this tiered usage plan by blaming users for their consumption and claiming that their pricing wouldn’t support necessary costs of providing the bandwidth.
The time for this to happen is - now. As of August Time Warner Cable will institute tiered pricing with bandwidth limits in 1, 10, 20, 40, 60 and 100gb increments. They are generously offering unlimited bandwidth (at any speed) for “only” $150/month (that’s not a 3-in-1 plan, that’s $150/month for Internet alone). If they aren’t doing this in your area, and they are your primary provider - you may want to prepare for a fight. They are planning to roll this out everywhere that they don’t currently have competition that would cannibalize their user base.
So what is the effect that this has on entrepreneurs specifically, and the region in general?
- Most entrepreneurs these days are “heavy users” of the Internet. Between developing their software, creating distributed development teams, uploading and downloading information to servers, twitter, website updates, video presentations, and all the other myriad ways that entrepreneurs market themselves - they almost all will fall into the high bandwidth usage scenario. Many do this sort of work from home, either during work hours, or just during off hours. This means that they will typically be paying between 3 and 4 times what they are now for Internet access - times as many employees or collaborators as they currently have. This additional cost will not only discourage the average money-conscious entrepreneur, but also discourage their collaborators, their users (for after all if they develop a high-bandwidth application like HULU, or NETFLIX , or even medium bandwidth services like BLIP.FM, or they will be trying to get users in this city as well, and their financiers (what venture capitalist will take seriously an investment developed in a city where they know that everyone is watching their “Internet gas meter” to see if they go over). They’ll simply move on to invest in other areas that are more tech-friendly.
- Students and new, young minds are the core to successful entrepreneurial ventures. New ideas come from youth, and the more we can encourage our youth to come to Rochester to learn their trade, and stay here once they have learned it, the more competitive our city can be in attracting and retaining young hard-working bright men and women to our area. But if their first impression when they arrive in Rochester is to get a bill for a 10mb/s connection for $150/month(because believe me - college students are probably the definition of high-bandwidth users) which they get at home in a combo bundle form Verizon FiOS for$60/month which includes phone, TV, and Internet at a blazing 20mb/s down and 10mb/s up - are they going to stick around here after they graduate, or move to a more progressive area with more reasonable Internet access. I’ve already gotten tremendous feedback from the RIT campus here in town that students en massse’ (and especially the deaf and hard of hearing students at NTID who use video streaming) are up in arms about this latest proposition form Time Warner. So, as a region, we have to decide - do we tolerate this monopolistic pricing scheme, or do we legislate it away?
- Collaboration depends on a highly connected community. According to this study made by the state of South Carolina, a highly connected, inexpensive to access broadband infrastructure is one thing that can make a region more competitive and connected to the future. Having this strength available makes the collaborative process easier to manage, results in more ideas, creates those ideas faster and brings them to market. Adding high price or being unable to access high speed broadband on the other hand puts a community at a definite disadvantage, because the oppressiveness of monitoring and paying for the bandwidth cap drives collaboration down and highly skilled employees and technical people away from the community to areas where they can get these features.
- Driving prices up in an already suffering economy hurts our residents, whether employed or unemployed, ability to recover quickly, and adds to inflation. A full package of internet, phone, and cable television services could easily run into the $300-400/month range depending on features selected. A marginal price increase would be painful, but doubling or tripling the rates for many users renders them impossible to bear.
- Price caps selectively punish your most tech savvy and powerful users - the ones who help all other users, the ones that drive change and innovation on the internet. It selects against young people, active business people, and the businesses that they drive.
- It selects against tech-savvy small businesses who use the web to their advantage to market their products and services. Ah you say, businesses themselves won’t be bandwidth limited, while this is true (for now - I wouldn’t bet on it being true forever if we let price caps enter the market), its not the business use of bandwidth that is at issue, it’s their end users. Am I as likely to search for houses on www.nothnagle.com if I find out that each house I look at and all the attached pictures represent over 1MB of my precious bandwidth? Am I likely to create www.webhomeusa.com if I know that the pictures and map mashups my users download are chomping bandwidth as I browse for houses? Both of these interesting and innovative sites started here in Rochester - pre-cap. Would they be as likely to be invented in the future if we knew we were penny-pinching every download and web page?
- The very fact of bandwidth caps subtly changes our Internet usage - and reduces the power of the internet to entertain, increase productivity and provide better services to our clients and end users. People have become dependent on “instant access” - it’s now EXPECTED in the business world. If we have to watch every gb of usage though, we’re more likely to “Skim the surface” of the Internet, rather than dive in head first. That is doing a disservice to our high school students, college students and others across the region.
- What about companies that have moved to a more distributed “work from home” environment. Many companies (I know of one local Rochester top 100 company at least) have eschewed large installations of capital investments in buildings, leases, and office space, in favor of a distributed environment. Their “workers” work from home and are paid based on their productivity. Typically these work from home users are vpn’ed into the central office machines during work hours - happily performing their tasks. They used to pay one flat fee for the privilege - but if they now have to pay metered bandwidth rates - what happens? Do they pass that cost up to their employer, who then passes it to the customer - yet again we run into an inflationary situation.
So what can the Rochester (or other region) entrepreneur do to protest these caps? Fortunately the Rochester Community - recognizing the peril this puts our region in - has stepped up to the task. Here are specific things that you can do - right now - that are listed on my website. Bringing FiOS to Rochester (www.verizonfiber.com ) is a long-term plan - they have no plans yet to enter our market. If we continue to let Time Warner own this market then it will be difficult to bring other competitors in. I strongly suggest you take action on multiple fronts:
- Visit other websites like www.stopthecap.com and www.dslreports.com and look for ways to resist the tiered billing system.
- Spread the word - get 5 people you know to sign up for www.verizonfiber.comsurvey, or post some flyers around campus, or tell your neighbors and co-workers. Most people BELIEVE TIME WARNER that their bills will not go up. We know otherwise and we should spread the word to all who we know that they can expect to pay more for internet under the new plan.
- Support Congressman Massa who has taken up this cause as his own. Senator Massa is the REAL DEAL and has gone out of the way to hep us in this quest. Please take time to visit his website or write a supporting letter.
- Take time to write Time Warner and tell them how you feel. Also engage Time Warner’s PR mouthpieces in as many venues as you can - ask them the hard questions. The more they don’t have an answer the worse they look in the eyes of the media and the public. We’ve slowly been turning the media’s attention around from just reprinting their press release to seeing it from a user’s eyes.
- Attend the protest April 18th and let them know IN PERSON you are not going to take this lying down.
- If you have connections in the media, talk this issue up. Ask them why they’re not giving it more attention and coverage.
- Take time to write the Attorney General and let him know that you believe that this new tiered pricing is a discriminatory policy and is based on Time Warner’s monopoly in our area. Insist that if Time Warner wants to implement tiered pricing it do so in competitive markets as well. They never will because they know that Verizon Fiber and others would eat them alive.
- Help me with writing content - if you have a link to share, or a profile to post, or a blog post to register, I would love to have help and input. Writing content is very time-consuming and I do have a company to run. Any help anyone would like to lend would be welcomed.
You can find all these resources at: http://www.verizonfiber.com/TWCProtests/tabid/57/Default.aspx
Thank you for your support - please spread the word,
Cornell Entrepreneur Network Celebration 2009
March 31, 2009
Cornell University is sponsoring their Cornell Celebration 2009 Entrepreneur’s conference April 16th through 19th on the Cornell Ithaca Campus at the Statler Conference center and hotel. The conference is the milestone annual entrepreneurship event that brings together over 500 students, alumni, faculty and staff. With eleven colleges and programs participating, this year’s event promises to be the most collaborative and comprehensive yet. The two days will include: symposia from all eleven participating groups, the final stages of two business idea contests, a showcase of technologies that are being commercialized, and a celebration of Cornell’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
It is not too late to register for the event at: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=172741&CFID=8482415&CFTOKEN=49993185
I attended this event last year and found it incredibly valuable - both as a learning event and as a networking opportunity. Cornell has the first Real Estate MBA degree in the country and there were not just science and technology entrepreneurs but Real Estate and other entrepreneurs at the conference. Unfortunately it falls the same weekend as the Atlanta FIRST Championship event and I’ll be out of town.
Posted by Lee Drake - www.rochesterstartups.com
The Lamentable State of Rochester Media
March 25, 2009
Penfield Robotics Team wins Chesapeake Regional
I guess I just don’t get it. As a long term investment in the future of our region, training, retaining and attracting scientists, engineers, programmers, skilled technical people, and smart kids is a sure win. And yet our media does very little to feature success in these areas. How can we get them to “change their ways”?
As a contributing member to the community I and other scientists, engineers and business people dedicate a fair amount of time to mentoring programs like the FIRST Robotics program. The team I mentor (Penfield Robotics Team 1511, Rolling Thunder) is a contender for an international award for their community outreach, community service, mentor involvement, business involvement and school relations. We actually won the award in the highly competitive Chesapeake Bay regional competition at the US Naval Academy in Maryland (not even relying on how well known we are in our own area). The team has already won 3 awards (Entrepreneurship, Imagery and Website) so far this year, was a finalist in the local robot competition and has qualified for the international competition every year for the past 5 years.
The average kid on the team (Rolling Thunder’s presentation team) puts in a year round effort that adds up to hundreds of hours, and mentors work essentially 2 jobs during build season - their regular employment and almost another full time job’s worth of time to mentor the students and help them to do an awesome job. The kids learn leadership, engineering, math, science, teamwork, technical writing, PR, speaking and presentation skills, and other highly valuable life skills that are all the things that schools seem to struggle to teach our kids. The nature of the program is that it also grabs kids that might be good with their hands, but have learning disabilities with classroom settings, and puts them on the straight and narrow. They dedicate to the team year round, including the summer. 100% of the alumni from Team 1511 have gone on to college. How many sports teams can claim the same thing?
And yet, when you go to the media to cover this fantastic testimonial to how industry and education can work together (and I’m talking ALL the media, newspapers, webzines, television, local magazines) they at best relegate you to page 2 of some inner section of the paper, or a short blurb about the “geeks and their robots” - if they cover you at all. And this isn’t true of just FIRST - it’s true of any academic competition: Science Olympiad, Mathletes, FIRST Lego League, even spelling bees. We’re frequently told “there wasn’t room” in the print edition. Meanwhile of course high school and college sports get full color 1/2 page feature articles, detailed student statistics on how each player performed and weekly coverage.
Now you might say we’re not doing our job - but that’s not true either. We have an extensive website with pictures, videos, etc. all released for use. We have signed releases from every student and mentor on the team. We pre-announce events through press release and send out event results through press releases. And still it’s page 3 in the corner somewhere along with “man loses cat up the tree”.
There have been occasional high spots, feature articles, in-event media coverage, video or picture specials as part of some other section (our kids were featured in the Penfield Neighborhood section because I suggested it to the Penfield editor), but they are few and far between. Meanwhile the kids pour their heart and soul into these highly productive and beneficial programs and get ignored when they succeed.
So what is the answer? I’m asking you all for suggestions for how to get academic achievement and academic competitions better featured in each of our local regions, but especially the Rochester area. How can we be sure that our community is known for the fantastic kids, mentors and parents we have who don’t happen to enjoy baseball or football (or enjoy them along with their academic achievments) but would rather create the next generation of scientists, programmers, and engineers? Should we team up with all the competitions and try to coordinate PR? Should we storm the steps? Comment in newspaper blogs and comments? What has worked for you?
