So, are you joking, or should I explain why that's true for you? If it's the latter, here's the deal.
The ID rule is to prevent disenfranchisement of voters, but when you sign the roster, you're actually signing that under penalty of law, you are who you say you are. Further, there's a method in place to challenge voters, when anyone involved in the process suspects they're not who they say they are.
Ultimately, though, the freedom of voting you're speaking of is in order to ensure that people are not kept from voting, as they have been in many parts of the country at one time or another.
Wow, that's awful, requiring an ID. Not only do we not require one except for first time voters who have registered by mail, but when people pull theirs out, I ask them to please put them away, because they are not part of the voting process. Are you sure that's a state requirement in Ohio? My understanding is that our state has interpreted the Federal law as not requiring an ID for each vote, and so we don't. For so many years, ID requirements were used to disenfranchise voters, so I'm really sensitive to it.
So, just so you know, showing ID is not standard everywhere.
"Who knows what happens to the paper?" you ask. But have you ever asked your elections officials? I can tell you that that box is individually tracked every step of the way, as is the vote in it. If you wanted to, you could be walked through that process, you can observe that in action.
In all honesty, whenever someone questions the process, I have one simple answer: Become involved in the process. I'm not worried about my vote counting, because I am now intimately familar with the very elaborate set of checks and balances and accounting and auditing in place to secure every single ballot in our system. I didn't know or understand any of that until I got involved with the process. Now that I work as an election inspector, every time I work I understand more of the process. Even if you don't become a pollworker, you're entitled to observe the process. NOTHING about what we do or how we do it is secret. You can watch us set up in the morning, you can watch us tally the votes. You can follow your precinct staff to the drop off point, and you can follow the ballots and voting materials back to the central location at Tower Road. You can watch the tallying taking place.
I agree with you that part of my job is to inspire trust in the populace. I do that by taking seriously every question asked of me about the voting process, and doing my best to provide information to the voters. When a voter like you expresses concern, I understand completely and do my best to explain what we're doing in a transparent way.
By the way, I agree that machines are more difficult to use than touch screens, but as I've explained elsewhere, the primary reason we have them is to enfranchise disabled voters. Touch screens would disenfranchise some of the same voters that were not able to exercise their voting rights under previous systems -- that is, you'd still have to be able to see and have a particular level of manual dexerity to cast a ballot. Over time, they become easier to use, at least.
If the voter cancels their ballot at that point, the vote is cancelled, they're assigned a new machine, and that ballot is marked invalid. It's actually a really big deal, which is why voters approve their ballot three times. Once before it prints to the paper copy, again to approve the paper copy, and a final time to count the vote.
BTW, changing one in 20 votes would not be enough to swing elections for us -- I have between 50 and 200 voters in elections -- and more than double that cast absentee ballots -- and the margins in their votes tends to be very large, more than 20-30 percent. They're pretty homogenous in their voting habits. But hey, it's the Bay Area, it's like that.
I work as a elections inspector in California, which means that I'm in charge of a single precinct -- I'm basically the head pollworker, responsible for the accountability of the ballots and equipment from the time it's delivered to me until the time I turn it in immediately after the election. Because of that, it's important that I am fully aware of what's going on with our equipment and alert to the possibility of tampering. My best defense has been knowledge -- which is a double-edged sword. I know how our system works. I understand the reasoning for each step of our process. I've taken every possible class offered by our county and achieved the highest possible level of certified proficiency with the equipment. So, instead of wondering what could go wrong, I understand the risk areas. For example, our equipment now has unique coded seals for every unused input/output port, and I know to watch to ensure those stay intact.
Ask "Why?" Ask to have equipment and processes explained to you. But at the same time, make sure that every moment of the day, you're acting beyond reproach. I hold my poll workers to very high standards, because every moment of every day, we're possibly under scrutiny, and it's important that there never be even the slightest incorrect impression that we're not being fully compliant to the rules and laws involved. I've actually had poll workers get angry and leave early because I was asking them to comply with the rules and they were unhappy being told, "No, you can't talk to your friend who is voting about politics" or "No, you can't imply you don't like a candidate by giving someone a funny look when they ask about a ballot option," or "No, you can't use your laptop/PDA/cellphone in our polling place".
But I'm pretty freakin' idealistic about what I do. If I lived where I grew up, I'd be a poll worker in a place where these have been real problems for decades. Right now, I live and work as a poll worker in a part of the country that has not historically had problems with voter disenfranchisement. So my work may have less meaning, in some ways, but it's still important. (Sorry, I feel very strongly about what I do, and it's hard not to talk about that.)
Because it's part of accountability for the voter's benefit -- not the voter's employer. The receipt shows the voter a unique identifier for their vote. With paper ballots, each ballot has a unique number, and when a voter voted that ballot, they got a tear off receipt showing that particular ballot number. That allows that voter to be able to ask "Was ballot X counted?" So your argument that this could be used against the voter was just as true with paper ballots.
In our county, the voter roster is not in order of time of voting -- it's in alphabetical order. It's impossible to tell from the roster or any other documentation available to us *when* a particular voter voted. We can tell that ballot X was cast at this or that time, and the voter walks away with proof for themselves that they voted ballot X. But there is no way to link ballot X -- be it electronic or paper -- to the name of a voter in the roster. Thus, every ballot is counted, every ballot is unique, the voter has proof of their unique ballot, but we have no way to link the voter to that ballot.
But the law doesn't say you're entitled to be assisted by someone sworn to secrecy. I mean, do you want to have to tell me what you want to vote, and then have me mark that down for you? What if I'm your neighbor? What if I'm your mother? Even if I'm sworn to not reveal votes, would you be comfortable if that was *always* the way you had to vote? The law says you're entitled to a private vote. Hence all the work on systems to create better assisted-voting options.
We just provide two different things. The voter gets a voting receipt, and separately, there's a paper trail. The voting receipt (which is the unique time-stamped code to access the voting machine) is a piece of paper the voter can take home, to work, etc. The paper trail is visible and approved by the voter, but remains locked, sealed, and does not leave the voting location.
I'm sorry that's true where you live. I know that when I was growing up, that was certainly a problem, and I know it continues to be. In my county, ALL precincts use the same equipment. There is no variance in equipment depending on area or affluence.
One of the things that happens to me when I work elections is that my voters will say they don't understand why we do this or that thing, because so many of them have never experienced voting disenfranchisement. I always cheerfully explain that while I'm glad they have no experience with it, that the laws and procedures exist because in many places, people don't have the luxury that my voters have. I grew up in the south, and I marched in voting rallies in support of voting rights. I understand what you're speaking of, but I don't think it follows that because *your* county or state isn't using our procedures, our reasons for using the procedures aren't valid.
The voting machines we use are the Hart E-Slate machines, which are coincidentally the only machines that have been re-certified in California so far. Alas, I'm not a designer of election equipment -- I'm a precinct inspector, which means I'm in charge of a single voting precinct. I would suggest inquiring to Hart directly about the planning involved in voting systems. What I can tell you is that we have multi-inputs, including sip-and-puff, and multiple outputs. My impression is that we can, with attachments, provide braille-based output and verification for voters, but I haven't had to do so thus far. (And such attachments are expensive enough that they are not provided to every precinct and every voting unit.) However, I have had sip-and-puff and blind voters, who all had previously been unable to vote without assistance.
Sucks for anyone who has a disability, though. They don't get to exercise their legal voting rights, because your system does not allow them anonymous, private voting.
And that's exactly what we have in my county, San Mateo County in California. The voter votes on the electronic system. The system then prints out a paper listing of his ballot, which displays for that voter. The voter must then physically approve that paper display as matching his/her vote choices. Only after the voter has verified the paper matches his/her intent, then the voter finally casts his/her ballot.
The paper ballots are on a roll that is held in a secure paper trail unit, which is sealed with a uniquely coded seal that cannot be disturbed from the time the unit is certified prior to election day until the unit is returned for verification and tallying. If the seal is broken or disturbed, that unit is immediately reported for auditing, etc.
When I am assisting voters, I make sure to highlight that the paper vote that displays is the "paper trail" they have heard about, and that to ensure their vote's integrity, they should be careful to seriously check the vote and verify it matches.
In our county, one of two in California re-certified to use electronic voting, the reason we have them is not for "quick/reliable/cheap" results. They're no faster than the previous voting system (which used paper ballots tabulated by machines at the polling place), and they were certainly more expensive.
The reason we have them is to fully enfranchise *all* voters. Every voter should be allowed to vote with every voting right given to us. Previously, voters with some disabilities had to have assisted voting, which meant that they had to have someone else read them the ballot, or mark the ballot, or otherwise participate in the voting process with them. We have electronic voting in order to comply with election and disability laws that previously were not being enforced. My goal -- and that of the people I work with -- is fully enfranchising every voter.
The original commenter said that he bought CD's (new, we assume) as gifts for friends, and then opened and ripped a copy for himself before giving them as gifts. That's different from what you're talking about.
When you buy someone something, open it, use it for yourself, take part, etc, you're giving them a used thing, not a new thing. I don't have a problem with giving used items -- I have a lot of friends who are into reuse/recycle and appreciate vintage/used/reclaimed gifts -- but as I said, buying someone a gift new and then using it for yourself before you give it to them is tacky. The implication is that you got a gift for yourself initially, and then just handed it off to them. It's not that many steps from that to, "For your birthday, I bought myself a bottle of wine, It was great."
Or have you not seen the PC vs. Mac ad about this sort of thing?
I'm sorry, that's tacky. What you're doing is giving a *used* CD as a gift -- used in the sense that you have first used it. That's fine in and of itself, but buying someone a gift so that you can benefit from it is, well, tacky. It's like buying your mom a frying pan so that she'll make you pancakes. It's like buying someone a sweater but wearing it holiday office party before you wrap it and put it under the tree.
If you want to do this, the proper way to do so is to give the person the (wrapped, unopened) CD as a gift, and then, some days later -- not when you give it, you dolt -- when the person says they enjoyed the CD, ask if they would lend it to you. Don't say, "...so that I can rip it, because I bought it for you thinking I'd be able to make a copy for myself..." because that's tacky, too.
They say it's the thought that counts, and your thought is "What's in this gift for me?"
Yes, San Carlos High School and High Tech High Bayshore both faced a lot of problems with political and district issues, and it's clear that the district would like to get rid of any charter schools. (The district involved has been in several law suits over refusing to follow state laws concerning supporting charter schools.) And I think that it's easy to think of "the administration" as a big entity, but in the case of small charters "the administration" is often just 2-3 people with a backing school governing board. That was certainly the case for much of HTHB's time. There are also a lot of details and events I left out -- I could write another thousand words on things like that facilities, the "deal" that got HTHB into the building that the school district has purchased, etc.
What I wanted to make clear was that HTHB didn't fail because charter schools are bad, or because it was in a bad location, or because the district didn't want it. HTHB failed because it didn't succeed at the basic mission of attracting and retaining students. Many of the problems could have been solved if the school had had the revenue that filling the seats would have brought. The school and many articles about it have suggested that the revenue wasn't there because the *location* kept students away. I think that's a facile and incorrect excuse.
Several commenters have suggested that Summit's touting 100% college bound students is a bad metric, or that the school is probably no better tSuhan HTHB. Well, now that I've had students at both schools, I can tell you why one has become a top-performing school while the other has closed.
1. Summit has emphasized strong teacher over facilities.
I have two children at Summit. They each have 5 teachers and several student teaching interns. With the exception of maybe one so-so teacher, all of these instructors have been *amazingly* good. By that I mean that they're people who genuinely want to teach, who have depth and breadth of understanding in their subjects, who can manage and inspire students. At HTHB, my son had teachers who didn't know their subject well enough keep up with him. At Summit, if my son wants to go beyond the classroom discussion, his teachers are right there with him, able to guide him and offer more insights to deepen his understanding of a subject. Sure, there are a couple of student teachers who seem to be a bit awkward, but they're at the school in part to get guidance in improving on this.
2. Summit has *retained* its teaching staff, giving a sense of continuity and community.
Summit has teachers that it's had for all four years they've been open. As far as I can tell, all their hires have been "keepers". Part of the selling point of these small schools is the idea that students are known and do not fall through the cracks, that they don't become anonymous and "lost" like they might at 2000 student high schools. The thing is, that really needs a continuity in community to work fully, and at Summit, it does.
3. Summit has a "no student left behind" policy that makes the success of *all* students the responsiblity of every community member.
At some point, HTHB gave up on students. If you were failing, they would throw you out. And a lot of students failed out, because they didn't have good teaching, and were generally miserable. At Summit, the entire community -- students, teachers, parents -- are tasked with ensuring that *every* student succeeds. My son excelled at many of his classes; he put a lot of effort into tutoring, guiding, and helping classmates who were struggling, so that *they* could succeed, too. If students are failing a course, they have the support of the entire community to get them back on track. This works in big and small ways. My daughter is not a top student, but even she has days where she tells me about how she was working in a small group, a group member didn't understand something, and the group took responsibility for helping the lagging student. "No student left behind" *works* at Summit.
4. The Summit administration seems to have more emphasis on living the school values of integrity, compassion . . .
After having two years of a marketing guy with the whole "How can you tell I'm lying? My lips are moving." problem, it's *refreshing* to have Summit's administration. Sometimes, they don't know things -- and they say so. I like having honorable administrators, *good people*.
I could go on, but the bottom line is that it's like bad startup vs. good startup. Would you rather have great Aeron chairs and 21" monitors, or coworkers who were the best in the area and who were being paid and given benefits that would keep them *happy*, keep them coding? Summit is the success of people over facilities, of substance and skill over "concept".
My son attended HTHB (High Tech High Bayshore) for three years. Or, to be more clear, he attended the school that started as San Carlos High School as one of the first students, and continued after the school became first loosely affiliated with and then a part of the High Tech High family, becoming HTHB. I didn't pick the school for him; he chose it himself, because he really liked the idea of charter schools, and wanted to attend a small school.
So, the first year, the school had about 78 freshmen enrolled, which was shy of the promised minimum of 80 (and goal of 100). There was a lot of hassle about not quite having 80 students. The school was not well supported by the chartering school district. It was a lot like being at a startup -- we did without many things, everyone was very optimistic, people fullfilled multiple roles, etc. That first year, there were basically only 4-5 teachers total, and they were mostly pretty good. My son had a math teacher who was amazing, dedicated, intelligent, and very inspiring to her students. His physics teacher was also great -- really interested in the topic even though it wasn't what his grad work was in, great with the students. He was a little outspoken sometimes -- he and I got into it in email once over something really silly. My son's Spanish teacher was wonderful and devoted, had a student at the school. His humanities teacher was well, *okay* -- didn't seem on the same level with the other teachers, and sometimes basically taught wrong things. There were days when I thought, "I cannot believe I am trusting my son's future to a startup", but I dealt with it. That year, my son did independent study work to do two years of math in the same year -- he and a few other students were a year ahead of most of the student body. At that time, the school's model allowed for independent study, separate pacing, things like that.
The second year, the school was announced to be more closely affiliated with High Tech High in San Diego, but was not yet "a High Tech High school". The original principal had left the school and instead there was a guy who had been a middle school principal. My son and the other students a year ahead in math were initially independent study with assistance from the Really Great Math Teacher, but at some point, the administration decided that it was too much work for her, and instead put the new math teacher in charge of them. Well *that* guy wasn't a good teacher. In fact, he didn't help the students with their studies; it appeared he didn't have the math ability to understand what they were doing. He told them he couldn't give them tests because he wasn't able to grade them. He was A Bad Teacher, very erratic. Half way through the year, the school gave *that* up, too, and instead sent those advanced math students to take math at a local community college.
Other parts of the year were more uneven, too. My son had a great humanities teacher, but his (new hire) chemistry teacher quit after a few weeks, and the replacement sucked. He taught students the wrong constant for Avagadro's number, things like that. Further, the school had no lab equipment, so they weren't doing any lab component. My understanding is that at some point, it became clear that the course would not be "state-certified" (which means it can be used towards getting into a UC-system university) unless it had a lab component. So the teacher did a basic measuring lab. And then he did it again. And for the rest of the year, every few days they would do pretty much THE SAME LAB, so that they could say that students had X number of lab hours per year. Nothing else. At the end of the year, the administration actually admitted that the students had not learned any chemistry, and that they felt bad, and would try to have a better teacher the next year. They told parents that yes, they had known that the teacher *and many others* had sucked early in the year, but they felt it was only fair to give them a semester to "settle in", and then once that was over, it seemed difficult to repla
The school failed because it did not have enough positive qualities to attract and keep students. Retention problems were caused by school policies, school administrators, and uneven teaching, among other things. The school keeps blaming the location, but I bet you Summit won't lose 75% of its classes because of the location the way HTHB did.
Yes, poorly managed. I'll write more in a separate thread.
Thanks for mentioning this, I worry people will think I'm making up how bad things were. Students were just left to fail, and many were very demoralized, as you know. I can remember checking in all the freshmen the first year for the orientation trip, and how young and mostly happy the students were. Then over the three years we were there, more and more students gave up and left, or just got really depressed and felt so cheated, and I felt cheated for them.
My son (who you probably know) was sad about not spending his last year at HTHB, but he's also glad he got out, so that he didn't lose his chance to get the kind of colleges he wanted to attend.
One more time. HTH schools may have a nice program, but HTHB (High Tech High Bayshore) sucked bigtime. It didn't do any of the things you mentioned. It was poorly run and managed. Summit *IS* all of those thing you mentioned positively -- it doesn't focus on "average ACT schools" but on ensuring that *every* student attending succeeds, and that every student is passionate and engaged about learning. And you know, for all the "HTH-like" model, the students at HTH were *miserable* compared to Summit, and that's why so many of them left. In *droves*.
Nope, not true. MANY Summit students aren't from priveleged backgrounds. Many students are going to be first generation college attendees. Many students are federal free/reduced lunch recipients. If you'd seen the graduation, you'd know how funny that statement is, given the actual makeup of the student body, which does a reasonable (though not perfect) job of reflecting the demographics of the district.
And by the way, the quality of teaching is *amazing*. Really.
So, in the interest of being fair, 100% of HTHB seniors are also off to college. The difference, and the question I think people should be asking, is that given that both schools started out with the same number of students freshman year (and they mostly did), where did all of HTHB's students go? They graduated 21, and Summit graduated what, 82? Where are those other 60 HTHB students? *I* know where. They dropped out, transferred out, and left in *droves*, and not because of funding, or location. HTHB has continued to put the blame on funding issues and not having enough students, without owning up to the fact that their educational implementation was *so* bad that they couldn't keep good staff or good students.
No, I doubt it, not at High Tech High Bayshore. The school sucked. Some particular administration members sucked. Some of the teachers were great, but many were just adequate, and others were terrible. The school didn't actual follow the High Tech High plan. And no, no one explained "why you need to learn this".
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So, are you joking, or should I explain why that's true for you? If it's the latter, here's the deal.
The ID rule is to prevent disenfranchisement of voters, but when you sign the roster, you're actually signing that under penalty of law, you are who you say you are. Further, there's a method in place to challenge voters, when anyone involved in the process suspects they're not who they say they are.
Ultimately, though, the freedom of voting you're speaking of is in order to ensure that people are not kept from voting, as they have been in many parts of the country at one time or another.
Wow, that's awful, requiring an ID. Not only do we not require one except for first time voters who have registered by mail, but when people pull theirs out, I ask them to please put them away, because they are not part of the voting process. Are you sure that's a state requirement in Ohio? My understanding is that our state has interpreted the Federal law as not requiring an ID for each vote, and so we don't. For so many years, ID requirements were used to disenfranchise voters, so I'm really sensitive to it.
So, just so you know, showing ID is not standard everywhere.
"Who knows what happens to the paper?" you ask. But have you ever asked your elections officials? I can tell you that that box is individually tracked every step of the way, as is the vote in it. If you wanted to, you could be walked through that process, you can observe that in action.
In all honesty, whenever someone questions the process, I have one simple answer: Become involved in the process. I'm not worried about my vote counting, because I am now intimately familar with the very elaborate set of checks and balances and accounting and auditing in place to secure every single ballot in our system. I didn't know or understand any of that until I got involved with the process. Now that I work as an election inspector, every time I work I understand more of the process. Even if you don't become a pollworker, you're entitled to observe the process. NOTHING about what we do or how we do it is secret. You can watch us set up in the morning, you can watch us tally the votes. You can follow your precinct staff to the drop off point, and you can follow the ballots and voting materials back to the central location at Tower Road. You can watch the tallying taking place.
I agree with you that part of my job is to inspire trust in the populace. I do that by taking seriously every question asked of me about the voting process, and doing my best to provide information to the voters. When a voter like you expresses concern, I understand completely and do my best to explain what we're doing in a transparent way.
By the way, I agree that machines are more difficult to use than touch screens, but as I've explained elsewhere, the primary reason we have them is to enfranchise disabled voters. Touch screens would disenfranchise some of the same voters that were not able to exercise their voting rights under previous systems -- that is, you'd still have to be able to see and have a particular level of manual dexerity to cast a ballot. Over time, they become easier to use, at least.
If the voter cancels their ballot at that point, the vote is cancelled, they're assigned a new machine, and that ballot is marked invalid. It's actually a really big deal, which is why voters approve their ballot three times. Once before it prints to the paper copy, again to approve the paper copy, and a final time to count the vote.
BTW, changing one in 20 votes would not be enough to swing elections for us -- I have between 50 and 200 voters in elections -- and more than double that cast absentee ballots -- and the margins in their votes tends to be very large, more than 20-30 percent. They're pretty homogenous in their voting habits. But hey, it's the Bay Area, it's like that.
I work as a elections inspector in California, which means that I'm in charge of a single precinct -- I'm basically the head pollworker, responsible for the accountability of the ballots and equipment from the time it's delivered to me until the time I turn it in immediately after the election. Because of that, it's important that I am fully aware of what's going on with our equipment and alert to the possibility of tampering. My best defense has been knowledge -- which is a double-edged sword. I know how our system works. I understand the reasoning for each step of our process. I've taken every possible class offered by our county and achieved the highest possible level of certified proficiency with the equipment. So, instead of wondering what could go wrong, I understand the risk areas. For example, our equipment now has unique coded seals for every unused input/output port, and I know to watch to ensure those stay intact.
Ask "Why?" Ask to have equipment and processes explained to you. But at the same time, make sure that every moment of the day, you're acting beyond reproach. I hold my poll workers to very high standards, because every moment of every day, we're possibly under scrutiny, and it's important that there never be even the slightest incorrect impression that we're not being fully compliant to the rules and laws involved. I've actually had poll workers get angry and leave early because I was asking them to comply with the rules and they were unhappy being told, "No, you can't talk to your friend who is voting about politics" or "No, you can't imply you don't like a candidate by giving someone a funny look when they ask about a ballot option," or "No, you can't use your laptop/PDA/cellphone in our polling place".
But I'm pretty freakin' idealistic about what I do. If I lived where I grew up, I'd be a poll worker in a place where these have been real problems for decades. Right now, I live and work as a poll worker in a part of the country that has not historically had problems with voter disenfranchisement. So my work may have less meaning, in some ways, but it's still important. (Sorry, I feel very strongly about what I do, and it's hard not to talk about that.)
Because it's part of accountability for the voter's benefit -- not the voter's employer. The receipt shows the voter a unique identifier for their vote. With paper ballots, each ballot has a unique number, and when a voter voted that ballot, they got a tear off receipt showing that particular ballot number. That allows that voter to be able to ask "Was ballot X counted?" So your argument that this could be used against the voter was just as true with paper ballots.
In our county, the voter roster is not in order of time of voting -- it's in alphabetical order. It's impossible to tell from the roster or any other documentation available to us *when* a particular voter voted. We can tell that ballot X was cast at this or that time, and the voter walks away with proof for themselves that they voted ballot X. But there is no way to link ballot X -- be it electronic or paper -- to the name of a voter in the roster. Thus, every ballot is counted, every ballot is unique, the voter has proof of their unique ballot, but we have no way to link the voter to that ballot.
But the law doesn't say you're entitled to be assisted by someone sworn to secrecy. I mean, do you want to have to tell me what you want to vote, and then have me mark that down for you? What if I'm your neighbor? What if I'm your mother? Even if I'm sworn to not reveal votes, would you be comfortable if that was *always* the way you had to vote? The law says you're entitled to a private vote. Hence all the work on systems to create better assisted-voting options.
We just provide two different things. The voter gets a voting receipt, and separately, there's a paper trail. The voting receipt (which is the unique time-stamped code to access the voting machine) is a piece of paper the voter can take home, to work, etc. The paper trail is visible and approved by the voter, but remains locked, sealed, and does not leave the voting location.
I'm sorry that's true where you live. I know that when I was growing up, that was certainly a problem, and I know it continues to be. In my county, ALL precincts use the same equipment. There is no variance in equipment depending on area or affluence.
One of the things that happens to me when I work elections is that my voters will say they don't understand why we do this or that thing, because so many of them have never experienced voting disenfranchisement. I always cheerfully explain that while I'm glad they have no experience with it, that the laws and procedures exist because in many places, people don't have the luxury that my voters have. I grew up in the south, and I marched in voting rallies in support of voting rights. I understand what you're speaking of, but I don't think it follows that because *your* county or state isn't using our procedures, our reasons for using the procedures aren't valid.
The voting machines we use are the Hart E-Slate machines, which are coincidentally the only machines that have been re-certified in California so far. Alas, I'm not a designer of election equipment -- I'm a precinct inspector, which means I'm in charge of a single voting precinct. I would suggest inquiring to Hart directly about the planning involved in voting systems. What I can tell you is that we have multi-inputs, including sip-and-puff, and multiple outputs. My impression is that we can, with attachments, provide braille-based output and verification for voters, but I haven't had to do so thus far. (And such attachments are expensive enough that they are not provided to every precinct and every voting unit.) However, I have had sip-and-puff and blind voters, who all had previously been unable to vote without assistance.
Sucks for anyone who has a disability, though. They don't get to exercise their legal voting rights, because your system does not allow them anonymous, private voting.
And that's exactly what we have in my county, San Mateo County in California. The voter votes on the electronic system. The system then prints out a paper listing of his ballot, which displays for that voter. The voter must then physically approve that paper display as matching his/her vote choices. Only after the voter has verified the paper matches his/her intent, then the voter finally casts his/her ballot.
The paper ballots are on a roll that is held in a secure paper trail unit, which is sealed with a uniquely coded seal that cannot be disturbed from the time the unit is certified prior to election day until the unit is returned for verification and tallying. If the seal is broken or disturbed, that unit is immediately reported for auditing, etc.
When I am assisting voters, I make sure to highlight that the paper vote that displays is the "paper trail" they have heard about, and that to ensure their vote's integrity, they should be careful to seriously check the vote and verify it matches.
In our county, one of two in California re-certified to use electronic voting, the reason we have them is not for "quick/reliable/cheap" results. They're no faster than the previous voting system (which used paper ballots tabulated by machines at the polling place), and they were certainly more expensive.
The reason we have them is to fully enfranchise *all* voters. Every voter should be allowed to vote with every voting right given to us. Previously, voters with some disabilities had to have assisted voting, which meant that they had to have someone else read them the ballot, or mark the ballot, or otherwise participate in the voting process with them. We have electronic voting in order to comply with election and disability laws that previously were not being enforced. My goal -- and that of the people I work with -- is fully enfranchising every voter.
The original commenter said that he bought CD's (new, we assume) as gifts for friends, and then opened and ripped a copy for himself before giving them as gifts. That's different from what you're talking about.
When you buy someone something, open it, use it for yourself, take part, etc, you're giving them a used thing, not a new thing. I don't have a problem with giving used items -- I have a lot of friends who are into reuse/recycle and appreciate vintage/used/reclaimed gifts -- but as I said, buying someone a gift new and then using it for yourself before you give it to them is tacky. The implication is that you got a gift for yourself initially, and then just handed it off to them. It's not that many steps from that to, "For your birthday, I bought myself a bottle of wine, It was great."
Or have you not seen the PC vs. Mac ad about this sort of thing?
I'm sorry, that's tacky. What you're doing is giving a *used* CD as a gift -- used in the sense that you have first used it. That's fine in and of itself, but buying someone a gift so that you can benefit from it is, well, tacky. It's like buying your mom a frying pan so that she'll make you pancakes. It's like buying someone a sweater but wearing it holiday office party before you wrap it and put it under the tree.
If you want to do this, the proper way to do so is to give the person the (wrapped, unopened) CD as a gift, and then, some days later -- not when you give it, you dolt -- when the person says they enjoyed the CD, ask if they would lend it to you. Don't say, "...so that I can rip it, because I bought it for you thinking I'd be able to make a copy for myself..." because that's tacky, too.
They say it's the thought that counts, and your thought is "What's in this gift for me?"
Yes, San Carlos High School and High Tech High Bayshore both faced a lot of problems with political and district issues, and it's clear that the district would like to get rid of any charter schools. (The district involved has been in several law suits over refusing to follow state laws concerning supporting charter schools.) And I think that it's easy to think of "the administration" as a big entity, but in the case of small charters "the administration" is often just 2-3 people with a backing school governing board. That was certainly the case for much of HTHB's time. There are also a lot of details and events I left out -- I could write another thousand words on things like that facilities, the "deal" that got HTHB into the building that the school district has purchased, etc.
What I wanted to make clear was that HTHB didn't fail because charter schools are bad, or because it was in a bad location, or because the district didn't want it. HTHB failed because it didn't succeed at the basic mission of attracting and retaining students. Many of the problems could have been solved if the school had had the revenue that filling the seats would have brought. The school and many articles about it have suggested that the revenue wasn't there because the *location* kept students away. I think that's a facile and incorrect excuse.
Several commenters have suggested that Summit's touting 100% college bound students is a bad metric, or that the school is probably no better tSuhan HTHB. Well, now that I've had students at both schools, I can tell you why one has become a top-performing school while the other has closed.
1. Summit has emphasized strong teacher over facilities.
I have two children at Summit. They each have 5 teachers and several student teaching interns. With the exception of maybe one so-so teacher, all of these instructors have been *amazingly* good. By that I mean that they're people who genuinely want to teach, who have depth and breadth of understanding in their subjects, who can manage and inspire students. At HTHB, my son had teachers who didn't know their subject well enough keep up with him. At Summit, if my son wants to go beyond the classroom discussion, his teachers are right there with him, able to guide him and offer more insights to deepen his understanding of a subject. Sure, there are a couple of student teachers who seem to be a bit awkward, but they're at the school in part to get guidance in improving on this.
2. Summit has *retained* its teaching staff, giving a sense of continuity and community.
Summit has teachers that it's had for all four years they've been open. As far as I can tell, all their hires have been "keepers". Part of the selling point of these small schools is the idea that students are known and do not fall through the cracks, that they don't become anonymous and "lost" like they might at 2000 student high schools. The thing is, that really needs a continuity in community to work fully, and at Summit, it does.
3. Summit has a "no student left behind" policy that makes the success of *all* students the responsiblity of every community member.
At some point, HTHB gave up on students. If you were failing, they would throw you out. And a lot of students failed out, because they didn't have good teaching, and were generally miserable. At Summit, the entire community -- students, teachers, parents -- are tasked with ensuring that *every* student succeeds. My son excelled at many of his classes; he put a lot of effort into tutoring, guiding, and helping classmates who were struggling, so that *they* could succeed, too. If students are failing a course, they have the support of the entire community to get them back on track. This works in big and small ways. My daughter is not a top student, but even she has days where she tells me about how she was working in a small group, a group member didn't understand something, and the group took responsibility for helping the lagging student. "No student left behind" *works* at Summit.
4. The Summit administration seems to have more emphasis on living the school values of integrity, compassion . . .
After having two years of a marketing guy with the whole "How can you tell I'm lying? My lips are moving." problem, it's *refreshing* to have Summit's administration. Sometimes, they don't know things -- and they say so. I like having honorable administrators, *good people*.
I could go on, but the bottom line is that it's like bad startup vs. good startup. Would you rather have great Aeron chairs and 21" monitors, or coworkers who were the best in the area and who were being paid and given benefits that would keep them *happy*, keep them coding? Summit is the success of people over facilities, of substance and skill over "concept".
To be clear, they graduated 21 seniors, after having enrolled originally 80 students in that entering class. I typo'd "freshmen" for "seniors".
My son attended HTHB (High Tech High Bayshore) for three years. Or, to be more clear, he attended the school that started as San Carlos High School as one of the first students, and continued after the school became first loosely affiliated with and then a part of the High Tech High family, becoming HTHB. I didn't pick the school for him; he chose it himself, because he really liked the idea of charter schools, and wanted to attend a small school.
So, the first year, the school had about 78 freshmen enrolled, which was shy of the promised minimum of 80 (and goal of 100). There was a lot of hassle about not quite having 80 students. The school was not well supported by the chartering school district. It was a lot like being at a startup -- we did without many things, everyone was very optimistic, people fullfilled multiple roles, etc. That first year, there were basically only 4-5 teachers total, and they were mostly pretty good. My son had a math teacher who was amazing, dedicated, intelligent, and very inspiring to her students. His physics teacher was also great -- really interested in the topic even though it wasn't what his grad work was in, great with the students. He was a little outspoken sometimes -- he and I got into it in email once over something really silly. My son's Spanish teacher was wonderful and devoted, had a student at the school. His humanities teacher was well, *okay* -- didn't seem on the same level with the other teachers, and sometimes basically taught wrong things. There were days when I thought, "I cannot believe I am trusting my son's future to a startup", but I dealt with it. That year, my son did independent study work to do two years of math in the same year -- he and a few other students were a year ahead of most of the student body. At that time, the school's model allowed for independent study, separate pacing, things like that.
The second year, the school was announced to be more closely affiliated with High Tech High in San Diego, but was not yet "a High Tech High school". The original principal had left the school and instead there was a guy who had been a middle school principal. My son and the other students a year ahead in math were initially independent study with assistance from the Really Great Math Teacher, but at some point, the administration decided that it was too much work for her, and instead put the new math teacher in charge of them. Well *that* guy wasn't a good teacher. In fact, he didn't help the students with their studies; it appeared he didn't have the math ability to understand what they were doing. He told them he couldn't give them tests because he wasn't able to grade them. He was A Bad Teacher, very erratic. Half way through the year, the school gave *that* up, too, and instead sent those advanced math students to take math at a local community college.
Other parts of the year were more uneven, too. My son had a great humanities teacher, but his (new hire) chemistry teacher quit after a few weeks, and the replacement sucked. He taught students the wrong constant for Avagadro's number, things like that. Further, the school had no lab equipment, so they weren't doing any lab component. My understanding is that at some point, it became clear that the course would not be "state-certified" (which means it can be used towards getting into a UC-system university) unless it had a lab component. So the teacher did a basic measuring lab. And then he did it again. And for the rest of the year, every few days they would do pretty much THE SAME LAB, so that they could say that students had X number of lab hours per year. Nothing else. At the end of the year, the administration actually admitted that the students had not learned any chemistry, and that they felt bad, and would try to have a better teacher the next year. They told parents that yes, they had known that the teacher *and many others* had sucked early in the year, but they felt it was only fair to give them a semester to "settle in", and then once that was over, it seemed difficult to repla
The school failed because it did not have enough positive qualities to attract and keep students. Retention problems were caused by school policies, school administrators, and uneven teaching, among other things. The school keeps blaming the location, but I bet you Summit won't lose 75% of its classes because of the location the way HTHB did.
Yes, poorly managed. I'll write more in a separate thread.
Thanks for mentioning this, I worry people will think I'm making up how bad things were. Students were just left to fail, and many were very demoralized, as you know. I can remember checking in all the freshmen the first year for the orientation trip, and how young and mostly happy the students were. Then over the three years we were there, more and more students gave up and left, or just got really depressed and felt so cheated, and I felt cheated for them.
My son (who you probably know) was sad about not spending his last year at HTHB, but he's also glad he got out, so that he didn't lose his chance to get the kind of colleges he wanted to attend.
One more time. HTH schools may have a nice program, but HTHB (High Tech High Bayshore) sucked bigtime. It didn't do any of the things you mentioned. It was poorly run and managed. Summit *IS* all of those thing you mentioned positively -- it doesn't focus on "average ACT schools" but on ensuring that *every* student attending succeeds, and that every student is passionate and engaged about learning. And you know, for all the "HTH-like" model, the students at HTH were *miserable* compared to Summit, and that's why so many of them left. In *droves*.
Nope, not true. MANY Summit students aren't from priveleged backgrounds. Many students are going to be first generation college attendees. Many students are federal free/reduced lunch recipients. If you'd seen the graduation, you'd know how funny that statement is, given the actual makeup of the student body, which does a reasonable (though not perfect) job of reflecting the demographics of the district.
And by the way, the quality of teaching is *amazing*. Really.
So, in the interest of being fair, 100% of HTHB seniors are also off to college. The difference, and the question I think people should be asking, is that given that both schools started out with the same number of students freshman year (and they mostly did), where did all of HTHB's students go? They graduated 21, and Summit graduated what, 82? Where are those other 60 HTHB students? *I* know where. They dropped out, transferred out, and left in *droves*, and not because of funding, or location. HTHB has continued to put the blame on funding issues and not having enough students, without owning up to the fact that their educational implementation was *so* bad that they couldn't keep good staff or good students.
No, I doubt it, not at High Tech High Bayshore. The school sucked. Some particular administration members sucked. Some of the teachers were great, but many were just adequate, and others were terrible. The school didn't actual follow the High Tech High plan. And no, no one explained "why you need to learn this".