Inequality

Today’s New York Times blog post on inequality shows that children from families in the 90th percentile – the top 10% in income – do better in school. No real surprise. What may be less commonly known is that the educational performance gap is also increasing over the middle class.

Many if not most middle class families probably believe their children’s education ‘gives them a shot’. Perhaps not as much as they think. They may also be surprised to learn this gap is showing up in other participation venues like organized recreation, volunteering and church.

Are we creating a society where productivity reigns while income and opportunity disparity grows?

The article provides strong evidence for supporting better pre-school child development including:
- Better and more day care taught by reasonably paid professionals,
- Play and face time activities that encourage cognitive development,
- Accessible community recreation and social activities.

It also shows why we need to question how we arrived here; where we need to go; and what might happen if we don’t change?

St. Francis Alumni Mass – 2013

“Why a Memorial Mass?” The border inspector’s follow up to the standard ‘purpose of your visit’ question was more odd than rhetorical. Next she asked me to remove my wool cap. Our friendliest crossing was the time we encountered an SFHS grad. My answer then settled everything and the remainder of our brief encounter was about graduation years and pleasant memories. Shared understandings do smooth relationships and trust.

After the Memorial Mass we had a difficult discussion with Kevin, class of ’99, about the number of young men from recent graduation years whose names were read. He as a young man with a new baby, me as a parent and grandparent, experienced the loss from additional perspectives.

Also on the list is James Michalek. I met him for the first time at last year’s Mass . The school library is named after his dad, Dr. Leo Michalek, school physician during my time.

Tony Kosowski has an online slide show of this year’s Mass. Also impressive is the schools online collection of Tau magazines and other alumni documents.

Later, John and I enjoy a conversation with the family of a future alumni. Ryan, class of ’15, and I share Choir membership. His mom, dad, and grandmother delight us with family stories about finding common ground in a Polish – Irish household that differs on conservative and liberal social and economic perspectives. It is obvious from the delightful anecdotes that spirited conversations have a long family history. Ryan and his dad, Jim(?), will be travelling to France soon and expect to see the monument to another SFHS grad (1933), Friar Ignatius Maternowski, who died as a chaplain parachuting into D-Day.

I’d long remembered his name on the bronze plaque at the chapel entrance. Take a moment to learn a bit more at find a grave and in the Fall 2012 Tau.

Off to Red Top Hots where we try to convince the owner to bring his mobile unit to Canada in the summer. He tells us about other annual Canadian regulars from Calgary. Obviously worth the drive from East or West.

We find ourselves in Lackawanna for the second time. Earlier it was breakfast at Daisie’s on South Park. John and I took a break from Lent. Now we are following Lauren around Our Lady of Victory. It is her first day as tour guide. Father Baker and her OLV teachers would be proud. His store and the story of this impressive Basilica is captivating. The museum displays child welfare charity of the times. It was a ‘Baker boy’ who provided his last days of hospital care.

Our South Towns tour ends with pizza and wings to go. Hope to be back next year. It will be the 50th anniversary of the class of ’64.

Library dedicated to Dr. Leo Michalek, school physician.

Less tells you more

The real numbers can be overwhelming. This famous summary puts our status in perspective.

If the World were 100 People infographic by KVSStudio.

Evidence Supported Practice

Attended a few sessions at the PART conference yesterday afternoon. Very stimulating presentation from Dr. Eileen Gambril. Some personally resonant take aways directly applicable to current BI work:
Decisions in child welfare practice: What outcomes to seek? How to frame problems? How to evaluate risk? What assessment methods to use? What intervention methods to use? When and how to revaluate progress?

What we know about decision making:
Some decisions cause more harm than good.
Errors occur; avoidable and not.
Wide variety of policy and practice is an opportunity to test. Are they equally effective?

Bias, propaganda, politics, value conflicts, conflicts of interest, and scare resources challenge critical thinking and evidence informed practice.

Implementing evidence based practice:

1. Convert information needs into well structured questions.
2. Track down the best available evidence.
3. Critically appraise what you find.
4. Integrate appraisal with other info and make the decision together with client.
5. Evaluate results and try to improve.

Bodies, Brains, Data

The combination of people, talent, and data contributed a large measure to the recent US presidential victory by a former community organizer.

People committed to a cause, a hope, an alternative remain the necessary condition for change. What this campaign demonstates is that the addition of analysts and relevant data make that change effort that much more effective.

Increasingly change agents apply ever more accessible analytics, publicly available data and strategically collected proprietary data to focused community mobilization.

Links: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/the-obama-campaigns-technology-the-force-multiplier/

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/tech/web/obama-campaign-tech-team/index.html

Acknowledging Irene Druska’s service and skills

Irene Druska, a long standing QSR support team member retired recently. Many of you worked with Irene during her 20 years at CAS Toronto. Not wanting any special notice, she left quietly.

As her supervisor during the past three and half years, I want to publicly acknowledge her years of service. I was proud to work alongside such a skilled and dedicated team member. Many caseworkers benefitted from her support in navigating complex requirements in a very comprehensive service application. She knew the requirements; the best practices; and the solutions for countless situations not imagined by system developers.

Irene did her work quietly, confidently, with singular focus on determining the best solution. Our work tracking and testing application is full of her recommended improvements, observations, and corrections to systemic flaws. Often when an issue arose, she could point to an earlier recommendation that would have prevented it.

During my 30 years of system development, Irene was one of the best testers I ever worked with. Her unique ability to uncover problems early and to emulate expected and unexpected user behaviour sent many test releases back for re-work. Developers were sometimes frustrated. They grew to appreciate her contribution to better quality by that early identification and to reduced future frustration and fixes.

Those who received help from Irene never detected that she had answered the same question, sometimes to the same person, many times previously. Often, as workers valued her understanding, she reminded them that the question had shifted from help with the service system to help with the case.

Irene’s work continues not only in the enhanced capabilities of those she helped, but also in many of her online tutorials in the CASTLE Intranet  and the hundreds of service system documentation pages in the data model wiki.

Before leaving, Irene mentioned looking forward to more time with Cooper, her rescue Greyhound, and to instructing more Tai Chi classes.

NIEM videos introduce benefits of standardizing data exchange

https://www.niem.gov/about/what-is-niem/Pages/what-is-niem.aspx.

Two videos, each less than 3 minutes long, provide a top level view to the benefits of standardized data exchange. I really like their emphasis on building the exchanges from multiple community sources and assisting stakeholders in understanding each other.

Recently we completed a web service based exchange of referrals among four agencies. Not an insignificant amount of work, but considerable benefits including faster, less costly processing. Comprehensive notification, local and shared logging ensures end to end accountability.

NIEMs also has extensive technical information on the Human Services domain that is very valuable to anyone working on application development, data exchange standards, or shared systems.

https://www.niem.gov/about/domain/human-services/Pages/human-services.aspx