Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Education

  • A Matter of Degrees

    A while back I listened to a woman explain that she holds three college degrees. I’m fairly certain that meant associate’s, associate’s, associate’s. My own three are bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate. Generally speaking, under our American system, we only refer to the highest degree held, so the lower two degrees are kind of assumed to exist. Jane Goodall holds a Ph.D. (from Cambridge) but no lower degrees – the British system is a bit different than ours. Dr. Goodall’s researched and published books on chimpanzees were, essentially, all of her college career. I know that her Ph.D. is more prestigious than mine – and that her single degree is a lot more than three associate’s might be.

    The Russians have a degree above the Ph.D. – but it is granted upon successful defense of the dissertation. Under our system, the dissertation and its defense are the final part of the Ph.D. A student who has completed all the coursework for a Ph.D. but has not submitted and successfully defended a dissertation is termed ABD – all but dissertation. ABD is not a degree, and in many ways can be kind of a bad thing. In order to start the dissertation, I had to have substantially completed my coursework, and passed my comps (comprehensive exams). If you don’t pass the comps, you have invested several years in education that you won’t get credit for. Had I failed my comps, I would have walked away with a second non-thesis masters. That’s kind of like having 2 heads – unusual, but not generally helpful to a career. I would like to have a quiet beer with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and learn exactly how he came to have his second Masters.

    Doctorates aren’t equal – the order in which they are given at a University graduation is the only spot where I know you can see the difference in status. Generally speaking, the Ph.D is an academic research degree, while the MD, Juris Doctorate, and Ed.D. are professional degrees. Only time I got to observe this was when my daughter got her Bachelors – the new Ph.D holders went through the line first. The next week, the MDs and JDs began a lifetime of larger paychecks.

    Then we can go to the Associates’s degrees – an Associate of Applied Sciences is a vocational degree, while the Associate of Arts or Associate of Science is generally the first two years of a bachelor’s program. It is quite possible to have 3 separate Associate’s degrees and never take a class with a 300 or 400 number.

  • Village Idiot or Village Midwit

    Time was when our phraseology suggests a belief in one idiot per village. Then came the internet and Facebook. The postings bring suggestions that we have more than one idiot per village. Fortunately, the internet is available, so we can hopefully download a measurable definition, and then use the old bell curve to find out if idiots are actually so common.

    So a search for ‘clinical definition idiot’ led me to this website: https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-the-difference-between-a-moron-imbecile-and-idiot.htm This is the fourth sentence (emphasis added):   “Those with an IQ of 0 to 25 (an IQ of 100 is average) were called idiots, 26 to 50 were called imbeciles and 51 to 70 were called morons. “

    That makes idiots pretty darned rare – the likelihood of encountering an idiot is the same as that of encountering someone with an IQ of 175 or more. Using a 15 point standard deviation, the chance of encountering an idiot is 0.0000287105%. ( https://iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx )

    So, taking the definition and the probability, it doesn’t look like idiots are something we encounter daily, or even monthly. We don’t have a great increase in village idiots. I think the problem has to be village midwits – so here’s what I get for a definition of midwit: “Noun. midwit (plural midwits) (neologism, chiefly Internet slang, mildly derogatory) A person of middling intellect; someone who is neither particularly dumb nor notably intelligent, especially if they act as if they are smarter than they are.” Again the emphasis is added. I think the problem is that we have a lot more people who “act as if they are smarter than they are.“

    So I assume midwittery begins with an IQ of 108 (half a standard deviation above the norm) the chart tells me that 30% of the population will score above 108. If I arbitrarily put the cap on at 115, I have a group that includes 14% of humanity – and that’s basically one out of every 7 people I encounter.

    I don’t believe we have more village idiots than ever before – but we do have more opportunities for education. According to the Census:

    “In 2022, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States ranged from less than high school to advanced degrees beyond a bachelor’s degree.

    9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.

    28% had high school as their highest level of school completed. 

    15% had completed some college but not a degree.

    10% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.

    23% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.

    14% had completed advanced education such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctorate. 

    When we add those numbers – 15, 10, 23 and 14 – we come up with a total between 62 and 63% of Americans (over 25) who have attended college. That’s five out of every eight people.

    When 5/8ths of the adult population has attended college – and 47% hold one level of college degree or another – perhaps there is nothing particularly elite about attending college. Sometimes we’re just one more village midwit. I’m not certain that village idiots aren’t less harmful than village midwits.

  • What Happens to Credentialism?

    Colleges – and even high schools – exist to provide credentials. Probably the highest example of credentialism is the MD or DO – but most of our programs boil down to taking the correct group of classes, achieving a certain minimum score, and acquiring a credential. You pretty much have to get the credential to get the interview that gets you the job. In this simplification, there isn’t a lot of difference between the bachelors, masters and doctorates in the academy and the classifications of apprentice, journeyman and master in the skilled trades (take plumbing or electricity for examples).

    There are a whole lot of jobs where I lack the credentials to even apply. We’ve developed a credentialed society, and sometimes the benefits of the credential seem hard to find. Sometimes the requirements in terms of work experience seem like gatekeepers. And more frequently, people are asking what is the value of the credential.

    My credential is a Ph.D. in sociology. If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people who recommend against getting a degree in sociology. I suppose I’m lucky – I got a job in the subject, and retired working at the same topic that interested me as an undergrad. Other folks have other credentials. I’m reading Neil Howe’s book about the fourth turning – and his jacket blurb identifies him as a demographer holding graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale. There are a lot of ways to get the title of demographer – his was, obviously, different than mine.

    After retiring, I’ve spent a few years on the local school board – and teaching jobs are open only to the certified. I started with the belief that certification in special education brought with it some incredible teaching skills – yet as I left the board, I left with a strong suspicion that we had hired people with the credential to evaluate our students, but once the evaluation was complete we wound up with teacher’s aides who did most of the actual teaching. I knew Dave Peterson – and saw more than one of his students go on to graduate and become teachers. But those years of closer observation showed me that Dave was a special teacher – but that wasn’t directly related to a special education certificate. At the Libby Campus of FVCC, I worked in the Academic Reinforcement Center with Connie Malyevac. Connie was a better teacher than I – I watched her reach out and find ways to get students on track, students who were beyond my reach. I was good – Connie was great. It wasn’t a question of credentials – she simply had more ability to reach out and bring students back onto the path.

    Remembering those days when I Worked with Connie makes me understand why we need to be moving into some different forms of credentials that reflect ability. I’m looking at the SAT – the Scholastic Aptitude Test is now reducing the length and complexity of statements to which students respond and from which they determine the correct information. These are the questions my students referred to as “story questions.” The real world has too much information – much of the problem of thinking is just deciding the data that is relevant to the problem.

    I’m glad to have had the University system as a place to work – but I could see how it was breaking down and no longer providing valid credentials. I think on Howe’s work – where his credentials are more the Ivy League degrees than the topic – and I recall the Whorfian Hypothesis. Benjamin Whorf was a Chemical Engineer (MIT BS and MS) who studied the Hopi language and came up with the idea that people experience the world based on the structure of their language. This link shows that MIT still remembers (web.mit.edu.allanmc.www.whorf.scienceandlinguistics.pdf )

    Benjamin Whorf’s name moved into social science fields because of his competence in linguistics, while his credentials were degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. Perhaps it’s time for us to start looking at developing competence over credentialing?

  • Our School District is 80% Unified

     This article is excerpted from a report I made to Trego’s school board several years ago.  I don’t have an answer to what went on when Eureka Elementary and Lincoln County High Schools were unified by election in 1988 – the relevant board minutes were missing, and Joel and I were unable to find them. 

    I began looking for data when I read of Eureka’s Elementary district’s inability to pass a levy for a new school building – the suggested alternatives included getting the high school to build a new school, and passing the existing high school on to the elementary district.  While it was offered as an “out of the box” solution, it has been done before – the Lincoln County High School I attended is now the Eureka middle school.

    As a Trego taxpayer, I have the privilege of supporting LCHS and Trego Elementary – but when LCHS buildings go to Eureka Elementary, we Trego residents have effectively been taxed to support Eureka Elementary as well as Trego Elementary.  (Joel tells me that Eureka Elementary paid LCHS a fair price for the old high school – but as I rewrite these notes, I still don’t know what the fair price was.  Trego and Fortine districts provide about 20% of the High School tax base.  Turning the old high school into the middle school is a great deal for Eureka – but may have been unjust taxation for Fortine and Trego landowners. I have assurances that that is not the case – but I do not have figures that allow me to do my own calculations.

    Understanding the significance requires data.  And that data is available at https://svc.mt.gov/dor/property/cov#/256 where the state shows market and taxable values for each district.  To minimize the data dazzle, I will attempt to explain using only the market values of District 13 elementary and District 13 high school, then converting them to percentages for ease of understanding.  (this data is from my original report to the Trego board, and is not current)

    High School District                                1,375,196,172

    Elementary District                                 1,108,162,025

    Subtracting the elementary market value from the high school market value shows that 2,670,341, or 19.4% of the property tax values going to LCHS are from Fortine and Trego districts.   The decisions on running the high school are made by five board members elected from the Eureka elementary district – the appearance of representation for Fortine and Trego is a member from each small district, outvoted at the best, and, at the worst a pair with Quisling quality loyalty to the communities they represent.

    I believe that the codes mandate that the Fortine district trustee be voted in by Fortine, and Trego’s trustee be voted in only by Trego voters – but I have found no evidence that elections have occurred in that manner.

    I have been gathering data to better understand the governance of Lincoln County High School over the past three years.  It is a bit perplexing . . . LCHS has, throughout my lifetime, been closely related to Eureka Elementary.  When I attended LCHS, the cafeteria was over in the Roosevelt building.  Roger Ranta was superintendent over both LCHS and Eureka Elementary.  The lines of demarcation were never well defined.  In many ways, LCHS and Eureka Elementary have behaved as a unified district over at least the past sixty years – but with lip service toward recognizing the outlying districts (now only Fortine and Trego) as part of Lincoln County High School’s district and independent of Elementary 13.

    MCA 20-6-101-3(4) states “As used in this title, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, a county high school is a high school district that has not unified with an elementary district under 20-6-312.  The context of the name “Lincoln County High School” does not clearly (or even murkily) indicate unification with Eureka Elementary.  I suspect that this section of the law was why discussion of the need to change the high school’s name was reported in the Mountain Ear when the unification was discussed in 1988.  (Joel tells me that the two districts are not unified, but that they operate together under a memorandum of agreement)

    I began searching for documentation of unification when I read that comment in the Mountain Ear archives.  I now have a copy of the April 20, 1988 letter to the trustees of Eureka Elementary, District 13 from Cindy Middig, then Lincoln County Superintendent of Schools.   That letter begins: “Congratulations on the success of your unification election” then gives instructions on actions that need to be completed before July 1st, 1988. 

    Since Eureka/LCHS does not term itself a “Unified District” while Libby does, I am assuming that a more detailed review of the LCHS minutes, or the Lincoln County Superintendent’s correspondence will unearth more relevant information.  Middig’s letter ends with “The additional high school trustee nominating areas (the 3 outlying districts) will remain the same.  The trustees presently representing them, Mrs. Lora Johnson (Trego), Mrs. BeeGee Cole (Fortine) and Penny Williams (Rexford) are hereby appointed to hold office until a successor is elected and qualified at the next regular school election in April of 1989.”

    The fortunate thing is that BeeGee Cole and Ted Roo (LCHS board chair at the time) live.  When I called BeeGee she recalled being appointed to the High School board to represent Fortine, but had no firm recollection of anything being done to unify the districts.  She explained to me that she was a Fortine board member and sent by the board to represent the Fortine District at the LCHS board meetings.  This differs substantially from the role Marcy Butts  filled on the LCHS board, and it appears that change is a result of Cindy Middig’s letter.  It appears that Middig did not consider that her change to the board structure would essentially create a taxation without representation situation when the Eureka Elementary Board could vote to take high school properties that were 20% funded by Fortine and Trego.

    I spoke with Ted Roo, whose recollection was that Cindy Middig’s letter removed all the high school board members and gave all the authority over the school to the elementary board.  From Ted’s recollections, we can point to April 20, 1988 as the time when the event occurred.  (Ted only served on the high school board, and ceased being a board member with Middig’s letter.)  If Ted’s recollections are correct, we need to see if “The Lincoln County High School Trustees” performed all the requirements for the first transaction listed in Middag’s letter.

    Since the May 16, 1988 minutes show LCHS board members Ted Roo, Lora Johnson, Penny Williams, L. Jack Higle, Andy Ivers and BeeGee present, we need only review the minutes from that date through July, 1988 to determine if the LCHS board completed that required transaction before July 1, 1988.  My reading of the Middig Unification letter is that, if that transaction was not performed by the LCHS board before July 1, the unification did not legally occur.  The old Mountain Ear article pointed out that there was a discussion that the name of the high school would be changed – yet it remains Lincoln County High School.  The unchanged name suggests that there is a significant possibility that the requirements listed by Middig were not performed.

    If those three specific actions Middig’s letter says were required before unification could occur were never done, as I read the letter, the unification was never completed.  Yes, that would create a challenge to getting LCHS a high school board after the Elementary board has controlled both operations for 35 years – but I know of no statute of limitations that forces us to accept governmental misconduct or blunders.  MCA 20-6-312 lists the requirements for County high school unification.  20-6-313 seems to support Middig’s instructions: “(1) Whenever a county high school is unified with the elementary district where the county high school building is located, the following transactions must be completed on or before the July 1 when the unification becomes effective:”

    Since the High School continues to operate as Lincoln County High School, which name does not clearly indicate the unification with Eureka Elementary, and after talking with then LCHS board chair Ted Roo, I have questions on whether those required transactions occurred – the LCHS name continuation suggests that there is, at the least, some probability that the Middig letter unified the districts, but the other activities that were required to occur before July 1, 1988 did not.

    I (along with Superintendent Joel Graves reviewed the records from May 16, 1988 through August, 1988, and we were unable to find the minutes that described the board activities to complete the following transactions required in Supt. Middig’s letter:

    1.         The Lincoln County High School trustees shall surrender all minutes, documents, and other records to the trustees of the “new” high school district.

    2.         The county treasurer, after allowing for any outstanding or registered warrants, shall transfer all end-of-year fund cash balances of the county high school to similar refunds established for the high school district.  All previous years’ taxes levied and collected for the county high school shall be credited to the appropriate fund for the high school district.

    3.         The board of county commissioners shall execute, in the name of the county, all necessary and appropriate deeds, bills of sale and other instruments for the conveyance of title to all real and personal property of the county high school, including all appurtenances and hereditaments, to the high school district.

    Another necessary search through Eureka’s records is to determine the circumstances of the transfer of the old high school building from LCHS to the Eureka elementary district.  If the LCHS board was eliminated – and I trust Ted Roo and his memory – the Eureka Elementary board held five of the votes that transferred the county high school to the Eureka Elementary District.

    I asked Suzy Rios, Lincoln County Superintendent of Schools, to search her department’s records from May 16, 1988 to August 1, 1988 to see if documentation exists that provides further information on the unification election – but I suspect that the county superintendent’s record went the same way as Extensions – and I disposed of Extensions records when they had been spoiled by years of a sewage leak in the annex basement.  

     Middig did not complete her term of office, and was replaced by Mary Hudspeth as County superintendent of schools.  The dates when Cindy Middag left the office and Mary Hudspeth came in may explain some of my confusion.  (At Trego, we are missing our 1988 and 89 board minutes)

    If neither Superintendent can find evidence that the LCHS board took the action Superintendent Middag required, our next step is to ask Sedaris Carlson (County Treasurer) to see if those actions required of the county treasurer occurred.  If they did, it is evidence that the unification occurred.  If not, it supports the null hypothesis.  Again, 1988 was early in computer evolution – any records will be on paper, and have long been stashed away somewhere.

    We can also check the county commission’s records for the same time period to see if their required actions were performed.  Their minutes for the middle of 1988 will show, or not show, if they did what they were required to do.

    As I understand it, if Superintendent Middig’s letter stood without negation,  we have a high school that is unified with part, but not all, of its constituent elementary districts.  Since Fortine and Trego both exist as independent districts, Eureka elementary has essentially been granted power to tax both Fortine and Trego for the high school district, then turn the high school property over to the elementary district.  If I recall correctly, taxation without representation was the impetus behind the American revolution.  This situation also suggests that if the unification did occur, Cindy Middig did not correctly consider representation and taxation of Fortine and Trego – which is probably a constitutional issue.

    My conversations with BeeGee and Ted leads me to these tentative (and testable) assumptions:

    1. Prior to the unification vote the outlying districts assigned board members to the LCHS board.  This makes sense in terms of communication both ways.
    2. The unification vote that was announced as a success by Supt. Middig was partially enacted – the high school board was replaced by Eureka Elementary’s board, plus a mandated representative from Fortine and from Trego.  Rexford later entered Eureka as a consolidation – ownership of Rexford school and its history may show something:  If the necessary transactions were completed, the building would have been property of the consolidated district when Eureka took over Rexford district.  Additional research needs to be done on the old high school.  Joel explained that Eureka Elementary bought the old high school building from LCHS – that can provide a great deal of light to the questions.  If it was purchased from LCHS, that indicates that there is no unified district.  If it was sold at less than fair market value, that indicates the high school and elementary districts were acting as a unified district to the economic disadvantage of Fortine and Trego taxpayers.  If the building was still owned by LCHS, it strongly suggests that the transactions Superintendent Middig demanded were not completed.
    1. Whether LCHS and Eureka Elementary are unified or not, the LCHS board is set up to exploit Trego and Fortine.  I cannot even vote against the Eureka board member who votes to finance a new high school and sell the existing building to Eureka Elementary for $100 the minute the high school bonds are paid off . . . and a single Trego rep, not even connected with Trego’s board can’t change that.  A governing board with five votes out of seven can institute a policy that elementary students can be transported by high school buses from Trego, through Fortine, to Eureka Elementary.  This amount of power over the two small districts that Cindy Middig granted to Eureka Elementary seems not only unconscionable, but unconstitutional. 

    My thanks to Joel Graves and Suzy Rios for their help in reviewing the records – and demonstrated the old research adage: “Absence of Evidence is not evidence of absence.”

    Our high school board is not (and has not been for over 35 years) matching this description:

    Montana Code Annotated 2023

    TITLE 20. EDUCATION

    CHAPTER 3. ELECTED OFFICIALS

    Part 3. School District Trustees

    Membership Of Elected Trustees Of County High School District And Nomination Of Candidates

    20-3-356. Membership of elected trustees of county high school district and nomination of candidates. (1) The trustees of a county high school district must include the following:

    (a) four trustee positions filled by members residing in the elementary district where the county high school building is located; and

    (b) three trustee positions filled by members one of whom resides in each of the three trustee nominating districts in the territory of the high school district outside of the elementary district where the county high school building is located. The county superintendent shall establish the nominating districts, and, unless it is impossible, the districts must have coterminous boundaries with elementary district boundaries.

    (2) The provisions of 20-3-305 govern the nomination of candidates for the trustee election prescribed in this section.

  • School Community Library Proposal

    After a recent board meeting, Trego School sent the following to the County Commissioners:

    To the County Commissioners,

    Trego School is interested in meeting the broader educational needs of our community, provided that we can do so without compromising the safety and quality of education for our students. We have realized that we have a layout that would make hosting a community library relatively easy to do without compromising student safety.

    As such, the school board has requested that I pass along the attached proposed interlocal agreement, to open the Trego School Library as a school-community library. There’s a little remodeling needed for safety purposes: specifically, we need to add a set of doors and restore a receptionist window to our office. We are not asking the county to pay for that. 

    We anticipate minimal expenses to the county; we already have office staff present 9-5, who will be able to check out books to visitors, we have a volunteer who returns books to their shelves, and the school already maintains heat/light/internet/insurance for the space. We do not foresee the need for a librarian (we handle being too small to afford one via membership in Montana Small Schools Alliance). We would expect the county to cover adding our library materials to the existing county library catalog, and we would need at least some training for our staff to be able to do so. 

    As stated, we believe that a joint library can be created with minimal expense, which would serve the community as a whole for approximately 30 hours a week, decrease the commute to the nearest library and increase the availability of library resources to our community. 

    Thank you for your consideration,

    What is a school community library? A school community library is essentially both a school library and a public library. It effectively places a public library on school grounds, often within the school itself.

    For Trego, the library would be in a separate wing of the school, so that it can be accessed without allowing access to the classrooms.

    What safety considerations are there for school/community libraries? School Community Libraries essentially invite the unvetted public onto school grounds during the school day. As such, it’s essential that they not also have classroom access. Additionally, it may be reasonable to reserve times for the library to be used exclusively by students.

    What benefits does a school/community library offer to the students? It expands the potential library catalog, beyond what the school can afford. Furthermore, students with high reading levels will have access to books at greater difficulty levels. Additionally, it allows students to access interlibrary loan and additional public library resources. It also has the potential to host a summer reading program, which would be beneficial to students. Book clubs and other programing is also a beneficial option.

    How can the school afford this? Essentially, the school already is. The library exists and already has costs for heating and lighting. The school would not be hiring additional staff, but would be taking advantage of existing employees and volunteers to handle checkouts and returns. The school would share library costs with the county; it’s unlikely to result in much savings, but it won’t increase costs either.

  • School Rankings Released

    School Digger has released its annual school rankings.  This year, Sunburst (near the Sweetgrass Hills) rated #1 – a small school with only 40 students. 

    ACT scores were not included in this year’s rankings – a bit of a loss.

    Our own Lincoln County High School ranked 85th of Montana’s 124 schools.  On the Montana State Reading Test LCHS scored at 52.8% – a little above the state average.  The score for mathematics was 15.3%, and science was 15.2%.  That translates to the bottom sixth in math and science.

    Whitefish ranked 9th, Libby ranked 13th. 

    Click the link to check the ratings for yourself.  Words fail me.

    Sourced from OPI