Last night, I waited in great anticipation for the start of the great blizzard of 2017. I enjoy big weather events, especially if I am physically safe. I like to watch thunderstorms. I was excited to wait for the howling winds and rapidly falling snow we were promised. I read this article, which made me laugh out loud (for the first page or so). It is about losing things, misplacing your keys, your wallet, your cell phone. That is the kind of thing I do often. I have attached an electronic device to my wallet and keys (called Tiles) to help find these things when they are lost. After hearing what Kellyanne said about being under surveillance by your microwave, I wonder if my keys and wallet are watching me. But I digress.
I saw the first snowflakes about 1 am, then went to sleep. When I woke up, I saw we were not getting a blizzard. The track of the storm shifted west, sparing us 2′ of snow. What we got was ice, snow, and slush. So much for the science of forecasting. Since I am in the midst of reading “Weapons of Math Destruction,” I understand that there are many variables that could not be predicted with certainty. So, bringing it back to education, I thought about how absurd the concept of VAM (value-added measurement or modeling) is. If weather scientists can’t accurately predict a weather event just a few hours before it happens, why do economists think they can accurately measure something as elusive as “teacher quality” by aggregating changes in student test scores over a period of years without accounting for the hundreds and thousands of unmeasured variations in students’ lives, th classroom, the school, etc.?
See how easy it was to go from the blizzard that fizzled to the flaws of teacher evaluation?
Time to check my chicken soup.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You made me laugh out loud with your misplaced keys description…and the Conway Microwave comparison…but I really would like to have your chicken soup recipe. Glad the blizzard stayed away…and next time the keys walk away, bet your 80 lb. puppy could tell you where to look for them. Dogs rule.
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The blizzard didn’t fizzle. It merely shifted. We got it up here in the Albany-Schenectady area when we were originally supposed to get 8″ or so. It turned out to be about 21″ at my house, with blizzard conditions in the surrounding hills. The weather forecasters are actually pretty good. But a one degree shift in wind direction makes a huge difference to a local area.
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Buffalo got 14.5 inches and it’s still snowing, expecting another five or so inches by tomorrow afternoon. Nobody mentioned us, and our Erie County Executive wondered about the State of Emergency since this was just a normal snowstorm in our neck of the woods.
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We grew up in Buffalo and I remember many major snowstorms but missed the big one in the 70s — forget exactly which year. Loved snow days! During the early 20s we lived in Philadelphia and one year they predicted we were going to have the “hundred year snowstorm” and the week long hype was over the top. Being Buffalonians we got prepared. It NEVER happened –didn’t even get a snow day. But the TV weatherman got death threats over it and eventually left the area. Now live in Florida but I still miss winter.
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Blizzard of 1977….lived in Rochester at the time.
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There will never be another storm like the blizzard of 77 – there was so much snow piled up on either side of the road that it was like driving through a tunnel (and I am not exaggerating). We left Buffalo during a lull to visit my inlaws in Syracuse then couldn’t get back home (due to the driving ban) so we had to move in to my mom’s house for a while (she lived in a nearby suburb). I thought my car was buried under all the snow, but when it never turned up I started to panic. Luckily it wasn’t stolen, just towed away by the city.
Fun times.
It’s still snowing here, so I’m staying put for another day. Diane, you inspired me to also make a pot of chicken soup. Cheers!
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I was living in Ithaca at the time of the 77 blizzard and a 15 foot “valley” in our back yard basically disappeared due to the drifted snow. School was off for a week and we had a great time digging tunnels through the drifts.
But of course the amount of snow we got (4 feet?) was nowhere near what Buffalo got (9 feet with 30 foot drifts in some places). I recall pictures on the news of snow so high it reached up to the roof of single story houses and all but buried them.
I also recall that they had to use trains to haul the snow away because the piles were already so high.
The folks who reported this as a blizzard do not know what a real blizzard is. Even the predictions of two feet of snow come nowhere near a real blizzard. I used to get 3 feet of snow every week for a month straight some winters when I lived in Salt Lake. Even 2 feet is nothing.
The weathermen were predicting 22 – 18 inches where I live and we got about 4 inches.
I realize it is very difficult to nail down precisely how much a certain area will get, but that is all the more reason to be cautious with the predictions.
but unfortunately, most of these weather reporters just hype these things like crazy for DAYs before they happen.
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OK, my turn for a Blizzard of ’77 story.
My family lived south of Buffalo. I was a commuter to UB and my brother was in HS. My Dad worked in a factory about 20 miles away.
I chose to blow off my classes that morning and public school was cancelled. My Mom wanted to pickup some groceries before the storm hit, but unfortunately it came before we left the store.
Whiteout conditions and we were 5 miles from home. My brother and I took turns walking along the shoulder with our hand on the front fender to guide our car home. Two hours to get home.
We didn’t see Dad for 8 days. I could step out my second floor bedroom window onto a drift. I did, because we couldn’t open up any doors. I have a picture somewhere that has me standing on a snowdrift with two wires entering the snow on either side of me.
I was standing on top of a traffic signal.
Unforgettable. When I tell my students about what a blizzard is I rely on these and other memories. Every other winter storm I’ve experienced I’ve compared to ’77, and for me, none come close.
Thank God.
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Rockhound
I think you have the best story, but maybe we should take a vote.
Regarding driving in a blizzard, the worst snowstorm I ever drove in by far was on the highway just south of Buffalo around Christmas of 82 ( I think).
It was not quite as bad as your experience but it was snowing so hard it was mesmerizing with the snowflakes coming fast and curious in the headlights.
We could not see the edge of the double lane highway and nearly everyone else was pulled off to the side.
The problem was, once you pulled off, you were a goner. Small cars were buried, so we didn’t stop.
We ended up driving right down the middle of what we judged was the highway at about 20 miles an hour, with one of us driving and the other two “navigating” by looking out the right and left windows to direct the driver when he got too close to what we thought was the edge.
If that was not bad enough, we were driving my old Dodge Dart that tended to fishtail whenever the road was the slightest bit slippery.
I vowed never again to visit Buffalo in winter!
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SomeDAM Poet, unfortunately I’ve had that same experience numerous times. It’s even hard to exit because you can’t see the off ramps. If you’re lucky you can follow behind somebody else.
They call it “Winter Driving” out here in the Buffalo (and Rochester and Syracuse) area.
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We have to be plowed out by tomorrow since Buffalo is hosting the 2017 NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament featuring Notre Dame vs Princeton, West Virginia vs Bucknell, Villanova vs Mount St Mary’s and Wisconsin vs Virginia Tech. More games will be played on Friday and Saturday.
The main problem will be parking as the downtown lots will not be at full capacity due to piles of snow pushed off to the sides.
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And i haven’t violated that vow to date.
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Diane,
Bruce Baker at Rutgers covers the topic of VAMS as well as a few other notable people. I concur wholeheartedly and have stood before the local board on this issue – with teachers and their union leaders in attendance….but they have a state board of ed and a rotund governor who are enamored with charters and Parcc etc…local control is seemingly lost – Ill be in front of them for the 3rd graders and Parcc issue – it will still happen even after calling for parents to opt-out! The other issue is the fact at the moment – Parcc being mandated as a graduation exam —
Transition to you comment on the weather – “So much for the science of forecasting. … I understand that there are many variables that could not be predicted with certainty. … If weather scientists can’t accurately predict a weather event just a few hours before it happens, … ”
Isn’t this what global warming scientists do with their computer models – predict 30 – 50 years out of impending disasters? How many meteorologists on the various channels called for a blizzard here – and they relied on one factor of saving grace in their predictions – how far out to sea it would go –
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Jscheidell,
The climate scientist have decades of data demonstrating the changes in the climate. Rising sea levels, heightened pollution, as well as the health effects of polluted water and air.
I remember being in Belgrade in 1984, where there were no pollution controls. The cars were burning low grade fuels. I could barely breathe.
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I remember being in San Bernardino in 1971, the year before the Clean Air Act went into effect. I could barely breathe and I couldn’t see the mountains just a few miles away.
Our friend seems not to understand the difference between climate and weather.
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Jscheidell
Climate science is a physical science. Weather forecasting is also a physical science . I disagree with Diane. I think the National Weather Service did a great job . A week ago they predicted exactly where and when the storm would hit . It was a Nor’easter and it arrived right on time,affecting basically the same areas projected to be hit. Pretty amazing how far they have come in 40 years. Climatologists make a number of scenarios.Some are more likely than others, some sooner than others , but all are bad. The weather service gives a number of storm paths and then they try to predict the most likely. Had that massive storm moved 30-50 miles east, Diane would be complaining about being trapped indoors and not because she can’t find the keys.
Economics pretends to be a science . For the most part it is not. There are few hard fast rules or laws that can not be altered by the actions of men. My favorite economist Dean Baker a former director of EPI , likes to point out, that no profession gets it wrong as frequently as economics with so little consequence. Part of the reason for the failure of many economists to see things like an historic housing bubble or repeated financial collapses, which have rolled through world economies for several decades, the largest of which was in 2007, is that unlike the hard science of climate change ,the papers and opinions of economists are many times paid for by individuals and organizations who want a specific result. This is rampant in the ed reform movement. right from a Nation at Risk . Of course when the Hard Scientists , statisticians and mathematicians at the Sandia labs looked at the data back then they had different conclusions.
But rest assured this will change as the repulsive spawn of a baboon in the White House , de funds scientific research and right wing billionaires purchase more pseudo scientific papers.The brains wrapped in tin foil crowd will be happy to provide them for a fee . Few if any of them will have backgrounds in Climate Science . However they will have slept at a Holiday Inn Express.
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Joel,
I did not mean to put down the metereologists. They make multiple scenarios (not all bad!), they tell you that the track of the storm might change, they give you time to prepare for what might happen. Unlike the economists who claim to be able to measure Teacher effectiveness, the meteorologists never express certainty. They know and admit uncertainty.
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It’s important to make a distinction between meteorologists, scientists who admit uncertainty, and mediarologists (TV weathermen and women) who are far more likely to hype a storm than admit uncertainty.
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dianeravitch
I knew you didn’t mean to put down Meteorological Science . And the problem with economists is that most of them aren’t . To my point(Baker’s point) if you can not see the events of 2007-8 and the run up to it in the housing bubble, perhaps you should not call yourself an economist and start calling yourself a paid lobbyist.
Which is what most of those who claim to be economists, in the ed reform movement are.
Mail me a link to the electronic finder device . My wife and 33 year old son need one. (LOL). In their case, the credit card never goes back in the wallet . I am now on a first name basis with the customer service agents at Citi Bank .
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Joel,
Google Tile.com. It is a little square plastic thing that you can attach to your keys and put in your wallet. You connect it wirelessly to your cell phone. If you lose your keys or wallet, you press a button on your cellphone, and the Tile in your wallet or on your keys rings. If you lose your wallet, you press the Tile on your keys or wallet, and the cellphone rings. It has saved me hours of searching.
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It all comes down to the difference between weather and climate.
Weather is about what happens over the short term.
Climate is (by definition) a long term average (30 years)
When climate scientists make projections about what they believe will happen decades into the future, they base these projections on physics (Co2 absorbs infrared radiation and an increase in a atmospheric co2 MUST necessarily increase the global average temperature) and LONG TERM trends (eg, in surface air temperature over the past few decades)
Combined with the physics, the long term trends are a far more reliable indicator of what might happen in the future than are short term weather ups and downs” (which are basically random noise , just like VAM and therefore essentially USELESS for making projections)
The difference between weather and climate and focus on short term ups and downs rather than long term trends are quite common among non-scientists and are at the root of most of the confusion about climate change.
Over the short term (eg, a decade or so), the ups and downs of “weather” (eg, due to el nino) can completely swamp the impact of increased Co2 over the same period, making it appear that the Co2 is having no effect. Such focus on short term is behind the incorrect claim that there was a “pause” in the temperature increase since the beginning of this century and that increased Co2 therefore had no effect.
One simply MUST look at a longer period, over which the impact of weather effects averages out, leaving only the upward ramp due to carbon dioxide increase.
If you are REALLY interested in understanding this stuff, you will take the time to visit that site I linked to previously because it excels at explaining why it is so important to look at long term TRENDs rather than short term weather and explicitly explains why the so called “pause” was merely “apparent”, due to short term ups and downs (eg due to do nino) and disappears when you look at the long term trend (which effectively washes out the short term changes)
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See also the amazing breadth of data on climate and weather collected by an organization that the Koch brothers hate and is likely to have severe budget cuts under this administration. http://www.noaa.gov/climate
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I agree.
After all, NOAH has a very good track record in prediction, especially for floods.
Even Betsy D. should recognize that.
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My 79 year old father is in East Nowhere, NH, alone with no power. He is getting hammered with lots of snow and high winds. I guess I’d rather be in your shoes than his. He just had to go back for Town Meeting this weekend.
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Nice narrative. I can remember a blizzard that hit NY about 1980. Woke up in the Bronx with 10 foot drifts and howling winds. Wouldn’t want to be out in that kind of weather at my age! 😉
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I remember that one. Our Honda Civic was invisible under the snow in Brooklyn.
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You guys are amateurs, the Lindsey storm of 69 was a great one. Twenty inches of snow fell so fast that between 2pm and 8 pm the city was parallelized . By Sunday night 8pm myself and a group of friends were lying in the middle of the LIE . Which wasn’t reopened for another 3 days as most of queens stayed buried for a week.
It was not John Lindsey’s fault . The Eskimos have 50 names for snow. Because all snow is not created equal.
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Yes, the blizzard of ’69 was a good one, especially since i was in school at the time, but my kids fondly remember the blizzard of ’96, when the NYC schools were closed for two-and-a-half days.
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Right you are Joel. It was already pretty bad that Sat, upstate where I was in college. 8am Spanish prelim was not called off! Classmates helped me dig out my car after.
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VAM is certainly not a statistically reliable measurement and serves as a detriment instead of helping in the learning environment. Thanks for mentioning this in forecasting that is based upon many variables!
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What talent!!! Not only did you go from failed blizzard predictions to flawed teacher evaluations but you managed to throw Kellyanne Conway into the mix. I predict (yes, yet another pun) that you will have a second career as a writer for SNL!
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Ha!
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There is actually a common theme which Diane has correctly recognized: randomness.
All three — weather, VAM and what comes out of Kellyanne’s mouth –are essentially what you would expect when you throw dice.
“Randumbness”
Weather, VAM and Kellyanne
Random as a Duncan plan
Random as a grain of sand
Blowing on a windy strand
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Diane: Enjoyed your note–and sorry to add a bad bit of news that came in this morning on Inside Higher Ed: A “new” “Higher Education Policy Group Forms.” A brief google shows that It’s supported by Lumina and connected with ALEC. It seems philanthropy has changed its focus from direct giving to policy-making, proving once again that having scads of money does not a brilliant person make.
BTW, I’m in Southern California. ;o)
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/03/15/new-higher-education-policy-group-forms?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b028fe970c-DNU20170315&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b028fe970c-198488425&mc_cid=b028fe970c&mc_eid=f743ca9d07
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Thank-you for that link. I left a comment. These ed-reformers crop up like mushrooms after rain.
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Well we got the blizzard. I would guess at least 30″ of snow. More snow today. Trying to dig cars out and clear driveway. Too old for this! I’m retired but another snow day for schools today has now taken a day from spring break for students and teachers.
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Our district builds 5 snow days into our school schedule, and we usually only use 2-4. We are at 4 days as of today. I’d wager most districts around here do the same.
Did I ever mention my district is in Central New York where annual snowfalls AVERAGE 120 inches a year?
I honestly and truly love the winters here. It’s not for everybody, but for me winter is my favorite season and keeps me here in Syracuse.
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My 1st teaching gig was in Syracuse. That 1st yr we got 150″!
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You know you have a lot of snow when you stop talking inches (30″) you skip talking feet (2 1/2′) and you start talking “yards” (5/6 of a yard). A few years ago, South Buffalo had a about 2 1/2 to 3 yards of snow.
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I HATE SNOW!!!!! (A Joe Batory memoir)
As a school superintendent for more than 16 years, I lived in terror of snow primarily because I regularly sent 90 school busses loaded with children into inclement weather during winter. It took me a while but I eventually learned that the primary purpose of weather forecasts via the media was “to scare people to death.” Accuracy was not a priority. So having survived too many inaccurate weather forecasts by “experts,” here is my top ten list of scientifically developed ways to accurately predict weather from “most accurate” at the top to “least accurate” at the bottom.
Most Accurate 1. Ask your local fortune teller
2. Check you horoscope
3. Roll some dice
4. Get your palm read
5. Visit your local witch
6. Use voodoo
7. Check how your bunion feels
8. Look out the window
9. Consult the national weather service
Least accurate 10. Watch the local TV meteorologists
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I think we have to differentiate between meteorologists, scientists who study weather, and mediarologists (TV weathermen and women who report it, especially in massachusetts where “r” s are added where they don’t exist)
But yes, the whether reporters try to scare people to death…and sell advertising, which often go together.
I like your list and perhaps it is just an oversight, but you left off the least accurate indicator of all: take a walk outside.
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I love how you compared VAM concept to weather forecasts. It was so appropriate.
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We certainly had a blizzard here in NW CT. We have about 2 feet of snow. A local meteorologist called it correctly. The interior was hit hard not the coast.
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This was originally titled “Economists are like Psychics”
Of course, economists invented VAM for teachers and not coincidentally, also believe they are experts on climate change.
And weathermen also works as a title
“Economists are like weathermen”
Economists are like weathermen
This cannot be denied
Cuz if, by chance, they get it right
It’s greatly AMPLIFIED!!
But mostly, they just get it wrong
And utter not a word
For them to actually point this out
Would really be unheard
And when their goof’s so blatant
They really can’t ignore it
They simply claim they found a “flaw”
But “markets” will restore it
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“The Econoreaster”
Econoreaster brings
A storm of VAM and things
That blow and swirl about
And white the blue-skies out
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Believe it or not, when Raj Chetty drew his sweeping conclusions about the effect of a single teacher on lifelong earnings, he was basing that on a lifelong extrapolation from what he claimed was a significant difference in earnings for a SINGLE year (28 year olds).
If that were not bad enough, he disregarded the fact that he himself had found no significant effect for 30 year olds, which would have thrown into doubt his extrapolation for 28 year olds far into the future because Chetty’s own data showed that the small effect at age 28 had already disappeared by age 30.
In other words, Chetty’s entire claim was based on Chetty picking and he was fully aware that his assumption about lifelong earnings was unjustified.
Moshe Adler pointed this all out to Chetty, who essentially dismissed it with a lot of handwaving.
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Raj Chetty sent me an email last year, out of the blue, informing me that his work was so impressive that the American economics journal was publishing it in two successive issues, and the only other time that happened, the economist in Question won the Nobel Prize. Has Raj won a Nobel yet? If he does, let’s organize a protest at the award ceremony. How many hundreds or thousands of educators lost their careers based on his calculations, his certainty, and his self-promotion campaign?
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Ironically, if he does get an economics prize (which is actually a fake Nobel Prize, a marketing ploy of the Swedish central bank that the Nobel family is vehemently opposed to the charCterization as a Nobel prize) it will just be confirmation that his work is junk because the bankers who give that prize have a habit of giving it for theories that have been shown to be wrong. Sometimes they even give it to people with diametrically opposite theories about the same thing. I guess they figure they can hedge their bets that way.
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Hedging their bets, huh?
So they are sorta in the same field as bookies?
Makes sense.
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Let me point out that the “Nobel” in economics is not issued by the same folks that give out prizes for science, nor does it come from the same funds designated by Alfred Nobel. Instead, it is given by the conservative Bank of Sweden. It was conceived as a way to confuse people. It is not a Nobel, but simply given by the Bank at the same time.
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I stole that line from bank fraud expert Bill Black.
He has also called the economics prize a “near beer variant” of the Nobel Prize and chastised Raj Chetty for his claim that economics is a science.
Although Black does say that
“Economics could be a science if more economists were scientists”
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/10/economics-science-economists-scientists.html
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Yeah they screwed up but hey nyc schools got the day off and that is good for something. The mayor of NYC is Mr. Diblasio who made the call about one day in advance to close the nyc schools. Interesting comparison to former mayor of NYC Mr. midget Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg would wait till the next morning around 5 am before he would say if the schools would close or not. In this case midget mikes policy would have probably kept the schools open due to lack of snow accumulating however diblasio’s call made life a bit more fun then bloombergs doomsday life which eliminates anything that makes the soul smile. Rather, midget mike bloomberg would rather work and count his billions for which he will leave here on earth once he departs and its soon as this old creepy creature is due to expire soon and bring with him the no smoking, no soda, no salt and keep the schools open no matter what. Forget about kids having fun in the snow for mikey bloomberg life is about the money honey but what he does not realize is that he cannot take it with him.
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Even without a ton of snow, it was wise for the mayor to case the schools the day before, giving parents time to make arrangements. Buses aren’t great on slippery roads (you did have sleet) and keeping kids home meant less vehicles on the road thus an easier time for the snow plows. Better safe than sorry after an accident occurs.
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Did any of the charter schools stay open in the city?
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One huge difference between people trying to predict local weather in detail and those who pretend to measure ‘teacher effectiveness’ is that the former actually know what constitutes ‘weather’, whereas the latter have no idea what an ‘effective teacher’ means.
I would suggest that a long-term survey of former students, perhaps at intervals to 5 or 10 years throughout their life, might actually yield useful data.
Furthermore, there is no single ‘great’ teacher for every student. Some need an authoritarian hand, others grow best in a lax, but supportive, environment. Schools need to provide those differences.
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