Peter Levine
- students as part of the accountability puzzle September 3, 2010
- the value-added debate in education policy September 1, 2010
- Jonathan Lethem, A Fortress of Solitude September 1, 2010
- what happened to the new Obama voters? August 31, 2010
Archive for October 2009
I ventured out to Southeast DC yesterday to visit an elementary school that was the site of a City Year “Make a Difference Day” project. What follows was the next 15 hours worth of work in producing a mini-documentary for myImpact about the day. It was a very rewarding experience, and made me feel very grateful in general that 1). I went to an elementary school where I did 2). that the young people in City Year have dedicated a year of their life to improve others’ and 3). I feel like I am, however little and indirectly, contributing a solution through myImpact. In any case, enjoy:
It is worth noting that I caused an accident crossing the street to the school from my cab while the US Secretary of Education was just arriving. Yikes.
I think Fall is my favorite season. Crisp, cool air. Colorful surroundings. Anticipation of the holidays. Having lamented the infrequent use of my recently upgraded Nikon D90, I decided to take a few pictures of the Georgetown area, which seemed to be in peak this weekend.
It seems completely arbitrary that this week would be the longest, busiest, most stressful in a while…but somehow it is. Tonight PCYC’s School Board 2.0 Project was live-streaming the DV School Board Meeting tonight and myImpact has raised over $250 through America’s Giving Challenge (an exercise in seeing how online social networking and civic engagement can translate into philanthropy).
Meanwhile, I spent a great portion of the day shooting for a documentary I am working on about a formerly used defense site in the Spring Valley area of Washington. The gist: WWI chemical weapons were developed, the army buried these weapons at the end of the war on-site, everyone “forgot” about it a pit was discovered in 1993, and now millions of dollars are being spent cleaning up the area (home to American University and an upscale neighborhood of many thousands of people). I spent the afternoon with one lady who has a mortar found in her backyard. She also attributed her cancer to the buried chemicals. In fact, most of her neighbors have cancer too. It was a very interesting day, though I had to pass up a networking reception for young non-profit professionals at the White House (i.e. Eisenhower building) that I was otherwise looking very forward to attending.
Today culminated a fast-paced and mind wrenching process of preparing for a debate in my ethics class on the use of Quality Adjusted Life Years determinations in a system of health care rationing. My side argued against the position that morality demanded their use. Our basic argument was that, while we accepted the necessity to ration scarce resources (in a hypothetical nationalized health system), we are morally prohibited from making life-value judgements and instead should focus on a system of valuations for various treatments, like the Saved Young Life Equivalent model. In other words, instead of placing numerical values on the lives of various people to measure health state, as QALYs necessitate, we would instead focus on health improvement, comparing medical interventions with each other, not patients. The debate went well…I think.
It is a really technical topic that I still don’t completely understand, but it is really relevant to the current debate. Many would say we ration health care present day, based on people’s ability to pay (which, to me, is a preferable system to the QALY process for may reasons). In any case, I think a nationalized health care is an awful idea, though many in Congress want to see us inch in that direction. I spend at least one day each week at my internship hearing from constituents about this issue. It is clear our current system is broken. But I don’t think that’s reason to make it worse through the current proposals.
Speaking of ethics, I got a paper back today on the current interests approach- evaluating how we should administer treatment to patients that may not be conscious (living wills vs. their family vs. their “current interests”). I really enjoy philosophy writing, and the process of formulating a convincing argument in a really concise and clear way.
In other news, it seems like the FinApp Committee of GUSA has come very close to not only instituting a new policy regarding our student endowment, but also recovering $300k+ in misallocated students funds. I’d call that a good accomplishment for our first week out.
I decided to be all ambitious and set the alarm for 7:00 AM to get an early jump on the day – starting anew…right? Well that meant only 5 hours of sleep, the snooze button was hit again…and again…and wow it’s 9:15 and I overslept class, for the first time this year. I guess the lesson is too much ambition is dangerous. I did, however, finish my memo on Afghanistan to the President for my Public Affairs Seminar. Today was myImpact Monday – made much progress with our new Web developer and I finally see progress on the horizon. This Thursday and Friday we are trying to win $1,000 through America’s Giving Challenge.
Meanwhile, PCYC is putting together an interesting proposal for a summit on youth economic issues that Mobilize.org is convening next month–a woman from the Pike County Economic Development Authority seems open to the idea (and coincidentally sent me info about the Echoing Green Fellowship I will be joining in applying for with myImpact). Then more hours of GUSA meetings in trying to get a strategy planned on how students are going to restore some sanity to the activity funding process here on camps. As the Chair of the Finance and Appropriations Committee, this means a lot more meetings than I’d prefer, but it is a worthwhile goal.
