or at least how many of them there are....
I.S. 318 Top Rated Players
Oct 18, 2008
1. Rochelle B 1774
2. Daniel M 1687
3. Alexis P 1686
4. Myles F 1676
5. Steven C 1620
6. Orlando G 1587
7. Pobo E 1575
8. Mr. G 1503
9. Brittanie U 1480
10. Amani E 1478
11. Miguel G 1484
12. John Paul G 1424
13. Kevin I 1390
14. Jakob K 1361
15. Ezequiel Q 1335
16. Rawn P 1327
17. Azeez A 1323
18. Davon T 1314
19. Randy R 1309
20. Shawn S 1302
21. Rashawn W 1281
22. Jose M 1242
23. Abadel P 1240
24. Mr. M 1202
25. Mateusz C 1199
26. Jacob M 1119
27. Peter G 1109
28. D’Andrea D 1066
29. Alex C 1047
30. Carlos A 1041
31. Adolfo N 999
32. Sedrick N 998
33. Mitasha P 995
34. Rhoda L 991
35. Sebastian D 989
36. Talitha S 985
37. Miguel V 975
38. Sekou P 974
39. Joel P 969
40. Ameer W 958
41. James O 945
42. Jie Jing L 941
43. Christian M 867
44. Joel O 852
45. Mateusz B 851
46. Lovedeep S 837
47. Cesar R 805
48. Richard W 834
49. Juan C 783
50. Lisa L 775
51. Ezequiel A 770
52. Patrick N 757
53. HuiWen L 754
54. Nicole N 752
55. Tony de la C 748
56. Daniel M 725
57. Bilal H 691
58. Phillip P 638
59. Emmanuel O 574
60. Christopher F 566
61. Aru B 552
62. Roy G 501
63. Myles B 487
64. Joel de la C 487
65. Chris C 481
66. Shondel N 439
67. Nydrah G 433
68. Evelyn C 418
69. Luis T 392
70. Skye R 344
71. Qi Yuan H 324
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33 comments:
I hope I don't ever have to play any of them, at least any of the top 20. Well done, kids (and coach).
Elizabeth,
Are all your kids USCF members? Who pays their dues? Is there funding? Is that what Chess in the Schools does? It's a little fuzzy to me, but here in Chicago we'd like to learn whatever we can from New York's success with scholastic chess. Thanks.
Truly awesome!
What an amazing coach they have!
I'd love to have your job.
Alas, I'm not nearly as qualified.
Regards,
Eric
Elizabeth,
It's a pleasure to read your interviews and posts like this one; it's obvious you have a lot of affection for these kids and enthusiasm for teaching and chess and it really shines through in your writing.. And at the risk of raising your ire again it really is nice to see you post about something you are so positive about as opposed to the politically tinged posts where, IMHO, you allow an overwhelming degree of negativity to suffuse your writing. I'm not presuming to tell you what to write about but I'm just observing, and commenting on, the fact that the one you do SO well and the other, well, not so much.
To this end I've been meaning to ask, do you have any plans to do any commentary on the big match in Bonn? Annand's victory today was quite impressive, at least from the limited point of view of this class C player. I'd love to get your perspective on this game as I'm sure would your other readers.
Tom-- I'll email you.
Doug-- I'm glad you said that. First of all, as I've mentioned, being "positive" or "nice" is not my goal. More than that, as a feminist, I'm normally offended when men try to insist that I should try harder not to upset people, not to criticize, not to be negative, etc. Have you ever in your life told a man you respect to be more positive? Or to smile ("Because you have such a beautiful smile!")?
Second, my job and my politics are very closely aligned. I chose to become (and to stay) a public school teacher because I believe in public education. I could get much more money teaching privately (especially at this point in my life when I've had success as a coach), but I will not do that.
And the reason I'm so angry, forget that, FURIOUS, at conservatives is because every day I see the damage they are doing to the children I teach. Just a few examples:
1. The No Child Left Behind law, which forces teachers to drill ridiculous, absolutely meaningless test prep into kids until they hate school, hate learning, and give up.
I had a student last year, the best student in my English class (a kid who, if he didn't get 100 on a test, I checked to see if I'd made a mistake) and I made a homework assignment to write one page about something that made them anxious or afraid. This kid wrote that he had frequent nightmares that he is taking a standardized test and wants to change his answer, but the eraser won't completely erase the old mark and he keeps trying but it won't go away and then he fails the test. When I read this, all I could think was "What are we doing to these children?" How can we take a kid who loves school and loves learning and force them to be so afraid?
And the tests are ridiculous. I scored 800/760 on the SAT and 800/800/720 on the GRE, but I could barely finish the 7th grade NY State English test and I scored 60 on it. It's incredibly boring, totally ambiguous, and I'm sure a couple answers were wrong. IT'S INSANE.
The law also judges schools using inappropriate criteria. Specifically, it doesn't take the income level of the school's students into account when assessing acheivement, even though this is a very important factor in kids' performance. Secondly, it requires test scores rise *every* year, which is simply unreasonable in a high achieving school. (At some point, it's clearly unreasonable in any school.)
2. Two of my former students are parents already. (Both are are under 20)(Notice that I don't keep in touch with most of my students, so it's not 2 out of 5,000; it's 2 out of maybe 15.) Why does this piss me off? Because my school doesn't have any sex education. Many schools don't. They don't want to offend anyone's "values." There were three girls in my English class last year who were sexually active and knew NOTHING about contraception. You want to know who is paying for these fucked up values? The kids I teach, the ones you commend me for caring about.
3. I tried to call a parent today because this girl in my class hasn't been doing homework, but they DON'T HAVE A PHONE. The income disparity in this country is shameful, and I lay the blame squarely on Republicans. I have kids who don't come to free tournaments because their parents won't give them BUS FARE to meet me at school. (We pay for the train fare to the tournament and the kids can usually stay on the train or transfer to another one to go home. This was a kid whose mother didn't have *two dollars*.) I have kids who come to tournaments and haven't eaten breakfast and don't have money for lunch.
So please, if you are reading this and you haven't decided yet, vote for Obama.
Elizabeth Vicary
The top 4 players are obviously way to successful and need to share a few hundred of their points with the bottom 15. This will make everyone happy and delighted...
People, especially anonymous people, are stupid.
1, I took standardized tests 3 times a year and additional tests every friday. Also extra exams at 11, 16 and 18. Didnt kill me and I also have test anxiety, was out 6 weeks from it once.
2. Then get them to be sexually inactive, they know right from wrong. Lack of a moral compass.
3. I would blame it on the high taxes, rent control, land restrictions, and overregulation in NYC. In the 2010 census NY will lose some more House seats as everyone is leaving there and moving South and West.
If you think things will improve under Obama you are truely mistaken. New York has been on the downside for years and will continue so.
Soooooo, does this mean you WON'T be covering the Annand/Kramnik match?
Sorry, I guess the last post didn't have the effect I intended. To answer some of your questions, yes, in fact I have suggested to men, on occasion, to be more positive. Not necessarily those I respected, but this is not relevant since we have not established that I respect you (no offense; I simply don't know you well enough). I must admit to never having asked a man to smile more. Strange as it may seem I don't think it's ever come up. Of course I've never asked you to do so either. I'm not entirely sure where the "because you have such a pretty smile" snark is coming from but I'm guessing it has little to do with me.
As to your rather round-the-bend fury with conservatives if all you can do is come up with the No Child Left Behind Act count me as unimpressed with the argument.
I'm sorry that your students live in poverty but poverty in New York City existed before George W. Bush was president and will exist long after Barack Obama becomes president, at which time I'm sure you'll think of some way to blame conservatives anyway.
What else? I don't think your 2 former students who already parents are the conservative's fault either. If I were to assign blame I'd start with the former students themselves, then move on to their parents, and finally I'd be tempted to move on to any role models they may have had that failed to instill in them the idea that sex is not something to fool around with for ones so young. I'm not against sex education in schools per se but I'd prefer to see it implemented only after the U.S. schools show some modicum of evidence that they have improved to the point where they are at least dispensing a substandard education in reading, writing, history, math and science (as opposed to the abysmal to non-existent job they are doing now). Once they get that up and running I'm on board with sex ed.
And finally, regarding your last posts closing plea urging me and anyone else reading to vote for Obama: I'm sorry, but seriously, what are you, like in your mid 30's or so? That's a little old to still be believing that any of your expressed concerns will be addressed in ANY meaningful way by an Obama administration. At most more money will be spent (though probably not even this) but nothing will change any more than it changed when Bush increased education funding and Clinton before him. No need to take my word for it; just check back in 4 years time. My prediction is that nothing will have changed down at the level of your students because their problems are not caused by the government and can't be fixed by the government (an argument could be made that their plight is in fact caused by government intervention, though quite the opposite of the kind you're suggesting, but that would be a discussion for another time). The kinds of problems your describing are not the kind that can be solved by a benevolent presidential father figure, which is just as well.
And finally, since I’m burning all my bridges here anyway, I never meant to imply that you SHOULDN’T be writing political stuff but rather that you’re just not all that good at it. You haven’t written anything that hasn’t been written thousands of times before every day of the week. You have no sense of humor about it that comes from recognizing the fundamental circus-like/carnival freak show/hall of mirrors quality of the entire political process. I guess (and you more or less say this in your post) when you believe the very fate of the world hangs in the balance there’s no time for bemused detachment. Lives are at stake! Stultifying standardized tests await! Whatever. Also if your goal is objective argument or persuasion I must say I doubt you’re succeeding there, either, at least not with anyone who doesn’t already agree with you (hi, Brian!).
Oh, well, I’ve gone on for far too long already. With any luck you stopped reading about half way through.
Keep on bloggin’.
Doug.
Why is anyone "blaming" or upset with 20 year olds who become parents???? That is the choice they made. It's not like they are 13.
3. I would blame it on the high taxes, rent control, land restrictions, and overregulation in NYC. In the 2010 census NY will lose some more House seats as everyone is leaving there and moving South and West.
Then you'd be a fool, because what Elizabeth sees in New York, I see in Chicago, and anyone can see if they go to Los Angeles, or Houston, or Atlanta, or Baltimore, or Memphis. Poverty is not caused by fucking rent control.
We live in the richest country in the world, where the mean household income is $60,000 a year, where worker productivity rose steadily at 2.5 percent a year from 1996 to 2000 and has continued to rise. With that kind of wealth floating around, and more being generated all the time, no American should live in poverty. Yet the median annual wage, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was during the Nixon administration. The average CEO earns more than 400 times the salary of his workers. Corporations like Wal-Mart don't bother to provide their workers health insurance because their wages are so low, they qualify for Medicaid. Why is there poverty in America? Follow the money. Hint: Most of it disappears into a silk-lined pocket before it ever reaches your paycheck.
Finally, when your school looks and feels like a prison, your home life is sad and stressful and possibly violent, your neighborhood is a disaster area, the powers that be consider you undeserving of the education you're getting and regularly let you know it, and you don't have the money for bus fare or anything else entertaining, why shouldn't you fuck? It feels good, it doesn't cost anything, and for a while at least, you feel valued. An economist would call this "responding rationally to prevailing market forces."
Oh, and one other thing: If anyone here thinks it's easy to make wise decisions in the heat of passion about the consequences of sex, whether you're 14 or 40, you need to read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, specifically chapter 5.
What really irks me is that liberal Democrats who champion science, and Darwinism, and complain when creationism is taught in schools.... start to cry and whine when Darwinism plays out in society.
Poor people are poor for a reason.
Voice of Reason:
What does believing that Darwinism actually occurred have to do with not wanting kids born in extreme poverty to have 100x fewer opportunities than kids born into riches?
Just because we acknowledge that something existed doesn't mean that we believe this is the way things should be. I mean really wtf is with people's obsession with poor and irrelevant analogies?
Gee, let me try one.....I hate those people who believe that slavery actually happened and want it to be taught in schools, yet at the same time feel that black people should have equal rights. How irksome!
How did I do?
btw in case anyone was confused, my above analogy is intentionally absurd.
Doug --
1. My point is that telling someone to be more positive is inherently disrespectful, because it implies the person's beliefs are not based on a rational assessment of the world but on some internal unhappiness.
Poverty has always been a problem, but when Obama is attacked by Republicans for saying we should spread the wealth around, then it becomes clear who is on what side of the issue.
If you don't think it makes a difference who gets elected, then don't vote. I think it matters enormously.
I'm not going to comment on the World Championship games because
a) I have no idea what is going on in them and
b) I don't do favors for people who are as disrespectful and condescending as you are
Voice of Reason: "Poor people are poor for a reason" -- Then why do my kids win nationals every year?
everyone-- It seems like a lot of comments are implicitly anti-sex?--what's up with that? Sex is a positve expression of joy and love. I think 18 year olds should be having sex. I think some of my blog readers should be having more sex.
The problem is not sex. The problem is that self-righteous psychopaths are denying children the information they need to protect themselves. It's like not feeding a kid, giving them a raw chicken, and deciding it would be immoral to teach them how to use a microwave. Don't be surprised when they get salmonella and don't act like the kids deserve it for eating.
like that one, Greg?
(Elizabeth 8:00) "My point is that telling someone to be more positive is inherently disrespectful, because it implies the person's beliefs are not based on a rational assessment of the world but on some internal unhappiness"
...which you would think that someone his age would recognize. Disappointing, isn't it?
Assalaamu aleykum Greg and Elizabeth my brother and sister.
Greg, your analogy is unanalogous to my analogy. It's not just that you want Darwinism to be taught in the public schools, but you want it to be taught that Darwinism is the natural form of special development.
(As the internet can not exchange annunciation I am notifying you that I mean "relating to species" and not "unique").
If you really believe all that this entails, then you would agree that we are stifling human development through wealth redistribution (welfare, socialized medicine, and so on and so forth). You seem like a very intelligent man. Surely you have read some of the works of Haeckel, Malthus, Galton, etc?
Greg, I am not here to say that poor children are bad people and that it is fair and just that they have no opportunities. But reality is based on science, and science is cold, it is raw, it is factual. It is not meant to be fair or just.
Elizabeth, I surely do not know why your children win nationals each year. But none of your children have exceptional ratings (no offense is meant by this, a mere observation has been stated). Am I in the right to assume that the top players, the Sam Shanklands, the Ray Robsons, the favorites to win first, do not play in these nationals? If so, well, then that is why your children win nationals every year.
Further, Elizabeth, your statement on sex is terrible. To say that 18 year olds should have sex is as foolish and closetminded as to say that 18 year olds should not have sex. To have sex at 18, well, according to some, is not wrong. But that does not mean of course that it SHOULD be done. If you truly believe that to wait for marriage is wrong, then you scare me more than a Southern Baptist does.
Your statement reminds me of a comment in the television series The Family Guy. A feminist states that a stay-at-home-mother is wrong for being a stay-at-home-mother and the mother replies that it is her choice to do this.
You must learn that true freedom includes the freedom to be traditional. But you have not yet. But you are still young.
May peace and happiness be with all of you.
If you assume, as the previous poster does, that poor children are intellectually inferior and therefore do not deserve our efforts to lift them from poverty... how did Elizabeths team defeat the teams from Dalton and Horace Mann at last year's K-6national championships?
You are comparing apples to oranges*, VOR. My kids don't win individual titles; they don't and can't compete with the Sam Shanklands of the world. But they win open section team titles, which seems to suggest that "poor" kids, given a good education, can, as a group, compete successfully with kids from wealthy backgrounds.
It seems to me that at 18 people have a strong desire to have sex and this can and often does lead to immense amounts of happiness. And I'm strongly in favor of that. That's all. I'm not suggesting that anyone who doesn't want to have sex should (um, obviously?).
* this is actually one of my favorite bad analogies, because if you thnk about it, apples and oranges have a huge amount in common: fruitness, sphericalness, tastiness, price, frequency of appearance
Wow. Great rant Elizabeth. Teenagers have been sexually active for generations -- Romeo and Juliet, anyone. And they will continue to be. I think the current stat is something like 70% are sexually active before they graduate from high school. But it is sinful that comprehensive sex ed is not taught in the schools. It's not just pregnancy. It's sexually transmitted diseases. Of course I counsel my own kids to wait as long as possible (first date at 25 if I had anything to do with it) but I know that is unrealistic and therefore I will give them as much information as possible and access to contraceptives so they don't end up like Bristol Palin and that poor dumb boyfriend of hers who will not finish high school as a result of her mother's abstinence only sex education and anti choice policies.
Here in MA we have the horrible MCAS tests. The amount of time spent/wasted in teaching/prepping to the test is enormous. That time could be spent doing interesting things with the kids that might just turn them on to learning as a process that will do well by them for life. My daughter, now in 5th grade, came to her own conclusion that the tests are bogus and will probably refuse (with my blessing) to take any more of them.
Sexual activity is a reality with young people. All the studies done clearly, repeat, clearly demonstrate that abstinence education does not work. Sex education programs do work reducing pregnancy rates and std transmission rates. It a no brainer and has nothing to do with morals--it's a public health issue.
Wealth has be accumulating in the hands of fewer people world-wide for years. Poverty is actually a necessary component of the economic system as it exists, despite what the politicians at the World Bank and IMF say. Will Obama be able to change all that? No. But he will be able, hopefully, to reset the moral compass of our nation after the policies of the Republican leadership that has infested Washington for too long.
Just my left liberal 2 cents. :-)
Elizabeth - any of your kids in Vietnam?
VOR displays a whole lot of ignorance in his/her comments about “Darwinism” above.
Evolution is too slow a process for it to be observable it in human populations in real time. Paleo-biologists currently believe that our species attained its modern form approximately 20,000 – 50,000 years ago.
The term “survival of the fittest” was coined by a Sociologist, by the name of Herbert Spencer, not Darwin. Social Darwinism is a corrupted misuse of biological theory. Sociologists circa the 1890’s – 1930s were desperate to gain the same credibility enjoyed by physicists, chemists, and biologists, et al, and thus applied the veneer of a prominent scientific theory to their own emerging field of study. When Spencer spoke about survival of the fittest, he was referring to societies, cultures, and nation states. That line of reasoning is now understood to be an ethnocentric rationalization, justifying European & American colonization and domination of other parts of the world, as well as the extermination of many of the indigenous populations and cultures that they encountered.
“Social engineers” took it one step further. They argued that if it is the “fittest” who survive and pass on their favorable traits to future generations, that that is “the way things are meant to be,” and that they should speed the process along. This led to eugenic policies, such as the sterilization of retarded persons in this country, and even more extreme policies in Germany. This was pseudo science, it was wrong, and you will not find any “liberals” who support such terrible ideas.
VOR, on the other hand, seems to delight in the idea that there are poor people, upon whom his twisted misunderstanding of evolution must necessarily play itself out. His distorted version of Darwinism harkens back to a long ago discredited view. People of good conscience have the obligation to speak out against such heartless cruelty.
BTW, there are very good reasons for why Creationism is not allowed to be taught in public schools. (There is nothing preventing it from being taught in private schools. But don’t expect institutions of higher learning to give students credit for classes that had creationist textbooks in the curriculum.)
Since 1968 U.S. courts have consistently held that "creationism" is a particular religious viewpoint and that teaching it in public schools would violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. The leading cases are:
• Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) Supreme Court decision
• McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (1982)
• Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) Supreme Court decision
• Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005) teaching "intelligent design" in public schools was found to be unconstitutional.
Note, that the presiding judge over the most recent case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, was a conservative, life-long Republican, appointed by the Bush Administration.
The Voice Of Reason said...
What really irks me is that liberal Democrats who champion science, and Darwinism, and complain when creationism is taught in schools.... start to cry and whine when Darwinism plays out in society.
Poor people are poor for a reason.
VOR, your greeting to Elizabeth and Greg suggests that you're Muslim. Would you agree that the Palestinians are also dispossessed for a "Darwinist" (read: Spencerist) reason?
Voice of Reason wrote:
"It's not just that you want Darwinism to be taught in the public schools, but you want it to be taught that Darwinism is the natural form of special development.
(As the internet can not exchange annunciation I am notifying you that I mean "relating to species" and not "unique").
If you really believe all that this entails, then you would agree that we are stifling human development through wealth redistribution (welfare, socialized medicine, and so on and so forth). You seem like a very intelligent man. Surely you have read some of the works of Haeckel, Malthus, Galton, etc?
Greg, I am not here to say that poor children are bad people and that it is fair and just that they have no opportunities. But reality is based on science, and science is cold, it is raw, it is factual. It is not meant to be fair or just."
“. . . Darwinism is the natural form of special development.”
–What’s that supposed to mean??
“Reality is based on science . . .”
–He’s got that ass backward.
In his second post, it is clear that VOR really does confuse the theory of evolution with “Darwinism.” His description of Darwinism, is indeed consistent with outdated social engineering ideas. He confuses science that is “cold, raw, and factual” with malevolent social policy.
He also confuses the idea of “human development” with evolution. Biological theory has nothing to say regarding human development. The theory of evolution explains how the different species arose. Homo sapiens is but one of millions of different species in the world.
No one wants to see “Darwinism” as VOR understands it, taught in schools. It is shocking to see someone use a distorted view of a scientific theory to justify the perpetuation of the suffering of millions of people.
But VOR reveals the sources of his thinking by citing Malthus, Haeckel, and Galton.
Malthus suggested that only accidents, old age, war, pestilence, plague, and above all famine, as well as infanticide, murder, contraception and homosexuality could check excessive population-growth.
Haeckel was the German scientist who, by misapplying biological theory to the social sciences, inspired a generation of horrors in his own country, and across the continent. His thinking was part of the zeitgeist that proclaimed the superiority of the Aryan race.
Galton invented the term “eugenics” in 1883. In his book, “Inquiries into human faculty and its development” he proposed that a scheme of "marks" for family merit should be defined, and early marriage between families of high rank be encouraged by provision of monetary incentives. He argued that the late marriages of eminent people, and the paucity of their children, was dysgenic. He advocated encouraging eugenic marriages by supplying able couples with incentives to have children.
Here's the link for the roll call vote (house) for No Child Left Behind:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll145.xml
As you can see, 197 democrats voted for the bill in addition to 186 republicans. Also, only 10 democrats voted nay as opposed to 34 republicans who opposed the bill.
In the Senate (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1&vote=00192) 91 Senators voted for the bill, while the 9 who didn't were a mix of Democrats and Republicans.
Oh, don't think we don't recognize that congressional Democrats bear part of the blame for this mess.
However, the most pernicious parts of NCLB were brought to the federal government by George W. Bush from Texas, where they've been policy since the 1990s, and it was Republican pressure that denied states the federal funds necessary for them to meet NCLB's demands.
Demands, incidentally, that are incompatible with IDEA, the federal law governing special education. By definition, students in special education are entitled to services because they can't meet grade-level standards. If they could, they wouldn't need services. Yet students in special ed are counted toward AYP targets for schools, districts and states. This is a crazy dilemma even for wealthy suburban districts; it's even worse in underfunded urban districts, which desperately avoid testing students who may need special education services, because if it's found that the students do need services, those services will cost the districts even more money that they don't have -- leaving them not only underfunded but vulnerable to multimillion-dollar lawsuits.
No response to the objective facts at Dems and Reps both supported No Child Left Behind (more Dems and Reps actually)? Of course that is still the fault of Bush.
Um, did you miss my first paragraph?
Reading comprehension is so important.
Dear chess community,
My name is Lauren Goodkind and I have been playing in
USCF tournaments for about nine years now.
I produce a TV chess show, "Chess Diva" in Palo
Alto, California, with my twin sister Barbara. The
purpose of the show is to promote chess especially to females, since it is a male-dominated game.
Over the summer, we entered the sixth episode in the
WAVE (Western Access Video Excellence Awards) contest.
The link is http://www.accesswithoutborders.org/wave.
About a month ago, we learned that "Chess Diva"
was a finalist for the "best instructional"
category.
Two days ago, I flew to Denver, Colorado to attend the award
ceremony. We are happy that "Chess Diva" won
the award for the "best instructional" category!!
The sixth episode features Barbara and I teaching some
chess positions. We also show a "Chess in the community" video.
Not only that, we also feature top USCF female chess
players interviews with Alisha Chawla and Jessica Lauser.
We invite you to watch our show on the internet and give
us feedback! The link to the show is
http://www.geocities.com/chessdiva.show/Episode6.html.
Enjoy,
Lauren and Barbara
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