News

The Time’s Learning Network ran a feature as a follow-up to last week’s front page article about social media in the classroom. The Times interviewed Erin Olson, a member of the Harlan Institute Teacher Advisory Network. When asked about social media and civic engagement, she discussed her class’s experience with FantasySCOTUS and Snyder v. Phelps.

Q. Does classroom engagement in social media lead to civic engagement? Is social media use related in any way to increased activism? A.  E.O.: I am not the dispenser of all knowledge. Through social media, students can learn from the source, and the expert is not necessarily me. I can connect our class to experts in the field of study whether that be a professor, an author, a lawyer or a historian. There is so much information on the Web; students must read critically. In a time when e-mail forwards are considered truth, the ability to research effectively, to discover bias, and to analyze sources becomes crucial. My juniors are members of the Harlan Institute Supreme Court Fantasy League. Students read about the Snyder v. Phelps case, and on Veterans Day, the class discussed the case with a lawyer via Skype. Students responded to prompts on our Harlan blog. The class was inspired by the reading, and volunteered to perform a reader’s theater piece for the Veterans Day program. As we continued reading, writing, speaking, analyzing and researching, students managed to continue discussing the case. They understood the need to protect the freedom of speech, but they were troubled by the hurtful comments made during a time of mourning A few weeks ago, my students entered the room one talking over the other. Westboro Baptist Church was protesting a funeral of a fallen soldier; the funeral was in Iowa. Students organized a peaceful demonstration of support for soldiers. Their passion was inspiring, and their genuine empathy and support for soldiers fighting, for families of soldiers, for those fallen … amazing.

Erin talks more about the experience with the Westboro Baptists here. Congrats Erin!

Last week I featured Erin Olson’s (who is a member of our Teacher Advisory Network) class in Sioux City, Iowa. Erin’s class was inspired by playing FantasySCOTUS, and learning about Snyder v. Phelps, and launched a counter-protest to the Westboro Baptists who were protesting at a local military funeral. Today we are thrilled to note that Erin’s class is featured in an article in the New York Times about using twitter and social media in the class. It will be on the front page!

Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. On Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called “To the Lady,” which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops. The poet “says that people cried out and tried but nothing was done,” one student typed. Another offered, “She is giving raw proof … that we are slaves to our society.” Instead of being a distraction — an electronic version of note-passing — the chatter echoed and fed into the main discourse, said Mrs. Olson, who monitored the stream and tried to absorb it into the lesson. She and others say that social media, once barricaded outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves through a medium they find as natural as breathing. “When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”

Harlan Institute, and FantasySCOTUS, get an indirect plug when the article discusses her class’s study of Snyder v. Phelps.

Earlier in the week, students at the school had staged a rally to support American troops in response to picketing they had seen on the news by the fringe Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas at a funeral for an Iowa soldier killed in Afghanistan. Mrs. Olson asked her students to connect “the argument” of the poem and the video with their own rally. As the discussion swirled in class, one student typed on the backchannel: “We tend to have the attitude that someone else will do it. But what happens when everyone thinks the same as you?” “It only takes one individual to change,” another student typed. “If you want something to change you have to be willing to be that voice.” “It really shows the impact one change can make,” a third student wrote. “I agree with Katie!” someone added. “This class has given us a voice!”

Erin is a trailblazer in the classroom, and we are thrilled to work with her at the Harlan Institute.

I encourage everyone to attend this wonderful event. The Constitutional Sources Project cordially invites you and 6-9 students of your choice to listen to America’s finest storyteller, David McCullough, at the National Archives William G. McGowan Theater on Tuesday September 13, 2011. Through the Verizon Foundation’s generous sponsorship, Mr. McCullough will teach a diverse group of teachers, students and community leaders about the 1787 Constitutional Convention in an effort to help America’s youth understand the dynamic collaborative process which elevated the creation of government from violent regime change to constitution-creation by the rule of law. His address will be recorded and made available on ConSource.org and through Channel One Connection, a network of 400,000 teachers and 6 million students nationwide, for teachers’ use on September 16 to meet federal requirements to teach the Constitution on Constitution Day. After his remarks, teachers and students may participate in document analysis exercises in the Boeing Learning Center of the National Archives and tour other exhibits. The program begins at 10:00 a.m. Please be seated by 9:45 a.m. The Constitutional Sources Project has created the most comprehensive free online library of primary sources related to the Constitution and indexed by constitutional clause. Students, teachers, scholars, attorneys, judges, lawmakers, and most importantly “We the People” can access it freely at www.ConSource.org. Please RSVP by June 1, 2011 to me at eleesha.tucker -at- ConSource.org indicating (1) the number of students you will be bringing to Mr. McCullough’s address (2) if you will involve your students in a 30 minute Boeing Learning Center document analysis activity and (3) if you will explore exhibits at the National Archives including the Charters of Freedom at the Rotunda.

The ABA Journal has a cover story feature on the sad state of civic education in America’s youth.

Only one state deserved a rating of A when it came to teaching its students American history, according to a recent study. Most states fall in the category of “mediocre to awful.” The study ranked history standards in 49 states and the District of Columbia (Rhode Island has no mandatory history standards, only suggested guidelines) for “content and rigor” and “clarity and specificity” on a scale of A to F. Only South Carolina got straight A’s.

This lack of knowledge translates to a failure of today’s generation to participate in our Republic.

According to the report, students also are less interested in public or political issues than were previous generations, and they exhibit gaps in their knowledge of fundamental democratic principles and processes. “As a result,” the report said, “many young Americans are not prepared to participate fully in our democracy now and when they become adults.”

Indeed, this problem is not limited to students (namely because today’s adults were yesterday’s kids).

A 2005 survey by the ABA, for example, found that nearly half of all Americans were unable to correctly identify the three branches of government. A FindLaw survey that same year found that only 57 percent of Americans could name any Supreme Court justice.

These numbers show how important our work at the Harlan Institute is. We take great pride in finding new and innovative ways to teach students about our most fundamental laws.

In Manilla, Iowa, the Westboro Baptists–the victors of Snyder v. Phelps–protested the funeral of slain soldier Staff Sergeant James Justice. In response, students in Erin Olson’s AP Language and Composition class at Sioux Central Community School in Sioux Rapids, IA  started a protest of their own. The students had studied Snyder v. Phelps in class using Harlan Institute lessons in order to make predictions on FantasySCOTUS.org. Inspired by this case, the students took matters into their own hands. Ms. Olson tells us that her students entered her second period class disgusted and were quite disturbed that the Westboro Baptist Church would be protesting at the funeral of Staff Sergeant James Justice. She was amazed by their passion. Ms. Olson found that “their understanding of the Westboro Baptist Church’s platform was fostered during their reading for the Supreme Court Fantasy League created by the Harlan Institute.” On Veteran’s Day, her students Skyped with a Harlan volunteer lawyer throughHarlan Connect. The volunteer led a discussion of the legal issues surrounding Snyder v. Phelps. Students wrote about the case, but as the year progressed, Olson noticed that the case kept coming into her class discussions. Her students “understood the need to protect the freedom of speech, but they were still troubled with the moral ethical issues surrounding the case.” On May 4, 2011, she saw her students were enthusiastic about sharing their support for the family of Staff Sergeant Justice. They organized themselves. She “watched in awe of their passion driven learning.” They planned a lunch announcement, lead the Pledge of Allegiance, organized the playing of Taps, built a platform, and created sign. Due the high winds, “they were concerned about their paper signs blowing away, so they asked for permission to put posts into the ground, so they built a platform!” Students organized cameras to get footage of the process and work. Students contacted media. Ms. Olson tells us that “there are no words to express my pride in each and every one of my students. This is what learning is about. They are amazing, and I am so fortunate. Those kids wanted the family of James Justice to know their hearts hurt for the loss, and they support our troops.”

Today the Department of Education released the Civics 2010 Report Card, based on a civics exam administered to students nationwide in the 4th, 8th,and 12th grade. The Times reports on some of the findings:

Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics examination, and only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to test results released on Wednesday. At the same time, three-quarters of high school seniors who took the test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unable to demonstrate civic skills like identifying the effect of United States foreign policy on other nations or naming a power granted to Congress by the Constitution. … Average fourth-grade scores on the test’s 300-point scale rose slightly since the exam was last administered, in 2006, to 157 from 154. Average eighth-grade scores were virtually unchanged at 151. The scores of high school seniors — students who are either eligible to vote or about to be — dropped to 148 from 151. Those scores mean that about a quarter of 4th- and 12th-grade students, and about one-fifth of 8th graders ranked at the proficient or advanced levels.

Justice O’Connor, a champion of civic education, sounded the alarm about the crisis we have in civice ducation:

“Today’s NAEP results confirm that we have a crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education,” said Sandra Day O’Connor, the former Supreme Court justice.

I have started to go through the lengthy report, and will blog more about its findings, and how the goals of the Harlan Institute help to create awareness about civic education.

I am pleased to announce that FantasySCOTUS: Crowdsourcing a Prediction Market for the Supreme Court, co-authored with Adam Aft and Corey Carpenter, is on SSRN. This article analyzes the predictions made during the October 2009 Term onFantasySCOTUS.net. Based on this data, FantasySCOTUS accurately predicted a majority of the cases, and the top-ranked experts predicted over 75% of the cases correctly. Additionally, we compared our predictions to the path breaking Supreme Court Forecasting ProjectThe FantasySCOTUS top three experts not only outperformed the Forecasting Project’s experts, but they also slightly outperformed the Project’s model—75.7% compared with 75%., which developed a supercrunching algorithm to predict cases based on a certain cases characteristics. Finally, we assessed whether the Supreme Court prediction market merely mirrors the media—that is, do people make predictions based on coverage about the cases in the news and blogosphere. Using an expansive searching process—that considered both old school, and new school media—we found a correlation between media coverage and predictions. This was a very fun paper to write, and reveals great insights about how people perceive the Court. Here is the abstract:

Every year the Supreme Court of the United States captivates the minds and curiosity of millions of Americans—yet the inner-workings of the Court are not fully transparent. The Court, without explanation, only decides the cases it wishes. They deliberate and assign authorship in private. The Justices hear oral arguments, and without notice, issue an opinion months later. They sometimes offer enigmatic clues during oral arguments through their questions. Between arguments and the day the Court issues an opinion, the outcome of a case is essentially a mystery. Sometimes the outcome falls along predictable lines; other times the outcome is a complete surprise. Court-watchers frequently make predictions about the cases in articles, on blogs, and elsewhere. Individually, some may be right, some may be wrong, but on the aggregate, these predictions tend to be correct. Until recently, there was not a way to pool together this collective wisdom, and generate accurate real-time predictions for all cases pending before the United States Supreme Court. Now there is such a tool. FantasySCOTUS.net from the Harlan Institute: the Internet’s premier Supreme Court Fantasy League, and the first crowdsourced prediction market for jurisprudential speculation. During the October 2009 Supreme Court term, the 5,000 members made over 11,000 predictions for all 81 cases decided. Based on this data, FantasySCOTUS accurately predicted a majority of the cases, and the top-ranked experts predicted over 75% of the cases correctly. With this combined knowledge, we can now have a method to determine with a degree of certainty how the Justices will decide cases before they do. This essay explores the wisdom of the crowds in this prediction market and assesses the accuracy of FantasySCOTUS’ predictions This essay presents the first detailed analysis, and comparison of this path breaking Supreme Court Forecasting Project, documented in a 2004 Columbia Law Review article. The Project developed a sophisticated algorithm and, utilizing decision-trees, predicted how the Justices would decide cases based on certain characteristics of a case—such as circuit of origin, type of case, and the political ideology of the case. To test the power of their model, the organizers of the Forecasting Project assembled a cadre of Supreme Court experts, litigators, and academics to make predictions about the same cases. During the October 2002 Term, the Project’s model predicted 75% of the cases correctly, which was more accurate than the Forecasting Project’s experts, who only predicted 59.1% of the cases correctly. The FantasySCOTUS experts predicted 64.7% of the cases correctly, surpassing the Forecasting Project’s Experts, though the difference was not statistically significant. The Gold, Silver, and Bronze medalists in FantasySCOTUS scored staggering accuracy rates of 80%, 75% and 72% respectively (an average of 75.7%). The FantasySCOTUS top three experts not only outperformed the Forecasting Project’s experts, but they also slightly outperformed the Project’s model—75.7% compared with 75%. Finally, this essay assesses whether a Supreme Court prediction market merely mirrors the media—that is, do people make predictions based on coverage about the cases in the news and blogosphere. To complete this assessment, we searched several sources for stories about the ten cases we considered—the ALLNEWS database on Westlaw, the Legal US News database on LexisNexis, as well as a custom Google search engine we programmed that sifts through the 2010 ABA Journal Blawg 100. Using this expansive searching process—that considered both old school, and new school media—we found a correlation between media coverage and predictions. The inner-workings of the Supreme Court of the United States are shrouded in secrecy. From the first Monday in October to the last week in June, the Justices operate behind-the-scenes to determine some of the most important issues in our society. Now FantasySCOTUS can provide accurate, real-time predictions how the Court will decide these cases. The FantasySCOTUS crowdsourced prediction market provides an unprecedented insight into the decision-making of the United States Supreme Court.

Columbia. LSU, and NYU are neck and neck for the top three slots. Sign up today!

	1	.Columbia	21 Members	2590
	2	.Louisiana State	23 Members	2500	Join
	3	.New York University	38 Members	2480	Join
	4	.Thomas M. Cooley	31 Members	1850	Join
	5	.St. Thomas (minnesota)	12 Members	1740	Join
	6	.Michigan	17 Members	1450	Join
	7	.Virginia	20 Members	1340	Join
	8	.Loyola – New Orleans	11 Members	1230	Join
	9	.Campbell	8 Members	1200	Join
	10	.Georgetown	42 Members	1100	Join
	11	.Charleston	15 Members	1050	Join
	12	.Miami	20 Members	970	Join
	13	.District Of Columbia	11 Members	920	Join
	14	.Minnesota	8 Members	850	Join
	15	.Baltimore	22 Members	840	Join
	16	.Missouri – Columbia	13 Members	810	Join
	16	.Santa Clara	16 Members	810	Join
	17	.Saint Louis	26 Members	790	Join
	18	. Other Law School	116 Members	730	Join
	19	.Brooklyn	33 Members	710	Join
	20	.Regent	6 Members	700	Join

The New York Times has a fascinating piece about the explosion in schools permitting their students to take classes online. Here are some of the great statistics about this continuing trend:

In Idaho, the state superintendent of education plans to push a requirement that high-school students take four or more online courses, following a bill that passed the Legislature last week to provide every student with a laptop, paid for from a state fund for educators’ salaries. Chicago and New York City have introduced pilot online learning programs. In New York, Innovation Zone, or iZone, includes online makeup and Advanced Placement courses at 30 high schools, as well as personalized after-school computer drills in math and English for elementary students. The virtual high school says its list of client schools has grown to 770, up 34 percent in two years, because of local budget cuts. Nationwide, an estimated 1.03 million students at the K-12 level took an online course in 2007-8, up 47 percent from two years earlier, according to the Sloan Consortium, an advocacy group for online education. About 200,000 students attend online schools full time, often charter schoolsthat appeal to home-schooling families, according to another report.

Additionally, online courses can expose students to classes that local teachers simply cannot teach:

Reza Namin, superintendent of schools in Westbrook, Me., which faces a $6.5 million budget deficit, said he could not justify continuing to pay a Chinese language teacher for only 10 interested students. But he was able to offer Chinese online through the Virtual High School Global Consortium, a nonprofit school based in Massachusetts.

The Harlan Institute has been at the forefront of the development of free online classes, and looks forward to helping to promote this wonderful educational experience for students across the country.

Here are the latest predictions from the FantasySCOTUS.net prediction tracker for the 4/4/11 Supreme Court session.

Case Name	FantasySCOTUS Prediction	Outcome	Date Decided	Prediction Details
Talk America v. Michigan Bell	Affirm			Details
US v. Tohono O’odham Nation	Affirm			Details
Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association	Affirm			Details
Sossamon v. Texas	Affirm			Details
Arizona Christian Tuition v. Winn	Reverse			Details
Cullen v. Pinholster	Reverse			Details
AT&T v. Concepcion	Affirm			Details
Flores-Villar v. US	Affirm			Details
Amara v. CIGNA	Reverse			Details
Schwarzenegger v. Plata	Affirm			Details
Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy v. Stewart	Affirm			Details
Kentucky v. King	Reverse			Details
Janus Capital v. 1st Derivative Traders	Reverse			Details
Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting	Affirm			Details
General Dynamics Corp. v. US	Reverse			Details
The Boeing Company v. US	Reverse			Details
Montana v. Wyoming and North Dakota	Affirm			Details
Goodyear Lux. Tires, SA v. Brown	Reverse			Details
J. McIntyre Machinery v. Nicastro	Affirm			Details
Sykes v. US	Reverse			Details
Smith v. Bayer Corp.	Reverse			Details
Stern v. Marshall	Affirm			Details
US v. Tinklenberg	Reverse			Details
Bond v. United States	Reverse			Details
Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB S.A.	Affirm			Details
Freeman v. US	Reverse			Details
DePierre v. United States	Affirm			Details
Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc.	Affirm			Details
Schindler Elevator Corporation v. US ex rel. Kirk	Affirm			Details
Alford v. Greene	Reverse			Details
Camreta v. Greene	Reverse			Details
Bullcoming v. New Mexico	Reverse			Details
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd	Reverse			Details
Davis. v. United States	Affirm			Details
Fox, v. Vice	Affirm			Details
Duryea v. Guarnieri	Reverse			Details
Turner v. Rogers	Reverse			Details
J. D. B. v. North Carolina	Affirm			Details
McComish v. Bennett	Reverse			Details
Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett	Reverse			Details
CSX Transportation v. McBride	Affirm			Details
Wal-Mart v. Dukes	Reverse			Details
Isiogu v. Michigan Bell	Affirm			Details
PLIVA Inc. v. Mensing	Affirm			Details
Actavis Elizabeth, L.L.C. v. Mensing	Reverse			Details
Actavis v. Demahy	Reverse			Details
Microsoft v. i4i Limited Partnership	Affirm			Details
Tapia v. U.S.	Affirm			Details
American Electric Power Co., Inc. v. Connecticut	Affirm			Details
United States v. Jicarilla Apache Nation	Affirm			Details
McNeill v. United States	Affirm			Details
Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc.	Affirm			Details
Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan	Reverse			Details
Madison County v. Oneida Indian Nation	Affirm			Details
Fowler v. United States	Affirm			Details