Cheating Politicians Department

John Ensign can't get it through his thick head that it isn't the fact he screwed around on his wife Darlene that's the problem; it's the coverup and ethics violations that are the issues.

The Education Wars III

Thanks to the administration's hatred of traditional public education, it is not surprising charter schools are making a big comeback despite the fact they aren't any better than public schools and are often a hell of a lot worse.

The "monopoly" of public schools is not what is the problem; the problem with public education is with who runs the schools and their total lack of accountability.

The Education Wars II

Arizona joins Nevada and other states in subverting tenure and seniority rights of teachers in order to get Arne Duncan's blackmail money:

Lawmakers entered murky waters with the changes, setting limitations on how public-school districts can negotiate with teachers. The restrictions and changes, such as removing protections and prohibiting factors for hiring, make Arizona one of the more-restrictive states for teachers.

This is going to be hell, and very soon, nobody will apply to be a teacher given the absolute flagrant abuse of them by shitty principals.

The Education Wars

Too bad the pollsters didn't ask ME what I think of Washoe County School District:

According to a recent annual community poll, 55 percent of Washoe County voters believe the Washoe County School District is headed in the right direction, a 6 percent gain over 2008.

Voters cited as the top reasons for agreeing with the district’s direction that it’s doing well in general, they know students who are performing well in school and that the hiring of Superintendent Heath Morrison has bolstered WCSD’s goals of transparency, communications and instituting a stronger vision.

I attribute this to the wholesale ignorance of the public of not only what public school culture is really about, but the ignorance of where Eli Broad flunky Heath Morrison is coming from philosophically.

Miscellaneous Articles

Chelsea Clinton is engaged, but people who have read the tabloids for the past four or five years have been expecting this news.
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Yesterday I Linked an Article from the NYT

which was about the growing use of food stamps by vast numbers of people, and that the stigma of receiving the assistance has decreased.

The "welfare bum" who had food stamps to buy booze and junk food has pretty much fallen by the wayside. But the increase in food stamps points to a bigger problem:

The Times conducted a statistical analysis of food stamp use by county, in an effort to present a more detailed social portrait of the 36 million people currently on the food stamp rolls. “They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare,” the report noted.


Among the significant findings:

In 239 counties, more than a quarter of the population receives food stamps.
In more than 750 counties, at least one in three African-Americans receives food stamps.
In more than 800 counties, more than one-third of all children depend on food stamps.
In 62 counties, food stamp rolls have doubled over the past two years.
In 205 counties, food stamp rolls are up by two-thirds.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Stigma Attached

to getting food stamps because, after all, people who got them were welfare "bums." However, thanks to massive unemployment and poverty, the stigma has long since passed.

It also helps many if not all states have converted food stamps to an ATM card.

The outreach worker is a telltale sign. Like many states, Ohio has campaigned hard to raise the share of eligible people collecting benefits, which are financed entirely by the federal government and brought the state about $2.2 billion last year.

By contrast, in the federal cash welfare program, states until recently bore the entire cost of caseload growth, and nationally the rolls have stayed virtually flat. Unemployment insurance, despite rapid growth, reaches about only half the jobless (and replaces about half their income), making food stamps the only aid many people can get — the safety net’s safety net.

Support for the food stamp program reached a nadir in the mid-1990s when critics, likening the benefit to cash welfare, won significant restrictions and sought even more. But after use plunged for several years, President Bill Clinton began promoting the program, in part as a way to help the working poor. President George W. Bush expanded that effort, a strategy Mr. Obama has embraced.

The Education Wars

Dumbass editorial writers really need to quit bloviating about something they know absolutely nothing about, i.e., schools in general, including New York City's.

This blogger has some ideas on what needs to be done.

My ideas for nationwide education reform I think would go to the core of what the problem in public ed is, and it's not with the teachers. It's with the administrators who have unlimited power.

Tigergate

Woods says the accident is all his fault.

In a statement posted today on his Web site about an hour before he was meet with troopers, Woods says his wife, Elin, acted "courageously" when she saw that he was hurt. He says any other assertion is "absolutely false."

Woods says he understands there is curiosity about the accident. He says the "malicious" rumours circulating about him and his family are irresponsible.

The world's No. 1 golfer says he has cuts and bruising and is "pretty sore."

His official statement is here.

Yesterday Murdoch's News of the World had a piece which seemed to be very much on Tiger Woods' side and against the National Enquirer's allegations.

I suspect Murdoch's outfit is upset because his publications didn't get the scoop.

link

I love the headline: "Tiger's Not a Lion Cheetah, but His Wife Still Went Ape..."

Glamorous Rachel Uchitel - pictured far right - revealed her shock over the accident and said: "We have never had an affair. God forbid that Tiger got into a car wreck because of this."

False rumours that Woods had been seeing the New York socialite are said to have sent his wife Elin Nordegren into a rage after they celebrated Thanksgiving at their £1.7 million Florida mansion.

And as Woods, 33, left the alleged bust-up in his Cadillac in the early hours of Friday he hit a fire hydrant and then a tree and was knocked unconscious for SIX MINUTES.

When cops arrived at the scene they discovered Swedish ex-model Elin, 29, had smashed his rear window with TWO GOLF CLUBS. Woods was lying dazed on the ground with cuts around his mouth and his wife was "hovering over him".

Jimbo Eruptions

Nevada first lady and soon-to-be ex-wife (to the governor) Dawn Gibbons tells all or some about her divorce, her job, and her suspicions about her cheating husband in an upcoming magazine article for locals:

Speaking exclusively with writer Siobhan McAndrew in the December issue of RENO Magazine, the first lady openly talked about her shock over the divorce, why she fought to unseal divorce documents and why she doubts the governor’s “we’re just friends” defense for time he has spent with other women.


“Women are the ones required to give up so much to support their husbands, take time off to have children, and then, you end up where I am,” Gibbons said. “In politics, it’s just worse.”


The first lady said she has exchanged e-mails with other betrayed wives of governors, including South Carolina’s Jenny Sandford and New York’s Silda Wall Spitzer.
“I know how they feel, but the difference is they both have money,” Gibbons said. “At this point in my life, I had no idea I would feel this trapped.”

The magazine might be worth getting because there are comments from Jim Gibbons' friends Kathy Karrasch and Leslie Durant.

It will also be online at this site, so out-of-staters or people living all over the world will be able to read it.

Personal Stuff and UI

It appears I will need to keep filling out and mailing the state extended benefits for Nevada, and then when that runs out in about six or seven weeks, I then am eligible for federal Tier III extended benefits, according to this link.

It appears in Oregon the federal supercedes the state extended benefits, but perhaps that state doesn't require a snail mail claim, either.

Nevada unfortunately does.

The state unemployment insurance agency, DETR, has been sending out notices to a few people the agency overpaid and therefore these people must repay the overpayments. I don't know how that can be done, frankly.

What's really bad is employers aren't even held to the 11-day limit to challenge a claim, apparently. This isn't right. If it's 11 days for the former employee to file an appeal, it should be 11 days for the employer to challenge a former employee's claim.

The union's executive director when I worked at WCSD flat-out LIED about my eligibility. I believed her bullshit that the district would "fight" any claim I would make and claim I committed "misconduct," even though there was no misconduct on my part but there sure as hell was misconduct on the part of that dumbass principal and the head of human resources. So I went FOUR months without filing a claim until the union lawyers suggested the day of my kangaroo hearing I file. Of course I got the benefits, as the person from DETR in Las Vegas said they get "these kind of claims all the time" after I sent them a copy of the union's lawyers' brief.

Obituaries

L.A. Times sportswriter Mike Penner, 52, a suicide.

It sounds like this guy was a very screwed up individual. He tried living as a transgendered individual under the name of "Christine Daniels," but then reverted back to his original name and identity. As the link notes, he never underwent sex-reassignment surgery:

The day Mike Penner left the Los Angeles Times made the news. The longtime sportswriter wrote the article himself, a personal essay explaining that he was taking some time off and, upon his return, he would be known from then on as Christine Daniels.
Penner's public acknowledgment in April 2007 that he was transgender and would soon live as a woman shocked the world of sports journalism and turned his new identity, Daniels, into an instant celebrity. Daniels gave speeches, was profiled in Sports Illustrated, collected honors for courage from transgender groups and wrote a blog for the Times titled "Woman In Progress."

Except that the transition didn't last. In mid-October 2008, after a lengthy leave of absence, Penner, 51, returned to the sports pages and the Times newsroom as a man.

And just as suddenly, Penner's story, heralded in its early days as a triumphant example of transgender progress, has instead become a cautionary tale of the lesser-known phenomenon: transgender regret.

"It's unfortunate and it's relatively uncommon but certainly not unheard of," says Denise Leclair, executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education, a Waltham, Mass.-based transgender advocacy group. "The simplest way to think about it is being trans is something that never goes away. ... There's just a fairly constant social pressure to just go back. You don't have to be a genius to understand that society doesn't really accept this."

Miscellaneous Articles

What did FDR really die from, or rumored to have died from?
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Wall Street is behind the U of C cash crisis.
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Is Tiger Woods' wife to blame for his accident the other day when he first ran into a fire hydrant then into a tree with his SUV?

Reportedly his wife saw reports, presumably from the National Enquirer, her husband was having an affair with one Rachel Uchitel, 34, but Uchitel has denied ever having any affair with him and calls the reports "bullshit."

National Enquirer:

The ENQUIRER is reporting exclusively in its print edition that the 34-year-old brunette, who has a reputation for dating married celebrities, has been telling friends about a jet-set liaison with 33-year-old Tiger that began in June.

Multiple sources, who passed polygraph tests, say Rachel told them that she and Tiger also stay in touch during his frequent travels through phone calls and "sexting," sending each other racy text messages on their cell phones.

One close friend of Rachel's -- Ashley Samson -- told The ENQUIRER: "Rachel told me, 'I'm having an affair with Tiger Woods. We're in love!'"

And while Rachel emphatically says she's no home wrecker, she recently had a disastrous affair with David Boreanaz, the star of Bones. The affair even continued while his wife was pregnant and was reported exclusively by Star magazine.

So despite Rachel's protestations, the ENQUIRER amassed plenty of evidence for its story and is now releasing part of it.

Rachel, an events planner and former director of VIP operations at the NYC nightclub Grffin, has attempted to distance herself from the growing scandal in several comments made to media in the last 24 hours, including to the Associated Press, New York Post and New York Daily News.

But The ENQUIRER can show how Rachel's denials are full of contradictions!

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Although Vice President Joseph Biden appears to be all but invisible, this article says he is the second most powerful vice president in American history.

The reason he appears to be invisible to people like me is because he is spending most of his time on foreign affairs, of which he is an expert. I too believe he should have been president.

In any case, he's probably the most powerful VP, for Dick Cheney wasn't really VP anyway--he was actually the president while little George was little more than a figurehead.
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Although the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Panel Recommended

regular mammograms at age 50 and every two years after that and said there was overscreening of breast cancer, the panel didn't quite foresee the storm of reaction against their recommendations, especially by women who had believed for years that early detection equals a cure or prevention.

There was something charming about the innocence of the independent task force. Did the scientists assume the public would just accept the information as given? Or, should I say, as revised? Anyone who has spent time in a waiting room with women taught to equate early detection with prevention could have warned them.

Within hours, stories poured in from women who deeply believe “my life was saved” by an early mammogram. Then came suspicions about what new guidelines would mean to their insurance providers. Women recoiled as well from an analysis that listed “anxiety” as a risk component of early mammograms—as if they couldn’t handle a little A in preference to a big C.

If the experts didn’t realize how women would react, they were truly disconnected from the poisonous political atmosphere around health care reform. Quickly and deliberately, politicians turned “recommendations” into “rationing.” As Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., darkly warned, “This is how rationing begins. This is when you start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician.”

With younger women with breast cancer, survival depends on how aggressive the tumor is, now how big it is, and unfortunately, survival rates have hardly budged:

It’s important because—and I say this as someone whose mother, aunt and sister have all had breast cancer—the task force had a strong story to tell. The benefits of mammography for younger women have been oversold. As Laura Nikolaides of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, and a cancer survivor, says, “People have been doing mammography as a security blanket: If you have a mammogram, you won’t die of breast cancer. We wish that were true.” The biology of the tumor—how aggressively it grows—is now judged more important than the size at which it was discovered. And the terrible reality is that we haven’t done much to change the survival rate of younger women who get this disease.

Miscellaneous Articles

The shit finally hit the fan for David Truscott. At least he wasn't arrested for having sex with a horse.
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Food banks are seeing more first time visitors, thanks to a worsening economy.
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Sanford and Sin: While the governor's political fortunes are going into the ditch, his long-suffering wife's career appears to be taking off:

She is writing a memoir, “Staying True,” to be released in April by Ballantine Books, about grappling with her husband’s marital infidelity. She has applied to trademark her own name in order to sell clothing, mugs and other items. She will appear next month on a Barbara Walters special on ABC as one of the “10 Most Fascinating People of 2009.”

She has set up a privately financed personal Web site, JennySanford.com, complete with news releases and photographs. And she has endorsed a candidate to succeed her husband, State Representative Nikki Haley, a Republican and the only woman in the race.

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The Education Wars II

Here is a little bit more about the attempt by Bloomberg/Klein to undercut teachers' rights in that particular school district.

I like this paragraph:

Terminating Teachers: Under Bloomberg/Klein the sevenfold increase in reassigned teachers are mostly caused by Tweed allowing Principals the power to remove teachers on false or frivolous charges. This increase in reassigned teachers have overwhelmed the 3020-a process making a 2 to 3 year stay in "rubber rooms" quite common. Since Arbitrators and transcribers are paid by New York State and are paid sporadically, many 3020-a hearings are drawn out as both groups make this a low priority item. This has resulted in the DOE making settlements with many a charged teachers. However, teachers who know the charges are untrue rather take their chances with an independent Arbitrator than admit guilt. This forces the DOE to bolster their "weak cases" by practicing "character assassination" against the teacher that furtherextends the 3020-a hearing process.

Ya think? Out here in Nevada, termination hearings using character assassination of teachers is the rule, or it was in my case. The district had no case against me, and the administrators knew that dumb shit principal was negligent, but instead of settling with me or dropping the fake charges, they decided to go through with the rigged hearing committing all kinds of sleazy and criminal acts to get rid of me.

Anything to protect the negligent principal, who should have lost her job instead of still being allowed to be a principal.

The Education Wars

A trio of "reformers" including Harold Ford, Jr. and Eli Broad, are waging war against public education in this column.

They hate the status quo and "lifetime benefits," which translate means tenure in their lying eyes although tenure means nothing of the sort.

Teachers, are you going to sit there and take it will the corporocrats destroy your hard earned careers?

Stupid Crooner Department

Andy Williams, 81, always a Republican even when he was friends with Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, has really gone off the deep end about President Obama. He called him a "socialist" and is upset about the people he associates with.

I will say this much about the president, though, and that he doesn't go around supporting murdering ex-spouses like Andy did.

Here is the Telegraph article.

Williams still admired the Kennedys and was fond of Ted as well as Bobby and Ethel.

The article is a couple of months old, but now that it is that time of year, and Williams, like the late Bing Crosby, was closely associated with the holidays.

He and Claudine used to have special Christmas programs as part of his popular variety show in the 1960s.

More Political Stuff

Former representative Barbara Vucanovich doesn't think much of John Ensign's chances for re-election, now that he's screwed things up badly:

The former seven-term U.S. representative said she's especially disappointed in Ensign's scandal because she personally helped recruit him as a candidate in Las Vegas in the early 1990s when he first ran for the U.S. House.

"I met with his family. I thought he would be a wonderful candidate," said Vucanovich, who served in 1983-97.

"I'm extremely disappointed in him and frankly, very surprised, because I think that isn't the character that everybody thought he was. I'm very, very disappointed," she said.

I guess she didn't know him like she thought she did.

The Education Wars III

Nevada teacher unions are signing their death warrants now that they are working with the governor to try and change the law regarding teacher evaluations so the state can get that "Race to the Top" money.

I wonder if these unions even understand the strings attached to Arne's "Race to the Top." Duncan is virulently anti-public education; he wants to destroy them all and replace them with charter schools, most of which aren't worth a darn. The unions are so busy kissing up to school districts they aren't doing what the teachers are paying them to do, and that's represent the teachers.

The Education Wars II

Nepotism not only affects public education in general, but it also affects the media as well. The Washington Post's "America's Next Great Pundit" is none other than the ex-husband of D.C. tyrant Michelle Rhee, Kevin Huffman. The paper has long supported the questionable policies of the tyrant from D.C.'s public schools.

Whoever says people get ahead on merit is full of shit.

Speaking of Rhee, who got herself engaged to former basketball star and now mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson, questions are being asked about her now-fiance and alleged misuse of AmeriCorps money:

On June 27, 2008, Michelle Rhee, head of the Washington, D.C., school system, paid a visit to Gerald Walpin, who was inspector general of the government volunteer organization AmeriCorps.

At the time, Walpin was investigating a California private school known as St. Hope, which was founded by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star and friend of Rhee's who was running for mayor of Sacramento. St. Hope had received about $850,000 in AmeriCorps money, and Walpin's investigators were looking into charges that Johnson had misused those funds by assigning paid volunteer tutors to run errands for him and wash his car, as well as making them take part in political activities.

In the course of the investigation, some young female AmeriCorps volunteers also charged that Johnson had made inappropriate sexual advances toward them and offered one of them $1,000 a month to keep quiet.

Rhee, who later became engaged to marry Johnson, had been on St. Hope's board of directors before taking over as chief of the District of Columbia system. Her apparent goal, as she visited Walpin, was to vouch for Johnson.

York tends to lean right in his writings, but the allegations have been spreading like wildfire all over the education blogs.

The Education Wars

My little rant on a board about inappropriate curriculum:

Well, "really" high "achieving" kids were NOT taking algebra in middle school when I went

This is entirely the fault of the standardistas, as Susan Ohanian calls them, and it is completely inappropriate to teach high-level math in middle school, and it is trickling down into the lower grades, and many if not MOST kids cannot handle it. But that's okay, because there are always special education teachers to pick up the slack, and the kids who are "failing" math are forever labeled as "failing" when in reality it is shitty, inappropriate curriculum that is being shoved down kids' throats.

Thirty or forty years ago one almost NEVER saw kids in special education (only those who would be labeled "life skills" students were found in self-contained classrooms--the TRUE special education students such as the "mentally retarded" and of course others severely disabled weren't in schools at all or were in institutions) and very few students got ANY remedial help in reading or in math, and yes, there have always been second-language learners in public schools, so that isn't the reason for the huge explosion of kids in special education, nor can poverty or divorce be blamed, either. No, what happened is trends in education "upped" the ante in requiring kids to go on college-track preparation in high school and the lower grades, thanks to the fraudulent Nation at Risk report and other reports pushed by anti-public school politicians saying this country was falling behind academically compared to other countries and many, many kids have fallen through the cracks as a result because they can't do the work. And then there was the whole language fad, promoted by Ken Goodman and others trying to put an inappropriate high school-style language arts pedagogy on elementary school students who need explicit, sequential language arts instruction. Inappropriate curriculum/pedagogy is the real reason so many kids are in special education today, and if there is any blame leveled at teachers, it should be that many of them aren't taught how to teach reading.

Now your child is an exception, but it is the exception which proves the rule. Hundreds of thousands of middle school kids can't handle abstract concepts like algebra. That is a fact. They aren't stupid, they aren't lazy, though standardistas would say they are, or they, like you, blame the teachers. These kids simply aren't cognitively ready to handle abstract concepts.

By the way, many, many intelligent adults can't do algebra, either.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

I thought about taking Sam to this on Saturday (Tony is probably too "old" to walk in a parade as he is around 13 and his eyesight isn't any good anymore), but I will probably forget about it.
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I'll probably get sick with the swine flu eventually, but this advice is still good, I guess.

I haven't received either the H1N1 or the regular flu shot this year so far.
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I'd like to see Webber Falls before I hightail it out of here for good.
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I'll bet my brother didn't record the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.
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The Education Wars IV

I hope this wrongfully accused former teacher wins her suit, now that her career is likely destroyed forever:

Attorney Eric Deters has filed a lawsuit on behalf of former Dayton, Ky., teacher Nicole Howell against Kenton County prosecutor Rob Sanders.

"We believe Rob Sanders is the responsible party. He ordered the arrest. He directed the prosecution," said Deters.

The lawsuit against Sanders seeks punitive damages, contending the prosecutor brought and tried the case with "no probable cause" and denied Howell her constitutional right to due process.

"After talking with my lawyer Eric Deters and a couple of other people, other professionals, I felt that I couldn't let this go," said Howell. "I could. I could move on and deal with it, but what if this happens to somebody else? What if someone else feels they are wrongfully prosecuted and pursued for no one reason than malice?"

She may get this lawsuit thrown out, however, because of sovereign immunity, which is nearly absolute for prosectors. If the district canned her over this, she may have a case against it.

The Education Wars III

Meanwhile over at D.C., teachers there are screwed over as the WTU lost a court challenge to mass layoffs proposed by chancellor/dictator Michelle Rhee:

In an opinion issued late Tuesday morning, Judge Judith Bartnoff said WTU had failed to prove any of its core arguments against Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's decision to conduct a RIF (reduction in force) due to a $43.9 million budget shortfall. She said that given the District's financial situation, a reversal of the layoffs would force Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to make other cuts in the DCPS, harming the public interest.

"The District asserts, and the plaintiff has not disputed, that in that event, other staff would be subject to a RIF--even further into the school year--or programs that have been deemed essential would have to be cut," Bartnoff wrote. "Such an action would not benefit DCPS, its teachers, students or staff, or the wider District of Columbia community."

No word yet on whether WTU plans to appeal.

The union is so stinking ineffective, or else the judge was on the take.

Here is a blog post saying somebody needs to take a stand for teachers:

I decided to post this entry after reading articles by Leah Fabel of the DC Examiner and Bill Turque of the WaPo this morning. Seems like the Washington Teachers' Union got brutalized yesterday by Judge Judith Bartnoff in her 23 page ruling . Many argue that the WTU's legal strategy was flawed right from the start. I knew we were in trouble when our WTU Prez George Parker indicated that the union's legal strategy was a secret so as not to tip off the other side. I was concerned that at no time was there a consultation with our laid off teachers and our union lawyers about our various legal strategies. Further there seemed to be little effort made to get affadavits' from teachers under oath and/or collect evidence for our legal case. I like many others worried when the WTU didn't file a TRO (temporary restraining order) as union members had been advised would happen right from the start. The TRO was filed after the preliminary injunction in late October.

Not until our WTU General Vice president, Nathan Saunders and I arranged for a free legal consultation with Joseph, Greenwald and Laake, P.A.- did the WTU decide to file a TRO, some say too little too late and well after the filing of the preliminary injunction. As Peter Nickles has been quoted this is a slam dunk for the Rhee administration. As much as I hate to admit it I have to agree with Nickles this time.

Look for more of this crap to go on all over the country.

The Education Wars II

It's hunting season, and Mayor/Dictator Michael Bloomberg of New York is waging open season on teachers:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced some controversial proposals for education reform Wednesday while addressing the Center for American Progress in the nation's capital.
Speaking beside U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the mayor announced that the city will begin immediately using student test scores to help decide whether a teacher gets tenure.

The state recently passed a law banning the use of student test scores in tenure decisions.

Bloomberg said a close reading of the law shows that the city can use the test scores for teachers up for tenure this year. He said he has asked Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to begin using the test scores in that decision-making process.

"We should use all means that we have to evaluate who the better teachers are, promote them, pay them more if we can," said the mayor. "And, at the same time, those that aren't up to standards, give them the remedial work that will make them integral teachers, and after all that, they can't cut the mustard, then I'm sorry, they just can't work in our school system.

More revolving door shit, and the kids will be screwed over. Test scores don't mean crap. The kids don't even take the tests seriously to begin with.

Worse still, Bloomberg wants to give principals even more power to boot teachers they don't happen to like.

More about Bloomberg's latest scheme:

The tenure law, passed last year after heavy lobbying from the city and state teachers unions, bars the use of student test scores as a factor in teacher tenure decisions.

But the mayor pointed out this morning that the rules apply only to teachers who began work after July 2008. Teachers up for tenure this year were hired in 2007 and so are not subject to the provisions, Bloomberg argued. If legislators allow the law to expire on schedule this June, then it will never have applied to any teacher.

Right now, 1,200 teachers are receiving regular paychecks and benefits even though they don’t hold full-time positions in the city schools. Bloomberg is proposing to make it easier to move those teachers off the payroll.

Bloomberg also targeted the “rubber rooms,” which hold teachers accused of offenses ranging from incompetence to abuse. A backlog of accused teachers means the rubber room is clogged with people waiting for a verdict on whether they can go back into the classroom.

Bloomberg said that his proposals should not come as a surprise to the union.

“I didn’t consult with them, but they certainly know my views that we should use all means that we have to evaluate who the better teachers are, promote them, and pay them more if we can,” Bloomberg said.

Of course he didn't consult with the union. Who needs them anyway?

Turkey Day for Pets

Here is a reminder to keep one's pets, especially dogs, from the dinner table tomorrow.

Tony and Sam will get a little bit of white turkey meat, and that will be it.

Miscellaneous Articles

Roman Polanski was granted bail, but there is no chance of him running away:

The court said Polanski could stay at his chalet in the Swiss Alps. He would be monitored by an electronic tag.

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Germany restores a record to Gretel Bergmann some 73 years later.

She's still alive at 95 years of age.
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In an appearance of Oprah Winfrey's program, Vicki Kennedy describes her late husband Ted's cancer ordeal:

She also told Winfrey about how her husband kept working on his book after his diagnosis and even was calling colleagues in the Senate to talk about strategy to push through legislation as he was traveling to Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. to undergo brain surgery.

"It was an inspiration, really, to watch how Teddy grappled with such a grave diagnosis and always looked forward with hope," she said.

After watching a clip of her husband's speech at the Democratic National Convention, Kennedy said her husband, despite being told initially that he had just a few months to live, was determined to survive long enough to see Obama sworn in as president.

"He was in training to be there in January," she said. "He was exercising every single day to be strong enough to be there," and even calculated how many steps he would have to take that day.

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I have been on Keystone Canyon Trail a few times. It is a good workout.

I have taken pictures of this area, too:

link
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Not Dead Yet's Stephen Drake takes a look at bioethicist Art Caplan's take on the case of Ron Houben, who was said to have been PVS, but lo and behold, he wasn't.
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The Education Wars

Arne Duncan doesn't give a shit about state universities, either:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is watching colleges struggle with tough economic conditions and wants them to know that the federal government is trying to help. But, Mr. Duncan said Tuesday, it can help only so much.

Words cannot begin to describe just how bad this administration is on education.
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It is no surprise charter schools need more examination:

Nationally, charter schools reach out to educationally disadvantaged students and those learning to speak English.

In Idaho, not so much.

Hispanic students are 73 percent more likely to attend a traditional public school than a charter school.

American Indians are 57 percent more likely to attend a traditional public school.

There are 78 percent more economically disadvantaged students in traditional schools than charter schools.

Students learning to speak English are 96 percent more likely to be found in a traditional school than a charter school.

Kids with special needs are 41 percent more likely to attend your neighborhood school than a charter school.

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Sex, drugs, and suicide are high at Washoe County School District. I am sure
this"data" aren't the kind that appeals to Superintendent Heath Morrison.

After all, teachers can't be canned over it.

The report itself can be read here.
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Why Is It the Media Persists

in treating Sarah Palin like shit? Probably no politician, not even the previous so-called president or former president Clinton, have been treated so horribly by the media.

It is true some of it is her fault, but there is prejudice against her for many other reasons, and I don't think it has a lot to do with "qualifications." After all, President Obama didn't have much in the way of experience either when he ran for president.

One is the most obvious, and that she is female, and female politicians have their own unique problems in getting support and money for their campaigns. Hillary Clinton knows this very well. Another problem, and it isn't trivial, is the fact Sarah Palin is attractive. She has to prove herself to not be a bimbo, and unfortunately, there are things she has said which give many people pause about her intellect. Which leads to another factor, and it may be the most critical of all, and that's the fact Sarah Palin is not an Ivy League graduate; indeed, she bounced around in a few state colleges before getting her degree. There is a mentality in the eastern media centers and which is common among many people in that region but not in other parts of the country which says it is very important what college you attended and graduated. The only schools that really count among the eastern establishment are the Ivy League universities. And even among the Ivies, there is a hierarchy of prestige. Universities such as Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania aren't highly thought of by the elite media; they are little "better" than the despised state universities which the vast majority of college students attend. Princeton is a little more prestigious. The truly important colleges in the eyes of the media are Harvard and Yale, the former being the most important of all. Never mind the fact once a student can get into one of these colleges, the colleges aren't any more rigorous than the garden variety state university. People don't apply and attend those colleges for the "rigor"; they are buying connections which these colleges have in abundance. Anyway, Sarah Palin didn't bother with attending an Ivy League school, and this on top of being from the West disqualifies her from being taken seriously.

I also believe the fact she had a Down syndrome child is a major factor in the hostility towards her although less by the traditional media than by the blogs. Palin didn't do the politically correct thing and have an abortion while at the same time having a high-profile political career. She has called herself a feminist and has lived that idea for years, but many so-called liberals hate her guts and laugh at her insistence she is a feminist. Where is "choice" in all of this, by the way? "Choice" is as much the right to have a child as it is the right to have an abortion.

A snip from Taibbi's article:

The tone for all this behavior is always set somewhere way up the corporate totem pole, and it always reflects some dreary combination of simple business considerations (i.e. what’s the best story and sells the most ads) and internalized political calculus (i.e. who is a “legitimate” candidate and who is an “insurgent” or a “second-tier” hopeful). It’s not that the reporters are making this judgment themselves, it’s that they have to listen to what the apparatus Up There is saying all day long — not just their bosses but the think-tank talking heads they interview for comments, the party insiders who buy them beers at night, the pollsters and so on.

And when all these people start getting in their ears about this or that guy doesn’t have “winnability,” or doesn’t have enough money to run, or has negatives that are insurmountable, all that thinking inevitably bleeds into the coverage. It’s not that the reporters are “biased.” They just don’t have the stones, for the most part, to ignore all the verbal and non-verbal cues they get from authority figures about who is “legitimate” and who isn’t.

Once the signal comes down that this or that politician doesn’t have the backing of anyone who matters, that’s when the knives really come out. When a politician has powerful allies and powerful friends, you won’t see reporters brazenly kicking him in the crotch the way they did to Dean and they’re doing now to Sarah Palin. The only time they do this is when they know there won’t be consequences, meaning when the politician’s only supporters are non-entities (read: voters), as in the case of Ron Paul or Kucinich. Like America in general, the press corps never attacks any enemy that can fight back...

(H/T to commenter Mary Louise for this good piece.)

It May Be Good News

the number of new jobless claims is going down, but there still aren't enough jobs being created for the nearly 15 million people currently out of work.

Obama is still sitting on his rear not having a clue what to do about it.

The Education Wars

Most teachers spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year buying supplies for their rooms, but far too many of them are also supporting their students by paying for their lunches or buying food for them.

Again, Obama Isn't Doing Much at All About

the jobs crisis in the country; if he did he would be reversing three decades worth of Friedmanite economics:

Perhaps the most remarkable expression of concern came from economist Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New York Times who has been a fervent supporter of Obama’s health care plan. He took note of Obama’s comments to Fox News about the danger of growing federal deficits, then observed: “It took me a while to puzzle this out. But the concerns Mr. Obama expressed become comprehensible if you suppose that he’s getting his views, directly or indirectly, from Wall Street.”

Krugman has blurted out the real social base of the Obama administration. Obama, Emanuel, Geithner & Co. echo the views of bankers and speculators because that is whom they represent and serve. Obama heads an administration of, by and for the most powerful financial interests.

This is not a government of reform that is being led astray by right-wing pressure, or can be pushed to the left by counter-pressure from below. It is a government of social and political reaction.

Those of us who observed Obama on the campaign trail felt he was a tool of Wall Street. What else could be the explanation for the obscene amount of money he raised in the primary and general election campaigns? It wasn't all small donors.

"How wonderful it is. ... Scared, but excited."

Like our illustrious governor, John Ensign also has a fondness for texting messages to girlfriends while being married himself.

Video:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'll be surprised if Ensign doesn't resign soon.

Here is the Nightline broadcast from ABC:

Part One

Part Two

If Obama Doesn't Do Enough

to jumpstart the economy, he will be a one-term president for sure. It appears he can't understand the need for this government to create more jobs to get the economy moving.

That's because he is a neoliberal, and they don't differ a hell of a lot from the Republicans when it comes to economic matters.

Miscellaneous Articles

Just because somebody is in a coma, that doesn't mean the person is in a "vegetative" state.
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Sanford and Sin: Governor Sanford probably should take a hike to the Appalachian Mountains, for he now faces 37 charges by the South Carolina ethics board.
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Barbara Ehrenreich

gave an interview with Robert McChesney about the pernicious "happy talk" crap of "positive thinking," which is nothing more than Horatio Alger crossed with New Age psychobabble.

The audio interview is here.

I will probably get her book. Being a realist isn't being "negative."

The Education Wars III

The other day I commented on the myth of a teacher shortage, which in fact has always been a myth.

Thanks to this blog, I came across this article from last year describing just how bad the glut is:

First, there is an irresponsible press that publicizes these falsehoods but the blame also has to be spread out amongst the unscrupulous politicians, disingenuous teacher unions, and dishonest bureaucrats. They all have so much to gain from misinformation that they are not about to correct it. Also, stories about “man bites dog” (teacher shortage) captures the public’s attention instead of mundane factual stories like “dog bites man” (teacher surplus). The former is going to get the headlines while the latter will barely make the news.

Also in the state of Texas, starting salaries for a 22 year old teacher with zero experience is actually very good so it has prompted a steady flow of college students to choose education as their major. In addition, many states now have implemented quite a number of alternative certification programs which allows degreed professionals in other fields to be trained to become educators.

One benefit to this glut is that districts now can be selective of whom they hire from their pool of applicants.

However, the real tragedy that the media and the politicians conveniently ignore is that in many states, an educator with 20 plus years of experience is not going to make that much more than a first year teacher. There just isn’t that kind of incentive for school districts to keep highly experienced educators since they are flooded with so many applicants. In fact, there are so many veteran teachers who have become virtually unemployable because the districts prefer the twenty-something year old newcomer who has no experience.

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact districts hire nepotisms regardless of their age first and foremost. Almost ALL school districts do this, despite the fact nepotism is nothing but a form of corruption and should NOT be allowed in public sector work of ANY kind. Many if not most private companies but for the smallest mom-and-pop businesses have rules against nepotism, to say nothing of the fact almost all public employment employs civil service to prevent the old "spoils system." Not public education, however.

It isn't the unions, however, pushing the "shortage" myth: it's the school districts and colleges that are doing it.

Here is an even older article from SEVEN years ago decrying the myth of a "shortage":

These self-serving crisis forecasts were wrong and remain wrong. The faulty analysis underlying the "two million new teachers" forecast came from a federal study that used projections of student enrollment, student-teacher ratios, and teacher turnover to estimate the total number of teacher hires over a decade ("Predicting the Need for Newly Hired Teachers in the United States to 2008-09," by William J. Hussar, National Center for Education Statistics, August 1999). These projections were picked up by media and widely disseminated by education interest groups. But they were based on an erroneous assumption. The forecaster ignored the fact that many teachers who leave the school workforce in a given year return one or two years later. All he did was cumulate the gross outflow of teachers for a decade while ignoring the reflux of teachers who had withdrawn temporarily from the schools. Yet returning teachers account for over one-third of new teacher hires in any year. In fact, every year our colleges and universities continue to graduate education majors far in excess of net new teacher hires.

The Cassandras also ignored the business cycle. It's true that in 2000-2001 many school districts found themselves with more teacher exits and fewer applicants than in earlier years. Many had difficulties filling vacancies in certain subjects. But their situation was hardly unique. Hospitals also struggled to recruit nurses, computer firms had trouble finding programmers, and even the local Taco Bell was hard-pressed to find workers for its fast-food counter. Unemployment rates in 1999-2000 hit forty-year lows that made it difficult for virtually all employers, including school districts, to fill vacancies. But that was then and this is now. With the recession and the deceleration of K-12 enrollment growth, many school districts are again awash in teaching applications.

And this article is from TEN YEARS AGO:

08/30/99- Updated 12:09 AM ET

Teacher shortage just doesn't add up

By Gregg Zoroya and Kristen Hartzell, USA TODAY

This is a strange time in America's education of its children. As schools reopen across the country, administrators from central Florida to Seattle are scrambling feverishly to find teachers.

Last year, a physical education teacher who couldn't spell "strenuous" on the blackboard (he wrote "strenous") taught English in rural Georgia. About 2,600 students in New Orleans wasted a year on algebra, earning no credit because teachers were not credentialed for the class. In Orlando, special-ed students are taught by people with no training in the field because there's no one else to do the job.

Yet experts say there are plenty of teachers coming out of universities across the country. Not since the altruistic '60s and early '70s have freshmen - one in 10 - shown such interest in education, they say. The number of graduates prepared to be teachers this year (190,000) nearly reaches the all-time peak of 1972. Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that funnels seniors into two-year teaching commitments at urban and rural schools lacking resources, has seen applications rise 36% in four years.

"What we sense among students is a desire, right out of college, to assume a very significant responsibility that really does make an impact on the world," says Wendy Kopp, the organization's president and founder.

The problem, experts say, is that the nation does a better job of placing cornflakes on grocery shelves across the country than of making sure each classroom has a qualified instructor. "We have a huge distribution problem," says Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Stanford University. "Do we have enough people being produced to fill the need? The answer is yes."

A surplus of teachers generally in the Northwest, Rocky Mountains and Northeast fails to stem shortages in the South and West for several reasons. A checkerboard of licensing requirements discourages interstate moves, as does something as simple as the threat of losing accrued pension benefits and salary credits.

link

PBS's The Merrow Report also refuted the notion of a shortage a number of years ago.

The Education Wars II

Another lousy administrator steps down, but not without creating a lot of damage.

Ohanian comments on this:

Longtime Oakland teacher Jack Gerson points out: "Two years ago, Steve Barr and his Green Dot charter schools group engineered a hostile takeover of Locke High School, a large public high school in Los Angeles. Despite the opposition of United Teachers of Los Angeles and the LA Unified School District, Barr was able to convince a bare majority of Locke's permanent faculty (37 of 73) to opt for Green Dot."

Barr promptly dismissed the entire staff, forcing them to reapply for their jobs. Over 70 percent were not rehired.

We already know that this is the model Arne Duncan wants to see implemented nationwide. Now we wait to see if Barr will play a role. Hold on to your hats--and guard your children.

One shudders if this guy will have a influence on the Department of Education.

The Education Wars

One of the worst messages being sent by our administration and the media is everyone should go to college, despite that even in good times a minority of jobs require ANY education beyond high school, and now the problem is worse with the high rate of unemployment.

Blocks

For the hell of it, I took these pictures in the neighborhood.

DNA Forensics is a Great Thing,

but it also can create havoc in family disputes, including divorce and child support:

In an age of DNA, when biological relationships can be identified with certainty, it can seem absurd to hew so closely to a centuries-old idea of paternity. And yet basing paternity decisions solely on genetics places the nonbiological father’s welfare above the child’s. Phil Reilly, a lawyer who is also a clinical geneticist, has been wrestling with the policy implications of DNA testing for years, and even he is stumped about how society should manage the problem that men like Mike face. “We’re at a point in our society where the DNA molecule is ascendant, and it’s very much in the public’s consciousness that this is a powerful way to identify relationships,” Reilly says. “Yet at the same time, more people than ever are adopting children, showing that parents can very much love a child who is not their own. The difference here for many men is the combination of hurt and rage over the deceit, the fact that they’re twice beaten. I can see both sides of this argument. As a nation, we’re still in search of what the most ethical policy should be. Every solution is imperfect.”

Once a man has been deemed a father, either because of marriage or because he has acknowledged paternity (by agreeing to be on the birth certificate, say, or paying child support), most state courts say he cannot then abandon that child — no matter what a DNA test subsequently reveals. In Pennsylvania and many other states, the only way a nonbiological father can rebut his legal status as father is if he can prove he was tricked into the role — a showing of fraud — and can demonstrate that upon learning the truth, he immediately stopped acting as the child’s father. In 2003, a Pennsylvania appellate court bluntly applauded William Doran — who had been by all accounts a loving father to his 11-year-old son — for cutting off ties with the boy once DNA showed they were not related. The judges found that Doran had been tricked by his former wife into believing he was the father of their son, and he was allowed to abandon all paternal obligations.

If a man is supporting a child--regardless of whether the child is biologically "his"--he should continued to support that child.

It's about the child's welfare, not about the man's convenience.

The Education Wars

A school district settles a sex discrimination suit filed by 22 teachers, and of course the teachers have receive a pittance.

The Richland School District will pay $460,000 to 22 female teachers who claimed in a federal lawsuit that they were the victims of sex discrimination and were due back wages.

The teachers and district filed a joint statement in U.S. District Court in Johnstown asking that the suit be dismissed, The Tribune-Democrat has learned.

While the checks would average $22,900 per teacher, individual payments would vary based on the length of service and the individual circumstances of each teacher. “Somebody might get $2,000; somebody might get $50,000,” said Carl Beard of Altoona, the district’s attorney.

Of course the lawyers get a hell of a lot more.

More About Mammograms

Gina Kolata of the New York Times provides us a timeline of the mammogram controversy, which has continued for DECADES.

It's helpful.

I Can Think of a Lot More

indications this country is going down the tubes.

Look no further than our school system and the war being waged upon it by the billionaire "philanthropists."

Miscellaneous Stupidity

A woman apparently was gaming her sick leave thanks to posting some Facebook pictures. Or so she claims.
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Somebody ought to be in rehab, and it isn't Patrick Kennedy.
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Obituaries

Time to get caught up on a few:

Comedian Ken Ober, 52.
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Former governor of New Mexico Bruce King, 85.
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Actor Dennis Cole, 69, of undisclosed causes. He was very popular in the 1970s and had once been married to actress Jaclyn Smith. They divorced. Cole experienced some tragedy when his only son was murdered (the case is still unsolved).

Cole later went into real estate in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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Also at the same link as the Dennis Cole obit is Francisco Ayala, who died at the premature age of 103.
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It Appears the Health Care Bill

has cleared the 60 votes needed for cloture, and the legislation can now be debated.

Miscellaneous Articles

I really hate this: Bill Moyers is retiring from weekly television.

He's one of the best thinkers out there discussing the issues that need to be discussed.
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The Education Wars

The Obama administration's "Race to the Top" bribery program, which is from the bottom of the barrel and dealt with from the bottom of the deck, is designed to completely ruin public education, once a jewel in the crown of our democracy:

These blackmail tactics are already having the desired effect. A number of states have in recent months passed legislation promoting charter schools, expanding testing and other metrics, and channeling funding to those schools whose students perform well. These policies will starve the very schools that need funding the most.

Obama’s policies encourage the development of an openly class-based system of education. Wealthy districts will prosper, while the great majority of schools—in the cities, rural areas and even the suburbs—will suffer or vanish.

Many teachers, students and parents oppose Obama’s education policies. After Duncan outlined the plan in July, “1,200 public comments poured into the Department of Education” condemning the plan, the New York Times noted.

The Obama administration responded with its usual contempt for popular opinion. “Even after all the comments, the rules are as comprehensive and demanding as before, they haven’t changed,” said Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff. “We’re seeking reforms, so we haven’t backed off anything.”

It's WSWS, but by God the Obama administration deserves every bit of criticism it gets regarding its public education "reforms."

This Writer Traces the Push Towards Having

mammograms at earlier ages, even though there are many, many false positives with younger women and the fact deaths from breast cancer have hardly budged:

Critics of this week’s recommendations have poked holes in the Preventive Services Task Force’s data analysis, have warned against basing present practice guidelines on the older imaging technology used in the studies, and have called for still more studies to be done. They generally sidestep the question of whether the very small numbers of lives potentially saved by screening younger women outweigh the health, psychological and financial costs of overdiagnosis.

You need to screen 1,900 women in their 40s for 10 years in order to prevent one death from breast cancer, and in the process you will have generated more than 1,000 false-positive screens and all the overtreatment they entail. This doesn’t make sense. We could do more research and hold more consensus conferences. I suspect it would confirm the data we already have. But history suggests it would never be enough to convince many people that we are screening too much.

Miscellaneous Articles

Ten cents says Phillip Morris will either win on appeal or else the jury award will be reduced to next to nothing.

Details:

Lucinda Naugle, the 61-year-old sister of a former Fort Lauderdale mayor, was awarded $56 million in compensatory damages and $244 million in punitive damages Thursday after a three-week trial and three hours of jury deliberation in Broward County Circuit Court.

Ms. Naugle, an office manager, had started smoking when she was 20 and quit when she was 45 years old, her lawyer, Robert W. Kelley of Fort Lauderdale, said in a telephone interview Friday. She now has severe emphysema and needs a lung transplant she cannot afford, he said.

The jury assigned her 10 percent of the liability for her smoking and disease, and Philip Morris 90 percent.

“She’ll get paid, I would hope, within a year or two,” Mr. Kelley said. “The question is will she live long enough.”

First the Breast Cancer Screenings,

and now the pap smear recommendations. Although the new recommendations appear to be based on science, medicine, and common sense, many people, including doctors, are resistant to them.

Some of the outrage may be fueled by concerns any health care reform may include some sort of rationing:

The backers of science-driven medicine, with its dual focus on risks and benefits, have cheered the elevation of data in the setting of standards. But many patients — and organizations of doctors and disease specialists — find themselves unready to accept the counterintuitive notion that more testing can be bad for your health.

“People are being asked to think differently about risk,” said Sheila M. Rothman, a professor of public health at Columbia University. “The public state of mind right now is that they’re frightened that evidence-based medicine is going to be equated with rationing. They don’t see it in a scientific perspective.”

The Unemployment Rate in Nevada

went down a tick, but it doesn't mean much when the state used to have 4-percent unemployment. Those days are gone forever, I am afraid.

Meanwhile, people in my area are moving out of Reno in droves. Moving vans are everywhere in sight.

Snip from the article:

Washoe’s decline to 12.2 percent, based on a mid-month survey of employers and other market estimates, is more a reflection of a stagnant or declining workforce than outright improvement in the job market, said Bill Anderson, chief economist at the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

California's rate continues to tick upward.

Campaign 2012

Should Oregon's Peter DeFazio run for president?

It's too soon to write off Obama, but he definitely better get his shit together on the economic front. These neoliberals like Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner need to be sent packing, for they have no concept of what is really needed in this country.

Giving handouts to Wall Street while more and more people are jobless and chasing too few jobs is not the way to go.

I'd argue, though, Arne Duncan is a far worse pick than the Dynamic Duo. The guy is an ignorant, stupid disaster of a pick.

The Education Wars III

K-12 education isn't the only thing under siege thanks to our worsening economy:

BERKELEY, Calif. — As the University of California struggles to absorb its sharpest drop in state financing since the Great Depression, every professor, administrator and clerical worker has been put on furlough amounting to an average pay cut of 8 percent.

In chemistry laboratories that have produced Nobel Prize-winning research, wastebaskets are stuffed to the brim on the new reduced cleaning schedule. Many students are frozen out of required classes as course sections are trimmed.

And on Thursday, to top it all off, the Board of Regents voted to increase undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — by 32 percent next fall, to more than $10,000. The university will cost about three times as much as it did a decade ago, and what was once an educational bargain will be one of the nation’s higher-priced public universities.

Among students and faculty alike, there is a pervasive sense that the increases and the deep budget cuts are pushing the university into decline.

As California goes, so does the rest of the country.
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Predictably, special education complaints are increasing in New York City, at least.

The Education Wars II

Bill and Melinda continue with their scheme to destroy public education, something of which they know nothing about:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Thursday a $335 million investment in teacher effectiveness, with major grants for experiments in tenure, evaluation, compensation, training and mentoring in three large school systems and a cluster of public charter schools.

Through the grants, which amount to one of the largest privately sponsored school improvement initiatives in recent years, the foundation aims to reshape how policymakers approach teaching. Its goal is to focus on performance rather than qualifications.

The winners, picked from 10 applicants, are: Hillsborough County (Fla.) schools, in the Tampa area, to receive $100 million; Memphis schools, $90 million; Pittsburgh schools, $40 million; and five charter networks in Los Angeles (Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, Inner City Education Foundation and Partnerships to Uplift Communities Schools), $60 million.

More
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In a rare bit of good news for teachers, substitutes in L.A. regain their seniority rights.
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Miscellaneous Articles

The gun-toting teacher from Medford, Oregon, has lost her appeal, which only makes sense.

You use the COURTS, not a gun, and definitely not take it to work, to rectify problems.

Besides, there is always the possibility of a student getting hold of it, and then all hell breaks loose.
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New York's highest court upheld recognition of gay marriages in a narrow ruling.

New York State’s highest court rejected unanimously a challenge on Thursday by opponents of same-sex marriage to policies that recognize such unions performed in other states, though the decision gave gay advocates a small victory because it was narrowly written and applied to a relatively small number of people.

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Caster Semenya gets to keep her gold medal.
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I thought I'd include this article about a truly absurd lawsuit here:

Former high roller Terry Watanabe is accusing Harrah’s of some serious funny business in Las Vegas.

In what may be the nastiest spat since the days when Vegas handled disputes outside of court—if you get my meaning—Watanabe has filed a lawsuit accusing the casino giant of plying him with alcohol and prescription drugs in an attempt to keep him gambling. In the end, he says he lost more than $100 million.

Watanabe made his money with his father in the import/export business, running Oriental Trading Co. in Omaha, Nebraska. He sold the company in 2000 and became known as a philanthropist, with a taste for gambling.

By 2006, Watanabe says he was actually living at the Wynn in Vegas, but moved to Harrah’s properties, including Caesars Palace, after being offered better comps. Those comps included a three bedroom palazzo, 15 percent cash back on monthly table losses of $500,000 or greater, and $12,500

The Education Wars

Naturally, I want to point out a "report" which is slanted to make teachers look bad, but still it is nice to note Michelle Rhee is after tenure, which we know is nothing more than a rubber stamp anyway for principal abuse.

The Obama administration says it wants to remake public education around the principle that the best teachers should be promoted and rewarded, regardless of seniority.

And a brawl over just that idea is now playing out in the shadow of the White House.

The chancellor of Washington's school system, Michelle Rhee, is wrestling with one of the most expensive, worst performing school systems in the country. The dropout rate has hit 40%, and the cost per student is $14,000 a year. Buildings are crumbling and thousands of parents have abandoned the system, which serves about 45,000 students.

Ms. Rhee is trying to reduce what she believes to be a bloated school management and wrest more control over the district's affairs from the powerful local teachers' union. She has replaced principals, laid off teachers and closed underperforming schools.

Michelle Rhee is a moron.

Meanwhile, newbies are rumored to be sighted all around the D.C. district:

I have received emails confirming sightings of new 'teacher hires' beginning the second week of November, only a month after the notices of layoffs were given to 388 DC teachers and school staff. This is pretty darn amazing given the budget pressures that DC public schools is reportedly faced with. Ever wonder why Chancellor Rhee has yet to implement a freeze on hiring and spending practices given the twenty million dollar deficit DC schools is up against ? Well let me make an educated guess why this administration continues to spend willy nilly. Perhaps Rhee does not want to freeze spending so that she can continue to hire staff on the DL (down-low) to replace teachers who were unfairly laid off.

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Political Nonsense

Yes, it is true: Sarah Palin will be in Reno next month to promote her new book, Going Rogue.

She's picking areas of the country which are not too hostile towards her.

The Education Wars III

There are many good reasons why public school teacher tenure, which exists in all states except Mississippi, should remain in place, according to this excellent article.

It is relatively easy to fire a teacher, even for mediocrity, contrary to misrepresentations by some legislators and journalists of this fact. The Fair Dismissal Act provides minimum due process protections: the teacher can be fired for "any good and sufficient cause;" the hearing is held before the teacher's employer (the local school board decides the outcome); the decision is always upheld on appeal if there is "any evidence" in the record to support it; and decisions are therefore rarely reversed. In my experience, fewer than 100 teacher dismissal hearings are held per year statewide. Many more teachers with tenure elect to resign without invoking their right to a hearing because of the evidence against them. Of the 40 or so teacher dismissals that are appealed each year, over 90% are upheld. If an administrator is doing his or her job, and has a "good reason," then it is relatively easy under these rules to fire any teacher. This is a small price to pay for a fair hearing, and for protections that hold the line against arbitrary, political, and unfair firings.

Does the Fair Dismissal Act make it impossible to fire an incompetent or even a mediocre teacher? Of course not. All an administrator has to do is evaluate and document teacher performance. This isn't brain surgery. School systems have three full years—540 classroom instructional days--in which to observe and judge a teacher before granting hearing rights. If a school administrator can't figure out in 3 years whether a teacher is going to make a contribution to student progress and achievement, then maybe it's the administrator who should be held accountable. Thereafter, if an administrator doesn't have the competence or integrity to build a case against a teacher who ought to be fired, then perhaps the administrator should be fired.

Fair dismissal is not about protecting bad teachers. The solution to the problem of the "bad" teacher is not the abolition of a fair hearing for all teachers. The hearing process protects good teachers from arbitrary, retaliatory, political, and discriminatory actions. We should all support that goal.

Tell it to the assholes at Washoe County School District who engaged in an unlawful firing of yours truly.

What I Want to Know

is WHO in the hell put in the "fine print" in the EUI legislation which would allow for a giant hole in the law not covering millions of other unemployed whose benefits will expire in or after January?

But many legislators, state aid officials and struggling workers apparently failed to read the fine print. The added federal benefits, built on a series of previous extensions, are slated to end on Dec. 31; it was assumed that Congress would vote to prolong those programs. While discussions have started, Congress is not yet considering a specific proposal. And unless it acts before the Christmas break, officials warn, the extensions will end, leaving large numbers of workers with no coverage. If Congress, now caught up with the health care overhaul, delays action until next year, millions would still face painful gaps in aid.

“There are six people looking for every available job, and these payments are enabling people to pay their mortgages and put food on the table,” said Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, who championed the Nov. 6 law and hopes to light a new fire under Congress.

“It’s a horribly complicated system, and most people didn’t pay attention,” Mr. McDermott said of the need for quick Congressional renewal.

Nancy E. Dunphy, deputy commissioner for employment security with the New York State Department of Labor, said that officials in New York and most if not all other states “were taken by surprise by this.”

“It makes no sense,” Ms. Dunphy said. “You had the president and others saying that the intent was to add 20 weeks of benefits, and now we have this glitch, if you want to call it that.”

There is no doubt Congress will fix this glitch, but the question is whether these goddamned fools will give it the immediate attention it needs.

What Happens to a Teacher with "U" Ratings?

By way of explanation, a "U" refers to "unsatisfactory" performance in the New York City public schools, but there are similar ratings in all school districts in the country.

However, as readers of this blog know, or should know, the "U" is being misused widely by principals who simply want to get rid of undesirable teachers, and they are being told to do it by the higher-ups in NYC schools, i.e., Bloomberg and Klein. This is being done to save money on pensions.

From the NY teachers' chatboard of Teachers.net:

I really need some information. A teacher I know - he has
been teaching 20+yrs, has recieved 3 U's in the past few
years. He was apparently removed from our school today.
How long does the school have to keep them on the payroll?
They can't hire a sub or an ATR until the teacher is off
the payroll and I have been pulled from my small group
reading to teach this class.

This post got a couple of to-the-point answers:

You sound like the only reason you want a response on this is
because you are being inconvenienced by the teacher's
predicament. In that case, screw you. A proven, S-rated
teacher starts getting U ratings in the twilight of his/her
career and you don't question that, only when can they fill
the position so you don't have to work so hard?
Someday you too may be the victim of Kleinbloom's age
discrimination and I hope you get just as little sympathy.
Scores of wonderful older teachers are suddenly finding
themselves the recipients of U ratings as a way to force them
out -- teachers who were mentors, who served on curriculum
committees, who were rated S for 15, 20 years. Suddenly
their experience and salaries are a detriment to the
administration and they are being targeted. But you just
want to get back to your old schedule. I bet you are a
Teaching Fellow.

And this:

You can betcha that the goal is to take away the pension that she
spent her whole life working for, on some trumped up charges.
That is what happens, and you have to hire a lawyer to try to
prove you are innocent.

"To prove you are innocent."--This is what happens in "due process" hearings--you have to prove yourself "innocent" of whatever bogus charge is brought. The hearing officers decide on the basis of "the preponderance" of "evidence"--evidence that is typically doctored or in the case of witnesses perjured--whether you get reinstated to your job--a near impossibility--or whether the principal's dismissal is upheld, which is almost always the case.

The Education Wars II

Nevada's governor Jim Gibbons should have REJECTED the blackmail money by the federal government in order to destroy teachers' careers with the "Race to the Top" crock of shit funding, but he didn't.

Nevada teachers are going to find their jobs further deskilled, while the administrators will continue to get away with murder.

The Education Wars

The News Hour With Jim Lehrer has this report about D.C. tyrant Michelle Rhee and her attempt to fire teachers in order to hire cheapies as replacements:

Miscellaneous Articles

The WSWS takes a dim look at a government panel's breast cancer recommendations, even though there have been serious questions raised about mammograms for years.

This isn't any kind of conspiracy against women; besides, women who want them can still get them. This recommendation was based on a cost-benefit analysis.

Of course the panel recommended women with family histories of the disease should get mammograms just as they always have.
_____

So what does health care reform REALLY mean?
_____

A federal judge has just ordered compensation in the case of a gay couple denied spousal benefits.
_____

The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, will not be running for governor again. Of course this is no surprise.
_____

The euthanization of Oreo, the abused pit bull mentioned on this blog last week, has created a huge uproar, for many people believe the ASPCA didn't want to bother with the long process of rehabilitation.

The dog was euthanized only a little over three months after her legs were broken by her abusing owner having thrown her out the window.

I Always Thought Company Holiday Parties

were a bunch of crap, anyway. They weren't designed for the good of the employees but in fact were ways bosses could find out how their "inferiors" behaved outside of work, such as drinking and hitting on other employees' spouses, etc.

In all of my years working, I never once went to a holiday party or any kind of get-together with people I worked with. I was always of the belief work and personal life should be kept separate.

Naturally, Wall Street Just LOVES It

when masses of people are out of work, and it makes sense in a way. More people out of work means more profits for big business, even though in the end if people aren't buying anything because they have no money, executives in businesses will find out THEY and their companies have no money.

The biggest problem with our financial elites is they can't think beyond the next balance sheet or quarterly statement.

Evidently Sarah Palin

must be good for ratings or magazine sales; as for the latter, Newsweek has her picture plastered on its cover. It's a bit sexist and cheesecake, perhaps.

But here's the article:

Moderate Republicans—yes, they are not yet extinct, though most are in hiding—scoff at Sarah Palin and wish she would go away. But she's not going away. This week she's going on-air with Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey to flog her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, and to promote her brand of in-your-face, power-to-the-people conservatism. President Obama is no doubt happy to have her out there on full display. He cannot help but relish the prospect, no longer farfetched, that the Republicans will nominate Palin to oppose his reelection in 2012. A student of history, Obama could be thinking of his predecessor in presidential coolness, John F. Kennedy. In 1963 Kennedy's advisers counseled against giving Sen. Barry Goldwater national stature by posing with the GOP's conservative insurgent at a White House photo op. "What are you giving that SOB all that publicity for?" demanded White House aide Kenny O'Donnell. "Leave him alone," JFK replied. "He's mine."

Obama knows the long odds against a right-wing populist winning the presidency, no matter how good she looks in a skirt (or running clothes), brandishing a gun. He shouldn't be too cocky, however, because the death of the center is ultimately a problem for him and the whole country. If the Palinistas seize the GOP, they probably cannot take the White House. But their brand of no-prisoners partisanship sure can tie up Congress.

In modern memory, Capitol Hill has never been so polarized. With conservatives refusing to reach across the aisle, it will be hard to get even the most modest health-insurance reform through the U.S. Senate, where a 41-vote minority can block legislation. Without bipartisanship, forget about reducing the deficit or doing anything meaningful on the environment, immigration, or tax reform.

The fact of the matter is Obama had better be worried about his OWN chances for re-election, because right now he's not doing too great on the economy and especially on joblessness. His education ideas are a disaster. Those are just a couple of things he deserves to be on the ropes over.

Besides, Palin isn't going to be the GOP nominee in 2012; I fully expect somebody like Mitt Romney to get it.

Martis Creek Wildlife Area Trail--November 2009

The last time I was on that trail was summer of 2008. Even in November it is pretty there. The trail is located near Truckee, California.