Day: July 13, 2014

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Education News north carolina Politics Teachers Rights Texas

Stupid Costs More

I know, I know: Money is the answer, plain and simple. School districts don’t want to pay teachers for advanced degrees and right wing politicians don’t want public schools to begin with, so it makes sense that Texas and North Carolina are both in the forefront of starving their states of effective teachers in an effort to…well, I’m not sure.

The debate over whether teachers who earn advanced degrees and credits that allow them to earn more money on the salary scale are actually better teachers than those who don’t, or are better themselves than if they had just stuck with their Bachelor’s degree credits, is becoming louder and more intense. As any teacher can tell you, though, there really is no debate. Teachers who continue their educations, broaden themselves or even go in  a new educational direction tend to be more effective. There is no question that teachers should be encouraged (required?) to take courses in content or pedagogy.

So why the screed? Because  a few states, most notably Texas and North Carolina, have decided that paying teachers more for advanced degrees doesn’t necessarily lead to high student test scores. And they might be right, but that’s exactly what’s wrong with the current push for test scores to evaluate teachers. Earning a higher degree makes the teacher more knowledgeable and exposes them to more effective teaching methods. Students are then exposed to a greater variety of teaching methods and more expansive content. That’s the point of an education. Equating the tests with teacher effectiveness is a terrible idea whose time, unfortunately, has come.

Even worse is the fact that public leaders continue to say that we need the best and brightest college graduates to become teachers (as if we don’t have a significant majority of them in classrooms right now). What the best and brightest know, and being one of them allows me to represent their argument, is that educating yourself is the best practice any teacher can follow. The best and brightest also know that motivating people to push themselves should be recognized monetarily. Isn’t that what law firms, banks and other corporations do?

The best and brightest are not swayed by specious arguments from elected officials who are not, in most cases, the best and brightest. For proof, consider the reaction in North Carolina: 
In April, the Wake County Public School System – the largest in North Carolina with about 150,000 students – said more than 600 teachers had left since the beginning of the school year, an increase of 41 percent over the same period the year before.

 

One district official blamed a lack of a significant pay raises in recent years, along with the phasing out of tenure and extra pay for advanced degrees. Human Resources Superintendent Doug Thilman called the figures “alarming” but “not surprising.”

Not surprising? If your best teachers are leaving the schools, why continue the policy? And who, might I ask, is taking the place of these best and brightest? People with no interest in getting advanced degrees? These are not the best people to have in your classrooms. This is the kind of lazy thinking that will rule the country if conservatives are elected to the Senate and the White House.

Something to seriously think about this fall and for 2016.

You want more? That’s easy. Simply go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Immigration Politics

BIG Government Rick Perry Wants The National Guard at The Border – Video

Big government indeed. Rick Perry, governor of Texas, is requesting more and more from tax payers and ultimately the Federal Government. He wants the National Guard to come in and patrol the border not because they can make arrests, they can’t, but because he wants the visual.

According to the backward thinking of Big Government Rick Perry, who was interviewed on Fox News by Brit Hume, cutting into the already depleted budget to pay a few thousand of National Guardsmen to patrol the border for the perfect picture moment, is how we will stop the children from coming over the border.

“They need to be right on the river. They need to be there as a show of force because that’s the message that gets sent back very quickly to Central America,” he said.

Hume challenged Perry, asking what purpose troops could actually serve.

“They’re not, under the law, allowed to apprehend any of these children that are crossing, are they?” he asked.

“The issue is with being able to send that message because it’s the visual of it, I think, that is the most important,” Perry responded. “If you don’t stop the bleeding. If you don’t staunch this flow of individuals that are coming up here, this is only going to get worse.”

Hume continued to press Perry.

“But the question I’m trying to get at with you is this: if these children, who have undergone these harrowing journeys to escape from the most desperate conditions in their home countries, have gotten this far, are they really going to be deterred by the presence of troops along the border who won’t shoot them and can’t arrest them?” he asked.

“I think we’re talking about two different things here,” Perry responded.

The governor then added that the “most humanitarian thing that we can do” is to take care of the undocumented immigrants, quickly process them and return them to their families.

Video

Categories
Fashion Videos

Meet Chuck Taylor: The Man Behind The All Star

The man behind the best-selling basketball sneakers of all time is in the Basketball Hall of Fame and is still a household name even though his career ended years ago. No, it’s not Michael Jordan. We’re talking about Chuck Taylor. 

This story originally aired on Nov. 2, 2013

Millions of people around the world wear Chuck Taylor’s name on their ankles every day. His signature has appeared on the high-top, canvas All Star sneakers since 1932.

In Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., there’s a steady stream of college students, tourists, hipsters … and Chuck Taylors. On a sunny October afternoon, Morgan Goldstein was sporting a multi-colored pair of high tops. The 23-year-old has owned several pairs of All Stars.

“They’re comfortable. They’re classic,” Goldstein said. “My parents wore them. My mom thinks it’s weird that I’m still wearing them because that’s what she wore when she was a kid.”

Aleem Ahmed, 29, was wearing black low-tops. Ahmed has no problem explaining why he likes the sneakers, but like most Chucks owners, he’s less certain about Taylor’s story.

“I only know him from the sneakers. Maybe he has a skateboarding background? I don’t know,” he said.

Abraham Aamidor wrote a biography of Taylor published in 2006 titled Chuck Taylor, All Star.

“It became like Betty Crocker in a sense. If you were a cook, you knew the name Betty Crocker. There was no such person as Betty Crocker. But there really was such a person as Chuck Taylor. Most Americans didn’t know that,” Aamdior said. “People who were buying his shoes by the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and beyond, they just thought of Chuck Taylor as a brand. His brand grew with the shoe even as his persona, the real persona, was lost.”

A Player In Basketball’s Early Days

Charles Taylor was born in 1901, just ten years after Dr. James Naismith is credited with inventing the game of basketball. Taylor grew up in Columbus, Indiana and played for the Columbus High Bull Dogs. He graduated in 1919 and eventually landed in Akron, Ohio where he played for the Firestone Non-Skids, a semi-pro team owned by the tire manufacturer. But in 1922, he accepted a job as a salesman at Converse, and basketball was a critical part of his position.

Joe Dean worked for Converse for nearly 30 years, ending his tenure as a vice president. When Dean was hired in 1959, Taylor was already a giant at the company and in the world of basketball.

“He loved the game [of basketball]. He loved being a part of it. He put on clinics all over the country, helping kids learn how to play a little bit better,” said Dean, who later served as the athletic director at Louisiana State University and is in the College Basketball Hall of Fame.

“He was a loveable guy and fun to be around and a nice guy, and he, at one point, knew every college basketball coach in the country. And if you wanted to hire a coach, you went through him. He’d recommend somebody.”

In the 1920s and ’30s, Taylor played on Converse’s own team and generated publicity in local newspapers with countless basketball clinics. The self-promotion paid off. The All Star sneaker had debuted in 1917 and Converse added Taylor’s name 15 years later, but Aamidor says customers had already made the switch.

“People would order ‘Chuck’s shoe’ or ‘Chuck Taylor’s shoe’ instead of the Converse All-Star. So his signature was added just under the five-point star. Brilliant marketing, brilliant branding.”

Taylor never asked for a royalty for having his name on the shoe. Air Jordans have earned Michael Jordan far more money than he ever made as a player, but Converse gave Taylor a full expense account and commission. By the time he retired in the mid-1960s, Taylor had been out on the road selling for more than 40 years. He married and divorced then married again later in life, but had no children. Dean says Taylor had no regrets.

“He went years without having a house or an apartment or anything. He lived out of a hotel 365 days a year. And that was happy for him. Christmas Day was just another day to him. Converse paid for Christmas. They were just glad he didn’t ask for a little extra change for his name,” Dean said, laughing.

(Photo courtesy of Abraham Aamidor)

h/t – onlyagame

Categories
Immigration Politics

Bryan Fischer Says “Our Southern Border Is There By God’s Design”

Oh wait! So you didn’t know that the borders were God’s design? You didn’t know that it was his intention that people stay separated? Well according to the Republican “Christian” preacher, preaching Republican policy ideas, that is exactly the case.

In a column for BarbWire today, Fischer writes, “What we learn from the Bible is that borders are God’s idea, and that such borders are to be respected. They are not to be crossed without permission.”

As a result, he writes, “[o]ur southern border is there by God’s design” and those who “regard it as something not worth respecting and defending” are insulting God.

He gives himself an out by adding an exception to biblical national borders in the case of “a just war.”

What we learn from the Bible is that borders are God’s idea, and that such borders are to be respected. They are not to be crossed without permission.

Crossing a border without permission is like breaking in the back door of a house to help yourself to goodies instead of being invited in by the host through the front door. You might get to eat either way, in the same house and from the same cupboard, but in one case you would be doing something respectful and civil and in the other doing something that rightly should land you in jail.

The Scriptures make it clear that national sovereignty, including clearly defined borders, is God’s idea. In Acts 17:26, we read, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place…” (Emphasis mine throughout.)

Two things, we are told, are under God’s sovereign control: how long a nation lasts, and where its borders are. The verb translated “having determined” is the Greek verb “horizo,” from which we get the word “horizon.” It means “to mark out, to define.” So God has marked out and defined the borders of each country.

Our southern border is there by God’s design. To disregard it, to treat it as if were not there, to regard it as something not worth respecting and defending, is an insult to the God who put it there for our benefit.
…

The lesson? Each nation’s sovereignty is marked by its boundary, and each nation has the moral right to decide who will be given permission to enter its sovereign territory. Moses recognized this, and so should we. The only exception is under circumstances of a just war.

Bottom line: borders are biblical, and are there by God’s sovereign design. And they are to be respected by everyone.

– See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bryan-fischer-our-southern-border-there-gods-design#sthash.HhngntnB.dpuf

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