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Education News Politics teachers

The Test, the Whole Test and Nothing But the Test

At some point, I could see teachers having to not only swear allegiance to the United States and the state in which they live, but taking an oath to uphold the testing mania that is now in full swing across the country. This would be the only legitimate way for tests to become an accepted part of the educational landscape in the form that the know-nothing reformers would like. But when you construct a system that relies on tests and ineffective evaluation measures, I suppose force is all you have to make the system work. Right Vladimir?

This past week in New Jersey, scores of teachers attended the state Board of Education meeting in Trenton with the express desire of bringing some sanity and professional judgement to the issue. Do I think this will happen? Not really, as long as the discussion begins and ends with testing and so-called objective measures of determining teacher effectiveness.

To be fair, I have been evaluated according to the Danielson rubric in my district, and my evaluations have reinforced what I, and my students over the years, have known all along; that I run my classroom according to accepted educational practice and that my students practice and learn the required academic skills. But only one-half of one of 22 components actually asks an administrator to evaluate my content area knowledge and most of the rubric focuses on what the teacher does, not what the students do. This is certainly one way to evaluate teachers, but it’s not the most effective.

Now come the tests. Last week, students in 11th grade took the state’s high school graduation test. In coming weeks, schools across the state will lose valuable instructional time administering elementary and middle school level tests that will eventually be used to evaluate those teachers. Then there’s the pilot program for the PARCC tests, that will take more time and students out of the instructional day.

Next school year, the state’s public schools will virtually shut down in March and May so that they can administer the full dosage of PARCC tests to students on computer hardware and software that must work 100% of the time during the tests. How likely is that to happen? And how likely is it that every teacher will be able to help students who push the wrong key or hit a fatal keyboard combination while legitimately trying to do their best? The tests will not be measuring teacher performance and will barely be measuring student knowledge. What they will be measuring is perseverance, survival, the district’s wealth and ability to buy computers, and how many rooms the school has available for testing.

The coup de grace is that one of the architects of this fakery, Christopher Cerf, stepped down as Education Commissioner last week, but not before penning a love letter to the NJEA, accusing it of double-dealing, hypocrisy and ignorance. I’ve met Commissioner Cerf in a formal professional setting and I can tell you that he doesn’t care a whit what the NJEA says. As long as the NJ state Board of Education supported him, that’s all Cerf needed to legitimize his program. Perhaps his successor, David Hespe, will look at what’s happening and actually listen to educators.

Until then, it’s testing…1,2,3 for students and teachers. Productive school days will suffer as a result.

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News

Pregnant Mom Drives Car with Kids into Ocean

(AP) — A pregnant South Carolina woman who drove a minivan carrying her three young children into the ocean surf off Florida had talked about demons before leaving the house, according to her sister who worriedly called police, officials said during a news conference Wednesday.

After the call to dispatch Tuesday, Daytona Beach police officers stopped 31-year-old Ebony Wilkerson’s black Honda Odyssey and she expressed fear that her husband would be coming to Florida to harm her and her children, said Police Chief Mike Chitwood.

“When we spoke with her she was lucid,” Chitwood said. “The children were in the back seat, they were buckled in and were not in distress. Although the sergeant said she looked like she had some mental illness, she did not fit the criteria for going into custody under the Baker Act.”

The Florida Mental Health Act, commonly known as the Baker Act, allows authorities to involuntarily take people into custody if they seem to be a threat to themselves.

Two hours after the police stop, Wilkerson drove into the ocean. Bystanders and officers helped pull her and her children — ages 3, 9 and 10 — from their minivan as it was almost submerged.

Ebony Wilkerson’s sister told police she was concerned about her sister’s mental state, Chitwood said.

“Her sister had called dispatch and told them that she (Wilkerson) had been talking about demons that day before she left the house,” Chitwood said.

Chitwood said Wilkerson went to Halifax Health Medical Center on Monday to voluntarily check herself but then decided against it and walked out.

The children were turned over to welfare authorities.

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News

Malaysia Airlines Flight Goes Missing En Route to China

A Malaysia Airlines flight with 227 passengers on board has gone missing – and a search and rescue team has been deployed to locate the aircraft, a spokeswoman has confirmed to ABC News.

The Beijing-bound flight departed Kuala Lumpur at 12:55 a.m., and was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., the airline said. It went missing two hours into the flight.

The airline said there are 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members on board the Boeing 777-200 aircraft.

Malaysia Airlines said 13 different nationalities are on board the missing flight.

“We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts with flight MH370,” the airline’s chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said statement on Facebook.

“Malaysia Airlines is currently working with the authorities who have activated their Search and Rescue team to locate the aircraft,” Yahya said. “Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew.”

In a statement on Twitter, Boeing said it was watching the situation closely.

h/t – abcnews

 

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News

Lawyer Falls To Death Onto Scaffolding Near City Hall


(Stjepan Pavich / Gothamist)

[UPDATE BELOW] A 45-year-old man fell to his death onto scaffolding outside of a building near City Hall this morning. Thus far no criminality is suspected by the NYPD, but officials would not confirm that the man jumped. Paramedics accessed the scaffolding outside of 225 Broadway to reach the body after receiving a call at 7:25 this morning; police tell us the man worked in the building.

Graphic photos sent in by a tipster show blood on sidewalk below the scaffolding where the body landed.


Courtesy @yonkeltron

In an email, one witness says:

“When I got there I saw at least one cruiser and two emergency response vans. They had cones beyond the police tape and were restricting traffic slightly more than the choke point heading toward the WTC construction site. Two uniformed officers were going through that pile of trash and possibly bagging things but had moved on when I went to take pictures. The cops were replaced around the perimeter by the downtown ambassadors in the red.”

The identity of the deceased has not been released pending the notification of his family. The Post reports that the man was an attorney whose office is on the 12th floor.

Update 2:03 p.m.:: Police have identified the deceased man as Leonard Morton, an attorney who ran his own practice in the building. The police have yet to determine a cause of death for the Upper West Side resident. In addition to his practice, Morton was an adjunct professor at Hunter College.

h/t – gothamist

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dead News

Woman’s auto-payments hid her Death for Six Years

Woman found dead years later in garage

(CNN) — For years, the payments went out of the woman’s bank account.

Nobody batted an eyelid. Bills were paid. And life went on as normal in the quiet neighborhood of Pontiac, Michigan.

Neighbors didn’t notice anything unusual. The woman traveled a lot, they said, and kept to herself. One of them mowed her grass to keep things looking tidy.

At some point, her bank account ran dry. The bills stopped being paid.

After its warnings went unanswered, the bank holding the mortgage foreclosed on the house, a common occurrence in a region hit hard by economic woes.

Still, nobody noticed what had happened inside the house. Nobody wondered out loud what had become of the owner.

Not until this week, when a worker sent by the bank to repair a hole in the roof made a grisly discovery.

The woman’s mummified body was sitting in the backseat of her car, parked in the garage. The key was halfway in the ignition.

Authorities say they believe the woman died at least six years ago. They’re still trying to figure out what happened.

“I’ve been doing this 37 years. Never seen anything like this before,” said Undersheriff Mike McCabe of Oakland County, Michigan, just outside Detroit.

Rarely heard from

The woman, who authorities aren’t identifying until they’ve informed her family, paid her bills from her bank account through auto-pay, according to McCabe.

Neighbors said they didn’t know much about the dead woman, describing her as in her 40s and of German descent.

“She really kept to herself. We never really heard anything from her,” neighbor Caitlyn Talbot told CNN affiliate WXYZ.

Talbot said she wasn’t aware of anyone having seen the woman, who traveled a lot, in about six years.

“She was probably there for a couple of days, then she’d leave for a week, then she’d come back. Then she’d leave for a month and come back,” Talbot said.

McCabe says neighbors chalked up the woman’s absences to her returning to Germany for long periods of time.

Despite years without a living owner, the house was never broken into, he said.

Authorities told WXYZ that the house appears to have black mold inside it, and that detectives entered the building Thursday wearing hazardous material suits.

Another neighbor, Darryl Tillery, told the Detroit Free Press that mail never piled up at the house and the lawn never grew out of order. McCabe said one of the neighbors cut the grass for years.

Cause of death undetermined

Police were dispatched to the house for a welfare check in 2007 after a neighbor reported not having seen the owner in a while. After seeing no signs of anything amiss, police went on their way, McCabe said.

Authorities are still waiting for a toxicology report, which will take four to six weeks, before determining the cause of death. The medical examiner found no signs of trauma to the body, McCabe said.

Dr. Bernardino Pacris, the county deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, told the Detroit Free Press that the woman’s skin was still intact, but that the internal organs had decomposed.

Pacris told the newspaper that during the mummification process, skin develops a parchment-like consistency and leathery texture. Finding a body in such a condition is unusual, he said, but “once in a while, we see this.”

Attempts by CNN to reach Dr. Pacris late Thursday were unsuccessful.

 

h/t – cnn

Categories
Foreign Policies News Russia

Russian Reporter Against Russian Invasion of Ukraine – Video

Abby Martin works for RT, aka Russia Today, the English-language, Kremlin-managed cable news station that’s been wackadoodle with its Ukraine coverage. On Monday, Martin blasted Russia’s invasion as “wrong.” But did she go off the reservation, or just add a layer to Putin’s propaganda offensive?

Here’s what she says in her closing monologue, shown above:

Before I wrap up the show, I wanted to say something from my heart about the ongoing political crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s military occupation of Crimea. Just because I work here, for RT, doesn’t mean I don’t have editorial independence and I can’t stress enough how strongly I am against any military intervention in sovereign nations’ affairs. What Russia did is wrong.

h/the Gawker

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Foreign Policies News Russia

Russia Firing Warning Shots at Ukraine Soldiers

Although the rest of the world is denouncing the recent occupation of Russian forces in Ukraine, things took a turn for worse as bullets from Russian troops fly over the heads of Ukrainian soldiers.

Escalation.

Russian troops in control of the Belbek air base in Crimea fired warning shots into the air as around 300 Ukrainian soldiers, who previously manned the airfield, demanded their jobs back.

About a dozen Russian soldiers at the base warned the Ukrainians, who were marching unarmed, not to approach.

They fired several warning shots into the air and said they would shoot the Ukrainians if they continued to advance.

The Ukrainian forces are believed to be led by Colonel Yuli Mamchor, commander of the Ukrainian military garrison at Belbek, who was seen speaking to gun-wielding Russian troops at the air base.

The stand-off comes as Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops participating in military exercises near Ukraine’s border to return to their base.

But the Russian president showed no signs of loosening the stranglehold on the Crimean peninsula, openly defying the threat of diplomatic and economic sanctions from world leaders.

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Featured News Politics

It Gets Worse – Marissa Alexander Could Face 60 Years in Prison

A 33-year-old woman could end up in prison for 60 years when she’s retried for firing a shot in the direction of her estranged husband and two of his children.

Marissa Alexander was convicted in 2012 on three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to 20 years — three counts served concurrently. An appeals court tossed the conviction, saying the judge made a mistake in shifting the burden to Alexander to prove she acted in self-defense.

Assistant State Attorney Richard Mantei told the Florida Times-Union the state is simply following sentencing laws in seeking 60 years. The same court that ordered Alexander’s retrial ruled that when a defendant is convicted of multiple counts from the same crime, judges must make the sentences consecutive.

Critics say it’s outrageous to seek triple the original sentence.

Categories
Egypt Foreign Policies News Politics Russia United States war

The World Gets Dangerous

You can’t say we weren’t warned that Vladimir Putin might try to flex some muscles in Ukraine. After all, the Olympics are over, there were no terrorist attacks, Russia won the most medals, and Viktor Yanukovych turned out to be better suited for the summer games, beating a hasty vamoose from Kiev all the way to Moscow. Perhaps we could have a Dictator’s Marathon in Rio come 2016. I’d watch “Baby Doc” Duvalier run from shouting crowds. And you would too. After all, you watched Curling, right?

Let’s move on.

The latest is that Russian security forces are now in the Crimea and are asking Ukrainian forces to defect. They’re also trying to neutralize and reverse the events of last week when crowds in Kiev forced the President from his post. Putin is painted as the bad guy here, but the West has a problem on its hand that is similar to what happened in Egypt last year. A democratically elected government has been overthrown in a decidedly non-democratic manner, but since the people who have taken over are seen as a better alternative, the western powers are accepting the change. This is dangerous.

Of course, Yanukovych made this problem worse by leaving. Had he stayed and honored the agreement he made with the opposition, then the system would not be under such strain. And I suppose he could be invited to come back as part of a Putin-sponsored deal that restores the legitimately elected government and keeps Yulia Tymoshenko out of jail. I don’t expect this, but I didn’t expect the Crimea to become a world headline and another part of the world that most Americans can’t find on a map.

President Obama and John Kerry will need to finesse this so that we don’t look weak, but that we also don’t get involved in a shooting war. I trust that they’ll hold off the Republicans who want us to refight the Cold War with hot weapons and show Vlad the Invader what a real country does with its taxpayer-bought arsenal.

Maybe we can use Governor Christie’s expertise and cause a traffic jam that bottles up the Russian forces until we can get the UN to negotiate an exit.

This one bears watching, and is a reminder that we need to be thankful that we have a level-headed team in the White House to see us through.

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Categories
Healthcare News ObamaCare Politics

Paying Their Own Way – 4 Million Already Signed up for Obamacare

Why are Republicans against people taking their health decisions into their own hands? Why are they so against Americans paying their own way? Why do they insist on taking away our health care and replacing it with nothing?

Besides them just being evil, who knows?

Meanwhile, Americans are enjoying the benefits of living more health conscious lives, now that they’re finally able to afford healthcare.

Some 700,000 people have enrolled in Obamacare so far in February, raising total enrollment to roughly 4 million with a little more than a month to go before the sign-up deadline expires to get insurance this year.

The new figures for state and federal exchanges released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Tuesday illustrate participation in the sweeping initiative continues to grow steadily, a point raised by President Barack Obama at a White House event later in the day.

Categories
Education News Politics Wisconsin Union Bashing

Union Workers Get Smacked

In case you missed it, the anti-union movement is alive, well, and gloating over its success while working people in both the public and private sectors suffer from stagnant and negative wages, more expensive benefits and the prospect of losing what dignity they have at the altar of unfettered free enterprise and wealthy-worship.

The story of the UAW’s loss at the Volkswagon plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee last week because of scare tactics imposed by Republican national and state legislators is well-known. The surprising part is that VW seemed to be friendly to the idea of representation given that they had envisioned a workers council, which is prevalent in many other countries, that would protect worker’s rights and act as a partner in running the plant. This could still happen, despite the right’s irrational fear of unions, but it weakened the already-fragile union movement and did damage to its efforts in the south.

The picture is similarly bleak in the Midwest, as Governor Scott Walker’s Wisconsin experiment is burying public union workers. A new report in the New York Times shows that many towns and cities are finding that they have more money to spend, or at least less debt, because of the anti-union laws passed in 2011, but that workers are being devastated by the law, called Act 10. In short, public unions were stripped of their collective bargaining rights on anything except salaries, but even they were to be capped at no higher than the inflation level. The result is a one-two punch.

One:

Demoralization is the flip side of Act 10. In Oneida County in northern Wisconsin, the county supervisors jettisoned language requiring “just cause” when firing employees. Now, said Julie Allen, a computer programmer and head of the main local for Oneida County’s civil servants, morale is “pretty bad” and workers are afraid to speak out about anything, even safety issues or a revised pay scale. “We don’t have just cause,” she said. “We don’t have seniority protections. So people are pretty scared.” 
Assessing Act 10, Lisa Charbarneau, Oneida County’s director of human resources, said: “It’s been a kind of double-edged sword. It’s saved some money, but it’s hurt morale. It’s put a black eye, so to speak, on being a government employee, whether management or hourly. All government employees seem to have taken a hit, there’s this image that they’re sucking all these good benefits.”

Two:

Leah Lipska, the president of Local 1, scoffs at Mr. Walker’s famous suggestion that public employees are the “haves” in society, noting that many earn less than $35,000 a year. And the law, says Ms. Lipska, an information systems technician with the state corrections system, has made things much worse. 
“My family is now on food stamps,” said Ms. Lipska, a mother of three who earns $18.62 an hour. (Her husband’s computer installation business is struggling.)

This simply reinforces the idea that GOP orthodoxy on economics is dangerous. Taking money out of people’s pockets and making them afraid to speak up because they might lose their jobs will not in any way help the economy to grow. And Scott Walker wants to be president (shudder).

Meanwhile, here in New Jersey, where the governor also wants to be president but won’t be, the end of Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf’s term is proving rather dangerous for teacher rights. The Superintendent of Newark’s schools is asking Cerf for a waiver so she can ignore seniority while making massive cuts to Newark’s teaching force. Even better, or worse, is the suspicion that Anderson is doing this to protect the Teach for America teachers she’s hired at the expense of more expensive, experienced educators. Anderson was a former executive at Teach for America.

This assault on both tenure and negotiated rights would be the most serious attempt by the know-nothing corporatists on the teacher’s associations in the state. It would also be an opportunity for Cerf to make a final, lasting imprint on the state’s education system that has already seen an ineffective evaluation system and massive cuts to school programs go into effect during his and Christie’s term. My sense is that Cerf won’t do it because the governor is facing multiple investigations into questionable behavior by his aides, and Christie won’t need the added attention, but this would be an opportunity for both men to show their conservative bona-fides and take some eyeballs of the GW Bridge and Sandy affairs.

The bottom line is that the bottom line is guiding everything the GOP touches these days and public workers continue to be obstacles to knock over and criticize. Never mind that these are the same middle class workers who need to start spending if the economy is to make a broad rebound and will need to lead the country if it is to educate its next generation of citizens.

Can you say, “Organize?”

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Featured News

Lawyer Says LI Housekeeper Who Allegedly Killed Infant was Raped


(Suffolk County Police)
A lawyer for the Long Island live-in housekeeper accused of killing her newborn baby and throwing the body in the trash says the infant was the result of a rape, and had been born stillborn and premature. 

Santos Elena Ruiz Solano, the 26-year-old housekeeper who lived in her employer’s West Islip home, was arraigned on second degree murder charges yesterday after prosecutors accused her of fatally fracturing the infant’s skull, putting the body in a plastic bag and throwing it in a garbage can. Ruiz Solano, a native of Honduras, plead not guilty, andaccording to attorney Michael Brown, she was raped en route to the United States seven months ago. “She is a mother who gave birth to a stillborn baby. She’s traumatized,” he said. “But now she is facing the hammer of the criminal justice system. “

Medica examiners say the infant was born alive, and the bodily trauma it suffered indicated a significant force. “The baby had three skull fractures that would have been caused by at least one impact,” prosecutor Glenn Kurtzrock said yesterday. “It would not have been caused by the baby simply falling or being dropped out of someone’s arms.”

According to prosecutors, Ruiz Solano gave birth on Sunday in the bathroom of her employer’s home; she allegedly called her husband to take her to the hospital soon after, and gave him a plastic bag with the infant’s body, which he then threw out unknowingly. He reportedly told officials he did not know his wife was pregnant; she has two children at home in Honduras.

Ruiz Solano is being held without bail.

h/t – gothamist
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