Rigor vs. Vigor

I hate the latest educational buzzword - "rigor".

Every time somebody uses it at work, I want to say to them that the word doesn't actually mean what they think it means.

Joanne Yatvin feels the same way:

There is one word I dislike so intensely when used in connection with education that I can’t remain silent under any circumstances. That word is “rigor.”

Part of my reaction is emotional, having so often heard “rigor” paired with “mortis.” The other part is logical, stemming from the literal meanings of rigor: harshness, severity, strictness, inflexibility and immobility. None of these things is what I want for students at any level. And, although I don’t believe that the politicians, scholars or media commentators who use the word so freely really want them, either, I still reproach them for using the wrong word and the wrong concept to characterize educational excellence.

Now, more than ever, “rigor” is being used to promote the idea that American students need advanced course work, complex texts, stricter grading, and longer school days and years in order to be ready for college or the workplace. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) already adopted by 45 states, were designed for rigor and will inexorably lead to it in all forms in almost all classrooms.

Since I believe it is time for a better word and a better concept to drive American education, I recommend “vigor.” Here my dictionary says, “active physical or mental force or strength, healthy growth; intensity, force or energy.” And my mental association is to all the Latin-based words related to life.

How much better our schools would be if they provided students with classes and activities throbbing with energy, growth and life. Although school buildings have walls, there should be no walls separating students from vigorous learning. No ceilings, either.

To learn vigorously, students need more than academic skills and knowledge, more than the generalities and hypotheticals found in textbooks and workbooks. By reading newspapers, magazines, graphic novels, even the daily comics and Internet articles; and by getting to know people of all ages, types of work, and cultural backgrounds they can learn about the real world they live in. Although it is not practical to send hordes of children and teen-agers out into that world to learn all the things they need to know, many more in-school classes and supplemental activities can be vigorous.

In short, "rigor" is associated with inflexibility, stiffness, harshness and death; "vigor" is associated with energy, health and life.

The owners and operators of the Common Core Federal Standards surely chose the right word (though undoubtedly by accident) when they decided to describe their work on standards as "full of rigor."

Thursday Night Music: James Carr

Progressive Insurance Sucks

From an Associated Press article in The Guardian:

BALTIMORE (AP) — The Progressive Corp. insurance group is defending itself against an onslaught of negative publicity after it tried to avoid paying $75,000 to the family of a client killed in a car crash and tried to blame the wreck on her.

It began Monday with a blog post from 33-year-old Matt Fisher of Brooklyn, whose sister Katie Fisher had Progressive insurance and was killed in a June 2010 car crash in Baltimore. In order to avoid a $75,000 payment to Katie Fisher's family, Progressive interjected itself into a lawsuit Katie Fisher's family filed against the other driver.

Last week a jury found the other driver negligent, despite Progressive's efforts to persuade the jury that Katie Fisher was at fault.

Matt Fisher said Thursday that the deluge of online support his family has received is gratifying.

I'm not surprised that Progressive Insurance is an evil company happy to take your premiums but not so happy to pay out on claims.

But I do like to highlight when a company acts especially scummy.

Today Progressive Insurance qualifies.

Facebook Shares Hit New Low As Investors Flee

Falling, falling, falling:

Facebook's shares fell to new lows in early trading Thursday as insiders were freed to sell another 270m shares.

The expiration of a lock-up period for insiders increased the pool of available shares by 60%. Facebook's share price fell close to 7% in early trading to $19.73, a level that is more than 46% lower than the $38 IPO price set in May.

Goldman Sachs, Elevation Partners, which counts U2's Bono as a partner, and DST Global are among the early investors that will now be allowed to sell more shares. Goldman and DST were among the investors who increased the number of shares they sold at $38 shortly before the IPO.

Facebook's shares have been hit hard as analysts have worried the firm has yet to figure out a way to make money from mobile users, the fastest growing of their business. After such a precipitous fall in share price, analysts are split on whether investors will take advantage of the end of the lock-up to sell more shares.

One analyst, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed to Angie's List, a referral service, whose share price plummeted on Tuesday after its IPO lockup expired. "I wouldn't even think of buying this until the price comes down," he said

.
A commenter at The Guardian writes the following:

Capitalism eats itself as a company that produces nothing fools the foolish and gets them to buy shares in it and then they are shocked when suddenly they realise a company that produces nothing can't actually be worth anything in real terms.......

Angie's List, Zynga, Groupon, Facebook - gee, feels like the Tech Bubble Burst all over again.

A Parody Of Michelle Rhee Olympic Ad Shows Up On Jimmy Kimmel

Thomas Haden Church, spokesman for Kids Swap:



Michelle Rhee, owner and operator of Teachers Suck, er, StudentsFirst:



The NY Post covers the Kimmel parody without mentioning what its target is - Rhee's StudentsFirst Olympics ad.

Liz Dwyer explains why the Rhee ad is misleading and offensive:

The stats the ad uses perpetuate the lie that in her glory days America scored highest in the world on these tests and has now lost her footing. Since the first administration of international tests in 1964, we've never been number one. In fact, we scored second to last back then. Now we're scoring in the middle of the pack and actually improving.

Even though top education experts say that ending child poverty is the key to improving our education results, Rhee fails to mention how according to a recent UNICEF study, the United States has the second-highest child poverty rate—22 percent—out of 35 developed nations. The higher the child poverty rate, the lower PISA scores fall. Finland, whose education system has become a real model of what's possible, only has a 5.3 percent child poverty rate. An analysis of America's PISA scores reveals that if we just took the scores of students attending schools with less than 10 percent of the population coming from low income backgrounds we'd have the highest scores in the world.

Teacher and education activist Gary Rubinstein takes the ad's Olympics analogy further and points out that "just because we have a higher percentage of students doing poorly on the PISA does not mean that we have lost our competitive edge." After all, says Rubinstein, even though we have "the highest obesity rate in the developed world" the United States "still got the most medals (second most gold medals) in the 2008 summer games."

Even if you believe that our schools are completely failing and that our society is doomed because of these PISA scores, there's no denying the ad sends some particularly troubling social messages. As Education Week Teacher points out, "it seems questionable for an education organization to be playing up obesity for laughs, especially as more people acknowledge bullying as a rampant school problem."

Prominent educator Anthony Cody, who calls the ad "insulting to our schools, and to our intelligence," also notes that along with mocking overweight people, there's "an underlying homophobia in the piece, in that the male "athlete" is flopping around doing a sport that is associated with women." Cody says the athlete is "feminized by this performance, and that is held up to ridicule."

Indeed, it's sad that an organization that calls itself Students First would choose to ridicule students and our schools in this way. The messaging of this ad also feels pretty unpatriotic. Imagine if instead of the incredibly inspiring "Made in Detroit" Chrysler ads featuring Eminem that ran during the 2011 Super Bowl, some organization had run an ad depicting our automobile industry as an out-of-shape football player?

If only Rhee had chosen to air an Olympic-themed ad spotlighting the progress our schools are making and called for greater community support of teachers and students. At a time when our athletes are about to compete on a world stage, Rhee should be embarrassed that she endorsed such a shameful, snide "let me tell the world just how much our schools suck" point of view.

That's Michelle Rhee for you, providing misleading propaganda, homophobia and a couple of fat jokes in the service of corporate education reform - and her own career advancement.

Firing our way to the top is as ridiculous a solution for education reform as swapping "dumb" American children for "smarter" ones from overseas.

Bill Gates Turns His Talents To Toilets

You heard that right - Bill Gates is now interested in developing a new solar-powered toilet that will disinfect and decompose toilet waste and turn it into "biochar" -- biological charcoal -- that can then be used as fertilizer to grow food.

Huffington Post reports that Gates is very passionate about his "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge," so much so that he even tweeted about it a couple of days ago:

4 out of 10 people don’t have a safe way to poop - that’s 2.6 billion!

Given all the bullshit that comes out of the Gates Foundation - like the grants for merit pay they're always handing out (even though merit pay has never, ever worked), or the grants for the galvanic skin response bracelets to measure teacher effectiveness through "student excitement," or the grants for cloud whitening tests to lessen the effects of global warming that have been termed "dangerous" by many scientists including those at the Royal Society, or the grants to promote GMO in sub-Saharan Africa that will force African farmers to have to purchase Monsanto GM seeds, the Gates Foundation people ought to be flushing their own work down these Gates Foundation-funded solar toilets as soon as they get them.

That alone would make the world safer, if not for pooping, then at least for teaching, learning, breathing, eating and living.

Then they can take some of the stupid shit Gates says in interviews and flush that too.

Finally they can take the crap Microsoft makes and send that into the dumper as well.

Really, after we get through flushing all the shit Bill and Melinda Gates and their bullshit-laden employees at both the Gates Foundation and Microsoft do all day long, we're not going to have much of an opportunity to dispose of anybody else's waste.

The Gates people create too much of it on their own.

Frankly nothing would make the world a better, safer, cleaner place than for Gates to create this new solar-powered, high tech toilet and flush himself and his money down it.

Corzine, Top Execs To Get Away With MF Global Robbery

Leave the poor 1% robber barons alone!!!!!! They work really, really hard and sometimes they just, you know make mistakes:

A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives.

After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case.

Just more evidence of how crooked and corrupt this country is.

Michael Fiorillo likes to say this is what a banana republic looks like.

He is exactly right.

Swamp Dogg

Saw Jerry Williams - known as Swamp Dogg - last Sunday at Lincoln Center. A fantastic show, and if you don't know about him, I want to encourage you to check him out. Here's a You Tube version of Synthetic World from an earlier time:



So far this summer, I've seen the Beach Boys, Arlo Guthrie and Family, George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars, Nile Rogers and Chic, Bettye LaVette, Otis Clay, Willam Bell/Dann Penn/Teenie Hodges as part of the American Songwriters Series, Swamp Dogg, Sam Moore (Sam & Dave), The Ryan Montbleau Band, Marshall Crenshaw and some great July 4th bluegrass.

Still have a couple more shows at City Winery/Hudson Square, the Mighty Diamonds at Summerstage, and Ian Hunter and the Rant Band at Highline Ballroom.

But summer is fast coming to an end.

Hold on, hold on...

Daily Mail Tells Unemployed Graduates To Work Like They're In A Concentration Camp

Such good advice from Dominique Jackson at the Daily Mail:

The Daily Mail has been embarrassed into deleting an offensive paragraph from an online contribution to its website.

A piece headlined Why our new legions of unemployed graduates need to adjust their expectations, by Dominique Jackson, contained this extraordinary paragraph:

"The German slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' is somewhat tainted by its connection with Nazi concentration camps, but its essential message, 'work sets you free' still has something serious to commend it.

There is dignity to be gained from any job, no matter how menial, and for young people at the start of their careers, there are valuable lessons to be learned from any form of employment, whether that is on the factory floor, on a supermarket till or in the contemporary hard labour camp of a merchant bank or law office."

This grotesque lapse in taste was removed from the article once its presence was revealed on the Twittersphere.

There was no mention of the deletion despite the fact that three (of the 29) commenters on the article - which was posted on 4 July - pointed out that it was entirely inappropriate.

One of them, gloworm, glos, wrote: "Somewhat tainted? By the deaths of considerably more than a million men, women and children? I understand the point you are making, but to write off a phrase like 'Arbeit Macht Frei' as somewhat tainted demonstrates such a complete lack of feeling for context that... Christ, words fail me."

What's the death of millions when we're talking about the dignity of work here?

There is nothing more important than the dignity of work.

Ugh.

Harry Harrison

RIP:

Harry Harrison, the American science fiction writer best known for the Stainless Steel Rat comic space opera series and the dystopian Make Room! Make Room! has died at the age of 87.

He also parodied the genre in his Bill the Galactic Hero books, seeing his work as anti-war and anti-militaristic. Brian Aldiss, who worked with Harrison on criticism and editing science fiction anthologies, called him "a constant peer and great family friend".

Harrison's first novel, Deathworld, was published in 1960, with the Stainless Steel Rat appearing for the first time a year later. "Slippery Jim" diGriz, the books' anti-hero, whose latest appearance was in 2010, was, one admirer pointed out on Wednesday, a "rogue smuggler" created years before Han Solo in the Star Wars films.

The central idea of Make Room! Make Room!, his 1966 novel in which a critical food shortage in overpopulated New York means a food substitute is needed, was used in the 1973 film Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston.

Harrison, an advocate of the international language Esperanto, which appears in several of his books, was born in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1925and also lived for periods in Mexico, England, Ireland, Denmark and Italy. After service in the second world war and art study, he ran a studio selling illustrations to comics and science fiction magazines, He married Joan (née Merkler) in 1954 in New York. She died from cancer in 2002. They had two children, Todd and Moira.

Harrison was quite prescient - we're almost to the world of Soylent Green/ Make Room! Make Room! now.

2013 Mayoral Race Poll Results

Here they are:

A new Quinnipiac poll in New York City finds Christine Quinn (D) way ahead of her other Democratic challengers for mayor with 29%, followed by Bill Thompson (D) at 10%, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio (D) at 10%, City Comptroller John Liu (D) at 9% and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer (D) at 4%.

Big caveat: The mayoral race isn't until 2013.

A long way off, and yet not that long off.

These poll results are based mostly on name recognition.

Quinn does have a big lead, but remember, you need 50% to avoid a runoff.

So whichever of the bottom tier candidates can get into a runoff with her has a shot to beat her.

Time To Praise Mike Bloomberg

The Guardian reports Devo has a new song coming out:

Devo's next song is about Mitt Romney's dog. The American new wave band are putting an Irish setter front and centre on Don't Roof Rack Me, Bro! (Remember Seamus), which takes fire at the Republican presidential candidate.

Twenty-nine years ago Romney took his family on a 12-hour road trip from Boston to Ontario, strapping the family dog to a kennel on their car roof. As the Chevrolet station wagon barrelled down the highway, Seamus clung on for dear life; even after the dog suffered a diarrhoea attack, Romney just sprayed everything down and continued with the journey.

Although Seamus may not be at the forefront of Romney's election battle against Barack Obama, Devo have not forgotten him. On Tuesday the band announced their next single, due 25 August, with cover art depicting Romney behind the wheel and a terrified dog on the roof

The song is part of a campaign by Gerald V Casale, one of Devo's founders. Remember Seamus proposes to "make 2012 the year where animals like Seamus are valued and honesty is praised". The group has rallied behind Dogs Against Romney, a Facebook page with more than 70,000 fans, and Casale has also contributed to a forthcoming video game, The Crate Escape: Seamus Unleashed, which is due on 26 August – National Dog Day in the US.

As for Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts insists that Seamus enjoyed being on the car roof. "The dog loved it," said his wife, Ann Romney, in April. "He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation. It was to me a kinder thing to bring him along than to leave him in the kennel for two weeks."

Say what you will about Mike Bloomberg, but he would NEVER do what Mitt Romney did.

No, sir - Mike Bloomberg's dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, ride right up front in the helicopter as it takes off illegally from the 34th Street helipad on weekends.

That's Mike Bloomberg for you - he loves animals.

It's people he doesn't much like.

How Will Chancellor Walcott Give The Finger To Teachers This Fall?

Oh, no - Chancellor Walcott dislocated his middle finger this week while walking to the gym.

As a result, he has to wear a cast over his hand that puts his middle finger out of commission for at least a couple of weeks until it heals.

With school beginning for teachers in less than three weeks, will Chancellor Walcott be healed in time to give the traditional "Middle Finger" to educators on the first day back to school?

Will he be able to give the "Middle Finger" to all those schools he tried to close a couple of months ago that a judge said he couldn't close?

Throughout the Bloomberg administration, the first day back to school is traditionally a time to recommence teacher-bashing season, to warn teachers about impending layoffs during the January budget fight, to smear teachers in the press as perverts and sex offenders, and to suggest that anybody off the street could do a better job teaching than the 75,000+ current people working as NYCDOE teachers.

An indispensable tool for the administration to get these ideas across, a shorthand for it, if you will , is the ceremonial "First Day Back To School Chancellor's Middle Finger."

Joel Klein was a master at it, often employing Eva Moskowitz to join him in his reverse salute to teachers, when he wasn't ignoring people and playing Angry Birds on his Blackberry, that is.



Bloomberg is pretty good at giving people the finger too, although like most oligarchs, he often prefers to hire somebody else to do the dirty work for him.




And of course his hiring of Cathie Black - a woman with no education experience, no common sense, no empathy, no class and no clue - was a "Middle Finger" to all the students, parents teachers, and administrators in New York City.



When you look up the phrase "Middle Finger" in the Urban Dictionary, you see "Bloomberg's hiring of Cathie Black as NYC schools chancellor" as one of the definitions.

In any case, here's hoping Chancellor Walcott's middle finger will be healed in time to tell teachers just what he thinks about them on September 4, 2012.

Sure Walcott can express his disdain, scorn and contempt for teachers without it, but nothing gets those feelings across like a good middle finger.

See what I mean?

Get well soon, Dennis - and stop drinking with Cathie Black, okay!

Or you'll end up like her.

Dave Grohl Joins TEACHERS ROCK, The Pro-Privatization/Anti-Teachers Union Show On CBS

I found out Dave Grohl signed onto TEACHERS ROCK, the union-bashing, pro-privatization CBS TV special sponsored by Walmart and the makers of union-busting movie "Won't Back Down," Walden Media, that is masquerading as a "celebration" of teachers.

Many of the other names on the list of performers who are there to" honor" teachers - like Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Garth Brooks, and a couple of American Idol winners - I didn't bat an eye at.

Most of these celebrities probably have no idea who or what is backing this "celebration" of teachers. They're probably thinking this is just a nice way to honor people who teach. They're most likely unaware of the politics behind this.

At least one of these celebrities, Meryl Streep, has publicly supported charter schools in the past (see here and here), so she may perhaps know a little more about the politics of charter vs. public school.

After all, when she chose to donate money to a school in Central Falls, Rhode Island in honor of actress Viola Davis (who coincidentally stars in the movie "Won't Back Down"), she chose a charter school, not a traditional public school.

That's an interesting choice she made and says at least a little something about where she's coming from.

But as I say, most of these people probably have no idea how odious this show is to real working teachers, how insulting it is to raise money for Teach for America, an organization that trains people for five weeks to work a couple of years as teachers before moving on to their "real jobs" and call that a "celebration" of teachers, how awful it makes most teachers feel to see celebrities promoting a movie that pushes for private takeovers of public schools.

I am surprised that Grohl is showing up to this thing.

Perhaps I am giving him more credit than he deserves, but he should know better than to support a "celebration" of teachers sponsored by right wing outfits like Walden Media and Walmart.

He didn't just fall off a turnip truck - he should know anything sponsored by Walmart and Walden Media is going to have an anti-union and/or right wing agenda (Jersey Jazzman connects those dots here.)

But since he's signed on to appear at TEACHERS ROCK, it's possible he doesn't.

You can register here at the Foo Fighters forum to express your displeasure with Grohl's decision to appear on a teachers union bashing show masking itself as an appreciation of teachers.

You can also call his manager here: 323-856-8222

Perhaps he is unaware of the politics underlying this "celebration" of teachers that it is meant to highlight TFA, charter school teachers, school choice, and public school privatization in the form of parent trigger laws.

Or perhaps he is totally aware of this and supports these things.

Either way, time to let him know how you feel about it.

Grohl is known as the "nicest guy in rock" - but there's nothing nice about lending his voice to a sham celebration of teachers that is really meant to publicize Walden Media's anti-union, pro-privatization movie.

Spitzer Aide Accuses Cuomo Of Troopergate Investigation Cover-Up

What's the reason that Andrew Cuomo is having his staff scrub his papers and documents from his tenure as attorney general of the state of New York?

Former aide to disgraced Governor Spitzer, Lloyd Constantine, says it's to cover up his role in the investigation of Troopergate and hide his misuse of government aircraft as both HUD secretary and when he was working for his father, Governor Mario Cuomo:

Troopergate — which many would like to forget, foremost my former boss, Eliot Spitzer, and the current governor as well — will continue to haunt us all. I was Spitzer's senior adviser and one of five senior lawyers conscripted to represent the governor and the Executive Chamber in the many Troopergate investigations in 2007 and 2008.

Troopergate began July 1, 2007, when this newspaper reported that then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno had been using state aircraft for travel to meetings and events whose purpose was primarily personal and political. Almost as soon as Cuomo heeded Spitzer's call to investigate Bruno, the tables turned. Cuomo was also investigating whether the governor and his aides had improperly enlisted the State Police in spying on Bruno.

In a sloppy three-week rush to judgment and race for press primacy over competing investigations being conducted by Albany County District Attorney David Soares and then-Inspector General Kris Hamann, Cuomo's Troopergate report superficially addressed the Spitzer administration's sins and ignored and whitewashed Bruno's blatant misuse of the state fleet.

On the Bruno side of Cuomo's probe, neither the majority leader, nor anyone else was questioned under oath. No documents were subpoenaed. Cuomo exonerated Bruno, concluding that if a day of private and political events included any amount of time when Bruno arguably was doing the state's work, the massively expensive use of the state's airplanes was lawful.

The omissions and superficiality of the Cuomo Troopergate probe and the resulting lack of confidence in its findings spawned eight additional Troopergate investigations by Soares, the inspector general, the Senate's Investigation Committee, the State Investigation Commission and two now-defunct state commissions for ethics and public integrity.

The reason for the whitewash was obvious. Any finding of state aircraft misuse by Bruno would have instantly evoked comparison with far more serious and pervasive patterns of misuse by both Gov. Mario Cuomo and allegedly by Andrew himself when he was secretary of housing and urban development.

"Air Cuomo" was the name given to the reports and records showing that during just four of Mario Cuomo's twelve years as governor, Cuomo family members (including Andrew) took 729 trips on the state's aircraft. After leaving office, he reimbursed the state $29,000 for a small number of these trips.

During the planning stages of Andrew Cuomo's unsuccessful bid to become governor in 2002, he flew on the federal taxpayers' tab to New York 24 times, purportedly on HUD business. During that same period, Andrew Cuomo visited no other state within his jurisdiction more than four times, not even California with twice the population and housing of New York.

Cuomo has been quite successful at hiding his corruption and right now he's getting help from the current attorney general, Eric Scheniderman, on hiding his role in the Troopergate investigation.

But this is the kind of stuff that will come out eventually, no matter how Cuomo tries to hide it.

This is especially so if he tries to run for president in 2016.

Light will be shone on his entire political career and he'll have to be really adept at hiding this stuff from opposition researchers in other campaigns.

NY Post And NY Daily News Slap At Andrew Cuomo Over Teacher Evaluations

Ooh, lookee here - Rupert Murdoch just slapped Cuomo across the face with today's editorial on teacher evaluations and the Daily News made matters worse by comparing him unfavorably (at least in their minds) to the behemoth across the Hudson, Chris Christie (who happens to be Cuomo's rival, perhaps, for the 2016 WH race.)

Cuomo never likes to be criticized by any news outlets, but he especially hates to be taken to task publicly by his patron, Rupert Murdoch, or Murdoch's proxy in Albany, Fred Dicker.

You can bet Cuomo will respond the way he always responds when slapped by Murdoch - he'll act as fast as he can to make Uncle Rupert happy.

Remember, that's what he did the last time Murdoch slapped at him by calling him "Chicken Cuomo" on Twitter over teacher evaluations.

Within hours, Cuomo responded by giving Uncle Rupert everything he wanted (at least at that time) on evaluations.

But now it turns out it wasn't enough.

How long will it take for Cuomo to give Murdoch what he wants once again?

Oh, and one last thing - are the DN and Post coordinating editorials?

Funny how they ran the same one on the same day.

Daily News editor Colin Myler of course is a former criminal, er, employee of News Corporation, so perhaps there is some coordination there.

Or perhaps somebody in the education reform/hedge fundie world pushed to have the editorial pages run the editorials so close together.

More likely it's the second choice.

With the start of school just a few weeks away, I suspect we are about to get a very heavy-handed push from the education reform world and their media mouthpieces to get a punitive, test-centric teacher evaluation deal here in NYC that will give the DOE the right to impose dozens of local standardized tests in every subject in every grade on top of the state tests and use the scores from both to evaluate and fire teachers.

Who cares if adding dozens of high stakes standardized tests a year to every grade in every subject makes sense?

Who cares if this so-called accountability movement is actually doing much more harm than good to kids?

After all, there is money to be made by Uncle Rupert and the rest of the reformers on all the testing, the test prep and the accountability and data tracking tools, and there is money to be saved by firing all those expensive veteran teachers and replacing them with cheaper (and disposable) newbies.

Cops Execute Knife-Wielding Man On Seventh Avenue

Another day in New York, another dramatic NYPD shooting.

Cops shot a knife-wielding man in Times Square yesterday in the middle of the afternoon. Police claim he had been stopped for smoking marijuana on the street when he pulled out a knife and began running away from them while swinging the knife.

They followed him through Times Square, eventually shooting and killing him on 38th Street and 7th Avenue. The Daily News reports at least fifteen bullet casings on the street, though there may have been more shots fired by the NYPD than that.



Was this guy a danger and a menace?

Absolutely.

According to the media accounts, they'd sprayed him with six blasts of mace and he still hadn't dropped the knife.

The cops claim he lunged at them with the knife right before he was shot.

The NY Post reports he was shouting "Shoot me! Shoot me!" before he "lunged" at them with the knife.

Some people say the knife-wielding man was trying to commit "suicide by cop".

Dunno how much of that to believe and the videos that have surfaced are quite jumpy - it's hard to see what's going on.

That said, the first photo with the man backing away from cops, hands behind his head, as they advance in preparation to shoot him, sure makes you wonder if there was another way to get him down without killing him in a flood of bullets.

But in Bloomberg's New York, this is actually the perfect emblem.

Get rid of the Big Apple symbol and put the photo of the guy with the knife backing away from a dozen armed cops getting ready to execute him in its place.

You don't have to be wielding a knife to get shot by gun-toting NYPD goons.

You can just be trying to flush marijuana down the toilet when they kill you - like in February when police followed 18-year-old Ramarley Graham into his home and executed him, NYPD-style, for trying to flush a small amount of marijuana before they arrested him.

Graham was unarmed when he was executed by police.

Graham's grandmother witnessed the shooting and was brought down to the precinct and worked over for hours as cops tried to get her to change her account of what happened.

One officer has since been charged with manslaughter in the case.

But we know how the justice system works in New York, don't we?

NY Times Fails To Mention Rhee/KJ Sex Abuse Scandal In Campbell Brown Story

The NY Times covered Campbell Brown's assault on teachers unions tonight.

They do mention how her husband Dan Senor sits on the board of the New York chapter of Michelle Rhee's group, StudentsFirst.

But they fail to mention how Michelle Rhee has been accused of helping a sex abuse case against her husband, former NBA star and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, go away when he was running a charter school.

Far from being an immaterial part of the story, how does Brown come off declaring the unions protectors of perverts and sex criminals when her husband sits on the board of a group run by a woman who has been accused in a Congressional committee report of helping to cover up alleged sexual misconduct by her then boyfriend and now husband?

And how can the Times cover the story without bringing this up? After all, they covered the allegations against Rhee back on November 20, 2009.

I have said it before, I will say it again - if Campbell Brown wants to go after people who protect sex criminals and perverts, she needs to look no further than Michelle Rhee.

Too bad the corporate media doesn't seem to want to connect the Rhee/Johnson sexual abuse cover-up to the Campbell Brown story.

But that's par for the course.

The media rarely have a problem dragging teachers through the mud but Michelle Rhee seems to consistently get treated with kid gloves over her alleged ethical lapses - from the widespread cheating that took place when she was chancellor of the DCPS to the allegations that she lied about her own record as a teacher to the allegations that she helped KJ cover up his sexual misconduct when he was a charter school head.

Post Editors Wring Their Hands Over Stuyvesant Cheaters

The NY Post editors work for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation - you know, the company embroiled in a hacking/corruption scandal that has seen over 60 of its current and former employees arrested on hacking, bribery, conspiracy and/or corruption charges. The latest arrested was a Sun journalist on suspicion of corruption on August 7th. This followed another Sun journalist who was arrested on July 20th on computer hacking charges and made "Employee of the Month" a day after his arrest.

News Corporation is currently enjoying not one, not two, but three different police investigations into its criminal activities in Britain as well as a Parliamentary investigation. The SEC and the FBI are looking into allegations of corruption here in the U.S. and could bring charges against the company for breaking the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bloomberg News reported on August 1 that News Corp. is also facing corporate hacking offenses over phone hacking.

In addition, the company faces numerous lawsuits from hacking victims in Britain and will soon face at least three suits brought by victims allegedly hacked by News Corp. reporters here on U.S. soil.

The former head of News International (Rebekah Brooks) and the former News of the World editor and aide to Prime Minister David Cameron (Andy Coulson) are both set to face hacking and corruption charges in the case. Brooks also faces charges of corruption and cover-up in the bribery case and Coulson faces conspiracy charges in Scotland relating the case.

News Corporation paid out over $315 million in costs related to the hacking scandal and faces hundreds of millions more the next fiscal year.

The scandal has been so damaging to the company that they have been forced to split into two, relegating the damaged newspaper properties to a smaller corporate entity while the more lucrative entertainment properties will go it on their own.

I give this context as background to note that the Post editors decry the culture of cheating at Stuyvesant high school and are - shocked, shocked - to find out that neither the new interim principal at Stuyvesant nor the NYCDOE brain trust seem all that concerned about the cheating:

Good news, Stuyvesant HS cheaters: Your new principal sees nothing amiss at your school — despite a massive cheating scandal recently that involved 71 students.

And despite reports in The Post from Stuyvesant sources, including students, of a serious “culture of cheating” at the school.

No, obviously, this is terrible news — even for the cheaters. Because if new principal Jie Zhang doesn’t end that twisted mindset fast, she won’t be doing the kids, the school or anyone else any favors.

First, as they say, she needs to recognize the problem. “I have not been made aware or have a reason to believe there is ongoing cheating there,” she says.

Willful blindness? As one source told The Post, “Everybody cheats all the time — on homework, on tests, on everything.”

As recent Stuyvesant grad Daniel Solomon reported on these pages, a school-newspaper survey found some 90 percent of seniors had advance knowledge of test questions and 5 percent ’fess up to cheating on SATs and AP exams.

Either Zhang has some quick learning to do — or she finds the scams tolerable.

Neither bodes well for the school.

Or perhaps she’s just taking cues from the Department of Education, which let off six of the 71 cheaters with just suspensions and the other 65 with no penalties at all.

The DOE wouldn’t even expel ringleader Nayeem Ahsan, who used his cellphone to photograph and distribute a Spanish exam.

It was encouraging that long-time principal Stanley Teitel left after the scandal broke. But what will that have accomplished if Zhang carries on his tradition?

Let’s face it. Eventually, cheating is likely to catch up with kids sometime in their lives, and the school’s sterling rep will fade.

That wouldn’t be a mere scandal — but a full-blown tragedy.

OK, before I get to the hypocrisy of the Posties, let's deal with the editorial itself.

The Post is wrong to say that cheating will catch up with these kids sometime in their lives.

In American culture, cheating is a privileged thing.

The guys on Wall Street do it all the time and nothing - I mean nothing - ever happens to them.

The hedge fundies cheat, the big banks rigged LIBOR rates and so far only one has received a slap on the wrist (but promises of no criminal prosecution!), the Obama administration has refused to prosecute even one person responsible for the financial collapse of '08, former NY State attorney general Andrew Cuomo also refused to bring charges against anyone for the same crimes, and current Treasury Secretary Geithner knew 16 Big Banks were fixing LIBOR rates in order to enrich themselves and make their balance sheets look better than they were and did nothing about it - tell me exactly how the culture of cheating the kids at Stuyvesant are learning won't be rewarded in Big Business, especially on Wall Street, in the future?

Seriously, learning how to cheat and get away with it is an indispensable lesson every member of the American elite must learn before adulthood.

Next, let's deal with the allegations of cheating.

The Post is decrying the whitewashing of the Stuyvesant cheating scandal which involved one school and 71 or so students, and rightfully so, but nowhere in the paper (or its sister paper, the Wall Street Journal) do we see any story of the whitewashing of the massive cheating scandal that took place in Washington D.C. under education reform darling Michelle Rhee that involved over 100 schools, more than half of all D.C. schools.

Erasure rates of answers from wrong to right were so frequent at many of these D.C. schools that statisticians say you would have a better chance of winning the Powerball lottery twice than having all of those wrong answers in all of those schools erased and right answers put in their place by real kids.

Yesterday, the Washington D.C. school system exonerated itself by limiting the cheating scandal investigation to one school, the one with the most egregious erasures and the one focused upon by USA Today when they brought this scandal to light back in 2011.

Yesterday USA Today reported that D.C. officials limited the scope of the investigation because

they believed news coverage of the scandal would limit future cheating — and because schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson handed over "no additional evidence" of cheating or "investigative leads to pursue."

There you have it - news reports of a limited, whitewashed investigation of past cheating ought to discourage future cheating and how can we expect to investigate this thing fully when the DCPS chancellor refuses to hand over additional evidence? Gollee, we just have to go with what we have here, folks.

Clearly there is a cover-up going on in the DCPS and city officials in Washington D.C. are helping, along with officials at the USDOE who don't seem to want to get to the bottom of the matter either, perhaps because an investigation of Rhee's D.C. tenure that found widespread cheating would undercut so many of the "Rheeforms" the USDOE is pursuing nationwide, with D.C. as one of the "models" for where these "Rheeforms" have supposedly worked.

It seems to me this is a much bigger scandal than the Stuyvesant scandal, and while I have no problem with the Posties decrying the cover-up at Stuyvesant over cheating, I do take issue with their refusal to call for a wide and "rigorous" investigation into their education reform darling, Michelle Rhee and her tenure of cheating at DCPS. I understand that the DCPS is not in New York, but since the DCPS reforms and evaluation system have been promoted by many education reformers around the country - including those at the Post - I think it is only fair and honest that the Posties decry the whitewashed investigation of Rhee and DCPS while they're decrying the Stuyvesant whitewash.

Finally, let's look at the hypocrisy of the Post editorial writers, decrying what they allege is a culture of cheating and cover-up at Stuyvesant.

Given that the NY Post's parent company is embroiled in a scandal that stems from a culture of cheating (hacking into people's phones for stories, hacking into people's computers for stories, paying public officials for privileged info about people and using that info in stories, threatening to use damaging info against enemies) and a culture of cover-up (even Rupert Murdoch himself has admitted that News Corporation spent more time trying to make the hacking scandal go away than trying to fix it and right the wrongs done), it sees quite hypocritical for the Posties to write so indignantly about the harm done by the Stuyvesant cheating and cover-up.

After all, it seems to me that these kids who engaged in the cheating can grow up to be very successful businessmen or women, very successful hedge fund managers or Big Bank CEO's, real estate moguls, or even - gosh, we can only hope - journalists who work for ethically-challenged News Corporation.

And therein lies the crux of the hypocrisy in this story.

Even as we say we don't tolerate cheating as a culture, the fact of the matter is, we reward it constantly.

America is not some meritocracy where those who work the hardest and the longest, who are the most forward-thinking and most innovative, are the ones who rise to the top.

America is a kleptocracy where those who are the most ruthless, the least ethical, the most willing to act criminally are the ones who rise to the top.

We see this again and again - from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase to Michelle Rhee to Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, the most ruthless, the least ethical, the most selfish and (often) the most willing to engage in criminal acts survive and thrive while the rest of us who play by the rules get screwed again and again.

So really, those kids at Stuyvesant have learned the best lesson possible for them.

As members of the elite, they have cheated and gotten away with it.

Just as most members of the American elite cheat and get away with it.

Seems to me this lesson has simply reinforced the reality in 21st Century America.

Politico: Many Unions Tell Dems No On Convention Cash

Good for them:

The Democrats are hitting up unions — their go-to cash cows — for last-minute donations to help pay for next month’s convention in Charlotte.

The response from some big unions? Tough.

Union leaders insisted from the start that they wouldn’t help fill the piggy bank for this year’s Democratic National Convention after the party picked a labor-hostile location and at the same time made fundraising tougher by banning corporate contributions and capping individual donations. And with the event less than a month away, they’re sticking to their guns.

Labor unions aren’t slated to sponsor any official convention events, according to a recent convention itinerary obtained by POLITICO. Unions are also refusing to put up the money to back get-out-the-vote efforts they’ve funded in the past.

Heavy hitters like the AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers’ International Union of North America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers say they won’t be making big money contributions this year.

Other unions are toning down their convention involvement with many opting to send a few staffers to engage with union delegates. And some, like the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, have said they are sitting out entirely.

“[T]here was a general disappointment in the selection because of the non-union hotels, the non-union accommodations in North Carolina,” said Chuck Rocha, president of the union consulting firm Solidarity Strategies and former political director of the United Steelworkers union.

You can bet that if unions starve the cash-begging Dems this time around, they won't be taken for granted next time around.

This is still a lesson the AFT and the NEA have yet to learn.

That's why the NEA said yes to the anti-union Dems and gave $1.2 million for this convention.

What a disgrace.

Oh Mr. Obama, do you want our endorsement three years out and our hard earned cash for your convention, even though you've pushed a pro-privatization, pro-charter, pro-testing agenda that hurts our members and you're holding your convention in a right-to-work state that pisses on unionized workers?

Please please please can we give you cash as you abuse us!

Ugh.

But many of the other unions have learned their lesson - you abandon us, we abandon you:

One Democratic lobbyist said the reason unions aren’t reacting to the arm twisting is that the Democratic National Committee and the Obama administration haven’t laid the foundation for a good relationship.

“One of the greatest frustrations with this administration is how they treat members and everyone else. It’s sort of this attitude that they’ll come because they are Democrats,” the lobbyist said.

Indeed.

Now if only the co-dependents running the teachers unions could learn this lesson.