The State Board of Education got a look at results of teacher evaluations that showed that in 13 school districts, teachers are very, very good at helping children learn. In fact, nearly 97 percent of the 972 teachers evaluated in the 2008-09 school year were proficient, accomplished or distinguished.
Anyone who has been a public school teacher knows that most teacher observations and evaluations are a joke.
What do you know now that you wish someone had told you ten years ago?
That you should take every opportunity to go out dancing – your knees won’t last forever.
When's the last time you used profanity?
Profanity? Like Tabasco sauce, it’s useful to spice one’s rhetoric but ruinous if used promiscuously, dammit.
On what type of products do you never go cheap on, for the sake of quality?
Opera. If one is to see one of mankind’s greatest artistic concepts,
then one should ensure that neither one’s seeing or hearing is in any
way impaired. As others have said, there are no pockets in shrouds.
If you are not familiar with Fred or CEI, here is Politico's introduction:
CEI, which bills itself as “a free market public policy group,” has
helped establish itself as one of most notable global warming skeptics
and has remained a constant thorn in the side of former Vice President
Al Gore. (The Institute said “he distorts the evidence he cites” and
has been trying to schedule a debate with Gore for years.) Such CEI
projects as EnjoyBottledWater.org not only earn the organization press,
but also the ire of progressives.
Many conservatives, including Ron Paul and Steve Forbes, like Smith and
the work done by his group. (Smith founded CEI in 1984 after stints at
the Council for a Competitive Economy, the Association of American
Railroads and the Environmental Protection Agency.) And, well, Smith
likes himself, too. Why? The answer lies below, in POLITICO’s latest
“Answer This” interview.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education rejected every grant proposal submitted by a North Carolina school district, including Wake County. Some wanted to blame the rejection on the elimination of forced busing.
Today, Keung Hui of the News & Observer reports that the feds passed on Wake's application because one reviewer had a very specific concern,
Complaints that the Wake County school system wasn’t doing enough to address gender issues appears to have cost school leaders up to $10.3 million in federal money for the magnet school program.
Two of the three reviewers who looked at Wake’s application gave the school district perfect scores on how it would promote desegregation. But a third reviewer repeatedly complained that Wake’s application didn’t adequately deal with gender issues, giving a much lower score than the other two reviewers.
[snip]
The third reviewer’s frequent references about gender surprised David Ansbacher, Wake’s senior director of magnet programs. He said gender wasn’t one of the targets in the federal magnet grant.
Bill Carruthers, president of Grant Prose, a company that helps groups apply for grants, also said gender isn’t one of the goals of the grant. He said he didn’t mention gender at all in the successful magnet grant application he helped the Houston school system write this year.
In one response, Reviewer #3 wrote, "[The school system] consistently leaves out gender as a factor to differentiate when it comes to meeting the needs of all students. Race is too much of a factor. ..."
On the other hand, Reviewer #3 complimented the "strong school board."
In this Freeman article Wendy McElroy discusses the increasing likelihood of federal controls over the internet. It's not enough for politicians to disseminate their own propaganda about all the good they're doing for us; they also want to shut down the avenues by which people can blow the whistle on their continuing assaults on our liberty and property.
Most politicians pay lip service to freedom of speech, but many of them will gladly use governmental power to hinder speech they don't like. The more authoritarian the politician's agenda, the more apt he is to think that "the public interest" is served in silencing those who criticize him. The Obama regime has more people like that than any we have ever had.
Orange County voters will decide soon whether to allow county commissioners to raise the local sales tax.
John Locke Foundation researchers question the proposed $2.3 million tax hike. You'll find details here, and in the comments below from Michael Sanera.
Among the latest batch of opinions the N.C. Court of Appeals has released this morning:
A unanimous three-judge panel affirmed a lower-court ruling in favor of Franklinton, its police chief, and two police officers in a wrongful-death lawsuit connected with a 2007 high-speed chase that led to the deaths of a fleeing suspect and two passengers in an unrelated car.
A unanimous three-judge panel affirmed a lower-court ruling favoring Cary in a dispute over town "riparian buffer" requirements for a 108-acre tract owned by Cary Creek Limited Partnership.
A unanimous three-judge panel upheld the 16- to 20-year prison sentence for a man convicted of second-degree murder in a 2006 Johnston County case, rejecting Dennis Wayne Shaw's claim that the trial judge improperly weighed an aggravating factor in the case.
In affirming an Onslow County drug conviction, a unanimous three-judge panel ruled that a defendant could not claim that conversations with his wife were protected by the "marital privilege" if those conversations took place in a sheriff's office with clear signs of visual and audio surveillance.
Byron York's latest column for the Washington Examiner compares last weekend's "One Nation Working Together" rally with Glenn Beck's August "Restoring Honor" event at the same location:
The nation's biggest, richest and most powerful labor unions spent months organizing the "One Nation Working Together" rally at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday. With midterm elections approaching, they hoped to put on a show of political strength to energize struggling Democratic candidates. But even after giving it everything they had, they still weren't able to draw as many people as Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in August. Why not?
Because the labor movement is shrinking, aging and divided. Because the best program its leaders (and co-sponsors at the NAACP) could put together was one featuring Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Richard Trumka, Van Jones and Harry Belafonte. And because George W. Bush is no longer in the White House. Put those factors together, and Big Labor's big march fell flat.
In response to my Health Care Update (sign up here) on disappearing health care plans, I received a note from somebody who will lose her Medicare Advantage insurance plan on January 1, 2011. The company isn't leaving the market entirely, but is eliminating her plan.
While Medicare Advantage customers lose their existing plans and have to settle for fewer benefits, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports there will be 30 percent fewer choices for Medicare Part D prescription drug plans and those remaining plans will have average premium increases of 10 percent.
