Portland Press Herald: Activist renews call for Maine school merger repeal
(Waterville) Morning Sentinel: Merger fighter presses forward
(Augusta) Kennebec Journal: Consolidation repeal forces short on cash
Go figure!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The consolidation process has been borderline fraudulent from start to the present. There are no substantial savings. Many districts were de facto exempt, or put together sham AOS structures. You don’t need the Gordon Donaldson reports to tell you these things (though confirmation of one’s beliefs can be gratifying).
Now, there are no penalties.
Of course, this writer didn’t want to see districts (that is, taxpayers) penalized. The legislature and executive didn’t want a Tehran-like uprising on their hands either. So the expedient becomes a virtue, the pols show clemency, and the pro-consolidation side proclaims its mercy in victory.
Power continues to accrue to Augusta. It’s more important to be able to claim consolidation has worked than for it to have actually worked.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Human Sound Effects, Screams, Moans, etc
San Juan Parangaricutiro
Spitfire Manual 1936 onwards
Blender Defender
Bureau of Communication
Aquarium releases rarely seen prickly shark
The Exploding Federal Deficit
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Your Body Is a Wonderland … of Bacteria
Zeke Has March Madness (video)
Drama Button (wear headphones)
H. L. Mencken speaks
Air France Flight 447:A detailed meteorological analysis
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Justice Souter’s ‘Safe Place’, Washington Post, May 25, 2009
The retiring justice embarks on a civics education project.
The justice went on to lament how many Americans today do not grow up understanding even the most basic truths about U.S. democracy — that there are three branches of government, for example. This ignorance, he said, was “the most profoundly important fact” to emerge from O’Connor’s first seminars, because if people do not understand the divisions and limitations of power, they certainly will not defend the judiciary’s independence.
This led to a realization, he said, that “we had to start with the reeducation of a substantial part of the American population.” Recalling Benjamin Franklin’s oft-told admonition to a woman asking what the Founding Fathers had created — “a republic, madam, if you can keep it” — Souter said, somewhat gloomily, “It is being lost. It is lost if it is not understood.”
Is It Too Soon to Be Naming Schools After Obama?, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 31, 2009
On the renaming of the Webster School in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
There is no trace at all of Webster in the Obama Service Learning Elementary school today, not even a picture of Webster, who may have been the subject of more formal portraits of any man of his time, if not of all American history. Indeed, in the period leading up to the vote on the name change, the principal of the school, Lori Simon, actually had to figure out for whom the school was named originally.
Talk about a missed teaching moment. Webster was the greatest orator in the age of great oratory; some of his words remain in the American memory, even in this ahistorical age. He was probably the most eminent Supreme Court lawyer in American history, having argued 249 cases before the court, including several of the landmark cases of the early 19th century that shaped constitutional law in the United States for generations. And he was one of the greatest secretaries of state ever (and the first to serve non-consecutive terms, one under William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, another under Millard Fillmore).
“He achieved great distinction,” says Kenneth E. Shewmaker, editor of the “Diplomatic Papers of Daniel Webster.” “Barack Obama may have greater distinction because he had the chance to be president. A senator doesn’t have that kind of power, but if we understand his legacy, including his role in creating the sense of American nationalism, we wouldn’t wipe Webster’s name off our buildings.”
Say No to Universal Preschool, New York Post, May 31, 2009
Doesn’t work, says Checker Finn.
Much of the enormous public investment that we’re already making is ill-spent, at least if school readiness is the goal. The worst offender is the beloved Head Start program, which waves the “child development” banner while shunning the structured teaching and learning (e.g. shapes, colors, sounds, letters) that would truly assist kids to succeed in the early grades.
While advocates insist that many current programs are “low quality” — and I’ve seen some I wouldn’t want my little granddaughters in — they’ve failed to set and live by quality criteria tied to school readiness. Unlike K-12 education, which has been adjusting — painfully — to being judged by its results, the preschool world clings to “input” gauges (e.g. expenditures, adult-child ratios, teacher credentials).
Spitting in the eye of mainstream education, Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2009
At a charter school in Oakland, California: hard work, high scores. Oh yeah, it’s American Indian Public Charter.
Friday, June 5, 2009
