BEN CARSON SEES BULLIES EVERYWHERE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hes-already-a-famous-surgeon-and-author-so-why-is-ben-carson-toying-with-a-longshot-presidential-bid/2014/08/28/dc183400-2e5e-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html

He’s already a famous surgeon and author, so why is Ben Carson toying with a longshot presidential bid?

Ben Carson, a surgeon and bestselling author, receives applause after speaking Monday at a Republican fundraiser at the Marriott in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Scott Morgan/For The Washington Post)

DES MOINES — Ben Carson sees bullies everywhere.

Maybe that’s what happens after years of being walloped by stronger kids, and ridiculed by the smarter ones at his inner-city schools in Boston and Detroit.

The bullying is central to the stories Carson tells about himself. Onstage here today in Iowa, where all presidential campaigns begin, he starts with a tale about studying hard enough to best his tormentors.

“I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class, much to the consternation of the students who called me ‘dummy,’ ” he says with a grin. “Now they were coming and saying, ‘Benny, Benny, come help me with this problem.’ I’d say, ‘Come sit at my feet while I instruct you, youngster.’ I was perhaps a little obnoxious, but it sure felt good to say that to those turkeys.”

Fifty years, a pioneering career as a pediatric neurosurgeon and six best-selling books later, Carson, 62, gleefully recites this story as though it happened yesterday.

But he didn’t come to Iowa just to tell his parable about schoolyard jerks. He’s inside this meeting hall, before a sellout crowd of nearly 400 people at the Polk County Republicans’ end-of-summer fundraiser, to discuss bullies of a different order. He wants to talk about the “secular progressives” in the news media, politics and academia who will stop at nothing to change the nation as we know it. He also wants to do this in Iowa, while raising money for local Republicans, coinciding with the start of his new PAC, which will “lay the groundwork” should he decide to run for president.

“The vast majority of people in this country actually have common sense; the problem is they’ve been beaten into submission,” Carson says, standing onstage between two mounted moose heads and beneath a series of chandeliers made of antlers. He speaks softly, almost as though he’s reading a child to sleep. But this is a scary story. If Republicans don’t win back the Senate in November, he says, he can’t be sure “there will even be an election in 2016.” Later, his wife, Candy, tells a supporter that they are holding on to their son’s Australian passport just in case the election doesn’t go their way.

“Bullies do whatever they can get away with and keep pushing boundaries until they meet resistance,” he writes in his new book, “One Nation” — one part memoir, one part political tome and one part tactical field guild for dealing with oppressors. “It is the people’s job to stop them before they become uncontrollable.”

It’s the perfect message for people who feel like the government is pushing them around. Carson’s experience — of growing up poor and black, thinking he might not make it past his 25th birthday and going on to become a world-class surgeon — may be unusual here in Polk County, but his feelings of being disrespected are universal.

His views seem to resonate in particular with evangelicals. And, for people who fear they will be pilloried by the “PC police” for speaking their minds on same-sex marriage, or how black voters are bought off by “goodies” from Democrats, or how President Obama’s health-care law is akin to slavery, Carson is a godsend. He isn’t afraid to say any of these things.

Fox news contributor Ben Carson compared the Affordable Care Act to slavery at the Values Voters' Summit Friday, saying, "It was never about health care; it was about control." (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

It started in February 2013 when he confronted bully numero uno. Speaking just feet away from Obama at the National Prayer breakfast, Carson gave a blistering critique of the Affordable Care Act. Then, as he describes it in an interview, “everything exploded.” The next day, the Wall Street Journal ran a column titled, “Ben Carson for President.” This gave birth to the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee, which has raised $8.7 million (as of July, Ready for Hillary had raised about $8.25 million). His new book will be No. 1 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list next week (he loves pointing out how much better it’s doing than Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “Hard Choices,” No. 6 on the same list).

Carson says that at the time of the prayer breakfast, he was planning a relaxing retirement. He even bought an organ with designs on honing his musical skills and spending his days away from “The People’s Republic of Maryland,” as he calls it, in sunny Florida.

He did retire from surgery last year, but his retirement plans changed.

“Sometimes I realize there are forces greater than me,” he says. “I am an instrument that’s being used to help restore this country.”

Last week, he took his “One Nation” tour into the politically important state of Iowa, where, in addition to signing books in various Barnes and Noble stores, he headlined three Republican fundraisers. (Carson, however, does not identify himself as a Republican, saying he wishes there were a “Logic Party” he could join.) He entered the state Sunday saying he was thinking about running and left his final crowd Monday night saying, “There’s a strong chance that [he] will.”

Jeremiah Ndiaye, 10, of Cedar Rapids, waits with other Carson supporters for a book signing at a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Cedar Rapids. (Scott Morgan/For The Washington Post)

Carson ends this speech in Des Moines to chants of “Run, Ben, run!” Sherill Whisenand, co-chairman of the Polk County Republican Central Committee, makes an announcement over the loudspeaker that Carson has won the group’s presidential straw poll, with 62 percent of the vote.

“In this room tonight, I can probably count on both hands the amount of regular people that come to most meetings,” Whisenand says later. “These are new people we’ve never met. . . . He’s clearly reaching people who aren’t always part of the process.”

In Des Moines, a man who used to drive a limo for Carson in Baltimore showed up because he always has admired him. “He doesn’t see color because all he knows is the inside of a brain,” he says. In Davenport, a black physician who grew up in inner-city Chicago says no other politician has come as close to representing him in terms of background and principles. In Cedar Rapids, a woman named Rebecca Stone drove from Chicago in a rainstorm, arriving at a Barnes and Noble three hours early, and nearly burst into tears when she met him. “His story is just so remarkable. I know he would be an incredible president,” she says in the parking lot, clutching an autographed copy of his book.

Las Vegas oddsmakers wouldn’t recommend putting a big bet on Carson’s presidential chances. Even his friends give him the nickname “Long shot.” But Stone is right about one thing: His story, which he recounts in his book “Gifted Hands,” is remarkable.

Carson’s mother was one of 24 children, got married when she was 13 and divorced when she found out that her husband had more than one family. The combination of growing up poor, having a broken family and facing constant bullying from classmates made Carson a tinderbox of a child. Once, he tried to stab his friend in the gut, only to have his knife break off on his buddy’s belt buckle.

As he tells it, he locked himself in a bathroom afterward and prayed to God for the ability to control his temper. It worked. His mother told him to stop watching television and to read more, and just like that he became a better student. He attended Yale, got his medical degree at the University of Michigan, at 33 became the youngest director of a major division in the history of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital as head of pediatric surgery, and rose to worldwide fame as the first surgeon to separate twins conjoined at the head (note: His middle name is Solomon, perhaps the first person ever to consider dividing a baby).

When “Gifted Hands” was published in 1990, the Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote a blurb on the back calling Carson “a model to all the youth of today.” Carson became so famous that when the Farrelly brothers made the 2003 comedy “Stuck on You” about conjoined twins, they asked him to make a cameo. He agreed to do it only if the movie premiere was held in Baltimore. For that day, Charm City felt like Hollywood. Here’s how broad his appeal was, politically speaking: He said in an interview this week that he turned down offers from George W. Bush and Obama (in 2009) to become surgeon general. He said that he found the job too ceremonial and that it wasn’t worth the pay cut.

If it all sounds like a made-for-TV movie, that’s because it is. Cuba Gooding Jr. played Carson.

It’s easy for people to say there are two Ben Carsons: the one who wrote the inspirational “Gifted Hands” and the one who is jumping into the political arena with both feet. Carson says that anyone who reads his past works can see that he’s writing about the same stuff as always: the importance of self-reliance, education and standing up to those trying to bring you down.

“Go back and read my books, they are exactly the same things,” he says in an interview at the Cedar Rapids Marriott after his second Republican fundraiser. He squints through his rectangular glasses, talks slowly and flashes an easygoing smirk. “But now, because they’ve classified you as a sellout or Uncle Tom, then all the things that they praised you about before they’ll say, ‘No, we can’t hear that, that’s not right.’ ”

That’s one way to look at it. Another is that Carson has upped the tenor of his language, daring people to criticize him so he can shoot them down as nothing more than bullies trying to silence him.

Since the Prayer Breakfast, Carson has been in the news for saying the health-care law is “the worst thing to happen in this nation since slavery,” for seeming to compare same-sex marriage to bestiality, and for saying that “America is very much like Nazi Germany.”

Does he worry that perhaps comparing Obama supporters to Nazi sympathizers may sound like something a bully might do?

“You can’t dance around it,” he says. “If people look at what I said and were not political about it, they’d have to agree. Most people in Germany didn’t agree with what Hitler was doing. . . . Exactly the same thing can happen in this country if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in.” So stand up he does, citing Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry along the way. He wants his only regret to be that he has but one life to give. Or at least give him sound bite or give him death.

For there he is with a new contract on Fox News Channel and a column in the Washington Times. There he is on television debating Jesse Jackson about the recent killing in Ferguson, Mo., saying that a white police officer’s fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown, who was black, had “nothing to do with race.” There he is on Bill O’Reilly’s show saying sure, he doesn’t have political experience, but he didn’t have experience separating conjoined twins when he did it for the first time. And this weekend, he’ll be in Texas at a summit for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity.

“If he can do all those things he did as a surgeon, I promise you he can figure out our immigration system and reduce the deficit,” says John Philip Sousa IV, who in addition to being the famous composer’s great-grandson also started the Draft Ben Carson PAC.

Even Carson can’t pretend that he isn’t excited about being back out there scrapping with people who want to see him fail.

“I have to admit that it’s heady stuff,” he says. “You pull up to a bookstore and there are 500, 1,000 people there. I walk in and everyone starts applauding and chanting, ‘Run, Ben, run!’ It’s everywhere I go, and it makes me realize how important it is to keep going.”

Can he become president? Probably not. But man, it will feel good for him to give it to those turkeys if he proves everyone wrong.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the fundraising total for the Ready for Hillary PAC. This version has been updated.

Barack Obama: Incompetent or Complicit – You Decide

http://www.lady-patriots.com/barack-obama-incompetent-or-complicit-you-decide/

Barack Obama: Incompetent or Complicit – You Decide

Since Barack Obama took office in 2009, he has been working secretly and openly to bring about Muslim conquest across the world. Every action he has taken since he has had the reins of power has brought us one step closer to his ultimate goal: world jihad. At least, that’s what it appears like to anyone with an open mind, willing to look at all the facts.

On the other hand, one could say that maybe he really is as incompetent as he appears to be so often. The few times he is willing to answer questions from the media he gets a distance look in his eyes as if he is grasping for answers to their burdensome questions. Without his teleprompter he can’t remember basic details about America, like how many states there are. Pay attention to his face in this video when he tells us that he has no strategy to deal with ISIS. He truly looks like a man way over his head, drowning in a sea of crisis, most of which he helped create.

Watch the short video, “Barack Obama: Incompetent or Complicit?”–and you decide.

 

RESEARCH: Crystallized Knowledge and Fluid Cognitive Skills

Crystallized knowledge comprises acquired knowledge such as vocabulary and arithmetic, while fluid skills are the abstract-reasoning capabilities needed to solve novel problems (such as the ability to identify patterns and make extrapolations) independent of how much factual knowledge has been acquired."

http://educationnext.org/what-effective-schools-do-cognitive-achievement/

What Effective Schools Do

Arguably, the most important development in K–12 education over the past decade has been the emergence of a growing number of urban schools that have been convincingly shown to have dramatic positive effects on the achievement of disadvantaged students. Those with the strongest evidence of success are oversubscribed charter schools. These schools hold admissions lotteries, which enable researchers to compare the subsequent test-score performance of students who enroll to that of similar students not given the same opportunity. Through careful study of the most effective of these charter schools, researchers have identified common practices—a longer school day and year, regular coaching to improve teacher performance, routine use of data to inform instruction, a culture of high expectations—that have yielded promising results when replicated in district schools.

We have only a limited understanding of how these practices translate into higher academic achievement, however. It may be that attending a school that employs them enhances those basic cognitive skills—such as processing speed, working memory, and reasoning—that research in psychological science has shown contribute to success in the classroom and later in life. Do schools that succeed in raising test scores do so by improving their students’ underlying cognitive capacities? Or do effective schools help their students achieve at higher levels than would be predicted based on measures of cognitive ability alone?

To address this question, we draw on unique data from a sample of more than 1,300 8th graders attending 32 public schools in Boston, including traditional public schools, exam schools that admit only the city’s most academically talented students, and charter schools. In addition to the state test scores typically used by education researchers, we also gathered several measures of the cognitive abilities psychologists refer to as fluid cognitive skills. Our data confirm that the latter are powerful predictors of students’ academic performance as measured by standardized tests.

Yet while the schools in our sample vary widely in their success in raising test scores, with oversubscribed charter schools in particular demonstrating clear positive results, we find that attending a school that produces strong test-score gains does not improve students’ fluid cognitive skills. Put differently, our evidence indicates that effective schools help their students achieve at higher levels than expected based on their fluid cognitive skills. It also suggests that developing school-based strategies to raise those skills could be an important next step in helping schools to provide even greater benefits for their students.

Crystallized Knowledge and Fluid Cognitive Skills

Despite decades of relying on standardized test scores to assess and guide education policy and practice, surprisingly little work has been done to connect these measures of learning with the measures developed over a century of research by cognitive psychologists studying individual differences in cognition. Psychologists now consider cognitive ability (few dare say “intelligence” anymore) to have two primary components: crystallized knowledge and fluid cognitive skills. Crystallized knowledge comprises acquired knowledge such as vocabulary and arithmetic, while fluid skills are the abstract-reasoning capabilities needed to solve novel problems (such as the ability to identify patterns and make extrapolations) independent of how much factual knowledge has been acquired. The terms were coined by the late psychologist Raymond Cattell, who first distinguished two types of intelligence. Cattell noted that one “has the ‘fluid’ quality of being directable at almost any problem,” while the other “is invested in particular areas of crystallized skills which can be upset individually without affecting others.”

Hundreds of studies show that, at any point in time, the two are highly correlated: people with strong fluid cognitive skills are at an advantage when it comes to accumulating the kinds of crystallized knowledge assessed by most standardized tests.

That these capabilities are nonetheless distinct is best illustrated by the fact that fluid cognitive skills decline with age starting even in one’s twenties, while crystallized knowledge tends to rise over the decades, in some cases peaking as late as one’s seventies. In an influential 2002 study involving people ages 20 to 92, University of Texas at Dallas psychologist Denise Park and colleagues found that the fluid cognitive skills of participants in their twenties exceeded those of participants in their seventies by as much as 1.5 standard deviations. In other words, more than 90 percent of participants in their twenties had higher fluid cognitive skills than did typical participants in their seventies. Those in their seventies nonetheless scored higher than participants in any other age range on tests of vocabulary, a key component of crystallized knowledge.

At a more fine-grained level, cognitive psychologists have identified multiple aspects of fluid cognition, including processing speed (how efficiently information can be processed), working memory (how much information can be simultaneously processed and maintained in mind), and fluid reasoning (how well novel problems can be solved). Longitudinal studies tracking individuals from late childhood through young adulthood indicate that gains in processing speed support gains in working memory capacity that, in turn, support fluid reasoning. Each of these abilities has been shown to be associated with academic performance, suggesting that they promote or constrain learning in school.

The strength of the relationship between fluid cognitive skills and academic performance also suggests that schools that are particularly effective in improving standardized test scores may do so by improving fluid cognition along one or more of these dimensions. This is what our research sought to explore.

Data and Sample

We gathered the data for our study during the spring of 2011 from 32 of the 49 public schools in Boston that serve 8th-grade students. The schools that agreed to participate in the study included 22 open-enrollment district schools, five oversubscribed charter schools, two exam schools to which students are admitted based on their grades and standardized test scores, and three charter schools that were not oversubscribed at the time the 8th-grade students in our study were admitted. Boston’s oversubscribed charter schools are of particular interest, as multiple studies have exploited the lottery admissions process to document the schools’ effectiveness in raising student test scores (see “Boston and the Charter School Cap,” features, Winter 2014).

Within those schools, we collected data on all students for whom we obtained parental consent for participation and who were in attendance on the day we collected data. These 1,367 students represent 43 percent of all 8th-grade students attending public schools in Boston and 64 percent of the students in participating schools. Seventy-seven percent of the students in our sample are from low-income families, 38 percent are African American, and 39 percent are Hispanic, in each case closely matching the demographic composition of all 8th-grade students attending public schools in the city and 8th graders attending the same schools.

The fluid cognitive skills we measured for each student included processing speed, working memory, and fluid reasoning. For processing speed, students were asked to translate numbers into corresponding symbols using a number-symbol key, and to indicate as quickly as possible under a time constraint whether either of two symbols on the left side of a page matched any of five symbols on the right side. For working memory, students viewed an array of blue circles, blue triangles, and red circles, and were instructed to count the number of blue circles within 4.5 seconds. After viewing between one and six arrays, they were prompted to record the number of blue circles contained in each. Finally, the fluid-reasoning task required students to choose which of six pictures completed the missing piece of a series of puzzles that became progressively more difficult. Because these three measures are closely related in theory and were positively correlated among the students in our sample, we also averaged them to create a summary measure of students’ fluid cognitive ability.

Fluid Cognitive Skills Predict Test Scores

Our first step is to examine the relationship between our measures of fluid cognitive skills and scores from the state’s standardized tests. We look at the students’ scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests in math and reading (ELA) and improvements in those test scores over time. We use simple correlation coefficients to measure the strength of the relationship between fluid cognitive skills and test scores. Correlation coefficients can range from -1 to 1, with a correlation of 0 indicating that there is no linear relationship between the two variables in question.

The correlations between our measures of fluid cognitive skills and 8th-grade math test scores are positive and statistically significant, ranging from 0.27 for working memory to 0.53 for fluid reasoning. The correlation between math test scores and our summary measure of fluid cognitive ability is 0.58, which implies that differences in fluid cognitive skills can account for more than one-third of the total variation in math achievement. The relationships are somewhat weaker for test scores in reading. Even so, variation in our summary measure of fluid cognitive ability can explain as much as 16 percent of the total variation in reading achievement.

Fluid cognitive skills are also related to the rate at which students improve their test-score performance over time. To measure gains in student achievement, we calculate the difference between 8th-grade performance in each subject and the performance level that would have been expected based on performance in both subjects in 4th grade. The correlations between our summary measure of fluid cognitive ability and test-score gains in math and reading were 0.32 and 0.18, respectively.

A high degree of correlation between measures of fluid cognitive skills and test scores is not news. As noted above, fluid cognitive ability has a long track record of predicting how much students know and are able to do. Our findings do suggest, however, that the specific measures of fluid cognitive skills we administered in classrooms as part our research were able to capture academically relevant differences in student cognition.

Schools Improve Test Scores but Not Fluid Skills

We address our central question of whether schools that raise student test scores also improve fluid cognitive skills in two complementary ways. First, we use our entire sample to analyze the extent to which the schools that students attend can explain the overall variation in student test scores and fluid cognitive skills, controlling for differences in prior achievement and student demographic characteristics (including gender, age, race/ethnicity, and whether the student is from a low-income family, is an English language learner, or is enrolled in special education). Second, we focus on the subset of students who entered the admissions lottery at one of the five oversubscribed charter schools in order to study how attending one of those schools affected test scores and fluid cognitive skills.

Consistent with other research on school effects, we find that the school a student attends can explain a substantial share of the overall variation in test scores: that single factor explains 34 percent of the variation in math scores and 24 percent of the variation for reading. In contrast, after accounting for prior achievement and demographics, the school attended explains just 2.3 percent of our summary measure of fluid cognitive ability.

This pattern suggests that schools may influence students’ test scores but not by affecting their fluid cognitive skills. However, this analysis does not account for the possible sorting of students into particular schools based on characteristics not captured by their prior achievement and demographic characteristics. Such “selection effects” could in theory account for the apparent school impacts on test scores, or even the apparent absence of impacts on fluid cognitive skills.

Our second analysis aims to address this concern. Because the oversubscribed charter schools in our sample admit students via random lotteries, comparing the outcomes of lottery winners (most of whom enrolled in a charter school) and lottery losers (most of whom did not) is akin to a randomized-control trial of the kind often used in medical research. Evaluations led by Harvard’s Tom Kane and MIT’s Josh Angrist have used this lottery-based method to convince most skeptics that the impressive test-score performance of the Boston charter sector reflects real differences in school quality rather than the types of students charter schools serve.

Due to the limited coverage of our sample, we cannot claim for our analysis the same level of rigor as these previous lottery-based evaluations. Of the roughly 700 applicants for the lotteries used to admit students in the 8th-grade cohort in our study, only 200 of them are in our evaluation sample. Focusing on lottery applicants is nonetheless useful because it enables us to hold constant whatever unmeasured differences lead some students to apply for a seat in a charter school and others to remain within the district. When comparing lottery winners and losers, we also control for prior achievement and the same set of demographic characteristics used in our broader analysis. We use standard methods to account for the fact that not all lottery winners enrolled in a charter school and remained there throughout middle school (and some lottery losers eventually obtained a seat). This approach enables us to generate estimates of the effect of each additional year of actual attendance at a charter school between 5th and 8th grade.

Our results show that each year of attendance at an oversubscribed Boston charter school increases the math test scores of students in our sample by 13 percent of a standard deviation. This is a noteworthy effect, equivalent to roughly a 50 percent increase in the academic progress students typically make in a school year (see Figure 1). Charter school attendance also appears to have a modest positive effect on reading scores, though this estimate falls short of statistical significance due to the relatively small number of students in our lottery sample. Even as students benefit academically, however, their fluid cognitive skills hardly budge. The estimated effect of charter school attendance for each of our measures is very small in magnitude; none is statistically significant.

Are Test-Score Gains “Real”?

There is ample reason to believe that the test-score gains generated by these schools are meaningful, despite the lack of corresponding improvement in fluid cognition. State tests are aligned to standards that specify the knowledge and capabilities students are expected to acquire—the very things cognitive psychologists call crystallized knowledge. And there is strong evidence that crystallized knowledge, which also bears a strong resemblance to E. D. Hirsch’s notion of Core Knowledge, matters a great deal for success in school and beyond. Recent studies by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues confirm that teachers who improve student test scores also improve their students’ earnings as adults (see “Great Teaching,” research, Summer 2012). Moreover, lottery-based evaluations of the Boston charter sector show that attending high schools affiliated with three of the charter schools in our sample increases Advanced Placement test-taking and performance and the likelihood of attending a four-year college.

Indeed, in our view, the unique data we gathered for this study make these schools’ accomplishments all the more impressive. They show that the schools that are most effective in raising student test scores do so in spite of the strength of the underlying relationship between math achievement and fluid cognitive skills. In other words, these schools have figured out ways to raise students’ academic achievement well above what is expected given the students’ baseline fluid cognitive skills.

A compelling way to see this is to look at the relationship across schools between the average test-score gain students make between the 4th and 8th grade and our summary measure of their students’ fluid cognitive ability at the end of that period (see Figure 2). Each dot represents a school, and the diagonal line shows the overall relationship between test-score gains and fluid cognitive ability across the full sample of schools. The extent to which a school is above or below that line indicates whether the average test-score improvement among its students has been greater or less than would be predicted based on their fluid cognitive skills.

Most schools fall relatively close to the regression line, indicating that their students’ academic progress is roughly as expected given the students’ fluid cognitive skills, but there are clear exceptions. Most notably, each of the five oversubscribed charter schools is well above the regression line. A few open-enrollment district schools also show the ability to drive similarly outsized gains, an important reminder that while governance matters, what counts in the end is effective practice. Finally, while exam-school students have considerably higher fluid cognitive skills (as would be expected of students who gain admission via test scores and grades), attending one of these locally renowned schools in the company of other bright students confers no systematic advantage. This last finding is consistent with recent evidence showing no academic benefits of attending a Boston or New York City exam school for students who just met the admissions criteria (see “Exam Schools from the Inside,” features, Fall 2012).

What do these differences in school performance mean in layman’s terms? Among students who fell below the midway point on our summary measure of fluid cognitive ability, only 20 percent of those attending a district school were deemed proficient in math as defined by Massachusetts on its 8th-grade math test. In oversubscribed charter schools, 71 percent of such students were deemed proficient. This is a remarkable difference for students who rank lower than their peers on a key enabling capacity. For district students, success is the rare exception (2 in 10), while for oversubscribed charter school students, it is closer to the rule (7 out of 10).

At the same time, fluid cognitive skills remain potent predictors of academic progress even among students attending oversubscribed charter schools. While these schools succeed in generating test-score gains for students of all cognitive abilities, it is still the case that students with strong fluid cognitive skills learn more. Indeed, the strength of the correlation between fluid cognitive skills and test-score growth in oversubscribed charter schools is statistically indistinguishable from the correlations we observe among students in open-enrollment district schools and exam schools.

Could Schools Boost Fluid Cognitive Skills, Too?

Our research sought to examine whether schools that have demonstrated success in raising test scores also boost students’ fluid cognitive skills—either as a byproduct or perhaps as a principal pathway for improvements in test scores. That turns out not to be the case. This result does not, in our view, call into question the value of the improvements in crystallized knowledge captured by improvements in test scores.

What we do not yet know, however, is which long-term outcomes are more strongly influenced by fluid cognitive skills and which by crystallized knowledge. One reason is that, as we see in our study sample, fluid cognitive skills and crystallized knowledge tend to be highly correlated. In fact, it may be accurate to say that schools like the most effective schools in our study may be the first to produce students for whom these two types of cognitive ability are consistently decoupled, providing an opportunity to study just which kinds of outcomes are enabled by gains in crystallized knowledge alone. For example, it is possible that the oft-discussed challenges some students from high-performing urban schools experience in college (see “‘No Excuses’ Kids Go to College,” features, Spring 2013) stem in part from deficits in fluid cognitive skills.

Indeed, perhaps the most important implication that we draw is that educators seeking to innovate should get about the business of developing and rigorously testing the effects of interventions to raise these fluid cognitive skills. Improved abstract-reasoning capacity likely has important benefits in its own right and is highly related to important skills such as reading comprehension. Deficits in students’ fluid cognitive skills may also prevent even the most effective schools from raising all of their students’ academic performance to the desired level.

The question of whether processing speed, working memory, and fluid reasoning skills can be developed through intentional efforts is an area of active debate among cognitive psychologists. Several researchers have published studies claiming that they have improved these skills through deliberate practice aimed at one or more of these skills and, in a few cases, have shown that such improvements have translated into gains in other, broader measures of cognitive ability. None of these interventions has yet been shown to improve long-term outcomes such as college completion or earnings, however, and other researchers have failed to replicate even the narrower impacts that have been reported. Meanwhile, private companies such as Lumosity are aggressively marketing software-based training programs derived from this line of research to the general public as “brain training.”

This is a perfect time for cognitive psychologists, educators, and perhaps even game and software developers to join forces in rapid-cycle experimentation to explore whether and how schools can broadly and permanently raise students’ fluid cognitive skills. Successful schools have demonstrated their ability to dramatically increase crystallized knowledge and thereby raise test scores, improving other important student outcomes in the process. Boosting fluid cognitive skills might have an equally profound impact on students’ academic and life outcomes.

Martin West is an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and deputy director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School. Christopher Gabrieli is adjunct lecturer at HGSE and executive chairman of the National Center on Time & Learning. Matthew Kraft is assistant professor of education at Brown University. Amy Finn is a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where John Gabrieli is professor of health sciences and technology and cognitive neuroscience.

This article is based on a study published in the March 2014 issue of Psychological Science.

COMMON CORD NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ibKP6vNw0H-o3Hi2As4vjNWoyZP9NFhi85Jpi2rlCxc/pub

Barge email Aug 29, 2014 Sent to School Superintendents

From: John Barge [JohnBarge@doe.k12.ga.us]

Sent: Friday, August 29, 2014 10:14 AM

Subject: Encouraging News from US ED

To :  Superintendents

During the past several months many of you have spoken to me about the increasing demands on teachers and schools as they work diligently to implement the variety of educational initiatives and reforms in which we are engaged.  You have communicated to me that you understand and support the reforms and that you have confidence that they will make a difference for Georgia’s students.  The issue I continue to hear is that the timeline for full implementation of the reform efforts has converged and that you are concerned that rushing these initiatives may have a detrimental effect on the quality of the final implementation.  Requiring more rigorous standards, administering high-quality assessments, and implementing teacher evaluations that include student growth are all extremely important and we remain committed to each of them.

I want to assure you that I have heard your concerns and agree with you that we are working on the right work and that the reforms are important.  I also understand the benefits of being able to have more time for implementation.  As many of you are aware, Secretary Arne Duncan announced this week that the U. S. Department of Education has also heard from many educators that the pace of the implementation of so many reforms on such an aggressive timeline will hinder us from receiving the ultimate benefit. He agrees that we must allow time for proper and thoughtful implementation. He has stated that the U. S. Department of Education will begin the process of providing additional flexibility to the ESEA waiver timeline which requires the use of student growth measures to be included in teacher evaluation high-stakes decisions.  We are awaiting the guidance document from the U. S. Department of Education.  When we receive the guidance, Georgia will actively seek the timeline flexibility to which Secretary Duncan referred, and we will share the details of that flexibility as soon as possible.  This, in no way, lessens our commitment to the important reform agenda we, as a State, and you, at the district level, have set for Georgia, but would allow a more reasonable timeline for full implementation.  Our first priority is to do the work well and to ensure sustainable results, even if that means timelines must be extended.

Thank you for your continued efforts in moving Georgia forward in student achievement!

John D. Barge, Ed. D

State School Superintendent

Georgia Department of Education

2066 Twin Tower East

205 Jesse Hill Jr. Drive

Atlanta, GA 30334

(404) 657-1175 - Office

(404) 651-8737 – Fax

jbarge@doe.k12.ga.us<mailto:jbarge@doe.k12.ga.us>

http://gadoe.org%3chttp//gadoe.org/%3E

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"Making Education Work for All Georgians"

"I have a plan to destroy America" — by Richard D. Lamm

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/02/09/i-have-a-plan-to-destroy-america-by-richard-d-lamm/

"I have a plan to destroy America" — by Richard D. Lamm

Dick Lamm (left); Mike McGarry of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (center) and me, Jan. 8, 2003, Denver, Colorado.

I have had the pleasure of speaking and debating alongside former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm. In Colorado five years ago, we took on an open-borders contingent that was pushing for the illegal alien ID card known as the matricula consular (which I’ve blogged about extensively here.) He’s a true maverick–a Democrat who has long presaged the self-destructive impact of open borders. In 2004, Dick Lamm gave a now-famous speech at one of the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s conferences. The incisive speech, “I have a plan to destroy America,” went viral. I still have at least one or two readers e-mailing it to me every week. I’m reprinting it today.

It’s more timely than ever as the differences between the two major political parties on these fundamental issues blurs and as open-borders activists on both sides of the aisle work to marginalize critics and redefine all dissent as “hate.” You will not, after reading and digesting Lamm’s speech, feel like “calming down.”

***
I have a plan to destroy America
by Richard D. Lamm

I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white bread, too self-satisfied, too rich, let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that “an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.” Here is my plan:

1. We must first make America a bilingual-bicultural country. History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset, put it this way: “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

2. I would then invent “multiculturalism” and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal: that there are no cultural differences that are important. I would declare it an article of faith that the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out-of-bounds.

3. We can make the United States a “Hispanic Quebec” without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently, “The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved, not by tolerance, but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically, and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.” I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl metaphor. It is important to insure that we have various cultural sub-groups living in America reinforcing their differences, rather than Americans emphasizing their similarities.

4. Having done all this, I would make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50 percent dropout rate from school.

5. I would then get the big foundations and big business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of victimology. I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was all the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.

6. I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would “celebrate diversity.” “Diversity” is a wonderfully seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other–that is, when they are not killing each other. A “diverse,” peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together, and we can take advantage of this myopia.

Look at the ancient Greeks. Dorf’s “World History” tells us: “The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games in honor of Zeus, and all Greeks venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet, all of these bonds together were not strong enough to overcome two factors … (local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions …)” If we can put the emphasis on the “pluribus,” instead of the “unum,” we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo.

7. Then I would place all these subjects off-limits–make it taboo to talk about. I would find a word similar to “heretic” in the 16th century that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like “racist”, “xenophobe” halt argument and conversation. Having made America a bilingual-bicultural country, having established multiculturalism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of “victimology,” I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra –”because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good.” I would make every individual immigrant sympatric and ignore the cumulative impact.

8. Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis Hanson’s book “Mexifornia” –this book is dangerous; it exposes my plan to destroy America. So please, please–if you feel that America deserves to be destroyed–please, please–don’t buy this book! This guy is on to my plan.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” –Noam Chomsky, American linguist and U.S. media and foreign policy critic.

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A Christian Genocide Symbolized by One Letter

http://m.nationalreview.com/article/383493/christian-genocide-symbolized-one-letter-christine-sisto

A Christian Genocide Symbolized by One Letter - National Review Online

There is a mass exodus of Christians from the Iraqi city of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. The Muslim fanatics who have taken over the city, calling themselves the Islamic State, issued an ultimatum to the city’s Christians earlier this month, saying that if they did not leave by Saturday, July 19, they “must convert to Islam, pay a fine, or face ‘death by the sword.’” As of Tuesday, most of the city’s estimated 3,000 Christians had fled.

Further, the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, had marked homes and businesses owned by Christians with a red, painted ن (pronounced “noon”), the 14th letter of the Arabic alphabet and the equivalent to the Roman letter N. The ن stands for Nasara or Nazarenes, a pejorative Arabic word for Christians.

The ن is now being shared on social media as a symbol of solidarity with the Iraqi Christians forced to flee their homes. The Catholic blog Rorate Caeli has wrote, the Islamists “mean it as a mark of shame, we must then wear it as a mark of hope. . . . You may kill our brethren and expel them but we Christians will never go away.”

The hashtag #WeAreN is also trending, along with pictures of people of all religions drawing the ن in red ink on their bodies.

When asked why he changed his profile picture to the ن, political consultant Ryan Girdusky said, “I changed it because of the lack of response by our media and our president . . . We feel like the Christian community is being persecuted at the same time the Palestinians are being given constant attention. There is a Christian genocide and no one is paying attention.”

The mass exodus has incited international criticism, even from Muslim scholars. Al Jazeera quoted Iyad Ameen Madani, the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as saying, “This forced displacement is a crime that cannot be tolerated.” Yesterday, the United Nations’ secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, said that the treatment of Iraqi Christians “may constitute a crime against humanity.” He also “condemned” ISIS’s actions “in the strongest terms.”

Mosul has played a role in Christian history since the first and second centuries, when the Assyrians in the city converted to Christianity. It is the home to many churches, as well as mosques and synagogues. Al Jazeera described, via an Assyrian Christian who chose to stay behind, how a statue of the Virgin Mary outside of one of Mosul’s churches was destroyed and replaced with a black flag. This Christian is one of the last left in Mosul, as most others have fled, many leaving with only the clothes on their backs.

— Christine Sisto is an editorial associate at National Review Online.

Sent from my iPhone

A New Kind of Problem: The Common Core Math Standards

http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/a-new-kind-of-problem-the-common-core-math-standards/265444/

A New Kind of Problem: The Common Core Math Standards

A set of guidelines adopted by 45 states this year may turn children into "little mathematicians" who don't know how to do actual math.

zhu difeng/shutterstock

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for TheAtlantic.com describing some of the problems with how math is currently being taught. Specifically, some math programs strive to teach students to think like "little mathematicians" before giving them the analytic tools they need to actually solve problems. 

Some of us had hoped the situation would improve this school year, as 45 states and the District Columbia adopted the new Common Core Standards. But here are two discouraging emails I received recently. The first was from a parent:

They implemented Common Core this year in our school system in Tennessee. I have a third grader who loved math and got A's in math until this year, where he struggles to get a C. He struggles with "explaining" how he got his answer after using "mental math." In fact, I had no idea how to explain it! It's math 2+2=4. I can't explain it, it just is.

The second email came from a teacher in another state:

I am teaching the traditional algorithm this year to my third graders, but was told next year with Common Core I will not be allowed to. They should use mental math, and other strategies, to add. Crazy! I am so outraged that I have decided my child is NOT going to public schools until Common Core falls flat.

So just what are the Common Core Standards for math? They are a set of guidelines written for both math and English language arts under the auspices of National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Where they are adopted, the Common Core standards will replace state standards in these subject areas, establishing more common ground for schools nationwide.

To read newspaper coverage of the new standards, you'd think they were raising the bar for math proficiency, not lowering it. "More is expected of the students," one article declares. "While they still have to memorize or have fluency in key math functions and do the math with speed and accuracy, they will have to demonstrate a deeper understanding of key concepts before moving on."

But what does this mean in practice? Another recent article explains, "This curriculum puts an emphasis on critical thinking, rather than memorization, and collaborative learning." In other words, instead of simply teaching multiplication tables, schools are adopting "an 'inquiry method' of learning, in which children are supposed to discover the knowledge for themselves." An educator quoted in the article admits that this approach could be frustrating for students: "Yes. Solving a problem is not easy. Learning is not easy."

With 100 pages of explicit instruction about what should be taught and when, one would expect the Common Core Standards to make problem-solving easier. Instead, one father quoted in the aforementioned article complains, "For the first time, I have three children who are struggling in math." Why?

Let's look first at the 97 pages of what are called "Content Standards." Many of these standards require that students to be able to explain why a particular procedure works. It's not enough for a student to be able to divide one fraction by another. He or she must also "use the relationship between multiplication and division to explain that (2/3) ÷ (3/4) = 8/9, because 3/4 of 8/9 is 2/3."

It's an odd pedagogical agenda, based on a belief that conceptual understanding must come before practical skills can be mastered. As this thinking goes, students must be able to explain the "why" of a procedure. Otherwise, solving a math problem becomes a "mere calculation" and the student is viewed as not having true understanding.

This approach not only complicates the simplest of math problems; it also leads to delays. Under the Common Core Standards, students will not learn traditional methods of adding and subtracting double and triple digit numbers until fourth grade. (Currently, most schools teach these skills two years earlier.) The standard method for two and three digit multiplication is delayed until fifth grade; the standard method for long division until sixth. In the meantime, the students learn alternative strategies that are far less efficient, but that presumably help them "understand" the conceptual underpinnings.

This brings us now to the final three pages of the 100-page document, called "Standards for Mathematical Practice." While this discussion is short, the points it includes are often the focus of webinars and seminars on the new Common Core methods:

1. Make sense of problem solving and persevere in solving them
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
4. Model with mathematics
5. Use appropriate tools strategically
6. Attend to precision
7. Look for and make use of structure
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

These guidelines seem reasonable enough. But on closer inspection, these things are essentially habits of mind that ought to develop naturally as a student learns to do actual math. For example, there's nothing wrong with the first point: "Make sense of problem solving and persevering in solving them." But these standards are being interpreted to mean that students "make conjectures about the form and meaning of the solution and plan a solution pathway rather than simply jumping into a solution attempt. They consider analogous problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem in order to gain insight into its solution."

This is a rather high expectation for students in K- 6. True habits of mind develop with time and maturity. An algebra student, for instance, can take a theoretical scenario such as "John is 2 times as old as Jill will be in 3 years" and express it in mathematical symbols. In lower grades, this kind of connection between numbers and ideas is very hard to make. The Common Core standards seem to presume that even very young students can, and should, learn to make sophisticated leaps in reasoning, like little children dressing in their parents' clothes.

As the Common Core makes its way into real-life classrooms, I hope teachers are able to adjust its guidelines as they fit. I hope, for instance, that teachers will still be allowed to introduce the standard method for addition and subtraction in second grade rather than waiting until fourth. I also hope that teachers who favor direct instruction over an inquiry-based approach will be given this freedom. 

Unfortunately, the emails and newspaper articles I've been seeing may herald a new era where more and more students are given a flimsy make-believe version of mathematics, without the ability to solve actual math problems. After all, where the Common Core goes, textbook publishers are probably not too far behind.

Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/world/middleeast/fighting-political-islam-arab-states-find-themselves-allied-with-israel.html?ref=world&_r=1&referrer=
 

Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent

CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting.

Not this time.

After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.

“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.

AJC ACCOUNT OF GOV. DEAL VISIT TO UGACRS

AJC ACCOUNT OF GOV. DEAL VISIT TO UGACRS 

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/08/26/nathan-deals-run-in-with-immigration-activists-at-uga/

A COMMENT from this article (and I quote):

 Roy GermanoAugust 4, 2014 | 8:50 pm

"Unauthorized workers are paying an estimated $13 billion a year in social security taxes and only getting around $1 billion back, according to a senior government statistician"

_______

You have taken a number and argument from " a senior government statistician" and totally miss- applied the number to suit your argument.

The Truth as from the WORLD BANK  and the CBO.

People in the United States whether Legal with correct documentation or without Legal Documentation send annually back to Mexican thru Money Order, Wire Transfer or Mail over 25 Billion Dollars.  Of that 25 Billion Dollars less than 5 Billion has had any form of tax applied to it.  World Wide over 68 Billion Dollars are remitted to Mexico and in 18 countries TAXES are taken out of every dollar( euro, yen etc) that is not accounted thru employer generated taxed payroll documents. 

According to the World Bank figures from 2012-2013 and the CBO. For EVERY dollar taxed on an undocumented "family" and I stated FAMILY, that undocumented family receives $4.21 in some form of aid or assistance.

$4.21 to $1.00

The state of California is the proving ground for what happens to a state economy when you have more people taking out of the system than you have people putting into the system. 

- See more at: http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/08/26/nathan-deals-run-in-with-immigration-activists-at-uga/#sthash.ZuqD5tmT.dpuf

Study: Social media users shy away from opinions

http://m.onlineathens.com/breaking-news/2014-08-26/study-social-media-users-shy-away-opinions?utm_source=Morris%20Digital%20Works&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Today%27sheadlinesfromTheAthensBanner-Herald08%2F27%2F2014#gsc.tab=0

Study: Social media users shy away from opinions

WASHINGTON (AP) — People on Facebook and Twitter say they are less likely to share their opinions on hot-button issues, even when they are offline, according to a surprising new survey by the Pew Research Center.

The study, done in conjunction with Rutgers University in New Jersey, challenges the view of social media as a vehicle for debate by suggesting that sites like Facebook and Twitter might actually encourage self-censorship. Researchers said they detect what they call the "spiral of silence" phenomenon: Unless people know their audience agrees, they are likely to shy away from discussing anything controversial.

In other words, most of us are more comfortable with ice-bucket challenges than political banter.

"People do not tend to be using social media for this type of important political discussion. And if anything, it may actually be removing conversation from the public sphere," said Keith Hampton, a communications professor at Rutgers University who helped conduct the study.

The survey was conducted shortly after Edward Snowden acknowledged leaking classified intelligence that exposed widespread government surveillance of Americans' phone and email records. Hampton said the Snowden case provided researchers with a concrete example of a major national issue that divided Americans and dominated news coverage.

Of the 1,801 adults surveyed, 86 percent they would be willing to discuss their views about government surveillance if it came up at various in-person scenarios, such as at a public meeting, at work or at a restaurant with friends. But just 42 percent of Facebook or Twitter users said they would be willing to post online about it.

What's more, the typical Facebook user — someone who logs onto the site a few times per day — was actually half as likely to discuss the Snowden case at a public meeting as a non-Facebook user. Someone who goes on Twitter a few times per day was one-quarter as likely to share opinions in the workplace compared with those who never use Twitter.

Only when a person felt that their Facebook network agreed with their opinion were they twice as likely to join a site discussion on the issue, the survey found.

Another finding was that social media didn't make it easier for people to share opinions they wouldn't otherwise share. Of the 14 percent of Americans unwilling to discuss the Snowden case with others in person, fewer than one-half of 1 percent were willing to discuss it on social media.

Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center Internet Project, said it's possible that social media actually sensitize people to different opinions.

"Because they use social media, they may know more about the depth of disagreement over the issue in their wide circle of contacts," he said. "This might make them hesitant to speak up either online or offline for fear of starting an argument, offending or even losing a friend."

While many people might say keeping political debate off Facebook is a matter of tact, Hampton said there is a concern that a person's fear of offending someone on social media stifles debate.

"A society where people aren't able to share their opinions openly and gain from understanding alternative perspectives is a polarized society," he said.

___

Follow Anne Flaherty on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AnneKFlaherty

CHRISTIAN EGYPTIAN WOMAN ON HIMAN RIGHTS

Egyptian woman: There are no human rights in Islam  [VIDEO] http://po.st/aYRDyn

State Board of Education announces public hearings

http://www.gadoe.org/External-Affairs-and-Policy/communications/Pages/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?PressView=default&pid=215&utm_content=bufferd5241&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

State Board of Education announces public hearings

​MEDIA CONTACT: Matt Cardoza, GaDOE Communications Office, (404) 651-7358, mcardoza@gadoe.org

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook

August 21, 2014 – Each member of the Georgia Board of Education has scheduled a public hearing in their congressional district, with the goal of hearing comments from interested citizens and educators regarding the performance and problems of public education.

This includes hearing comments about the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts as part of the State Board’s formal evaluation of these standards.

Persons wishing to speak should sign in upon arrival. For more information, please contact Mrs. Debbie Caputo at 404-657-7410.

The Georgia Department of Education does not discriminate on the basis of disability in admission to, access to, or operations of its programs, services, or activities. Individuals who need assistance or auxiliary aids for participation in this public forum are invited to make their needs known to Mrs. Debbie Caputo at 404-657-7410, no later than 72 hours before the scheduled event.

District	Board Member	Date of Hearing –all hearings at 7:00 pm	Location of Hearing
District 1	Mike Long	Sept. 4th	Coastal Pines Tech College    1777 West Cherry Street     Jesup, GA  31545
District 2	Vacant (Wanda Barr)	Sept. 4th	Crisp County Middle School, 1116 East 24th Avenue, Cordele
District 3	Helen Rice	August 25th	Northside High School 2002 American Way, Columbus
District 4	Lisa Kinnemore	August 26th	Rockdale Career Academy, 1064 Culpepper Drive, Conyers
District 5	Kenneth Mason	August 28th	KIPP STRIVE ACADEMY, 1444 Lucile Ave., SW Atlanta, GA 30310
District 6	Barbara Hampton	August 19th  (announcedhere)	Dunwoody High School 5035 Vermack Road, Dunwoody
District 7	Mike Royal	August 26th	Buford Fine Arts Center 2705 Robert Bell Parkway, Buford
District 8	Sandra Reed	Sept. 9th	Thomas County BOE Auditorium, 200 N. Pinetree   Boulevard Thomasville
District 9	Kevin Boyd	Sept.  9th	Gainesville HS –                Pam Ware Theatre 830 Century Place Gainesville 30501
District 10	Brian Burdette	August 26th	Putnam County High School 360 War Eagle Drive Eatonton
District 11	Scott Johnson	September 4	Marietta High School Performing Arts Center, 1171 Whitlock Ave, Marietta,  30064
District 12	Allen Rice	August 28th	Vidalia Comprehensive High School, 1001 West North St., Vidalia
District 13	Mary Sue Murray	August 12th (announcedhere)	Alexander High School, 6500 Alexander Parkway, Douglasville
District 14	Larry Winter	August 28th	Calhoun High School, 335 S River St., Calhoun

​

​

Hope, resentment in new charter school landscape

http://m.onlineathens.com/national-news/2014-08-20/hope-resentment-new-charter-school-landscape?utm_source=Morris%20Digital%20Works&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Today%27sheadlinesfromTheAthensBanner-Herald08%2F21%2F2014#gsc.tab=0

Hope, resentment in new charter school landscape

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Nine years after Hurricane Katrina, charter schools are the new reality of public education in New Orleans.

The majority of public school students will attend charter schools established by a state-run school district created in the aftermath of the storm.

Supporters hail it as a grand experiment and post-disaster deliverance of foundering schools. The charters, which still receive public money, can operate free from the politics and bureaucracy of the local school board and citywide union contracts. Principals have more authority to innovate. Schools that fail to improve — all public schools are held to the same standards — can lose their charter.

"Before Katrina, you could see that schools were allowed to stay open even if they failed students for decades," said Patrick Dobard, superintendent of the Recovery School District, or RSD, the state entity that oversees most New Orleans schools.

But critics, including some parents, say the new system has shut down neighborhood schools, while the best schools remain geographically distant for some low-income and minority families. "If you're white, you have a better chance to attend a neighborhood school which you can walk to," says parent Karan Harper Royal, an African-American parent.

An overhaul on such a broad scale would have been unthinkable before Aug. 29, 2005, when levee breaches during Katrina led to catastrophic flooding. About 80 percent of the city was swamped. The Orleans Parish School System was unable to open its 120 schools, which served about 65,000 students.

Amid the chaos, state officials saw an opportunity to seize control of schools from a school system widely viewed as corrupt and inept. Then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the Legislature passed laws effectively ramping up a 2003 program allowing the state to assume control of any school deemed failing under the state accountability system — most New Orleans public schools at the time.

Now, in a sometimes confusing patchwork of school governance, the RSD oversees 57 schools, all charters; the Orleans Parish School Board oversees 20 schools, most charters as well. A handful of schools are overseen by other state entities.

Charters have taken off around the country, with 1 in 20 students in America attending such a school, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Typically, they supplement an existing system and have been criticized at times for leaving the harder-to-educate students to the traditional schools.

Education experts are closely watching the New Orleans experience because the city has taken charters to a whole new level.

In New Orleans, overall enrollment is 44,700, down about 31 percent from pre-Katrina days, but a higher proportion of students are from families with low incomes.

Progress is measurable but uneven, despite increases in per-pupil spending. According to ratings released in October, only nine schools in the city were failing, down from 78 pre-Katrina.

Still, most charter schools overseen by the RSD rate no better than a "C'' grade in the state accountability system, while a half-dozen schools still run by the school board get an "A." More than half of the RSD's third-through-eighth-grade students have basic "fundamental" knowledge and skill in subjects like reading and math, up from 23 percent seven years ago, according to the state education department. Still, only 12 percent display "mastery" of subject matter.

"Somebody said to me once: 'We went from a disastrous system where very few young people were graduating ready for college, to a mediocre system. And that's a miracle.' Because we had to get off the bottom," said John Ayers, executive director of the Cowen Institute, a Tulane University public education think tank.

RSD schools are open to any child in the city. Some of the Orleans Parish schools are as well, although there may be testing requirements; at least one also reserves some spaces for neighborhood children.

Parents fill out a single application listing their top three choices, regardless of school system. Some schools hold lotteries, when applicants outnumber available seats.

"I'd rather have a neighborhood school," Rosa Hernandez said recently outside a Family Resource Center established to help parents through the selection process. A grandchild attends a school near her home and Hernandez was trying to get another enrolled in that same school. "We waited an hour and a half in there," she said. "They told us we didn't have space for this school year."

A little more than half of New Orleans voters favor the choice system over neighborhood schools, according to a poll released in June by the Cowen Institute.

Royal, a member of an organization that filed a civil rights complaint with the Justice Department, said her son rode the bus three to four hours a day to attend Lusher in largely affluent uptown New Orleans before she decided to drive him herself. One of the city's best schools, it is a charter overseen by the Orleans Parish School Board.

The school system provided bus tokens — public schools are required to provide transportation — but she said her son needed the time to study and sleep.

Some parents, facing high tuition for private schools and uncertainty over enrollment in a good public one, have turned to home schooling.

"The fear, the dread, just a lot of stress involved with trying to get into the one you want," said home-schooling mother Dawn Howard, who moved with her family to New Orleans from Hammond, Louisiana, after Katrina. "And there's not an even playing field among the schools. They're all performing at different levels, and it seems like everyone's trying to get into the same ones."

Some charter critics see signs of hope. Charters are beginning to give more voice to teachers, said Larry Carter, president of the New Orleans teacher union, which saw its collective bargaining agreement with all city public schools, in effect, washed away after the storm. The union recently won official recognition from the board running the Benjamin Franklin High School, a charter school overseen by the school board.

In a recent interview, Dobard predicted it will take seven to 10 years to bring all schools up to par. He, too, professes a sense of loss regarding neighborhood schools but is adamant that the citywide choice system is better.

Cherished traditions centering around high school bands and football rivalries too often overshadowed decades of academic failure, Dobard said.

"I have no one who's told me, 'Man, we had the best, most robust chemistry teacher at this school where we had a bad band,'" he said.

___

Associated Press writers Stacey Plaisance in New Orleans and Kimberly Hefling in Washington contributed to this report.

NIU CENSORS STUDENT ACCESS TO UNETHICAL MATERIAL

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2014/08/niu-censors-student-access-to-online-political-information.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FbYHz+%28Illinois+Review%29

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2014

BetaBeat is reporting that Northern Illinois University has enacted an Acceptable Use Policy that denies students access to social media sites and other content the university considers “unethical” or “obscene.”

Effective for residents, students and staff, the restrictions span across the NIU network, which includes both campus research and education center as well as the school’s Wifi network. Enacted July 25, the revised policy isn’t entirely new, but the implementation of a new filter that will strictly enforce it is.

One of the most controversial of the restriction is on political activities such as surveying, polling, material distribution, vote solicitation and organization or participation in meetings, rallies and demonstrations, among other activities.

In addition, illicit activity discovered during “routine monitoring” by the university is grounds for an investigation. According to BetaBeat, the policy is loaded with phrases like “but not limited to” and “etc.” to make it all as vague as possible. What exactly each bullet point means is unclear, but the idea of such censorship is concerning students.

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