Aszilvasy

Before Jason Collins came out, Joel Anderson explained why male pro-atheletes in the most popular American sports have remained closeted:

Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com has reported at least one current NFL player may come out publicly as gay in the next few months. By and large, however, sports figures in major teams sports have stayed in the closet. Why are they waiting? What are the player’s concerns? Not with teammates or the reaction inside the locker room. “America is the greatest place in the world. But America is more homophobic than locker rooms,“ Charles Barkley said recently on The Dan LeBatard Show in Miami. Pro athletes “have played with gay players before. … The crowd is going to be shouting things more than it’s going to be uncomfortable in the locker room.” The particular player Freeman wrote about for CBSSports.com felt the same. “The player fears he will suffer serious harm from homophobic fans, and that is the only thing preventing him from coming out.”

Those big men on the football field cannot take some taunting from the stands? Go watch the Jackie Robinson movie – and grow some.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that California-based Parent Revolution produced the slick video endorsing the parent trigger bill. The bill will be voted on Monday by the Florida Senate.

This is a sleazy trick. Typical deceptive tactic by a group that fronts for the most reactionary elements in our society.

Parent Revolution is funded primarily by the far-right Walton Foundation, which invests heavily in privatization. It also receives millions from the Gates Foundation and Broad Foundation.

Will the Florida Senate sell out public education or listen to Florida parents?

Animal facts guy Ze Frank talks about ducks and their cork screw-shaped penises.


ZeFrank

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two U.S. officials say the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings was unarmed when police captured him hiding inside a boat in a neighborhood back yard.

Authorities originally said they had exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-KHAHR' tsahr-NEYE'-ehv) for more than one hour Friday evening before they were able to subdue him.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation, say investigators recovered a 9 mm handgun believed to have been used by Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan, from the site of a gun battle Thursday night, which injured a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer. Dzhokhar was believed to have been shot before he escaped.

The officials tell The Associated Press that no gun was found in the boat. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said earlier that shots were fired from inside the boat.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid the celebration surrounding the opening of son George W. Bush's presidential library, former first lady Barbara Bush is brushing aside talk of a Jeb Bush run for the White House.

Appearing in an interview Thursday on NBC's "Today" show, Mrs. Bush was asked how she felt about Jeb, the former governor of Florida, seeking the presidency in 2016.

Mrs. Bush replied, quote, "We've had enough Bushes."

She went on to say she thought there were many worthy candidates, telling anchor Matt Lauer, "There are people out there" who are qualified. Mrs. Bush, who had a reputation for bluntness when her husband George H.W. Bush was president, spoke from the site of the presidential library. On Wednesday, George W. Bush told CNN he thought Jeb Bush should run for president.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

CHICAGO—Reasoning that he’s a grown adult who can eat food whenever he damn well pleases, local man Kyle Dunedin, 30, reportedly decided at 10:58 a.m.

Travis Waldron encourages medical examiners to check Tamerlan’s corpse for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the brain disease suffered by boxers and football players who take repeated blows to the head:

[I]t’s worth exploring every angle, including the possibility that brain injuries and CTE may have compounded problems Tsarnaev was already experiencing. CTE has, after all, been found in boxers as young as 17, and it has been linked to changing behaviors, depression, and dementia. And though it may seem like a diversion to investigate its role in Tsarnaev’s personality, CTE was an immediate consideration in recent tragic deaths like the murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher and the suicide of Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau.

Anything but Jihad. Yes, we can explore every angle, but this is almost a parody of liberal wish-mongering. Tamerlan’s brain was damaged by religious fanaticism and fundamentalism.

(Photo: Tamerlan Tsarnaev (L) fights Lamar Fenner (R) during the 201-pound division boxing match during the 2009 Golden Gloves National Tournament of Champions May 4, 2009 in Salt Lake City, Utah. By Glenn DePriest/Getty Images)

Gary Becker thinks so:

Elsewhere (see my monograph, “The Challenge of Immigration: A Radical Solution”, 2011) I use as an illustration a price of $50,000. I show that such a price would attract young, skilled, and ambitious men and women since they would gain the most from coming here. Many illegal residents would be willing to pay that price too in order to legalize their status since there are huge economic and other advantages of becoming a legal resident. A loan program analogous to the student loan program would lend money to poorer but ambitious immigrants, so that they are not kept out by the cost of entry.

Richard Posner seconds him:

Depending on the price, the option will more or less automatically open a quick path to citizenship for precisely those foreigners whose skills, matching U.S. business needs, will give them reasonable assurance of earning enough money in this country to make the exercise of the option cost-justified to them—and to us as beneficiaries of the labor of high-skilled workers.

Of course “selling” U.S. citizenship, like selling kidneys and other organs, is just the kind of sensible economic proposal that shocks people who lack an understanding of economics—and that’s almost everybody.

In 2009, Kent Schaible, the two-year-old son of Herbert and Catherine Schaible, contracted bacterial pneumonia. Kent could have been saved by doctors, but his parents didn’t give him that chance. Instead, they prayed for ten days… and, to nobody’s surprise, that didn’t help. A few doses of Tylenol could have saved Kent’s life, but his parents decided they had a better solution in mind.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible

The Schaibles belong to First Century Gospel Church of Juniata Park, Pennsylvania. It’s a place where the pastor preaches the gospel of faith-healing — if you have enough faith, God will heal you and those you love. You don’t need a doctor if you just believe hard enough. And if you don’t, you’ll be punished…

Medical insurance, hospital fees, and prescription costs today are enormous, but a believer receives healing for free.

…

If anyone has more faith in doctors and drugs, than they have in the living God and the risen Savior, their salvation would be in serious jeopardy.

Someone should tell the church that one interpretation of the Bible is that God gave people doctors to help heal them. God’s giving you medicine; take it!

After Kent died, the Schaibles were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child. In all, they could have served up to 17 years in prison. But that’s not what happened:

Pointing out that, according to Pennsylvania state law, “religious freedom is trumped by the safety of the child,” [Judge Carolyn] Engel Temin handed down her sentence: 10 years probation, the terms of which include a requirement that the Schaibles schedule regular appointments with a “qualified medical person” for all their children and release their children’s medical records to probation officers.

Not only did they receive a slap on the wrist, they were allowed to continue caring for their seven other children. But what about the court’s orders? Would they comply?

[Herbert Schaible] explained he will do his best to comply with the orders of his probation, which require that he and his wife allow their children to be checked up on by medical professionals.

…

“We’re not trying to live 10 years at one time,” he responded. “And when tomorrow comes, God will be with us. So that’s the way we look at it. He will show us what to do.”

Of course, I bring all of this up because of horrific news that was reported yesterday: The Schaibles have killed another one of their children in the same manner.

Brandon Schaible, only eight-months-old, spent the last weeks of his life breathing with difficulty and suffering from diarrhea. His parents watched him deal with this yet failed to take to heart the lesson they should have learned years ago: Take the child to a goddamn medical professional.

You want to pray? Fine. Pray. But do something useful while you’re at it.

At a hearing Monday, Philadelphia Judge Benjamin Lerner said the Schaibles violated the most important condition of their probation: to seek medical care for their remaining children.

…

… charges could be filed once authorities pinpoint how the boy died. An official cause of death is pending an autopsy, according to police.

Even if the official cause suggests he would’ve died no matter what the parents did, it wouldn’t take away from the fact that his parents did nothing of value.

Even the judge was blunt about what that meant:

“I am sorry for your loss. Deeply sorry,” Judge Benjamin Lerner told the couple. “But in all honesty, I am more sorry for the fact that this innocent little child will not be able to grow up to be what he wanted to be.”

…

“You are not a danger to the community,” Lerner said. “You are a danger to your children.”

The seven other Schaible children are currently in foster care while the parents are still free. The Schaibles now face jail time, a sentence they deserve now even more than they did years ago. Prosecutors are waiting to get the autopsy report before pressing criminal charges.

I have so many questions…

How many times does their imaginary God have to send them a message before they get the hint?

When is their pastor going to admit he’s preaching something dangerous and some of the blood is on his hands?

If the Schaibles were the ones who were sick, would they have denied themselves proper care, too?

We don’t know the answers to those questions, but we do know that the Schaibles didn’t make an honest mistake here. They saw the consequences the first time around and went down the same path this time.

Part of the problem is Pennsylvania law, which states:

If, upon investigation, the county agency determines that a child has not been provided needed medical or surgical care because of seriously held religious beliefs of the child’s parents, guardian or person responsible for the child’s welfare, which beliefs are consistent with those of a bona fide religion, the child will not be deemed to be physically or mentally abused.

In other words, child abuse to the point of death is awful… unless it’s done in the name of religion, in which case the state promises to look the other way. That needs to change. Religion shouldn’t be a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

And we shouldn’t have to wait for a third Schaible child to die before the parents are punished for their faith-based homicide.

On a side note, a lot of Christians will go to great lengths to protest abortion rights because they oppose “killing innocent babies.” But those same groups are basically nowhere to be found in cases of faith-healing deaths.

From a Russian message board: an animated gif of someone completing the classic arcade game Snake, that was available on the old Nokia phones.

According to one of the comments, the game took 13 minutes and 17 seconds to complete (here's the full, slow version) and the sped-up version (below) is 2 minutes and 6 seconds long.


via

Adding a somberly reflective coda to a squealing guitar solo of a career, blurred visionary Michael Bay has sifted through the hastily toppled rubble of his oeuvre, and discovered at least one charred reminder of a time he wished things had exploded differently. “I will apologize for Armageddon,” Bay said to the Miami Herald—a statement that was, in typical Bay fashion, an unexpected cut-away from a larger discussion about the upcoming Pain & Gain, and how it differs from his past films by giving audiences great, whopping seconds at a time to look at things. Still, Bay argues, “If you could do a graph on my movies, you would see how my editing has slowed down over the years.” And that creative evolution would surely have happened even sooner, were it not for several things that happened on Armageddon—things that Bay then proceeded to point out in rapid, bludgeoning ...

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Chris Mooney unpacks the research of sociologist Neil Gross, who found evidence that the academy indeed leans left, with 50% of professors describing themselves as “left or liberal,” and 8-9% as “far left” or “radical”:

[A]cademia is indeed more liberal than America, just as other professions, such as the clergy and the military, are dens of conservatism. But where conservatives get it wrong, Gross says, is in their simplistic assertions that academia’s leftward lean is a result of bias or discrimination. Rather, he argues, academia is liberal because… it has been attacked for being liberal. Gross’s analysis concludes that the ivory tower’s well-known political reputation has encouraged a kind of self-selection effect, where conservatives gravitate away from it, and liberals towards it.

That would mean it’s precisely backwards to claim that universities discriminate against conservatives in favor of the godless and liberal. Rather, people who are godless and liberal tend to flock to universities—and stay there.

The Bulletin is a roundup of a few game-related news stories from the previous week.

Nintendo announces sequel to A Link To The Past

Let it never be said that Nintendo doesn’t know how to cater to its oldest, lapsed fans. You know, the people that loved their Super Nintendo but criticize the company today for wooing the “casual” audience and lazily rehashing all of its past successes. Well, Nintendo has heard their complaints and is ready to give them a totally new and original idea: a sequel to The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, one of Nintendo’s most popular games of all time.

In an online broadcast, Nintendo U.S. chief Reggie Fils-Aime announce that the upcoming title for the 3DS portable will use a design similar to the 1991 classic, and it will take place in the same world. In other words, it ...

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Or you could try this, too.

(via Toothpaste For Dinner)

Taco Bell's Doritos Locos tacos have been a big hit product, but assertions that they're responsible for the creation of 15,000 new jobs are a textbook illustration of the difficulty in making macro-inferences from micro-phenemona:

Creed explained how one taco, the Doritos Locos Taco, helped create 15,000 jobs for the Yum! Brands subsidiary. Taco Bell says it has 150,000 team members in its restaurants nationwide.

“It’s very possible because two things happened. One is we grew the business,” he said, adding that Taco Bell’s sales grew by 8 percent last year.

Second, it helps if you add two or three employees to each of Taco Bell’s 6,000 locations.

“And that’s great, it makes us feel really good,” he said. “It’s great we sold lots of tacos and it’s great for our shareholders, but if you can get 15,000 people off the unemployment line and give them jobs -- that to me is giving back to society. That is having a social conscience in doing the right thing. That’s really important to me.“

The observation here is that Doritos Locos tacos helped lead to surging Taco Bell sales, then Taco Bell added a lot of staff to meet that rising demand. And good for Taco Bell. But presumably some large fraction of those sales either displaced sales at other fast food establishments or else displaced nonfood purchases. People might be cutting expenditures on cable television or movie tickets in favor of Netflix and plowing some of their savings into buying more meals outside the house. The impact of any particular firm's successes on overall levels of employment and output is totally ambiguous.

Crispian Jago of The Reason Stick (previosuly) tries to help you figure out which kind of paranoid you are.

Had enough government rhetoric? Tired of following the sheeple? Fed up with believing what THEY want you to believe?

Maybe it’s time to branch out and discover THE TRUTH. If you’re new to the exciting world of conspiracy theories and just can’t decide which paranoid delusion best suits you, then why not use this handy flowchart to find your ideal conspiracy theory. Then you too can go and stick it to THE MAN.

embiggen
The Reason Stick | via

Parents in New York want to see the contents of the Pearson tests that are aligned with the Common Core but officials are adamantly opposed to releasing the tests.

Parents want to review the tests to see if the questions and answers are reasonable. That is not going to happen. Teachers have been warned that they may be disciplined if they reveal any questions. Unless students spill the beans, there will be no review of the test content. There will be no Pineapplegate this year, as there was last year.

It is odd that the state is so quick to defend Pearson’s right to privacy and yet so fast to release confidential student information to Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.

Alex Baumans asks, "Could this be a Cupertino?" Liz Rafferty, "Oops! Zooey Deschanel Captioned as Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect", TV Guide 4/21/2013:

Who's that girl? It's … the Boston Marathon bomber?

During the intense lockdown and manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects Friday, a local Fox affiliate in Dallas, Texas misidentified one of the suspects as none other than New Girl star Zooey Deschanel. The closed-captioning error came as the station was attempting to name Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the attack who was being hunted by police on Friday.

"He is 19-year-old Zooey Deschanel," the caption faux pas read.

Here's a screen shot:

It certainly seems like some sort of autocorrection gone wrong — it's likely that this is the result of automatic reconstruction of real-time transcription, either this kind or this kind.

An article by journalist Yoav Gonen in the New York Post reveals that the Pearson Common Core tests given last week in New York include at least half a dozen plugs for brand name products.

In the film industry, corporations pay to have their brand mentioned or shown.

In the world of standardized testing, it is usually forbidden to use brand names.

This is a huge embarrassment for Pearson.

Even before the suspected Boston Marathon bomber was captured Friday night, top GOP lawmakers were urging President Obama not to afford him the constitutional protections of the American criminal justice system. Those calls escalated after his capture, with a growing cadre of Republicans demanding that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be declared an enemy combatant.

Leading the charge to handle Tsarnaev's case outside of the Article III courts is Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), backed by fellow GOP Sens. John McCain (AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) and Rep. Peter King (NY).

"The suspect, based upon his actions, clearly is a good candidate for enemy combatant status. We do not want this suspect to remain silent," the four Republicans said in a joint statement Saturday. "We continue to face threats from radical Islamists in small cells and large groups throughout the world."

Graham appeared Saturday on Fox News and labeled Tsarnaev a radical Islamist "on a jihad mission."

"The reason we wanted to capture him alive is find out about the attack and find out who he trained with and what connections to ... terrorism," the senator said "Ask the people in Boston. Radical jihadists are trying to attack us here at home. Every day we face threats from radical islamist and they are coming through our back yard and trying to radicalize American citizens."

On the other end are civil rights advocates, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, who insist that Tsarnaev should be tried in accordance with the criminal justice system.

"Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights. The public safety exception should be read narrowly," said ACLU's executive director Anthony Romero. "We must not waver from our tried-and-true justice system, even in the most difficult of times. Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions."

For now, the Obama Justice Department has chosen Option C: a carveout under Miranda law that lets authorities interrogate a suspect under the public safety exemption without reading him Miranda rights.

Those of us who've read out Kevin Drum know that declining lead levels are a key driver of falling rates of violent crime in America. But I was looking at the DC homicide stats this morning which show that not only are the number of murders falling in the city, the clearance rate is rising fast—a reminder that there are some deeper dynamics in play.

One interesting way to look at this is to do the math and chart not just the decline in homicide but the even steadier and more amazing decline in unsolved homicide. Part of the story could just be that the cops are getting smarter. One possible answer is that as crime falls the remaining crimes are disproportionately easy ones to solve—perhaps domestic violence cases. But my guess is the larger issue is simply that when the MPDC has fewer homicides to investigate it's able to investigate the remaining ones more thoroughly and so it gets more difficult to get away with murder. A virtuous circle, in other words, where the decline of an atmospheric toxin not only makes us safer but makes our public safety services more effective in coping with the remaining problems.

Alison Brie is barely noticed by the Internet, but if more information about her is something you might be interested in, she’s been around more than usual since the start of Mad Men’s new season. If you’d like to keep things respectable, you can watch Brie’s appearance on web interview series Speakeasy with Paul F. Tompkins, as they sip drinks and chat for 20 minutes about her various roles and her cover band The Girls. There’s the usual flirty/playful undercurrent to almost any interview with Brie, but Tompkins acquits himself well as an interviewer, getting her to talk at length about the differences between playing Annie on Community and Trudy on Mad Men, developing improv abilities, and how much of a pain it was to shoot “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” for Community, which amounted to hours and hours of sitting around a table. It’s ...

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Teachers in Florida are suing because they are being evaluated on the basis of students they didn’t teach and subjects they don’t teach.

This is manifestly unfair.

Imagine being fired because the scores didn’t go up in someone else’s class.

Let the lawsuits begin.

In time, the madness will end, and those who created it and perpetuated will be covered with shame and disgrace.

I am in Internet range for only a few minutes, so let me just type this right out:

1. Today a provision that would increase background checks for gun purchases was blocked in the Senate, even though consideration of the bill was supported by 54 senators representing states that make up (at quick estimate) at least 60 percent of the American population.
2. The bill did not fail to "pass" the Senate, which according to Constitutional provisions and accepted practice for more than two centuries requires a simple majority, 51 votes. Even 50 votes should do it, since the vice president is constitutionally empowered to cast the tie-breaking and deciding vote, and Joe Biden would have voted yes.
   
3. It failed because a 54-vote majority was not enough to break the threat of a filibuster, which (with some twists of labeling) was the real story of what happened with this bill. Breaking the filibuster would have required 60 votes.
4. Since the Democrats regained majority control of the Senate six years ago, the Republicans under Mitch McConnell have applied filibuster threats (under a variety of names) at a frequency not seen before in American history. Filibusters used to be exceptional. Now they are used as blocking tactics for nearly any significant legislation or nomination. The goal of this strategy, which maximizes minority blocking power in a way not foreseen in the Constitution, has been to make the 60-vote requirement seem routine.
5. As part of the "making it routine" strategy, the minority keeps repeating that it takes 60 votes to "pass" a bill -- and this Orwellian language-redefinition comes one step closer to fulfillment each time the press presents 60 votes as the norm for passing a law.

Yes, this is the 20 millionth time I have made this point. (Recently here, with special Orwell-homage.) But here is why it is worth noting again. Just in the past few minutes readers have sent in these illustrations of the success of step No. 5, above:

From Business Insider (source of screen grab above):

GUN CONTROL VOTE FAILS IN SENATE -- Obama Speaks Now On Failure

With Vice President Joe Biden presiding over the Senate, an amendment to expand background checks on gun purchases failed to pass through the body, falling by a mostly partisan vote of 54-46...

Sixty votes were needed to pass the legislation through the Senate.

No, 60 votes were needed to break the filibuster threat. Note that in the "mostly partisan vote of 54-46" the 54 senators were voting for the measure.

From Politico, emphasis added:

The Senate has rejected a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks on firearms and close the so-called gun show loophole, handing President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders a major defeat on one of the key pieces of the president's second-term agenda.

The vote was 54-46, with only four Republicans crossing the aisle and voting with the Democrats in favor of the bipartisan proposal by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Sixty votes were needed.

I won't add the line-by-line explication because you can do it yourselves. Actually, I can't resist: that last passive-voice sentence calls out for "to break a filibuster threat." Look at this home-page splash from Politico (below), and imagine if it said what actually happened: "GOP filibusters gun control."

Nonsense=makes no sense.

Last year, when the Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff study of teacher effects was published on the front page of the Néw York Times, it created a sensation. It seemed to say that the “quality” of a single teacher would raise lifetime earnings, reduce teen pregnancy, and have other dramatic effects.

The story said: “Replacing a poor teacher with an average one would raise a single classroom’s lifetime earnings by about $266,000, the economists estimate. Multiply that by a career’s worth of classrooms.”

One of the authors of the study said that the lesson was “fire bad teachers sooner rather than later.” This was used to support the test-based evaluation systems pushed by Race to the Top that otherwise had no evidence behind them (and still don’t). It also supported economist Eric Hanushek’s view that the “bottom” 5-10% of teachers, judged by their students’ scores, should be fired every year.

Just a few weeks later, President Obama cited the CFR study in his State of the Union address. He said: ” We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.”

But it is all a great exaggeration.

Bruce Baker of Rutgers demolished the study here. He pointed out many flaws, including the fact that most teachers are not rated.

But what about the claim of earning an extra $266,000 or $250,000 per year per class over a lifetime?

Baker writes:

“One of the big quotes in the New York Times article is that “Replacing a poor teacher with an average one would raise a single classroom’s lifetime earnings by about $266,000, the economists estimate.” This comes straight from the research paper. BUT… let’s break that down. It’s a whole classroom of kids. Let’s say… for rounding purposes, 26.6 kids if this is a large urban district like NYC. Let’s say we’re talking about earnings careers from age 25 to 65 or about 40 years. So, 266,000/26.6 = 10,000 lifetime additional earnings per individual. Hmmm… no longer catchy headline stuff. Now, per year? 10,000/40 = 250. Yep, about $250 per year (In constant, 2010 [I believe] dollars which does mean it’s a higher total over time, as the value of the dollar declines when adjusted for inflation). And that is about what the NYT Graph shows: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/06/us/benefits-of-good-teachers.html?ref=education”

What this boils down to is that a student can get a lifetime boost of $5 a week if we now spend billions of dollars on value-added rating systems. Maybe. Or maybe not. “

One of the authors wrote Baker to say that their calculations show that the actual gain per student would be about $1,000 a year or $20 a week.

There have been other criticisms of the study, some noting that the study was based on teaching before NCLB, before high stakes testing. Others questioned whether a large scale study of this kind could connect specific teachers to specific children. And one reviewer insisted that the study contradicted itself and said nothing.

Readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts

Given that the 12 apostles were all of Middle Eastern origin, born round about the year 0, how come they all had common English names?

Mike Rance, Byfleet, Surrey

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In most public school systems in America, teachers are paid higher salaries based on their years of service and their accumulation of master's degrees. In several American cities, there's been a move instead to pay teachers higher salaries based on their students' test scores. Not surprisingly, when financial rewards are tied to student test scores, some adults respond to the objective incentive structure by falsifying test results. Also not surprisingly, the "reformers" affiliated with these changes have not been eager to highlight malfeasance that's occurred under their watch. But while I have no problem with the idea that there should be consequences for Beverly Hall or Michelle Rhee or any other school chancellor who presides over cheating, I'm genuinely puzzled by what anti-reform people think these cheating scandals prove.

Suppose we found out that LeBron James were taking steroids. I can imagine a whole range of responses to that revelation that reasonable people might take. What I can't imagine is someone saying that LeBron James taking steroids proved that basketball players should be compensated on the basis of pure seniority rather than perceived basketball skill. Right?

To step back, the theory of the performance-based compensation system is that teachers differ in their effectiveness as teachers. It would be desirable to identify those teachers who are more effective than average and pay them an above-average amount so that they will have a below-average attrition rate. It would also be desirable to identify those teachers who are outliers in ineffectiveness—the relatively small minority who are much worse than average—and actively get rid of them. One vulnerability of an attempt to implement this system is that people of weak ability and low moral character can cheat so as to keep their jobs and earn higher pay. It's a real problem and it's not obvious to me how you solve it. But for the existence of that vulnerability to constitute a reasonable defense of the traditional "steps and lanes" teacher compensation system, you have to explain why steps and lanes doesn't have that same vulnerability. But in fact steps and lanes does nothing whatsoever to protect kids and parents from the problem that people of low moral character might ignore their obligations. It does the reverse.

Now if you wanted to say that these cheating scandals prove that we're never going to come up with a workable control system for organizations as large as big city public school systems and so we need to move to an all-charter system, I'd say that's an idea I'm sympathetic to. But that's not what the Michelle Rhee Detractors of America are after. So I'm really curious. What about the fact that some people respond to performance-based systems by cheating should make me think that pure seniority systems are good?

This article asks the obvious question:

Why does Atlanta’s disgraced superintendent Beverly Hall face serious jail time for the cheating that happened on her watch–which she ignored or encouraged by demanding higher test scores–while Michelle Rhee continues to fly from state to state, urging legislatures to follow the DC model?

The article says that Rhee emerged–so far–unscathed because she has friends in high places.

As for the DC model, let us not forget that John Merrow documented that the DC schools are in worse shape now than they were in 2007:

He wrote to the Education Writers Association, introducing his post about the leaked memo:

“I am also reporting that, after five years of Rhee/Henderson, the DC schools are worse off by almost every conceivable measure: graduation rates, truancy, enrollment, test scores, black-white gap and teacher and principal turnover.”

The California Democratic Party passed a resolution opposing corporate education reform.

It specifically criticized Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group called “Democrats for Education Reform” as fronts for Republicans and corporate interests.

See the story in the Los Angeles Times here. The headline repeats the “reform” claim that they just want to “overhaul” schools, when the resolution below correctly describes their agenda.

The message is getting out. The public is beginning to understand the privatizers’ game of talking “reform” and “great teachers” while dismantling public education and the teaching profession.

This is great news!

Here is the resolution:

Supporting California’s Public Schools and Dispelling the Corporate “Reform” Agenda
Whereas, the reform initiatives of Students First, rely on destructive anti-educator policies that do nothing for students but blame educators and their unions for the ills of society, make testing the goal of education, shatter communities by closing their public schools, and see public schools as potential profit centers and children as measureable commodities; and

Whereas, the political action committee, entitled Democrats for Education Reform is funded by corporations, Republican operatives and wealthy individuals dedicated to privatization and anti-educator initiatives, and not grassroots democrats or classroom educators; and

Whereas, the billionaires funding Students First and Democrats for Education Reform are supporting candidates and local programs that would dismantle a free public education for every student in California and replace it with company run charter schools, non-credentialed teachers and unproven untested so-called “reforms”;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party reaffirms its commitment to free accessible public schools for all which offer a fair, substantive opportunity to learn with educators who have the right to be represented by their union, bargain collectively and have a voice in the policies which affect their schools, classrooms and their students;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party send this resolution to all elected Democratic leaders in California, publicize the corporate and Republican funding of these groups and work with the authors of this resolution to dispel the false reforms and support the real needs of the classroom: trained teachers, adequate funding, safe and clean facilities, diverse and stimulating curriculum and access to pre-school and higher education.

Undeterred by the release of John Merrow’s report of widespread cheating on her watch, Michelle Rhee traveled to South Carolina to attack teachers. She said they were defenders of the status quo. She said they were protecting their self-interest. She said they ride a “gravy train.”

The average teacher’s salary in SC is $46,306.67.

Rhee is paid $50,000 for lecturing and taking questions for an hour.

Who is on a gravy train?