Education Change You Can Believe In From Obama, Duncan

I’m floored. I can’t believe this education proposal has come out of this administration. I had figured the President was in the back pocket of the NEA and AFT given the tremendous sums they gave to his election but he proved me wrong today. In this case I have no problem being proven wrong — bravo President Obama and bravo Secretary Arne Duncan.

Now this is just a proposal at this point so while I am giddy as all get-out about it I’m still not holding my breath. He can champion this all he would like but he still has to turn to Congress to get this done. I’m hopeful there is support in Congress for this and I’m hopeful Republicans are leading the charge because this is a transformation of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NLCB) and takes important steps to fix what is wrong with it while still insisting on accountability.

First we need to talk about what is broken with NCLB and that is ever increasing standards that can’t possibly be met. Standardized tests are based on percentiles so if you require schools to place within a certain percentile you are creating a glass ceiling — there will be a point where you can’t improve and if everyone improves someone still has to be at the bottom. This is the fundamental flaw of NCLB — it punishes districts even if they are making improvements.

While the administration has put out what it is calling a “blueprint” and not legislation, and I’ve been unable to find any outline yet what Duncan and Obama are saying is highly encouraging. According to the USA Today:

1. Raise the current standards by 2014.
2. Scrap the 2014 reading and math requirements and replace them with “college readiness” requirements by 2020.
3. Use subjects other than reading and math in their ratings.
4. “Value-added” indicators for teachers and schools.
5. Use indicators other than just test scores in assessing teachers.

These are all great changes to NCLB. The only one I am leery of the teachers unions getting their hands on is the subjective assessments. They could twist this into a means of keeping teachers who are not up to par by subjective means. That needs to be discouraged. The rest of these are great improvements on NCLB that open up the restrictions and bring reality to eduction — it’s not all reading and math.

What they added next though was the real kicker. For schools that are struggling, down in the bottom 5% they would have to take one of the following actions in order to maintain federal funding:

1. Shut the school down.
2. Bring in an outside company to manage the school as a charter school.
3. Fire the entire staff and rehire no more than 50% of them.
4. Fire the principal and bring in a new one with a transformation plan.

Wow. That’s about all I can say about that, wow. This is absolutely, without a doubt, EXACTLY what is needed to put teeth in NCLB. Right now a struggling school will only get worse; most of the parents will have nowhere else to go, that school will lose federal funds and with less funding it will only get worse. That’s broken. This puts the teeth in NCLB and frees school districts to make the kind of changes they would need to transform a failing school.

You can guarantee the teachers unions will be fighting these provisions tooth and nail in Congress. ”Let me be clear” here for a moment if I can steal one of the President’s lines, I have a message for teachers. I have nothing against the rank and file teacher doing everything he or she can to educate our kids. It’s a tough and often thankless job. You get to deal with a slew of parents who just don’t care. However, there’s no legislation on the planet that is going to make them care. This is all that can be done.

The prescription from NCLB right now just gets in the way of a teacher being able to be a teacher. A slew of requirements are put on them, the district office is in their classroom, creating some new set of guidelines for them to follow or the like. Teachers aren’t allowed to innovate and educate. You need to tell your leadership right now that the President’s plan will let you innovate and educate again and stand on your own.

Your leadership is about to barrage you with a mountain of scare tactics and try to get you behind opposition to this plan. You need to stand up to your leadership and tell them no. Have you seen the headlines over the past few weeks? In Illinois we have a complete disaster on our hands and districts are cutting staff left and right. This is what your leadership has gotten you with their hold on power and their refusal to innovate. Many a good teacher is being fired so many a bad teacher that’s been doing it forever can keep his or her job. That’s not right and you need to stand up for it as not right.

I’m sure you can easily count the bad teachers in your building right now. The ones who don’t care, the ones who “phone it in”, the ones you are constantly covering for. Admit it, you know they are there. Are you prepared to lose your job for them? That’s what your leadership will be asking you to do. Under this proposal YOU will be responsible for YOUR own results. If you are doing all that you can it will be seen and measured and you won’t be held responsible for your failing peers. This plan is a plan for good teachers and good teachers should stand up to their national leaders and get behind it.

I’m hopeful this plan can be put into place and it stays as it is outlined. You can rest assured I will be watching it as it comes out, but this is a great start and the first reason for hope and change I’ve seen out of President Obama.  Well done.

Think You Know Obama?

Photo by Steve Rhodes.

Barack Obama talks about change and a new direction for the country, the only issue is you have to be included in his vision the way he sees it. If you’re unlucky enough to be born alive but unwanted he has no interest in protecting you.

I have a difficult time with the abortion issue, I must admit. I believe it is morally wrong but I never look to force my morals on others. Many times I find myself walking a fine line on abortion issues and how I feel and where I stand. However, one thing that has always chilled me to the core is partial-birth abortion and a practice I wasn’t even aware of — “born alive abortion”. A practice, more or less, where labor is induced and babies are left to die.

This all started with me watching this obviously pro right to life video:

So I figured, these are just some pro-life activists who have found a couple of votes made by Barack Obama (good luck with that given the number of times he voted “present” as an Illinois State Senator) and twisted it a bit. But when I looked into it, turns out I was wrong, this video is completely accurate.

According to an investigation by Annenberg Political FactCheck he did vote against protecting these children three times.

Obama opposed the 2001 and 2002 “born alive” bills as backdoor attacks on a woman’s legal right to abortion, but he says he would have been “fully in support” of a similar federal bill that President Bush had signed in 2002, because it contained protections for Roe v. Wade.

We find that, as the NRLC said in a recent statement, Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported. Both contained identical clauses saying that nothing in the bills could be construed to affect legal rights of an unborn fetus, according to an undisputed summary written immediately after the committee’s 2003 mark-up session.

So, my question is, do you folks know the real Barack Obama and what he stands for? I don’t think you do because this is legislation that on a federal level passed 98-0 in the US Senate and was supported by Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy. Obama voted against it not once but three times in Illinois and has the audacity to call those brave enough to point it out liars:

I suppose that FactCheck are liars now too Barack? I have a better idea, you are.

I’m Voting Democrat

Photo by riot jane.

No no, you read that right. Please, this is COMEDY, for pete sake I can watch a bunch of nasty Sarah Palin videos let me post my one video poking fun at Dems. So don’t start up with how nasty and vicious Republicans are, this is a SPOOF. I aspirated Pepsi One at 1:06 so I had to share.

Thank you.

And now on to the video……

Palin Shows Her Grit

Photo by asecondhandconjecture.

You know, it’s funny that people would underestimate a woman from rural Idaho who settled in Alaska. Not sure if anyone checked the memo but Alaska is a pretty harsh environment. As such it attracts a type of person that is tough, self-reliant and unafraid to take the tough shots when they’re dished out. Not only that but they underestimated the appeal and down to earth nature of this woman.

Last night she made her debut and she hit the ball out of the park her first time up to the plate. What other person could deliver the tough jabs at Obama and Biden with a smile, a joke, and a nature that is instantly disarming? Suddenly the Obama camp had to run for cover — it was easy for them to make Hillary look cold and disconnected, that playbook is not going to work on Palin so they’re going to have to go back to the drawing board.

In fact they’ve already stumbled several times. How on earth can you compare being a community organizer to being a mayor or the governor of a state? No candidate on either slate has executive experience aside from Palin. They’ve tried to make Alaska look like a small insignificant state that shouldn’t be hard for anyone to run. I guess that would be true if it didn’t border with two other countries she’s had to deal with and provides an enormous amount of raw material backbone to the US economy. Oh, did we also mention it’s the largest state? I guess the Dem mudslinging machine was asleep in geography class and thought that Alaska was to scale on all the little textbook maps. Alaska may be small in population but it is immense on importance to the US.

After that you had Alan Colmes and the morons at Daily Kos questioning Palin getting proper prenatal care during her last pregnancy. Implying that somehow something to do with giving birth to a child with Down Syndrome. They might want to do a little bit of homework next time they try something like that since Down Syndrome is a genetic abnormality and has absolutely nothing whatever to do with quality of prenatal care. Colmes found out about his error and removed the posting but through the magic of Google caching it lives on.

I don’t know, maybe Alan should have just stuck with the party line that Palin should have exercised her reproductive rights and aborted the pregnancy as over 90% of mothers who receive a positive Down Syndrome prenatal screening do. You know, make it easier on herself and the world for not having to deal with a disabled child like Chris Burke. This kind of nonsense is the harshest slap in the face to all of us who are parents of disabled children. To insinuate and to outright lay it out there that somehow she is at fault and a bad parent that caused her child’s disability or there are increased risks of Down Syndrome to children of mothers over forty and that she shouldn’t have even conceived is beyond the pale. Keep writing this trash fellas, Sarah will be sworn in as vice president come January.

I must admit, when she was announced I was concerned that McCain was simply pandering to Hillary voters — trying to come up with a woman to reach out to the rightfully disillusioned Hillary backers. I was concerned she wouldn’t be up to the task. One speech went a long way but looking at this woman’s background has done more for me to silence those notions out. She is instantly disarming and appealing, clearly attractive but also feisty and tenacious (the hockey mom vs. pit bull joke was classic). It was energy that has been absent from the GOP Convention since The Great Communicator bid us all goodbye.

So it’s back to the drawing board for the dirty tricks gang working for Obama. I don’t think the blatant US attack did so hot, in fact I think you poured gas on the fire. It’s going to be a long two months for you guys.

Jackie On Obama

Priceless, absolutely priceless, Jackie Mason can boil everything down to the brass tacks and always has been able to.

Reagan – A Time For Choosing

This is 44-years-old but aside from references to the Iron Curtain and the Cold War you could interchange these words with today. It’s amazing how similar the positions of the left were then as they are now (referenced early in this clip).

Let The Fight Go On!

I agree 100% with John McCain, why not kick the tires on Dennis Kucinich too??

YouTube – Jackie Mason ‘08 Vlog 24 Obama’s Fraud

YouTube – Jackie Mason ‘08 Vlog 24 Obama’s Fraud

Jackie Mason, all over it and correct again!!

YouTube – Gingrich: I’m deeply worried

YouTube – Gingrich: I’m deeply worried

Why he didn’t run, I would like to know.

FOXNews.com – Angelina Jolie Says Troop Surge Creating Opportunity to Help Iraqi Refugees – Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment

Shocking, someone in Hollywood with some sense. Now who would have thought it would be Angelina Jolie? Well, I am a big fan of Mr. & Mrs. Smith so that’s something!

It’s about time that someone saw that cutting and running is not the answer in Iraq. The price has been high but to pull out now would mean a terrible regression in Iraq.

FOXNews.com – Angelina Jolie Says Troop Surge Creating Opportunity to Help Iraqi Refugees – Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment

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