Surprise, Surprise, it's happening else where too

Testing Anomalies Found in Many States - High School Notes (usnews.com)

Give all Canadians the right to vote | views from away

A nice blog post about the unfair restrictions on voting for Canadians who live abroad.

Give all Canadians the right to vote | views from away

If it swims, quacks and walks like a duck...

USA Today just blew the lid off a systemic irregularity in DC public schools standardized test results.  Their article about the testing irregularities require us to ask, once again, why is everyone in love with Michelle Rhee?  Now that her so called "turnarounds" are becoming more and more questionable, why do policy makers continue to turn to her for ideas?  We don't see Fidelity or JP Morgan Chase asking Bernie Madoff for investing advice.

Thankfully, Diane Ravitch just posted a blog entry on The Daily Beast, that continues to question Rhee's "education celebrity" status.  Let's just hope that more people wise up and realize that evaluating teachers based on which bubbles their students fill in will encourage them to get the right bubbles dark, even if it means doing some erasing.

Why Teacher Evaluations Shouldn't be tied to Student Test Scores

When test scores jump, questions should be asked.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_N.htm?csp=34news

78% of Americans don't believe in Evolution by Natural Selection

What does $1.3 billion buy these days?

On Saturday, March 12th, the Arab League urged the United Nations to vote on imposing a “no-fly zone” over Libya, to protect the civilians and the rebel forces in the eastern half of the country.  Since then, a “no-fly zone” was authorized with notable abstentions coming from Brazil, Germany, Russia and China.  But as France took to the skies to patrol the airspace around Benghazi, and British and American cruise missiles began to pound anti-air installations, the absence of any Arab military taking part in the “no-fly zone” is precisely the mistake that Western countries should have known to avoid by now.

For the last 30 years, America has given Egypt billions of dollars so that they could strengthen their armed forces ($1.3 billion just last year).  With those billions of our tax payer dollars, Hosni Mubarak has purchased hundreds of F15 and F16 fighter jets, and still more are on their way from Lockheed Martin.  Yet despite all of this military hardware at their disposal, and despite joining the call for a “no-fly zone” to be imposed, the military leadership in Egypt did not contribute to the imposition of the operation.

Nor did the Saudis who are another large purchaser of American military hardware, and who would have a much shorter flight for their sorties than the American bombers taking off from Missouri.  What is the point of purchasing all of those weapons if they are unwilling to use them even when they are calling for military action?  Obama, Cameron, and Sarkozy should have told the Arab League to put its money where its mouth was and fly a few missions over Libyan skies. 

One could call it a missed opportunity by the Obama administration, or, as his supporters have come to realize, just business as usual at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

TV REVIEW: The Chicago Code

Ok, first off, I would just like to say, this post has virtually nothing to do with politics...well...almost nothing.    The Chicago Code, Shawn Ryan’s new police-oriented procedural-drama (weekly bad guys to stop mixed in with a longer story arc) is fast paced and entertaining, but it’s a far cry from Ryan’s previous police drama, The Shield, or Jason Clarke’s unfortunately cancelled Brotherhood.  To be fair, The Shield was on FX, Fox’s edgy and courageous basic cable network, and Brotherhood was on premium cable’s Shotime, both of which tend to display far more creativity and departure from the broadcast networks’ need to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the American viewing public.

Jennifer Beals, Jason Clarke, and Delroy Lindo are certainly not to blame for the tepid feeling once gets while watching this show.  Their performances are spectacular and from his demeanor and delivery Clarke has convinced me that Wysocki could fly off the handle at the drop of the hat if someone puts a fellow police officer in unnecessary danger.  Unfortunately the procedural element, that each episode they will have one problem to solve and one bad guy to apprehend, diminishes the long story arc that shows like Brotherhood or The Wire were able to maintain.  Catching Alderman Gibbons becomes a kind of side-story that will likely only happen upon cancellation of the show…or not at all. 

Which brings me to my second problem with the show and that is the focus on political corruption.  Of course Chicago is a great place to tell a story about machine politics and corruption in City Hall, but the kind of corruption appearing in the show, at least thus far, is a comical simulacrum of the real abuses that occur in City Halls across the country.  From the concerned constituent who reports a possible crime to Gibbons only to end up murdered by his order, or the Irish street thugs being brought into Alderman Gibbons’ office for a chat are overly visible actions that would not go unnoticed in our post 9-11 security framework.  What it does provide is a very simple narrative for the broad viewership base that Fox is hoping to attract.  And don’t even get me started on the police informant Liam who does everything wrong for an undercover officer and would be dead already if David Simon were writing this show. 

So there it is…what was a great hope for a new series that could follow in the footsteps of The Shield, is unfortunately pandering too broadly to the masses and will probably last two, perhaps three seasons before it is abruptly canceled to make way for another crappy reality show from Fox.