n2doc

n2doc's Journal

January 30, 2015

Assembly bill would turn Wisconsin’s failing public schools into charters

MADISON, Wis. — At the end of a long day of public testimony, a young teacher broke down in tears in the center of the hearing room. “We have students who don't own a pair of socks,” Amy Mizialko, a special education instructor in the Milwaukee public school system, told the Wisconsin State Assembly's Education Committee. “And they walk to school every day in the winter.”

Recovering her composure to register her opposition to the school accountability bill being heard, she argued that it would take resources away from children who have already been “forced through the cracks.” Like many other critics of the bill, Mizialko said the bill ignores schools’ broader socioeconomic context and the effects of poverty on children's learning.

“This legislation can't punish and starve our students of the resources they need to learn,” Mizialko testified, “and then declare that our students are failures.”

AB 1, drafted by Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt, R-Fond du Lac, aims to change Wisconsin’s current school accountability system, which was approved in 2014. As written, it would establish an Academic Review Board (ARB) that would have the power to incentivize and punish publicly funded schools based on performance. The board would have the power to approve alternative assessments in lieu of the state exam to determine how schools are performing. The bill also sets out the methodology for measuring school performance and stipulates that the ARB has the authority to convert a failing public school to a charter school.

more

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/29/wisconsin-education-bill-would-turn-failing-public-schools-into-charters.html

January 30, 2015

Mike Luckovich Toon- Trading Places

January 29, 2015

The Fire on the 57 Bus in Oakland

By DASHKA SLATER
It was close to 5 o’clock on the afternoon of Nov. 4, 2013, and Sasha Fleischman was riding the 57 bus home from school. An 18-year-old senior at a small private high school, Sasha wore a T-shirt, a black fleece jacket, a gray newsboy cap and a gauzy white skirt. For much of the long bus ride through Oakland, Calif., Sasha — who identifies as agender, neither male nor female — had been reading a paperback copy of “Anna Karenina,” but eventually the teenager drifted into sleep, skirt draped over the edge of the bus seat.

As Sasha slept, three teenage boys laughed and joked nearby. Then one surreptitiously flicked a lighter. The skirt went up in a ball of flame. Sasha leapt up, screaming, “I’m on fire!” Two other passengers threw Sasha to the ground and extinguished the flames, but Sasha’s legs were left charred and peeling. Taken by ambulance to a San Francisco burn unit, Sasha would spend the next three and a half weeks undergoing multiple operations to treat the second- and third-degree burns that ran from thigh to calf.

Richard Thomas, the 16-year-old boy who lit the skirt on fire, was arrested the following day. Citing the severity of the crime, the Alameda County district attorney, Nancy O’Malley, charged Thomas as an adult, stripping him of the protections — including anonymity — customarily afforded to juveniles. Charged with two felonies, each with a hate-crime clause that increased the time he would serve if convicted, Thomas faced the possibility of life imprisonment.

Oakland is a city of more than 400,000 people, but it can often feel like a small town. The attack happened in my neighborhood, on a bus my own teenager sometimes takes home from school. Sasha Fleischman’s family and my family have close friends in common. Richard Thomas once attended my son’s high school. But even when events unfold practically on your doorstep, it isn’t always easy to make sense of them.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/magazine/the-fire-on-the-57-bus-in-oakland.html

January 29, 2015

Rod McKuen, prolific songwriter and poet, dies at 81

Source: LA Times

Rod McKuen, a prolific songwriter and poet whose compositions include the Academy Award-nominated song “Jean” for the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” has died. He was 81.

McKuen had recently been hospitalized and died Thursday at a Beverly Hills rehabilitation center of respiratory arrest after suffering from pneumonia, according to his friend and producer Jim Pierson.

Among McKuen’s commercial successes in the 1960s and '70s were his reworking of Jacques Brel’s song "Le Moribond" for the English-language version of “Seasons in the Sun,” later covered by the Kingston Trio and Terry Jacks. Frank Sinatra recorded an album of McKuen songs in 1969 called “A Man Alone,” which included “Love’s Been Good to Me.”

Besides his score for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” McKuen’s music for the animated feature “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” was also nominated for an Oscar.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-rod-mckuen-dies-at-81-20150129-story.html

January 29, 2015

Last McDonald’s Burger in Iceland on Display

The final McDonald’s burger to be sold in Iceland before the chain closed its doors in the country in October 2009 is on display at the Bus Hostel in Reykjavík. The man who purchased the last burger, Hjörtur Smárason, had kept it in his garage for three years before donating it to the National Museum of Iceland when he moved to Denmark.

He said that after a year the museum returned the burger to him after a specialist had told the museum that “hamburgers should not be kept at the National Museum,” mbl.is reports.

According to the Bus Hostel’s manager Aðalheiður Ýr Gestsdóttir, people are surprised by the good condition of the burger, more than five years after it was prepared. “Some people have even stolen some of the fries,” she said, adding that a security camera is now in place.

Hjörtur told mbl.is that his offer to re-donate the National Museum still stands.

more

http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/01/28/last-mcdonalds-burger-iceland-display

January 29, 2015