teacherken at Daily Kos This Week
Nick Kristof offers Progress in the War on Poverty
in this NY Times column in which he lays out the successes of the effort over the past 50 years, with links galore to support his argument that it has been a success. As he notes: The most accurate measures, using Census Bureau figures that take account of benefits, suggest that poverty rates have fallen by more than one-third since 1968. There’s a consensus that without the war on poverty, other
Gail Collins weighs in on Chris Christie
for once I am NOT going to offer a lot of words of my own. The column, titledBridge Over Troubled Politics, speaks for itself. Here is the conclusion: Republicans around the nation are going to be brought up short by an idea of a plot to screw up our constitutional right to drive to work. Among the great political divides in this country is mass transit versus cars, and Republicans tend to be rath
JAN 08
Charles M. Blow: As The Political World Turns
In his Thursday Thursday New York Times column Blow takes on Chris Christie. He begins by writing Well, that didn’t take long. After wall-to-wall Obamacare disaster ruminations, the terrain of the political landscape is shifting, as it always does, and refocusing attention on some familiar themes. The larger-than-life, straight-from-the-hip, quick-with-the-tongue paladin of the Palisades, Chris C
JAN 07
15 Months in Virtual Charter Hell: A Teacher's Tale
One major phenomenon that has blossomed as part the corporatization of education in the two most recent presidential administrations is that of virtual charter schools - schools with no mortar and brick buildings, or building of any kind. The teachers and students communicate in virtual space. In some cases these schools receive as much public funding per student as would a traditional public s
Putting students at risk for testing?
The weather in the Washington DC Metro area is dangerous this morning - temperatures at best in the single digits, with the wind having wind chills below zero. If you check the list of school closings, in Virginia the vast majority of the school systems are closed, with several (notably Arlington and Alexandria) only on 2 hour delays. If you cross the Potomac to the Maryland side, the picture is v
JAN 05
One Marine's Dying Wish
is the title of this must-read column by Frank Bruni in today's New York Times It is about Hal Faulkner, a 79 year old who is dying of cancer. Faulkner enlisted in the Marines in 1952 and was discharged in 1965, having served more than 3 years and risen from private to sergeant, showing how highly he was regarded. There were no real blots on his record. No complaints of incompetence or laziness or
JAN 04
a brief update on me and yoga
which I informed the community I had begun in something new at age 67. My first class was Monday. I have since taken classes on Thursday, Friday, and today. I have a one month pass and I am taking advantage of it. I had not planned yesterday, but with school closed it seemed a good time. All of these are listed as level 1 Vinyasa flow classes, at Flow Yoga Studios on NW P Street in DC. The fir
infidels are deserving of your enmity, not your empathy
Those words end a column by Charles M. Blow titled Indoctrinating Religious Warriors. He uses the data from the recent Pew Poll on Public views on Evolution that shows increasing numbers of Republicans rejecting evolution while increasing numbers of Democrats accept it. Blow quotes Gregory Paul from a piece in Evolutionary Psychology as writing “The level of relative and absolute societal pathol