The Plaintiffs’ Teachers Were Not Actually “Grossly Ineffective” This is excerpted from David B. Cohen’s post on Diane Ravitch’s Blog, and the bulk of the excerpt is a passage from a post-trial brief: “I was curious to learn whether the plaintiffs in the Vergara trial actually had ‘grossly ineffective teachers.’ The answer is ‘no, they…
The major ethnic groups in Iraq are the Arabs, which constitute 75% to 80% of the population, and the Kurds, which constitute 15% to 20% of the population. Islam is, of course, the dominant religion, with 97% of Iraqis identifying themselves as Muslims. Among the Muslims, 60%-65% are Shiites and 32% to 37% are Sunnis.…
The Census Department provides statistics on the largest employers in each state, and Business Insider put that material into an alphabetically arranged chart. I have rearranged the employers by category. The one caveat that I would offer is that I suspect that WalMart actually has the most employees in several states besides Arkansas. Here are…
Hood, William Joseph. Spy Wednesday. .New York: Norton, 1986. A former C.I.A. station chief, Hood first came to attention with his nonfiction book, Mole (1982). It chronicled Hood’s part in the decision by Soviet operative Pyotr Popov to become a double-agent, the details of the operation which went undetected for seven years, and then the…
Dear Secretary Duncan: Yesterday, when political ideologues were running full page ads attacking teachers and calling kids garbage — I was in the small town of Emporia, Kansas helping to dedicate a memorial to educators who made the ultimate sacrifice for their students. The headlines in the last few days have been dominated by political…
June 12, 2014 Secretary Arne Duncan U.S. Department of Education 400 Maryland Ave. S.W. Washington, DC 20202 Dear Secretary Duncan, This week, we needed your leadership; to demonstrate that teacher and student interests are aligned; that we must press—60 years after Brown v. Board—for educational equity; that it takes more than a focus on teachers…
“Drawing the Right Lessons from Vergara” Sometimes conflict is the starting point on the path to progress. That’s one of two possible ways events could play out in the wake ofVergara v. California, a court case that is driving enormous debate throughout the education world. Brought on behalf of nine public school students, the Vergara case…
As colleges and universities struggle to formulate effective policies for dealing with sexual assaults on campus, the media have often focused on the campus culture that blurs the lines between sexual license and sexual imposition. But the same insensitivity to distinctions is also pervasive in our media, often to an outrageous extent. The following is…
Although the increases in the compensation by college and university presidents represent a negligible percentage of their institutions’ budgets, they do very clearly set a baseline for the compensation received by other administrators—their subordinates and the subordinates of their subordinates–and reflect the continuing corporatization of our institutions as it is manifested in the broader increases…
The following is the text of remarks as prepared for delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Morgan State University commencement ceremony in Baltimore on Saturday, May 17, 2014. The transcript was provided by the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs. _________________________ Thank you, President [David] Wilson, for those kind words-–and thank you all…