Vice President Joe Biden Debates Paul Ryan

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Biden calls "a bunch of malarkey" on "my friend"...
From aboard Air Force One on Thursday night, President Obama watched Vice President Joe Biden take on GOP candidate Paul Ryan in what will be their only debate, held in Danville, Kentucky at Centre College. Biden turned in an aggressive performance during the 90-minute battle, moderated by ABC's Martha Raddatz.  (Above: The President watching the debate, mid-air)

"I'm going to make a special point of saying that I thought Joe Biden was terrific tonight," President Obama told reporters as he arrived at Joint Base Andrews at 10:35 PM following a fundraiser in Florida.

"I could not be prouder of him. I thought he made a very strong case. I really think that his passion for making sure that the economy grows for the middle class came through. So I'm very proud of him."

Asked if he called Biden after the debate ended, Mr. Obama replied "Yes, I just talked to him."

Biden's performance included interrupting Ryan and laughing openly at his comments, an effort to make up for the President's own less than shining debate in Denver.  Biden repeatedly referred to the Congressman as "my friend." The duel was pitched in the media as a generational fight, with Biden, 69, more than two decades older than Ryan, 42.  It was also the first time two practicing Catholics went head to head in a Vice Presidential debate. (Above: Onstage)

There were clashes over foreign policy, Medicare and Social Security, jobs and the economy.  Several times during the night, Biden dismissed the Republican's arguments as "malarkey" and "a bunch of stuff."

The debate opened with heat, skipping formalities and going straight to Libya, with Ryan citing the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens last month.  He said the Obama administration had denied Stevens adequate security, calling it an "unraveling of Obama's foreign policy."

"With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey," Biden, shot back, adding, "It's Irish."

Biden also hammered Ryan on Mitt Romney's comment that 47% of Americans are looking for federal handouts, something the President failed to do in his debate.

"I know you're under a lot of duress to make up for lost ground, but I think people would be better served if we don't interrupt each other," Ryan said at one point.

Biden's closing remarks:

"You probably detected my frustration with their attitude about the American people. My friend [Paul Ryan] says that 30% of the American people are takers, Romney [says] 47% of the people won’t take responsibility. He’s talking about my mother and father. He’s talking about the places I grew up in, my neighbors in Scranton, he’s talking about the people who built this country.

"All they’re looking for … is an even shot. Whenever you give them the shot, they’ve done it. They’ve done it. Whenever you’ve leveled the playing field, they’ve been able to move. They want a little bit of a peace of mind, and the President and I are not going to rest until that playing field is leveled, they in fact have a clear shot, and they have peace of mind—until they can turn to their kid and say with a degree of confidence, ‘Honey, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.’ That’s what this is all about."

The Vice President was joined by his wife Dr. Jill Biden in Kentucky.  They stayed at a family farm in the hours before the event, billed locally as "Thrill in the Ville."  He travels to Ryan's homestate of Wisconsin on Friday to campaign.

The President on Thursday was returning from a fundraiser in Florida with Sheila E. and Eva Longoria.

"Tonight proved once again that you won't find a better and more tireless advocate for the middle class than @JoeBiden. -bo," President Obama tweeted after the debate.

*Photos by Obama for America

First Lady Won't Host Annual Kitchen Garden Harvest Party For Kids...White House Welcomes Public For Garden Tours

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Public invited to view Kitchen Garden and grounds beginning on Saturday; a look back at Harvests past...
First Lady Michelle Obama has invited local school children to her famous Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn for a public Fall Harvest celebration each October since 2009.  But with President Obama's re-election campaign in high gear, and just 25 days until Election Day, for the first time in three years Mrs. Obama is putting aside her own tradition, and has no such event scheduled.  Like her husband, the First Lady has been busy on the campaign trail, wooing voters in swing states.  This week, Mrs. Obama traveled to Virginia, followed by two days in Colorado.  Last week, she visited Ohio, Colorado, Washington state, and Nevada.  (Above:  Mrs. Obama at last October's Harvest event)

Mrs. Obama's annual Harvests have been high-profile events with loads of media coverage for the Let's Move! campaign.  Despite the lack of a garden party, the Kitchen Garden and Let's Move! will still be in the spotlight: The White House has expanded the schedule for the annual Fall Garden Tours, offering these over two weekends this year, and the media has been invited, too.  The public can tour the grounds beginning tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 13, and again on Sunday, with two more days scheduled next week.  Visitors will have a nice view of the Kitchen Garden, lush with late bounty such as squash, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and early winter lettuces.  CLICK HERE for full details about the free tickets, times and dates.  (Above: Mrs. Obama at her 2010 Harvest)


A look back at the First Lady's past Fall Harvests....
Since Mrs. Obama first broke ground for the Kitchen Garden in March of 2009, it has produced more than 4,000 pounds of food, according to Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass.  At the First Lady's three previous Fall Harvest events, she was of course joined by Kass, the mastermind behind the project, as well as by Executive Chef Cris Comerford and Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses and other kitchen staff.  Members of the East Wing team always joined in, and, of course, there were the kids, who are the point of it all.  Each Harvest was a little different, but all focused on the wonder of going from dirt to dining.  Check the sidebar of the blog for all the Kitchen Garden-inspired recipes, such as Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Apples & Chilis and Garden Vegetable Pizza.  (Above: Mrs. Obama and helpers harvesting sweet  potatoes in 2009)

"Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land!" Mrs. Obama exclaimed during her first Fall Harvest in 2009, held on Oct. 29.  The Kitchen Garden was at the time its original size, 1,100 square feet, and Mrs. Obama was joined by kids from DC's Kimball and Bancroft elementary schools.  Mrs. Obama and her helpers dug up giant sweet potatoes--including four pounders--competing with Kass and his helpers to see who could go faster.  

About a third of the crops that grow in the garden are donated to DC's Miriam's Kitchen, which offers daily meals to homeless citizens. The vegetables are also used for First Family meals, which are designed around the seasonal offerings, as well as for State Dinners and other ultra-important social events.


By the time Mrs. Obama hosted her Fall Harvest in 2010, on Oct. 20, the Kitchen Garden had been expanded to 1,500 square feet in order to grow even more vegetables.  The First Lady was joined by kids from DC's Tubman and Bancroft elementary schools.  Internationally acclaimed chef Daniel Boulud and chefs representing the US in the year's international Bocuse d'Or competition also joined Mrs. Obama and her young helpers. (Above:  Mrs. Obama and her helpers sample baby white radishes with Boulud)

A highlight of the day was the first-ever Presidential pumpkins harvested from the garden.  Some were still half green.  (Above: Mrs. Obama and the kids display their bounty with Boulud, far left)

“Very cool, isn't it?"  Mrs. Obama said to her helpers.  "You guys have witnessed the first White House pumpkins.”


During the Fall Harvest in 2011 on October 5th, Mrs. Obama was again joined by kids from Bancroft and Tubman elementary schools.  The activity included a garden-side pizza party with the kids, which was subsequently included in the First Lady's book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, published in May of 2012. (Above:  Mrs. Obama and helpers harvesting red chilis)

The bounty from the Harvest was used the following week for the State Dinner honoring the Republic of Korea's President Lee Myung-Bak.  The 2011 Harvest also featured the first-ever Let's Move! Tweetup, with 17 adult social media users invited to the White House for meetings with Kass and other staffers.  The White House in the ensuing months dramatically expanded its use of Twitter for Let's Move!, with Kass and the other chefs engaging in more Tweetups and using social media to spread the word about Mrs. Obama's message.


Above:  Kass and a helper at the 2010 Fall Harvest, with sweet potatoes and the first-ever pumpkins.

*Photos by Eddie Gehman Kohan/Obama Foodorama; top photo by Chuck Kennedy/White House

White House Curator Bill Allman Discusses The British Burning The White House

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British Forces helped themselves to a sumptuous feast left behind by First Lady Dolley Madison before setting fire to the residence...
White House Curator William 'Bill' Allman stars in a new White House video, discussing the British burning of the White House during the War of 1812.  The British destruction took place on August 24, 1814, and Allman shows still-visible scorch marks on the residence as he explains that President James Madison was away from the residence, fighting the war.  But First Lady Dolley Madison was home, and she famously saved the portrait of President George Washington that now hangs in the East Room.  Mrs. Madison as she departed also left her husband's dinner ready to be served.  British troops helped themselves to what has been described as a lavish feast.


"President Madison came back from the battlefield and found dinner set, and First Lady Dolley Madison gone," Allman says onscreen. "He and his Cabinet quickly left as well.  And then later that night the British arrived and ate the dinner, then set fire to the building."

The video, posted to mark Fire Prevention Week, includes a clip of President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron joking about the White House burning, when Mr. Cameron visited the White House last march for his State Visit and State Dinner.

Allman doesn't say onscreen what Mrs. Madison was serving for dinner, but George Gleig, a member of the British force that attacked the White House, left this account:

When the detachment sent out to destroy Mr. Madison's house entered his dining parlor, they found a dinner table spread and covers laid for forty guests. Several kinds of wine, in handsome cut glass decanters, were cooling on the sideboard; plate holders stood by the fireplace, filled with dishes and plates; knives, forks, and spoons were arranged for immediate use; in short, everything was ready for the entertainment of a ceremonious party. Such were the arrangements in the dining room, whilst in the kitchen were others answerable to them in every respect. Spits, loaded with joints of various sorts, turned before the fire; pots, utensils stood upon the grate; and all the other requisites for an elegant and substantial repast were exactly in a state which indicated that they had been lately and precipitately abandoned.

You will readily imagine that these preparations were beheld by a party of hungry soldiers with no indifferent eye. An elegant dinner, even though considerably overdressed, was a luxury to which few of them, at least for some time back, had been accustomed, and which, after the dangers and fatigues of the day, appeared peculiarly inviting. They sat down to it, therefore, not indeed in the most orderly manner, but with countenances which would not have disgraced a party of aldermen at a civic feast, and, having satisfied their appetites with fewer complaints than would have probably escaped their rival gourmands, and partaken pretty freely of the wines, they finished by setting fire to the house which had so liberally entertained them.

President Obama Proclaims National School Lunch Week 2012, Oct. 14 - 20

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200 billion lunches served: President hails school lunch professionals, lauds First Lady's childhood obesity campaign...
President Obama on Friday issued a Proclamation declaring Oct. 14-20 as National School Lunch Week.  In his text, the President recognizes "all those whose dedicated work and care make good nutrition a reality for our sons and daughters." He discusses the origins of the program under President Harry Truman beginning in 1946, noting that more than 200 billion lunches have been served since.  The President hails First Lady Michelle Obama's efforts with the Let's Move! campaign, and discusses the importance of healthy, affordable food.  In December of 2010, the President signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, legislation Mrs. Obama championed through Let's Move!.  (Above:  The President signing the Act as Mrs. Obama and lawmakers look on)

The measure provided the first nutritional updates to the National School Lunch Program in fifteen years.  The standards went into effect this Fall.  About 32 million children currently participate in the program. Check USDA's site for full information.

"Through efforts like First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, we are continuing to bring together stakeholders at every level of government, in the private sector, and throughout our communities to ensure more children have access to the healthy, affordable food they need to learn and grow," President Obama wrote.

NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH WEEK, 2012

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

"Our children are the key to America's success in the 21st century, and it is incumbent upon us all to ensure they have the resources they need to reach their greatest potential -- including access to healthy meals at school. During National School Lunch Week, we recognize all those whose dedicated work and care make good nutrition a reality for our sons and daughters.

Our students deserve the best possible chance to live healthy, productive lives. Since the National School Lunch Program was founded over six decades ago, schools have served over 200 billion lunches that have helped generations of children achieve in the classroom and grow into our country's next generation of leaders. This school year, the program will carry that legacy forward by providing nutritious meals for tens of millions of students every day. These meals are a vital source of fruits, vegetables, and other fresh and nutritious foods for our Nation's young people. Through efforts like First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, we are continuing to bring together stakeholders at every level of government, in the private sector, and throughout our communities to ensure more children have access to the healthy, affordable food they need to learn and grow.

Soon after President Harry Truman signed the National School Lunch Act in 1946, he reminded us that "nothing is more important in our national life than the welfare of our children, and proper nourishment comes first in attaining this welfare." This week, we thank the countless individuals who make our children's well-being their highest priority, and celebrate the National School Lunch Program as a foundation for their success in the years to come.

The Congress, by joint resolution of October 9, 1962 (Public Law 87-780), as amended, has designated the week beginning on the second Sunday in October each year as "National School Lunch Week," and has requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this week.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week of October 14 through October 20, 2012, as National School Lunch Week. I call upon all Americans to join the dedicated individuals who administer the National School Lunch Program in appropriate activities that support the health and well-being of our Nation's children.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twelfth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh."

BARACK OBAMA

##

*Photo taken on Dec. 13, 2010, at Harriet Tubman Elementary School by Lawrence Jackson/White House

President Obama Dines At DC's 'Smith Commons' With Winners Of Last 'Dinner with Barack' Contest - UPDATE

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The President's battleground state guests are two teachers and an auto worker; contest entries helped the President set a fundraising record in September...
Washington, DC: President Obama dined on Friday evening with the three winners of the sixth and final Dinner with Barack contest, arriving at Smith Commons Dining Room & Public House in the Atlas Arts District at 5:40 PM for a meal that lasted close to two hours.  Not surprisingly, the President's three guests hailed from battleground states he hopes to win 25 days from now--Ohio, Colorado, and North Carolina--where he is polling neck and neck with his Republican rival.   (Above: This photo tweeted by the Campaign had the caption "table for four," but showed only the President's face)

Also not surprisingly, the winners were two teachers and an auto worker.  Favorite campaign talking points for Mr. Obama include his rescue of the car industry and bashing the GOP Congress for failing to support educators.  Teachers, fire fighters, and health care workers have loaded the President's previous dinner contest guest lists.

Clad in a blue shirt and dark tie, the President fiddled with a paper menu as he was seated with his guests at a table in the main dining room covered with a brown cloth.  Votive candles, napkin rolls and water glasses were on the table.  The President laughed and quizzed his guests about their bios, leaning his head on his fist, as pool was allowed in for less than two minutes for a rapid photo op.  The neighborhood bistro on the H St. NE corridor was closed to the public so the President and the winners could dine privately surrounded by huge lights and a video crew to film campaign spots that will be used in the final sprint to Election Day. 


The lucky winners were Joe Laliberte, a social studies teacher from Colorado Springs, Colorado; Kimberley Cathey, an elementary school speech pathologist from Greensboro, North Carolina; and Mario Orosa, of North Canton, Ohio, a technical specialist at Goodyear.  The President had breakfast in July with some of Orosa's Goodyear co-workers during one of his many visits to the Buckeye State.  Each dinner winner brought a companion, and there were two spouses and one mom joining the fun. Race was a factor: Winner Cathey and her husband are African America, and Orosa is Latino, crucial voting blocs for the President.  (Above:  Cathey is second right; Orosa is beside the President and Laliberte sips water)

"Smith Commons offers something for every palate," notes the website, as well as a wide variety of craft beers.  Entrees are priced from $15-$23, and include the Smith Burger with caramelized onions, bacon, and Chipotle mayonnaise--more than likely the President's order-- as well as seared braised short rib, seared scallops, turducken, lamb chops, parsley-crusted grouper, and chickpea ravioli. The menu [PDF].

Dining with supporters has been a tradition since Mr. Obama's first presidential campaign, and he was expecting his last Campaign contest dinner to be a wee bit emotional, he said in multiple emails asking for donations.

"It's bittersweet, but this is the last time we'll do this on this campaign," the President wrote in one email. 

The push for entries for this particular dinner contest, the sixth since the Spring of 2011, included more emails than for any previous dinner, as well as videos, online ads, and an aggressive social media push.  It helped America's most powerful dinner companion raise a record-breaking $181 million for his campaign in September, putting him within spitting distance of a $1 billion haul for this election cycle.


The President greeted the restaurant's staffers, posed for photos, and autographed a menu before departing the restaurant at 7:24 PM.  "Great food! Barack Obama" the President wrote on the menu (above).

"Thanks for stopping by with a few friends, Mr. President. @BarackObama It was our pleasure! #POTUS" the restaurant tweeted after the President left, with the Instagram of the autographed menu.

The President was back home at the White House at 7:29 PM.  The President last dined out in DC on Oct. 6th, when he celebrated his twentieth wedding anniversary with his wife with a date at Bourbon Steak restaurant. 

News of street closures, a heavy security presence, and a white screening tent set up in front of Smith Commons alerted the neighborhood that the President would be visiting the eatery, and Twitter was abuzz with the news late Friday afternoon.  Crowds lined H street, cheering and clapping as the President's motorcade arrived.


The winners' bios, courtesy of the campaign...
The three winners had to pass background checks, and will pay taxes on the assigned retail value of their individual prizes, $1,600.  The Campaign flew them to DC by coach class air fare and put up for a one-night hotel stay.  (Above:  With Orosa)

*Kimberley Cathey is a mother of two young sons and is in her eighth year as a speech and language pathologist at a Greensboro, North Carolina public elementary school.  Kim is a dedicated OFA volunteer and often hosts phone-banking parties at her home.  She is a strong supporter of the President because she believes, “he is in tune with the average person.”  She is especially grateful for his work to pass health care reform so her sons never have to worry about the costs of health care while in college, as she did.  Kim’s husband, Ron, will accompany her to dinner. 

*Mario Orosa is a native Ohioan and has worked in the research and development unit at Goodyear for 12 years.  He is currently a technical specialist there.  Mario supports the President’s decision to rescue the auto industry and invest in American auto workers, because he sees the positive affects not only on his job and the auto industry, but positive affect it had on his North Canton, Ohio community.  Deidra, Mario’s wife, will accompany him to dinner.

*Joe Laliberte, a native of New Hampshire, living in Colorado Springs, CO,  is a social studies teacher at a local Colorado Springs middle school.  Joe supports the President because of his unwavering support for DREAMers, many of who are Joe’s students, and the Latino community as a whole.   Joe’s mother, Patti, will attend the dinner with Joe and the President.

 The previous Dinner with Barack contest meals...
The President has attended four previous dinners and one luncheon for the Dinner with Barack contests during this election cycle.  Online dinner contests were also used for fundraising with George Clooney, Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Wintour, with Michael Jordan and NBA stars and with former President Bill Clinton.  A reception with Jay-Z and Beyoncé  also had a contest.  (Above:  The graphic logo for the sixth Dinner with Barack contest included First Lady Michelle Obama, though she was not part of the dinner)

Taken together, the dinners have helped drop millions of dollars into the President's war chest, though the Campaign won't specify how much.  The Clooney dinner last May was credited with raising at least $15 million.

The President and Mrs. Obama dined at DC's Mintwood Place restaurant on August 20, 2012 for the fifth Dinner with Barack contest, which had three winners and their guests.

The President enjoyed a cheeseburger and fries with the winners of the 'Dinner with Barack IV' contest on June 15th, 2012, when he took over DC's Lincoln Restaurant.

The First Lady also attended the third dinner with the President and the winners, which was held at DC's Boundary Road restaurant on March 8, 2012.

The second dinner contest was fulfilled with a luncheon; the President took his four winners to DC's Scion restaurant on January 6, 2012.

The President ate dinner with the four winners of the first Dinner with Barack contest on October 27, 2011, at The Liberty Tavern in Arlington, VA.

*CLICK HERE for links to all posts about the dinner series.


Above: The exterior of the restaurant, surrounded bys ecurity in the afternoon, tweeted by @Taylor_Gourmet.

 Info:  Smith Commons is at 1245 H Street, NE  Washington, DC 20002.  Phone: 202-396-0038.

*Top photo by Obama for America; second and third by pool; menu from Smith Commons; exterior photo by @Taylor_Gourmet

Hail Sealand

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Paddy Roy Bates is my hero:

Paddy Roy Bates, who occupied an abandoned fort in the North Sea and declared it the sovereign Principality of Sealand with himself as its prince, has died aged 91, his son said on Wednesday.

Michael Bates said his father died on Tuesday at a care home in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's.

In the 1960s, inspired by the "pirate radio" movement, Bates set up Radio Essex on an offshore fort. When that was closed down, he moved in 1966 to Fort Roughs, a disused second world war platform in international waters about seven miles off the coast.

Michael Bates said his father initially intended to set up another radio station, but then "had the bizarre idea of declaring independence".

Rejecting a British order to leave, he proclaimed the fort the Principality of Sealand, declaring himself Prince Roy and his wife, Joan, as princess.

The 550-square-metre (5,920-square-foot) fort two concrete towers connected by an iron platform claimed to be the world's smallest sovereign state, though it was not internationally recognized.

Since an initial attempt to reclaim the fort was rejected by an English court, Britain has largely ignored the breakaway platform.

Despite the lack of legal status, Bates gave Sealand its own constitution, red, white and black flag, passports, stamps, coins, national anthem and a motto, E Mare Libertas: "From the sea, freedom".

Today, Sealand makes money by selling aristocratic titles and hosting Internet servers.

Lots of days I feel like finding an off sea platform and declaring my independence from this fake democracy we have here called Bloomberg LP, er, I mean New York City.

RIP Paddy Roy Bates.

Carol Burris Gives Her Testimony To The Cuomo Education Commission

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Via the Answer Sheet, here it is, in full:

This past summer, New York high school Principals Carol Burris and Harry Leonadartos attempted to testify about school reform before New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Education Commission in New York City.  They were not given the opportunity to speak, and they wrote about it in this post. Yesterday the commission — which is chaired by former Citibank chairman Dick Parsons — visited Long Island and Burris was allowed to speak. She received a standing ovation when she was done. Below is her testimony.

Burris is the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York and a co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student scores. Over 1,500 New York principals and more than 5,400 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens have signed the letter which can be found here.

Testimony by Carol Burris:
Thank you very much for this opportunity. My name is Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre. I was an assistant principal, a teacher, a school board member and a board president. I am but one of many dedicated educators on Long Island. A remarkable 33% of all of the Reward Schools in the State of New York are in Nassau and Suffolk counties. If Long Island were a state, we would be first in the nation.
Long Island is also where the principals’ letter in opposition to APPR, the evaluation system, began. That letter is signed by 80% of all of Long Island’s principals along with more than 1500 other principals across the state, and thousands of parents and teachers. We are not afraid to be evaluated nor are we afraid to evaluate our teachers — those who claim we are simply “anxious” do not know us at all.

 In the testimony which I submitted, I explain why APPR will not improve teaching and will negatively impact the learning of our students. Rather than repeat that reasoning, Mr. Chairman, I would pose this scenario instead. Suppose the legislature decided that the solution to the financial crisis was to mandate an evaluation system for every loan officer in the state, even mandating a value added metric to be used. Suppose that 80% of your best managers and vice presidents told you that using that inaccurate metric was going to hurt, not help Citibank. Mr. Chairman, would you have complied, or would you have resisted in order to save your bank?

The obsession with test based evaluations of students, schools and teachers is tearing the schools we love apart. Something is very wrong when nine year olds sit for tests that are longer than the SAT and the Graduate Record Examination combined.

Something is wrong when policymakers contemplate tests for kindergarteners to predict whether they are on the path to college readiness.

Something is wrong when my students must take a pre-test comprised of Regents Physics questions BEFORE they have taken the course, so that their teachers can be evaluated.

Thank goodness my school does not offer sky diving! It sounds irrational — it is. Worst of all, taxpayer dollars and instructional days are being wasted.

Parents get it. They are opting out of testing. From Niagara Falls to Long Island they are uniting against the proliferation of standardized tests, and test based reform.

At the same time, the most critical reasons for poor student achievement are being ignored. As I documented in my testimony, New York is ranked number 4 in inequitable funding. Among the states in the Northeast, New York State is #1 in childhood poverty. We are at the top of the list for racially and socioeconomically segregated schooling.

I ask you to recommend that the millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars used for multi-day testing, test security and shredding, APPR and the creation of student data systems be dedicated instead to wrap around services for poor children and to fund excellent pre-schools and to the classrooms of New York that need it the most.

I ask you to recommend that the governor visit Long Island Schools and study just how well disadvantaged students can do if their school is not overwhelmed and has sufficient resources.

Some of the best schools in the nation are here on Long Island. In our schools that have ample support systems and not extraordinary poverty, students who receive free or reduced price lunch excel.

I understand that it is far more popular to blame teachers, tenure, unions, and principals. However, by ignoring the core reasons — that account for 85% of the variance in student performance — you do not make things better, and you risk making our schools worse as dollars flow to the wrong solutions.

I thank you for your service on this committee. I truly appreciate your visit to Long Island. Come visit our schools and speak with our teachers and us. We understand quality and we practice it. Thank you for considering my testimony.

Of course Cuomo, Tisch and King won't care about any of this.  They would rather blame teachers, principals, schools, unions and tenure for the problems in schools.

But Burris, the other principals who signed the letter, and everybody else who is fighting APPR are putting the people in charge on notice - the solutions being proposed and put into place are more damaging than the problems themselves.

Take the money going to all these so-called "reforms" and put them to wrap-around services for the schools and students that need it the most and you go a long way toward solving the problems in the school system.

That common sense solution is not very sexy.

No one gets fired.

So-called reformers like Klein and Rhee do not get to thunder about all the "bad teachers" who need to be swept out into the ocean via a broom.

But what Burris says is the truth.

It's a shame that so-called Democrats like Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama are unwilling to here this message.

Mandate Insanity

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Andrew Cuomo's vaunted education reform commission has been having some meetings around the state to hear from various constituencies about more education reform plans.

Last month when the commission met up in Newburgh, they heard complaints about the reforms already put into place:

Online testing is a hot subject among educators. That's because State Education Commissioner John King Jr. has turned up the heat.
King wants to make it a reality for all students to take their state tests on computers in the next couple of years.
Perhaps, he needs a reality check. Some parents and administrators think so. They're balking over his timetable.
They complain he's rushing into this new project with little or no money, just like every other mandate coming down the education pipeline these days. This fall, the districts have found themselves strapped with new teacher and principal evaluations, Common Core standards for English Language Arts and Math, and the Dignity for All Act.
All of these mandates require staff training and are underfunded. The Obama administration even threw in its own mandate with the Healthy Hunger-Free Child Act, which is to be put in place this fall.
It's no wonder why teachers are complaining about being stressed out so early on in the school year. Administrators can't remember the last time that so many expensive, new requirements were set to take effect all at once.
It's also no wonder why parents and superintendents sounded off at a state hearing on education reform in Newburgh last week. They told the Governor's Education Reform Commission about the deep financial problems their districts face due to the mandates, as well as cutbacks under the 2 percent tax cap.
"If we have to start paying for things like computers for testing, we'll be in a lot of trouble," said Jennie Colabella, a Highland School District mom.
"We're going to have to cut staff or cut programs for kids," said Middletown Superintendent Ken Eastwood. "I don't think state legislators have any idea that this is coming down the pipeline and, when it does, all hell's going to break loose."

Canceling programs for kids and laying off staff so that new standardized tests can be given to students in every grade in every subject online all the year through - that's the reform idea that most excites our NYSED Commissioner King and our Regents Chancellor Tisch.
No matter that all these tests and the evaluations now tied to them haven't been piloted.
No matter that districts are already scrambling for money and cannot afford all this new technology on top of all the other underfunded mandates.
No matter that the Common Core mandates have ratcheted up the difficulty of these new tests and the state knows that test scores are going to plummet across many districts (and teachers will lose their jobs and schools will be closed as a result of this.)
No matter.
The reformers have the reform plans in place and they DO NOT CARE if students, parents, teachers, administrators, and district leaders have any problems with them.
As one commenter on the Newburgh story wrote:

This whole education "reform" movement occurring in this state and throughout the country right now is a debacle. Yes, some changes do need to be made, but the sudden onslaught of enormous change and it's financial implications, at the same time when budgets are being cut like crazy, is disastrous. Teachers and parents need to start fighting back against these "reformer" dictators who have never stepped foot in a school classroom. They are destroying the public education system in this country.

Indeed - and that has always been the point.

These reformers know that many teachers and many schools are going to be deemed "failing" and "ineffective" under the new evaluation system and the new Common Core tests.

But rather than make these changes slowly and work with schools and teachers, they are instead rushing these through so they can declare the system a failure and privatize as much of it as they can.

There are some real bad times ahead.

And Cuomo, King and Tisch do not seem to care about the consequences.

Mayor Bloomberg King's Game 911 Tech System CityTime Mega-Crimes

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http://mayorbloombergkingofnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/06/suzannah-troy-note-to-press-activists.html  King's Game Danish film -- from Albany under the reign of andy cuomo to mike bloomberg and mrs. bloomberg Christine Quinn his mini-me -- the 2 get off playing good cop bad cop we have the largest mega corruption EVER and no one seems to notice...

Don't forget mega-corrupt MTA SAIC deal -- oh yeah and than the MTA and it's board got integrity?  Even less now that Andrew Cuomo stabbed the people of NYC in the back and sent a message go ahead and be violent towards women and get rewarded as well re: Dave Paterson silencing his 6 foot 9 best friend Dave Johnson's girlfriend in to silence.

Johnson fled.  The only honest folks with integrity resigned from their jobs in Albany as the corrupt Paterson and Johnson stayed on.  Finally paterson was forced to fire johnson who did plead guilty!

Judge Judy Kaye is a political fixer and betrayed all decency folks to do Cuomo's political fixing and it is is because of Paterson's daddy Basil who has powerful connections so from Albany to City Hall the most corruption EVER.

I had hoped Cuomo might change things but he has clearly signaled he is now part of the problem.

9-11 a nightmare I still can't believe but this too seems like a bad dream -- really mind blowing they are getting away with the largest tax payer abuse -- billions upon billions and no one seems to notice or care and the most corrupt players are all above the law while the little people are falsely arrested ticketed etc.

The New York Times Christine Quinn's Campaign Manager Protest Dress! by Suzannah B. Troy

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Protesting tonight and I will wear my red wig!!!!!
Wait until you see the back!   I accuse The New York Times of killing news stories on behalf of Christine Quinn!


http://christinequinnminime.blogspot.com/2012/07/christine-quinn-chuck-meara-locked-out.html


I wrote at the very bottom of the back of the dress.....Thanks Carolyn Ryan, We owe you....xoxox Christine Quinn, Emily Giske!

Sol Stern: The Centerpiece Of Bloomberg's Ed Reforms Lies In Tatters

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Sol Stern writes that the school report cards handed out by the NYCDOE - what Stern calls one of the centerpieces of Bloomberg's education reforms - are a failure:

There is little stability in the year-by-year individual school evaluations. Many schools found to be inadequate by the state are ranked high by the city and vice versa. Thus parents are increasingly baffled by the grades assigned to their children’s schools. Teachers are demoralized because they are under pressure to narrow the curriculum and teach to the state tests. Principals qualify for cash bonuses if their school’s ranking goes up; on the other hand they face the threat of closing if the school’s grades go down. Not surprisingly they are tempted to game the system by, for example, allowing students who have not completed their course work to graduate. Even The New York Post, among the mayor’s most enthusiastic supporters on education issues, now recognizes that the progress report “erodes confidence in the mayor’s management — endangering his legacy and undermining respect for vital reforms, like mayoral control of the schools.”

Stern then takes aim at not just the mayor's education reform centerpiece, but test-based education reform as a whole:

 This debacle was entirely predictable. Testing experts have recognized that accountability schemes based so heavily on standardized tests can lead to fraud. The principle even has a name: Campbell’s Law, after Donald Campbell, one of the greatest American social scientists of the 20th century, who concluded that “when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.”

Of course things are going to get much worse before they get better because the state has put a new teacher evaluation system into place, APPR, that requires all teachers be evaluated using their students' test scores. 

Additional standardized tests in every grade in every subject are going to be added all throughout the year not so that children can be assessed but so that their teachers can be evaluated.

The geniuses who put this system into place - Obama, Duncan and Gates who have promoted and funded it at the national level, Cuomo, Tisch and King who pushed this through at the state level, and the union leaders like Mulgrew and Iannuzzi who haven't challenged the premise of test-based accountability in any practical way - are going to have a lot to answer for when this generation of students damaged by test-based accountability become adults.

As for Bloomberg, the citizens of this city know that the mayor has no clothes when it comes to education and the school system - the latest Marist/NY1 poll shows that 49% believe the school system is worse now than a generation ago, another 16% say the quality is about the same despite all the dramatic changes wrought by Bloomberg.

The mayor has gotten a Mayor Data Report and the score is an "F".

Sol Stern was once a supporter of the mayor's reforms.

But Stern sees the damage that has been done by this regime, just as many New Yorkers see it, and says the following:

 The perverse incentives of the progress reports cause harm — to the kids, to the teachers and principals and to the parents. It’s time for the Bloomberg administration to face this inconvenient truth and restore integrity to the accountability system. 

I would add one thing - it's time for the Accountability Mayor to face some accountability for his failures himself.

Bloomberg The Tory

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Bloomberg addressed the Conservative Party's annual conference in Birmingham and claimed he has governed as a Tory in New York, bringing a milder form of right wing politics to the city that has more in common with the Tories in England than the GOP in Washington.

Bloomberg also took the opportunity to brag about his supposed successes as mayor:

Mr. Bloomberg said he and Mr. Cameron had each made difficult decisions on the economy, a reference to the sweeping austerity measures Mr. Cameron has introduced. Balancing his own city budget, Mr. Bloomberg said, involved “raising taxes and cutting spending, and let me tell you, that didn’t make me the most popular man in New York.” 
He cited a series of statistics that he said showed his pragmatism had yielded results: Crime is down 30 percent, he said, high school graduations are up 40 percent and welfare claims are down 20 percent.

He never did mention how the crime stats are phonied up, the graduation rates are phonied up, and the agencies in the city government are bastions of corruption (Seedco being the latest scandal there.)

He didn't mention the failed 911 system he has built that has gone $1 billion over budget and still isn't finished after eight years work.  He also failed to note how he has tried to keep New Yorkers from knowing the extent of his incompetence over the 911 system by hiding an independent report into the debacle.

He also didn't mention the CityTime scandal that saw crooks steal $700+ million dollars from the city in the worst fraud ever perpetrated against city taxpayers.

And he didn't mention the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010 when he couldn't get the streets cleared for days but told people to relax, stop whining about all the piled up snow and go take in a Broadway show instead as people in the boroughs died from a lack of medical care.

Instead he declared himself a great leader and his claims have, as usual, gone unchallenged.

But the Tories, in private, did mention one of Bloomberg biggest accomplishments, one which they envy very much - his refusal to compromise on anything:

Conservative officials, who have felt hampered by their coalition government with a liberal party here, also expressed admiration for the New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, who visited London before the Olympic Games this summer. “They run things a bit like we’d like to,” one official said, “if we didn’t have to worry about inconveniences like compromise.”

Yeah, that's what Britain needs - a government run by a bunch of rich, out-of-touch oligarchs who don't give a shit about anybody other than themselves and who use the police force as their "own private army."

Yeah, that's what Britain needs.

Remind me, didn't Britain get rid of absolute monarchy back in the day?

Maybe we ought to try the same here in NYC.

Is Obama Losing?

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I see that quite a few national polls have swung in Mitt Romney's favor since he trounced Barack Obama in a political debate last week.

I see that some swing state polls have begin to swing in Romney's direction too.

Of course I know that just two weeks ago, the media and the political establishment had all but written the election off as a win for Obama, so I have a difficult time seeing how one bad performance in a debate could swing the polls that much.

But I do know one thing.

The arrogant, out-of-touch elitist who showed up at the debate - I'm talking about the one with the "D" after his name, not the "R" - needed a wake-up call and maybe the swing in polls is just that.

I am a Democrat who has only voted for Democrats going back to 1988 (1986 if you count local elections.)

I am NOT voting for Barack Obama this year.

First of all, I don't consider him a Democrat.

Anybody who wants to gut Social Security and Medicare, hand out billions of dollars to the Too Big To Fail Banks while creating a mortgage relief program that screws middle and working class homeowners, renominates Ben Bernanke at the Fed, nominates Timmeh Geithner at Treasury (Goldman's man on the job!), promotes the privatization of the public education system through his Race to the Top program, jails Bradley Manning for years without any charges  wages war against whistleblowers with a tenacity the Bushies couldn't even muster, declares he has the right to assassinate any American any time anywhere if he declares them a "terrorist," puts together a "kill list" of "terrorists" he wants assassinated, and drops drone bombs on innocent men, women and children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere is not a Democrat to my mind.

That kind of guy is a Republican and I won't be voting for him, no matter who is running against him.

Secondly, Obama is one of the most arrogant pricks on the planet (if you don't think so, take a look again at the debate and read the accounts of how he had refused preparation for it and told his aides afterwards that he thought he had won.)  He truly is a narcissist who is convinced of his own righteousness and awesomeness and just can't understand why everybody else doesn't agree with him.

As a teacher who has watched Obama vilify my profession, I know that many teachers have tried to tell this man about the damage Race to the Top is doing to education and students.  Obama is pushing unproven, unpiloted measures like teacher evaluations tied to test scores onto the whole nation and is unwilling to listen to anybody, even an expert like Diane Ravitch, who tries to tell him he is wrong to do this.

Sometimes Obama just seems completely out-of-touch about the consequences his policies are having.  For example, he said during the State of the Union this past year that teachers need to stop teaching to the tests, that children deserve an education that is not limited by this kind of rote learning, and yet, Obama's own RttT policy ensures that this kind of teaching will happen because it promotes standardized tests in every grade, K-12, in every subject, and ties teacher evaluations to the scores.

Is Obama unaware that this is the consequence of his policy when he says that teachers should stop teaching to the test?  Is he actually aware of this and dissembling when he says this?

Dunno the answer to these questions, but I do know that there are two possibilities:

Either Obama has no idea the damage that is being done by his education policies and pursues them anyway or he does know and he lies about them.

Either possibility disturbs me and is pretty much emblematic of his whole presidency and indeed himself as an individual.

That was on display at the debate where he looked bored, pissed off to be there, and frankly mad that the rest of the country didn't already see the brilliance of his policies and call the debate off before it started.

So it's hard to know if the poll swing in recent days means much or if it's just the media making a horse race out of what seemed to be a rout in the making, but I do know one thing.

If the poll swing and the drubbing Obama is taking from the media, Dems and Democratic supporters alike serves to wake this arrogant, elitist, out-of-touch man from his "awesomeness fantasies" about himself and his policies, that's a good thing.

That still won't make me vote for him.

I don't vote for pro-privatization, anti-labor war criminals who murder innocent men, women and children on a "kill list."

But maybe a wake-up call will mean Obama will stop listening to only himself and start listening to some of the people who supported him in '08 who he know seems to disdain.

And if that happens, maybe, just maybe, a second Obama term won't be as damaging as the first one was.

Incorrect reports say that California's Prop 37 has zero tolerance for accidental GMO content

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California voters are considering a ballot initiative to require mandatory labeling for foods that contain Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) ingredients.

A recent Oakland Tribune editorial against the initiative gets key facts wrong. The editorial, which was widely published in other newspapers, claims that the proposal has a zero-tolerance for accidental GMO content in foods that aren't labeled as containing GMOs. Such a policy would force producers of essentially non-GMO products to use the label "may contain GMOs," simply out of fear of litigation.  But the editorial is mistaken. The initiative rightly allows foods that do not intentionally contain GMOs to carry a "non-GMO" label.

The initiative has several moderate and reasonable features.  For example, it would require genetically modified animals -- such as a fast-growing genetically modified salmon -- to contain a "GMO" label, but it would not require such a label for ordinary beef that had been fed genetically modified corn and soybeans.  A farmer or food manufacturer would not have to do any fancy testing to prevent accidental contamination with GMOs (for example by drifting seeds from a neighboring field, or from GMO-containing dust left over on farm machinery).  It suffices for the food producers to claim in writing that they used crop varieties and food ingredients that they reasonably believed were not genetically modified.  For example, a food manufacturer purchasing non-GMO corn would have to get the supplier to sign such an affidavit, but would not have to do scientific testing.  Some anti-GMO advocates might have wanted stricter rules, but there are good common-sense reasons why the initiative took these positions.

In this context, the Oakland Tribune editorial is particularly disappointing.  Whether you support or oppose GMOs, it is important to explain the initiative clearly so that our democracy can function as well as possible.

The Tribune editorial echoed a point that was also made in a recent working paper by the highly esteemed agricultural economist Colin Carter and several coauthors.  They wrote:

The California initiative would implement a zero-tolerance policy for accidental presence of small amounts of GM substances, even if the U.S. government has approved the GM material for human consumption.

But, after reading the text of the initiative, this seems incorrect. I wrote Professor Carter to ask about this, and his brief response by email while traveling made several good points in opposition to Prop 37, but didn't really back up this claim that the initiative takes a zero-tolerance position on accidental contamination.  Essentially, opponents fear that firms will anticipate legal problems and prophylactically label their products with "may contain GMO" labels, but I cannot really find a reasonable basis for that fear in the initiative itself.

Here's a subtle but important point.  A food manufacturer with a complex ingredient list, including corn or soybean ingredients from commodity sources, may have to use a "may contain GMO" label, but that's not a policy error.  Given that most U.S. corn and soybeans are produced with GMO varieties, it really is true that such products may contain GMOs, so the label is correct.  A food manufacturer who has made reasonable effort to use non-GMO ingredients is permitted under this initiative to use a "non-GMO" label.  I really don't see any part of the initiative that requires these essentially non-GMO foods to be labeled as "may contain GMOs" merely out of caution.

There are good reasons why some people will oppose this California Prop 37.  GMO technologies may well not be dangerous to humans.  Or they may have some risks and tradeoffs, just as non-GMO foods do, that are worthwhile because of the production advantages from the new technology.  Or, as economists in particular are likely to point out, it may be that a well-crafted voluntary labeling regime would have functioned as well as mandatory labeling without as much burden on society.  Still, opponents should make those points clearly rather than mischaracterizing Prop 37. 

Two communication strategies for reducing sugary drinks

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First, I like the plain matter-of-fact tone of the federal government's MyPlate graphic. It paints a pleasant portrait of a healthy meal, and then underlines several key messages for consumers by stating them in blunt English.  One of the key recommendations is to "drink water instead of sugary drinks."

A reasonable person may add that one should drink water instead of sugary drinks most of the time, but the mainstream message of the dietary guidelines reflects the best judgement of scientists in this field.



Balancing Calories

• Enjoy your food, but eat less. 
• Avoid oversized portions. 

Foods to Increase

• Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. 
• Make at least half your grains whole grains. 
• Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk. 

Foods to Reduce

• Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals and choose the foods with lower numbers. 
• Drink water instead of sugary drinks. 

Second, in a new video from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), public health marketers seek to both imitate and expose the emotive power of soda advertisements.  In the video, a family of polar bears endures the harsh effects of diabetes and learns that the soda advertisements offer only a false promise of happiness.  The video strays close to playing on guilt themes as motivation for healthy behaviors, but the polar bears are fundamentally sympathetic, and they take charge of their own lives in the nice ending. 

If you dislike the video's harsh imagery, I'd be interested to hear about it.  But I do think the beverage association spokesperson's rebuttal -- in a USA Today article -- rings false:

But ABA spokeswoman Karen Hanretty says, "CSPI is better at producing videos than they are doing math. People are drinking fewer calories from soda -- and have been for a decade -- so how can soda be to blame for rising obesity?" 

The basic message that it is better to limit sugary drinks is well-established and denying this with misleading trend statistics just makes the video look like the more serious party in this conversation.

Giving Low-Scoring Students ADHD Pills To Raise Their Scores

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We must raise test scores by any means necessary - even by drugging the kids and diminishing their authentic development as humans.

That's the take away from this horrifying story in this morning's New York Times:

CANTON, Ga. — When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall. 
The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder “made up” and “an excuse” to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools. 
“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.” 
Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken proponents of an idea that is gaining interest among some physicians. They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost their academic performance. 
It is not yet clear whether Dr. Anderson is representative of a widening trend. But some experts note that as wealthy students abuse stimulants to raise already-good grades in colleges and high schools, the medications are being used on low-income elementary school children with faltering grades and parents eager to see them succeed. 
...

Dr. Anderson’s instinct, he said, is that of a “social justice thinker” who is “evening the scales a little bit.” He said that the children he sees with academic problems are essentially “mismatched with their environment” — square pegs chafing the round holes of public education. Because their families can rarely afford behavior-based therapies like tutoring and family counseling, he said, medication becomes the most reliable and pragmatic way to redirect the student toward success. 

The Drug Enforcement Agency classifies these drugs as "Schedule II Controlled Substances because they are particularly addictive." 

We do not know what the long term side effects are. 

It is quite possible children will become dependent upon these drugs long into adulthood - perhaps for the rest of their lives. 

And what are the effects of taking these drugs on a child's emotional and psychological development?

Doctors really don't know, but you can be sure it isn't good.

Take the case of this family who have all of their kids prescribed with these drugs:

On the Rocafort family’s kitchen shelf in Ball Ground, Ga., next to the peanut butter and chicken broth, sits a wire basket brimming with bottles of the children’s medications, prescribed by Dr. Anderson: Adderall for Alexis, 12; and Ethan, 9; Risperdal (an antipsychotic for mood stabilization) for Quintn and Perry, both 11; and Clonidine (a sleep aid to counteract the other medications) for all four, taken nightly. 
Quintn began taking Adderall for A.D.H.D. about five years ago, when his disruptive school behavior led to calls home and in-school suspensions. He immediately settled down and became a more earnest, attentive student — a little bit more like Perry, who also took Adderall for his A.D.H.D. When puberty’s chemical maelstrom began at about 10, though, Quintn got into fights at school because, he said, other children were insulting his mother. The problem was, they were not; Quintn was seeing people and hearing voices that were not there, a rare but recognized side effect of Adderall. After Quintn admitted to being suicidal, Dr. Anderson prescribed a week in a local psychiatric hospital, and a switch to Risperdal. 
While telling this story, the Rocaforts called Quintn into the kitchen and asked him to describe why he was had been given Adderall. 
“To help me focus on my school work, my homework, listening to Mom and Dad, and not doing what I used to do to my teachers, to make them mad,” he said. He described the week in the hospital and the effects of Risperdal: “If I don’t take my medicine I’d be having attitudes. I’d be disrespecting my parents. I wouldn’t be like this.” 
Despite Quintn’s experience with Adderall, the Rocaforts decided to use it with their 12-year-old daughter, Alexis, and 9-year-old son, Ethan. These children don’t have A.D.H.D., their parents said. The Adderall is merely to help their grades, and because Alexis was, in her father’s words, “a little blah.” 
”We’ve seen both sides of the spectrum: we’ve seen positive, we’ve seen negative,” the father, Rocky Rocafort, said. Acknowledging that Alexis’s use of Adderall is “cosmetic,” he added, “If they’re feeling positive, happy, socializing more, and it’s helping them, why wouldn’t you? Why not?”

Dr. William Graf, a pediatrician and child neurologist who serves many poor families in New Haven, said that a family should be able to choose for itself whether Adderall can benefit its non-A.D.H.D. child, and that a physician can ethically prescribe a trial as long as side effects are closely monitored. He expressed concern, however, that the rising use of stimulants in this manner can threaten what he called “the authenticity of development.” 
“These children are still in the developmental phase, and we still don’t know how these drugs biologically affect the developing brain,” he said. “There’s an obligation for parents, doctors and teachers to respect the authenticity issue, and I’m not sure that’s always happening.” 
Dr. Anderson said that every child he treats with A.D.H.D. medication has met qualifications. But he also railed against those criteria, saying they were codified only to “make something completely subjective look objective.” He added that teacher reports almost invariably come back as citing the behaviors that would warrant a diagnosis, a decision he called more economic than medical. 
“The school said if they had other ideas they would,” Dr. Anderson said. “But the other ideas cost money and resources compared to meds.”

 This is one of the consequences of the education reform movement - succeed at school at any cost.  Never mind the emotional development of the children, just get the test scores up and the behaviors pacified.

I wonder what the drug addiction and alcoholism rates for this generation are going to be after they've been taught since childhood to just take a pill when things aren't going well for you.

This is wrong, pure and simple, and it will lead to very bad consequences in the long term.

You can see some of the consequences already in the short term in the experience of the Rocafort family and their son Quintn's psychotic episode.

Oh, well - nothing to be done but get those test scores up.

As Geoffrey Canada once said on Education Nation, there's no time to do anything else but focus on what works to get the scores up.

The Drugging Of A Generation

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The more I think about today's Times story that reported on low-scoring students from low income backgrounds being prescribed ADHD drugs to pacify their behaviors and raise their test scores, the more I think about the damage being done to an entire generation of children as a consequence of education reform.

According to the story, the drug of choice doctors prescribe to low-scoring children from working class backgrounds is Adderall.  Risperdal is also prescribed to one child in the story after he has a psychotic episode from the Adderall and grows suicidal.  The article also mentions Clonidin, a sleep aid, to help all of those drugged children get to sleep.

What kind of society do we live in that this conscious drugging of children to get their test scores up and their behaviors pacified is happening?  What damage has education reform done to children that anybody - seriously , anybody - thinks drugging these kids to get their scores up is a good idea?

If these kids are lucky, they will end up in 12 step or other treatment programs for the inevitable drug and alcohol addiction behaviors they are learning from this.  That's if they're lucky.
 
More than likely we are teaching a generation of kids to become addicts when life gets hard and things don't work the way you want them to (or the way your parents or school want them to.)

Heckuva job.  Just what the education reformers want.  Pacifies the lower classes and keeps them under wraps.  Makes money for Big Pharma.  And get the test scores up.  It's a win-win-win - for everybody except the children.

Sol Stern: The Centerpiece Of Bloomberg's Ed Reforms Lies In Tatters

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Sol Stern writes that the school report cards handed out by the NYCDOE - what Stern calls one of the centerpieces of Bloomberg's education reforms - are a failure:

There is little stability in the year-by-year individual school evaluations. Many schools found to be inadequate by the state are ranked high by the city and vice versa. Thus parents are increasingly baffled by the grades assigned to their children’s schools. Teachers are demoralized because they are under pressure to narrow the curriculum and teach to the state tests. Principals qualify for cash bonuses if their school’s ranking goes up; on the other hand they face the threat of closing if the school’s grades go down. Not surprisingly they are tempted to game the system by, for example, allowing students who have not completed their course work to graduate. Even The New York Post, among the mayor’s most enthusiastic supporters on education issues, now recognizes that the progress report “erodes confidence in the mayor’s management — endangering his legacy and undermining respect for vital reforms, like mayoral control of the schools.”

Stern then takes aim at not just the mayor's education reform centerpiece, but test-based education reform as a whole:

 This debacle was entirely predictable. Testing experts have recognized that accountability schemes based so heavily on standardized tests can lead to fraud. The principle even has a name: Campbell’s Law, after Donald Campbell, one of the greatest American social scientists of the 20th century, who concluded that “when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.”

Of course things are going to get much worse before they get better because the state has put a new teacher evaluation system into place, APPR, that requires all teachers be evaluated using their students' test scores. 

Additional standardized tests in every grade in every subject are going to be added all throughout the year not so that children can be assessed but so that their teachers can be evaluated.

The geniuses who put this system into place - Obama, Duncan and Gates who have promoted and funded it at the national level, Cuomo, Tisch and King who pushed this through at the state level, and the union leaders like Mulgrew and Iannuzzi who haven't challenged the premise of test-based accountability in any practical way - are going to have a lot to answer for when this generation of students damaged by test-based accountability become adults.

As for Bloomberg, the citizens of this city know that the mayor has no clothes when it comes to education and the school system - the latest Marist/NY1 poll shows that 49% believe the school system is worse now than a generation ago, another 16% say the quality is about the same despite all the dramatic changes wrought by Bloomberg.

The mayor has gotten a Mayor Data Report and the score is an "F".

Sol Stern was once a supporter of the mayor's reforms.

But Stern sees the damage that has been done by this regime, just as many New Yorkers see it, and says the following:

 The perverse incentives of the progress reports cause harm — to the kids, to the teachers and principals and to the parents. It’s time for the Bloomberg administration to face this inconvenient truth and restore integrity to the accountability system. 

I would add one thing - it's time for the Accountability Mayor to face some accountability for his failures himself.

Marching For Families

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The mayor sees an example every week outside City Hall:

They may not be massive, but the weekly one-man marches around City Hall have been effective in exposing the many flaws of the mayor’s childcare policies.

Tuesday, for the second week in a row, Raglan George, executive director of AFSCME District Council 1707, which represents many of the city’s childcare and Head Start employees, marched on City Hall.

His purpose was “to tell Mayor Bloomberg to stop his attacks on early childhood education and work to improve the lives of New York's most vulnerable citizens.”

Members of his union, as well as parents and children marched with him on the Broadway side of City Hall.

The marchers, George said, will return every week to let everybody know about the multiple problems with the mayor’s Early Learn program which he believes is “a dishonest response to ‘fix’ New York City’s childcare which was not broken in the first place.”

The first march happened Oct. 1, the day Early Learn became effective, and Raglan was joined by New York City Central Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez; Tammi Miller, Home Day Care Provider director for the United Federation of Teachers and City Council members Gail Brewer and Robert Jackson.

 ...

“Fewer children are being serviced and parents are anxious about their children’s care because the Early Learn plan simply does not work,” George said. “Centers that should be open are not; the city’s Administration for Children Services refuses to answer questions on the selection process of centers and safe, quality and affordable childcare for thousands of New York’s children is in jeopardy because of bad policy decisions by this administration.”

He promised to continue the marches every week until his concerns are addressed by the mayor. George is calling for the restoration of thousands of eliminated children slots; reinstatement of community-based childcare centers closed by Early Learn, rehiring of hundreds of long-time and professional childcare workers terminated and advocating an investigation of Early Learn practices and procedures by federal, state and city authorities.

The mayor of course only notices people with money, so the marches will have little effect on him.But they do a great job of exposing the sham that is the Bloomberg administration.Children First?Nahhh.Billionaire's First.Everyone else can go screw themselves.That's Bloomberg's motto.

Bloomberg Looks To Purchase The Financial Times

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He already owns Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Views, Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV, and Bloomberg Businessweek. 

He's rumored to be in the market to buy the New York Times. 

And now The Guardian's Michael Wolff says he's one of three oligarchs fighting it out for the Financial Times:

The big worry among rich men has been that Marjorie Scardino, the long-time chief of Pearson, was going to try to circumvent the company's retirement policy and stay on in her job – which would have meant that the Financial Times, which she has long refused to sell, would stay out of reach.

But she's decided to accede to the inevitable, and now, by common assumption, the FT, the publication rich men love most, will soon be on the market.

...

There may be as many as 50 men in the world, including Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires and South American kingpins, who could spend a billion bucks – and the FT Group may go for as high as twice that – on something contrary to their economic interests. But Pearson can't just sell to the hoi polloi super rich. It needs a qualified buyer – someone with a legitimate business interest along with mere ego and a desire for influence. And that probably comes down to Michael Bloomberg of Bloomberg LP (he could, also, do this deal personally), David Thomson of Thomson Reuters and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.

Each of these men, and their companies, have made repeated demonstrations of their interest. Most recently, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have been hat in hand to Pearson, while Murdoch's legal troubles, as well as his over-investment in newspapers, have kept him sidelined.

Scardino has continued to hold the line against the sale, but her radical refocusing of the company on the education market is what makes the sale inevitable. Hence, the company's institutional forces, seeing beyond her and her sentimental attachment to the FT, have been keeping channels of communication open, even gently encouraging the conversation with potential FT buyers.

...

Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters are direct competitors, the leaders in selling financial and other business data, and each one would loathe to see the other get such a major financial brand. Indeed, part of their own shadow negotiation is an implicit assumption that one would get the FT, and the other the Wall Street Journal when Rupert Murdoch departs this veil of tears and his company's love of newspapers ends.

But News Corp's recent decision to split the company into two, one focused on entertainment and the other on newspapers, might mean that the Murdoch papers, including the WSJ, could live on well after him – or at least be ensnared in a more long-term corporate fate. Hence, the competition for the FT has recently become much sharper between Bloomberg and Thomson.

Think about a world where Bloomberg owns the Financial Times, the New York Times, Businessweek and the various Bloomberg News entities, Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, the NY Post (if it's still in business), Channel 9 here in NY and FOX News, FOX Business and all the FOX entities.

Two really rich men who own a substantial amount of the "news" business.

No wonder journalists are afraid to anger Bloomberg and so treat him with kid gloves.

He, along with a couple of his oligarch buddies/friends/rivals, soon will own almost all of the "news" business.

Share Our Strength's "Protect SNAP" Video

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Share Our Strength has produced a video entitled "Protect SNAP" to generate awareness of the cuts to SNAP that are in the table in Farm Bill. In addition, this webpage features real stories on how SNAP is helping families.


Click here to read more and watch the video. 

From Share Our Strength: 

How Does Farm Bill Affect Hungry Children?

Congress is working to reauthorize the Farm Bill, legislation that provides funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, formerly known as food stamps.

Drastic cuts to SNAP are on the table and nearly half of all SNAP participants are children. If Congress cuts funding for this poverty relieving program, it will affect millions of children and families, leaving them even more vulnerable to hunger.