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Go To Iraq Or Go To Jail
Take your pick: prison or war.
That's what some army recruiters are telling high school students in Houston, Texas to scare teenagers into joining the army.
On July 29th, 2008, a local CBS affiliate in Houston broke this story about illegal army recruitment tactics and a shady new strategy called the "Delayed Entry Program." As part of a $5 billion recruitment budget for 2008--that's right, $5 billion—Army recruiters ask high school students to sign a non-binding contract that says they intend to enlist in the army upon graduation.
According to the Army's own policies for the new program, "under no circumstances will any [recruiter] threaten, coerce, manipulate, or intimidate future soldiers, nor may they obstruct separation requests... At no time will any [recruiter] tell a Delayed Entry Program member he or she must go in the Army or he or she will go to jail."
So when Eric Gonzalez and Eric Martinez, two high school friends in Texas who signed a Delayed Entry contract, were told they'd go to jail if they didn't join the Army, they realized something wasn't right. They came up with a plan to tape record the recruiter's illegal and dishonest claims, then leak it to the press.
Here's an excerpt of what Irving was told after repeatedly explaining he wanted to go to college instead of joining the army:
"You want to go to school? You will not get no loans, because all college loans are federal and government loans--so you'll be black barred from that. As soon as you get pulled over for a speeding ticket, they're gonna see you're a deserter, they're going to apprehend you, take you to jail.
"So guess what? All that lovey-dovey 'I wanna go to college' and all that? Guess what? You just threw it out the window, because you just screwed your life."
So how would you know if a military recruiter was lying to you? And even if you did know they were lying, whom would you go to? Who could you tell?
Worse yet, how many teenagers are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now because they were told they didn't have a choice?
To take action on this issue visit: http://www.notevenone.org/takeaction.html
Trekking Through the Life of a Guide
I'm sitting at a tiny, dark, and dingy café tucked away in the busy streets of Kathmandu, having milky Nepali tea with Ang Sherpa, a 24-year-old young man who guides tourists through the tortuous terrain of Nepal's soaring Himalayas and captivating hills. If you've ever been to Nepal, you'll have seen tenderly young Nepali child laborers. Yet Ang, who does not 'look' disadvantaged and is older, tells me a story mixed with politics, economic insecurity, and familial obligations that most tourists would never know unless they asked. At an age when most in the US are expected to 'invest' in their future by attending college, for Ang, working is investing in not only his future, but that of everyone else in his family.
Ang, who is a Sherpa (a Himalayan ethnic group which is prominent in high expedition trekking), is the second oldest of eight children. Along with two of his brothers who have been working in Dubai and Saudi Arabia for the past three years like thousands of other Nepali migrant laborers, all three work full-time to support their unemployed, 52-year-old parents and a Buddhist monk brother. They also pay the private school fees of their two younger sisters, their brother's English and tourism classes, and an ex-Buddhist monk brother's English language classes. Ang works as a full-time trekking guide, an industry that compromises 8 percent of Nepal's Gross Domestic Product, though it is certainly not a steady income throughout the year, because trekking seasons runs from September to May-after and before the monsoon season. . During the off-season, Ang doesn't work because jobs are hard to come by: the unemployment rate is estimated to be at least 42 percent, and young people are particularly hit hard since 38 percent of the working age population is composed of youths.
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Mideast Youth Takes On Afghan Media
Last year, we profiled Mideast Youth, an independent blogging network dedicated to eliminating extremism from the Middle East and North Africa. I thought I'd check back in with the group to see what they've been up to. Sure enough, they've been busy as ever. But their new project is both fascinating and really cool.
Mideast Youth has launched Afghan Press, a blog whose purpose is to "use digital media to show the world what currently goes unreported" in Afghanistan. The journalist-activists who started Afghan Press want to cover daily events in remote villages and interview locals -- everyday people -- who are never represented in the media. And they hope to do this using all different forms of media.
Afghan Press has also become a place to announce journalism training opportunities for Afghan journalists. In this way, Mideast Youth hopes to contribute something to Afghanistan's media.
From the Afghan Press mission statement:
Afghanistan is a country riddled with poverty, illiteracy, censorship, human rights abuses and corruption. There are hardly any progressive and independent news sources functioning within it. We aim to change that!
We want to create a powerful Afghanistan through new media technologies. The internet is our only gateway to free speech and global outreach...It is time for Afghanistan to have a successful digital media outlet that is by the people, for the people, to the world and whose mission is to improve the country.
Milwaukee Police Attack High School Students
Shortly after 4pm on Tuesday, June 10, Milwaukee police officers attacked and arrested a Riverside High School student who allegedly hit a car with a water balloon during a supposed water balloon fight. Onlookers witnessed this act of aggression by the police officers on duty. The officers on the scene viciously beat the victim over the head and tackled him to the ground. According to over a dozen witnesses, the boy was lying prone on the ground for several minutes before officers proceeded to lift his shirt and attack him with a tazer gun, an excessive and potentially lethal force. The tazer gun was used at close range. After the melee, the police spokesperson told the media that three officers were injured, but has yet to provide concrete evidence supporting these claims.
According to witnesses, including the boy's cousin, the student attacked is a severe asthmatic and was not resisting arrest when tazered. The student was held in the police vehicle for twenty minutes until an ambulance arrived on the scene. At least thirty officers were present and arrested a total of seven students and one parent. At least three of the people arrested were in the act of filming the incident. Police forced many of the first hand witnesses to leave the area.
Demand Police Accountability from Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett: (414.286.2200, mayor@milwaukee.gov) and new Police Chief Edward Flynn: (414.935.7200, acolem@milwaukee.gov)
Some of the students were detained for two days before being released and many of the students arrested are currently facing criminal charges and expulsion hearings.
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A Roomful of Lawyers and the Right to Education
I’ve spent the past two days at a conference hosted by the National Access Network, an alliance of organizations that works to support state-level legal efforts to increase educational opportunity.
The fact that such an organization exists, servicing a growing body of lawyers who have tried state-level education lawsuits in nearly all of the 50 states, may seem something of an anomaly to casual observers of civil rights in America. After all, we are barely more than a half-century removed from one of the most well-known lawsuits in American history, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which established as a matter of national jurisprudence that schools could no longer discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. So the concept of equal educational opportunity has long been at the very heart of the battle for civil rights.
The anomaly is that even as civil rights have become increasingly a matter of federal court action—from Miranda rights to free speech rights to other matters of equal protection—the progress of lawsuits on the federal level to further education as a civil right has long since ground to a halt. Whether it was the 1973 Rodriguez US Supreme Court decision which ruled that children do not have any kind of a right to education in the federal government, or the 2007 Seattle / Louisville decisions which effectively ended the legacy of Brown-initiated desegregation efforts, the federal courts have been a place where education advocates have gone only to get bad news over the past three decades.
In the wake of these negative rulings at the federal court level, a quietly impressive—and at times, heroic—group of lawyers have risen up to fight on behalf of children in the states instead. The basic nature of the challenges that these lawyers have brought is to question whether states, all of which have some limited clause requiring the provision of public education, have met a certain standard to provide educational opportunity to their children. Some of the lawsuits have fought for more equitable distribution of resources between wealthy and poor districts; others have argued instead for an adequate level of resources in every school district within a state, equity notwithstanding. The trial record is a mixed one, but the adequacy lawsuits have been particularly successful, winning 20 out of 28 state cases at the state Supreme Court level.
The recognition among lawyers that these state lawsuits are the “only game in town” has grown into a truism, with any discussion of raising a new federal level claim scorned upon as unrealistic. The problem with foregoing action at the federal level, be it legal or political action, is that it impels an end game where we have 50 different sets of standards, resources, and ultimately educational opportunities—and children will win or lose depending on what state they are born in. That might have been okay two hundred years ago or even a half century ago when youth in different states faced unique economic challenges, but that is no longer the case today.
All of this made my participation at the conference, representing Our Education’s 20,000+ students who believe that quality education ought to be a federal right guaranteed to all American children no matter what state they live in, something of an oddity. In a roomful of brilliant lawyers who have spent thousands upon thousands of hours fighting to force statehouses to do better by children but who have generally looked at the federal government without much hope, the idea of a constitutional amendment is at best naïvely optimistic, and at worst, a detraction of resources and energy away from more winnable strategies.
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Not Everyone's On Board With Urban Farming
People across the country are getting involved with the urban farming trend. Young people, old people, socially conscious people, gardening lovers, and people who just like to eat. In light of my piece this week, I thought this account of new urban agriculture endeavors in Seattle was pretty interesting.
What stood out to me was the backlash some new projects are getting from the city's transportation department.
Seattle residents interested in the local food movement are getting creative in finding green spaces in areas of unused, urban land. In these overlooked "nooks and crannies," reports SeattlePI, residents are starting to grow their own fresh produce. For example, they're transforming planting strips adjacent to city streets into sources for cheap and healthy food.
But Seattle's Dept. of Transportation say that these impromptu gardens are potential traffic hazards. It also says they could cause health risks. From the article:
[T]he Seattle Transportation Department, which technically requires homeowners to get a street-beautification permit before planting anything there, discourages people from growing food. Among the potential problems: crops tainted with automobile and stormwater pollution; bushy plants spilling into the street; creating a haven for rodents and pooping dogs; and potential complaints ranging from vegetable theft to unsightly dead cornstalks.
However, transportation officials also say that there is no law that specifically prohibits small-scale farming on planting strips.
Furthermore, the Dept. of Transportation hasn't actually done any studies or surveys to find out if their claims about health risks are valid.
Meawhile, many residents seek an alternative to shopping at grocery stores where prices continue to rise. Plus, in inner-city areas, it's difficult to find healthy food even at existing grocers. Residents believe they should be able to grow their own food instead of having to drive long distances to get access to fresh produce (with gas prices being what they are).
What city officials may not realize is that transforming unused bits of land into small-scale farms is the first step to creating a sustainable food system that will not only boost health (rather than presenting a risk to it), but will also boost local economy and the community.
Light on Opportunity or Light on Interest?
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/campaign-2008/2008/05/08/presidential-candidates-have-little-opportunity-to-talk-about-education.html?PageNr=1A US News & World Report article published earlier this month provides an accurate overview of how education has been treated on the presidential campaign trail so far this election cycle.
In short, education has played an insignificant role in both of the primaries, and appears to be headed in the same direction in the general election. None of the three remaining candidates have staked out bold positions on the most important K-12 and higher education issues, and none of them have made much in the way of headlines in terms of promises or policy proposals.
Both Senators Obama and Clinton appear to be content with criticizing funding levels for NCLB, clamoring for increased loans to help with college affordability, and drawing moderate lines on teacher pay and quality initiatives. One disjunction between the two is that Senator Clinton has toed the teachers union supported line of rewarding teachers based on how well whole schools are doing whereas Senator Obama has taken the more controversial stance of rewarding only those individual teachers who are dramatically improving student achievement.
For his part, Senator McCain has had even less to say about education. He doesn't even yet have a full education platform published on his campaign website, and has really only issued standard GOP responses on education, trumpeting such ideas as school choice, merit pay for teachers, charter schools, and sometimes even vouchers. To the degree that education remains a low-priority issue, it will benefit Senator McCain since he has little expertise on the matter, especially given a traditional Democratic advantage among voters who consider education to be a key election day issue.
My only challenge to the article regarding low attention paid to education on the campaign trail is to the title. US News has the piece printed under the headline, "Presidential Candidates Have Little Opportunity to Talk About Education." I question whether this gets to the heart of the matter, or if it actually gives the candidates a bit more credit than they deserve regarding this issue which, after all, may be one of the most pressing policy matters facing our nation's future.
To me, the presidential candidates have plenty of opportunity to address whatever issues they deem to be important. After all, we're talking about candidates who give multiple speeches each day talking about all of the changes they'd like to make to the country. Senator McCain, for instance, has had no trouble making headlines with his unique views on global warming and climate change--issues which he has raised on his own, without having to wait for the right "opportunity". In other words, I'm afraid the candidates have not lacked in opportunity to address education, but have instead lacked sufficient interest to make it a crucial topic. And if you're wondering why none of the candidates (not just this year, but really for the past half-century since K-12 education has become a federal issue) have made K-12 school reform a priority, allow me to ask you a question to offer a hint why education will take a backseat for the foreseeable future: how many elementary, middle, and high school students are allowed to vote?
Burger King Caves!
After years of resistance, Burger King finally joined fellow fast food giants McDonalds and Yum! Brands in meeting farm worker demands for decent wages and working conditions. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Burger King announced on Friday that the fast food chain will begin paying a penny more per pound of Florida tomatoes in order to boost wages for tomato harvesters. A penny more per pound actually raises wages by 75 percent, if you can believe that. Until now, the standard rate has been about 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket.
As The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel points out, the victory is "testament to the tenacity and discipline of the Coalition, a community-based worker organization, which has exposed a half-dozen slavery cases that helped trigger the freeing of more than 1000 workers." The students who have continued to fight hard for this cause also helped pave the way for Friday's announcement.
In her piece, vanden Heuvel mentioned a Senate Labor Committee hearing on harsh working conditions for South Florida farm workers. At the hearing, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser said simply of the Florida tomato harvesters:
"The exploitation of farm workers should not be tolerated in Florida. It should not be tolerated anywhere in the United States. There are many social problems that are extremely difficult to solve. This is not one of them."
It's especially not difficult for Burger King, who will only lose less than $300,000 a year -- that's nothing when BK made $2.23 billion last year.
A good bit of news for once for immigrant farm workers.
Are Unhappy Students the Exception or the Rule?
If you want to know how good a school is, here's a novel idea: ask the students.
At a bad school, you'll hear complaints that are well-founded, such as a number of the quotes from a powerful report published earlier this week in Washington, DC .
One elementary school student complained, "Give us harder work, not the busywork that we already know."
A middle school student, when asked about her teachers, said that "they let you know you are failing but then let you go on struggling and then send you to summer school."
A student at the same school reflected, "Teachers don't teach us a thing throughout the entire period. When visitors come, they start working."
And at one of the city's high schools, one history class had an almost unbelievable lesson plan, where students were asked, "Where is your favorite place to shop?"
The concept of students complaining about school is not a novel concept, of course, especially at this time of the year when summer is just around the corner and patience grows thin on the part of adults and students both. But there is something telling in these comments from DC's students--and its telling more because of who says them, than what they are saying.
After all, were you really all that surprised to hear that it was students from an inner-city with high levels of poverty complaining about bad teachers, low expectations, and overall low quality of education? I hear similar statements from students all the time in my school, and I have to confess that they are often on point. In short, reports of student discontent are numerous in DC, St Louis City, and other areas with high concentrations of low-income and minority children, and they often hit on important themes, such as those having to do with low quality teachers or run-down school buildings.
Meanwhile, if a school is actually pretty good, you'll likely hear a combination of compliments and complaints. The difference about the complaints, however, will be marked. Instead of focusing on obvious problems such as inept teachers, broken facilities, lack of safety, and inadequate student support and discipline, in the nicer suburbian schools, complaints will sound a lot more like the student in the video below, which is to say high on passion and energy, but low on common sense. (Message to student: you are right that some teachers focus too much on rote memorization, but trust me when I say that learning vocabulary words does serve a purpose in the end!)
54 Years Later, Problems Remain
Saturday marked the 54th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. The decision, reached by a unanimous Supreme Court, struck down laws that segregated schools on the basis of race. No longer would children of color be forced, by virtue of the circumstances of their birth, to attend schools separate from those attended by whites.
What has been the impact of the court's ruling, now that we have the benefit of 54 years of wisdom in hindsight? There are three frameworks through which politicians, educators, and casual onlookers typically refer to the decision, and depending on which one you chose to adopt, the decision has been either completely successful, partially successful, or completely unsuccessful.
The simplest way to look at the impact of Brown v. Board is to make a purely legalistic analysis. In this lens, the Supreme Court set out to do one very simple thing: get rid of the pernicious practice--as ordained by local and state laws--of forcibly sending one group of children to school A and another group to school B based solely on skin color. Never mind whether school A is nicer, has better teachers, spends more money per child, increase student achievement more than school B; in the legalistic sense, the only goal to be sought was the realization by law of the court's finding that "separate but equal [schools] are inherently inequal".
In the legalistic sense, the Supreme Court succeeded completely. Fifty-four years after the ruling, there is not a single school district or state that affirms a policy of race-based segregation. There may be other reasons why a child cannot attend a particular K-12 school, but to public knowledge, race alone is not one of them.
Some, however, would argue that the legalistic analysis is too simple, and that the proper way to analyze Brown's impact is to measure whether black children are actually being enrolled in white schools at appropriate rates. Call this the intermediate frame of analysis; the idea that the actual goal of the Supreme Court in Brown was not just to outlaw school segregation as a policy, but rather to go one step further and actually integrate schools to some appropriate degree. In other words, in this analysis, getting rid of school segregation laws is only step one of a two-step process envisioned by the court. To determine whether the decision has been successful requires us to measure how far we have come in the second step (are our schools actually integrated), and not the first.
In this second way of looking at the decision, it's probably the case that we have experienced only mild success in the wake of Brown. Although for a while the pace of integration was fast post 1954, it has slowed and even reversed in recent years--segregation has actually been on the rise for blacks since the late 1980s. Of course, the difference is that today's segregation is not shoved upon blacks by Jim Crow laws, but rather subtly arrived upon as the complex result of demographic forces, housing markets, and school districting lines. In any case, a person adopting this framework likely looks at the past 54 years with mixed feelings: thrilled with the complete reversal of school segregation laws (which was hardly a given even in the 1960s), but concerned with rising de facto segregation in our schools.
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In Burma, Politics Could Get In The Way Of Saving Lives
Relief organizations and the U.N. are becoming more and more frustrated with the Burma junta’s unwillingness to accept foreign aid for cyclone victims. Cyclone Nargis has killed nearly 30,000 people in Burma, according to Myanmar TV, although some are putting the death toll as high as 100,000. Around 1.5 million people have been displaced from their homes.
The Burmese military government began accepting some aid from the U.N. last week, but aid workers have struggled to gain access. The process has been slow, relief workers have experienced trouble getting visas and delivery of aid by the junta has been characterized by an “unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis,” according to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The U.N. has tried to increase pressure on Burma this week to avoid making the crisis exponentially worse. Many cyclone victims currently require medical attention that they’re unable to receive. Another serious concern is that there could be an outbreak of infections diseases. Both of these factors could result in an even higher death toll.
Today, the U.N. and other agencies expressed additional concerns about the children affected by Nargis. Up to 40 percent of those killed in Nargis were children, they said, and many of the survivors are also children. Children who are now staying in crowded, makeshift shelters could be at an increased risk of human trafficking and sexual abuse, the agencies said. Children separated from their families are forced to live alongside adults “often in dark or unlit areas with little supervision” reports the AP.
“We are really concerned about the risk of exploitation and sexual abuse,” said UNICEF’s chief of child protection in Myanmar, Anne-Claire Dufay. She said that this is a common concern in post-emergency situations.
The lack of security in many areas of the country, among all populations, is another cause for concern with Burma’s reluctance to accept aid. Since U.N. orders don’t seem to be getting the country’s attention, many are trying to get another government to step in.
Human rights advocates have called upon China to use its significant influence in Burma to pressure the junta to immediately accept U.N. relief. Human Rights Watch says that China must do “the right thing” and pressure Burma to lift restrictions on foreign aid efforts. "The world is watching to see if China does the right thing for Burma's cyclone victims," said Brad Adams, the HRW Asia director.
Sein Win, an exiled leader of Burma’s opposition party, has made similar pleas. “The world is not telling China to do what they should do…to save people,” he said. “[T]he question is whether they are going to use [their leverage] or not.”
But China is busy worrying about political strategy. The country does not want to alienate Burma’s government, and it does not want the world to see it siding with Western aid interests. China itself doesn’t like Western agencies to independently operate within its borders, even in national disasters.
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Anti-NCLB Lawsuit Fizzles Out
Despite a regular stream of criticism from politicians and educators about the law--some for its complete abolition, others for severe revision to the point of rendering it unrecognizable from the law's original goals--the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 remains, for the most part, safe and unchanged.
That's not to say that it hasn't been challenged and at times, threatened. But one of the more serious threats was unmistakably denied last week, when a federal judge ruled against Connecticut's lawsuit challenging NCLB as an unfunded mandate.
The root of Connecticut's lawsuit was a claim that the cost of fulfilling the annual 3rd through 8th grade testing requirements of NCLB was greater than the amount of money the federal government was providing the state in Title I funding. Connecticut sought an exemption from the US Department of Education to continue testing only in 4th, 6th, and 8th grades as it was doing prior to the law's passage. But the federal circuit court judge ruled that Connecticut had failed to provide any evidence that the federal government was not providing enough money to pay for the testing. NCLB's mandate to test every year between 3rd and 8th grade and once in high school, in other words, was sufficiently funded.
The case itself was simple in its holding, and relatively uncontroversial. The more interesting question for those of us concerned with the implications for chilrden is, where is all of the anti-NCLB sentiment coming from? The law has pretty universal goals, after all: to reduce the achievement gap and ensure school accountability.
My observations about the origins of anti-NCLB sentiment among educators is that it is partly due to top-down teacher union influence, and partly due to a bogey-man type mentality. In the former regard, national level officials in the NEA and AFT have long regarded NCLB as a problematic path for reform, since its chief proposal (school level accountability for student achievement) diverts attention from policies that would enhance teacher union membership or teacher benefits (such as class-size reduction or across-the-board teacher pay raises).
In the latter regard, my experience is that a significant number of teachers are upset about NCLB because of a post hoc ergo proper hoc* logical fallacy. Essentially, teachers get frustrated about their jobs for a multitude of reasons (low administrative support, lack of staff-wide teacher quality, poor student behavior, pay that they believe to be too low, to name a few). Many of these reasons may just have to do with the fact that teaching is, of itself, a challenging job. But since the passage of NCLB, teachers have attributed their angers and frustrations to the laws, rather than to more subtle demands that have long existed on the profession.
In short, teachers are blaming the NCLB-bogey man for non-NCLB-related problems. A great example of this is when teachers blame NCLB for high-stakes testing policies that school districts and states decide to implement. NCLB itself says nothing about making a certain grade level test a requirement for grade promotion; the states are to blame for it!
Sadly, this kind of attribution problem is probably par for the course any time a significant policy change is made without immediate results. But what we must make sure to avoid is giving up on a potentially positive policy because of wrong-headed backlash.
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Local Food Gets Globalized
A new documentary, simply titled Asparagus!, gives us big reasons to care about this one little green stalk. The film focuses a magnifying glass on Oceana County, Michigan, the asparagus capital of the world. Over the course of 53 minutes, we meet many of the residents, family farmers, and farm workers for whom asparagus defines life.
The film brings to life our country’s local asparagus industry, while pulling in issues from the local food movement to free trade to the U.S. war on drugs to the struggle of family farmers in an increasing globalized world. As many documentaries do, Asparagus! sets up a David/Goliath conflict: Oceana County’s asparagus community finds itself under serious threat from foreboding forces of the U.S. government’s war on drugs.
In the early 1990s, the government started using U.S. tax dollars to pay Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead of coca. Since then, hundreds of American farms have gone out of business. Not only is imported asparagus cheaper, but it’s available year-round – because Peru’s agricultural conditions allow for year-round growth.
For Oceana County, the impact has been particularly damaging. Many family farms have been forced to shut down. The ones still holding on for dear life struggle to compete with cheap imported asparagus.
Unsurprisingly, the so-called war on drugs initiative has done nothing to curb cocaine production or distribution. As one farmer in the film says, it’s not like coca farmers stopped their growing and switched over to asparagus. And why would they, when the cocaine industry is such a lucrative one, mainly due to high demand from the U.S.?
The film also takes on free trade, depicting small farmers whose lives and livelihoods are being greatly impacted by U.S. foreign trade policy.
But the real appeal of the film is that it’s got heart. As we get to know Oceana’s residents and farmers, hear their stories, and learn about their idiosyncratic love for asparagus, it’s hard not to fall in love with the town. Which also makes it hard not to get onboard with their cause.
Asparagus!, the award-winning “stalk-umentary,” is part of the Media That Matters film festival, and was released in its full length on DVD last week. Watch the trailer here.
Voting Rights Under Assault
The U.S. Supreme Court voted last week that could make it more difficult for Indiana residents to cast a ballot. And due to this ruling, many other states might follow suite. Remember that whole thing about democracy and everyone having the right to vote -- ha! I bet you thought that was real, right?
Rock the Vote released statement calling it "supremely wrong."
Politico has also reported on the topic saying that it hurts young voters.
In CNN's report they talk about the many, many other groups that will face voting difficulties in November as a result including, but not limited to: the poor, the elderly, African Americans, disabled Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, not to mention (and CNN didn't) young voters.
While this decision was only for Indiana, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri all have similar cases pending. Nearly every state has had some kind of ID law proposed in the last few years. As one activist told me we should "look for a lot of legislation to come very quickly on this, in time for November." Currently, some states allow student ID's as a form of verifiable identification, but only for state schools, and unfortunately, many states do not allow this.
I believe this ruling is the most devastating to our country and our rights than any ruling I've seen in my lifetime. I personally am shocked and disgusted in The Court, which leads a country that is supposedly a free society where you don't need a reason to make something legal -- you need a reason to make something illegal.
As the CNN report says, there is no evidence that widespread voter fraud has ever happened or that presenting an ID at the poll would stop this. What the law does do is disenfranchise millions of people and cause considerable problems for Americans who want to vote, but who will most certainly be turned away in November.
In Rock the Vote's latest report one in five young voters do not have the correct address on their driver's licenses leaving them at the mercy of the polling workers to decide if they can vote.
Sen. Russ Feingold is so concerned about this ruling that he has proposed legislation that would nationally allow same day registration or Election Day Registration (EDR) so that people can register under their current information and vote by provisional ballot so that their information is correct and they can still vote. This would essentially allow more people access to voting and to registration but still adhere to the Court's decision requiring identification.
Not surprisingly, the community of voting rights proponents and youth advocates spent the day filling the news will statements.
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NCLB in the Classroom: Observations from the Front
Debates about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) often come down to fractures based on perspective. Many of the educators I've met ground their opinions on the law in their experiences in the classroom. To these educators, NCLB's annual testing requirements have turned schools into factories where innovative lessons have been replaced by rote test preparation. Moreover, the annual tests have placed onerous expectations on students, filling some youth with such anxiety that they shut down or disengage from school entirely.
On the other hand, policy makers analyze the law from a perspective that can be characterized generously as a birds-eye view, or cynically, as an ivory-tower view. From their vantage point, requiring regular standardized tests in schools is crucial to ensure that schools are successful in their core purpose of advancing student achievement. Moreover, detailed, thoroughly examined data on how our students are doing within each racial and socioeconomic grouping is absolutely necessary if we want to close down the pernicious achievement gap affecting low-income and students of color.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that for most of my time in the education policy arena, I've fallen squarely in the latter camp. But now that I've taught and gone through a year where standardized testing has been a serious challenge, I am better able to understand the nuances of the debate.
The basic problem boils down to a simple fact: students of all ages and all backgrounds are already not inclined to test-taking. Now, some tests are easier to stomache than others. Tests that are relevant and reasonable are always better than tests that seem arbitrary and unnecessary. Tests that students feel well-prepared for are also more likely to be taken seriously than tests that seem overly difficult.
On both of these fronts in my school this year, however, NCLB-required standardized testing did not fare well with my students. Since passing the tests is not required for grade promotion (which, contrary to popular belief, is usually the case with most of these tests), the students did not see any direct reason to try hard on the tests. Moreover, the tests asked many questions that were inaccessible to the students, particularly on the math and science sections. So students who were already uninspired to try hard on the tests found themselves frustrated with confusing questions.
When that happens, the natural inclination for almost all of my students was to quit trying. There was a lot of random bubble-filling going around my room, and test sections that should have taken an hour only took 15 minutes. And there were a lot of angry students lashing out at teachers and other staff members who they perceived to be the reason why they had to take the seemingly unreasonable tests.
But here's where the rub is. Because the students did not try hard on the test, the data from the tests will not actually be a reliable way to measure our school's success! So the education policy maker's original goal of getting data to evaluate schools will not be met, and the process will only anger children and their teachers in the process. No wonder why there are so many educators who are upset!
Yet to demand that NCLB's testing requirements be shelved also misses the point. Because the real root cause of the controversy over the tests is that many of the students, in my school at least, find them so difficult that they refuse to try. Addressing this root cause problem by demanding an end to standardized tests makes as much sense as a shopping mall getting rid of its security cameras when it finds out that there has been an outbreak of theft.
The solution?
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