Comment Archives: stories: News & Opinion
Re: “From our cold, dead minds”
the problem is our culture, partisan in the university as well as congress. we live in ny yet i have never heard a mention of what happened here during the revolutionary war. how many people loyal to the english crown were burned out, pushed out and emigrated to canada. how about the civil war atrocities in shermans march to the sea. any research on these topics, no. why, because of the partisanship and subsequent cowardice in academia.
research in these areas would lead to discussion about what a well regulated militia could have done to stop the destruction of lives and property. our country is in trouble because those we rely on for research pick and choose what is politically expedient. i might do the same if my career depended on it.
so we are left with uninformed people taking sides, lacking information that would make a decent discussion possible. never mind what history has to say or statistics, nobody trusts them. just manipulate people to get enough votes for whatever side you choose. not a good way to get the consent of the governed
Re: “What did Rhee know about cheating in DC schools?”
Any employee who whines about being held accountable for his or her job performance should be terminated. Only in the dysfunctional alternate universe of government-run "education" could such an ironclad principle qualify as either "reform" or a matter of controversy.
Re: “Could charters chew up the Rochester school district?”
Thank you RochesterParent for making the case more clearly and cogently than I generally do.
It doesn't matter if the students are picked by lottery. Simply entering the lottery indicates a higher level of "give a crap" than those who don't. Taking 3.000 of those kids out of the public schools basically reduces the percentage of students in the district whose parents do care enough (or are knowledgeable enough) to perform this advocacy for their children.
I suppose that eventually there will be 80 charter schools and what's left will be a few public schools where the students who are the worst problem children, or whose parents don't/can't advocate effectively will rot until they are 16, when they drop out to live on society's margins.
If public schools could expel problem children the way charter schools can, if public schools could claim hardship to prevent having to have a major special ed program, if public schools had the parent involvement that charter schools do, they'd be doing as well as charter schools.
I know that in some areas the charter school experiment has been a failure due to a variety of reasons, but here, the conditions I just outlined have helped charter schools to become successful enough. God knows our school has about 10 middle schoolers we would love to expel. Our school would run far better and the scores would improve immediately if we could. We can't, so we will be judged a failure for making an effort to educate some seriously difficult children who have arrived in middle school without the skills to do 5th grade work.
Let us not forget that my evaluation is tied to some extent to these children's ability to do middle school level work. I've spent my year trying to get them to that level.
Analogy: try to get a high school baseball player to be able to play in the major leagues. The kid's the right size, the kid's at his physical prime, but the kid does not have the experience or skills to do that. Is it the coach's fault the kid can't cut it in the major leagues? Or is it the decision of the person who foisted that kid on the hapless coach?
Carry the Analogy: Take a mid-level baseball team. Ship all the best players to other teams. Now try to make the playoffs. That is what charter schools are doing to the RCSD.
Re: “From our cold, dead minds”
It's about time somebody wrote about this. It's an important topic and should be discussed.
Re: “Could charters chew up the Rochester school district?”
I don't know if charters are good or bad per se, but you're assuming that this is a zero sum game due to our slow population growth. Every year plenty of middle class parents exit the city for the suburbs because they rightly or wrongly believe that their children won't have an opportunity for a quality education if they stay. If charters provide that opportunity then the overall pool of students within the city is larger, not smaller.
Re: “From our cold, dead minds”
Good grief — talk about paranoid conspiracy theories spun up and pasted together from bits of gibberish!
Most thinking people will be amused to learn that the quest for truth, humankind's noblest endeavor, somehow is defined and constrained by the federal budget. Apparently any omission by appropriators amounts to an attack on reason, science and truth, on a par with the Inquisition. (What, no Nazi analogies?)
Sorry, but citizens have every right to say how their finite resources, confiscated through taxation, are to be used and not used. If your pet project loses out, too bad. These resources ought to be used only for the public good, and only when there is the broadest possible consensus on that point.
In this regard, it is perfectly reasonable to insist that funds be spent for their intended purpose. For example, the science research budget should be spent on research in the field of science, and not on so-called "political science". The latter of course has nothing whatsoever to do with science. Those who blur the distinction make a mockery of their own claims to be Galileo's heirs.
Nevertheless, if these people are bound and determined to put out junk "science" custom engineered to incite more anti-gun hysteria, there's certainly no shortage of left-wing foundations and billionaires who will pay for it.
Re: “PETA bringing campus tour to UR”
Bill Benson,
Apologies for leaving out the date. The post has been corrected.
Jeremy
Re: “PETA bringing campus tour to UR”
I take it we're supposed to guess the date of this event since it wasn't mentioned in the article?
Re: “Improving neighborhoods”
You're correct, Pam (and Chris), the city website does show Beechwood in the SE quadrant, but the logic of putting it there totally escapes me when it is very clearly in the NE part of the city.
Re: “Improving neighborhoods”
The City NSC offices have quads where Beechwood is considered the Southeast. See here: http://www.cityofrochester.gov/maps/
Re: “Improving neighborhoods”
Hello again, Rochester Musician,
I should have been clearer: of course I know that geographically, Beechwood is in the northeast. But for purposes of the FIS program, it's part of Southeast Council member Elaine Spaull's district.
Thanks!
Chris Fien
Re: “Improving neighborhoods”
Beechwood, in the southeast??? For real?? Maybe the city administration has some very odd views on what direction is which. Again according to the neighborhood association: "Beechwood is bordered to the North by Bay Street, to the East by Culver Road, to the South by East Main Street, and to the West by North Goodman Street."
So where is Marketview Heights? I checked the definition and it is "bounded on the west by North Street, on the east by North Goodman Street, on the north by Clifford Avenue and south at East Main Street."
Note that both of these neighborhoods are bounded on the south by East Main Street ...
Examining a map of Rochester, Beechwood is directly (and immediately) to the east of Marketview Heights. So please explain how Beechwood can remotely be considered southeast Rochester???
Re: “What did Rhee know about cheating in DC schools?”
Thanks ID for pointing that out.
Tim
Re: “What did Rhee know about cheating in DC schools?”
Tim, correction: Rhee did teach for three years - and there's a scandal there, too, regarding the testing results. That seems to have been hushed up, but her claims of her teaching excellence are suspect here as well. But Rhee had never been an assistant principal, a principal, a central administrator of any stripe (no directorship, assistant superintendent) - nada, zip - before being appointed chancellor at the age of 36.
Re: “Improving neighborhoods”
Rochester Musician,
I double checked with the city administration and they do indeed consider Beechwood the southeast.
Thanks!
Chris Fien
City news editor
Re: “Improving neighborhoods”
Ummmm ... Beechwood is in the northeast, not the southeast ... in fact, from the neighborhood association website: "Welcome to Beechwood, a dynamic and diverse neighborhood nestled in historic northeast Rochester."
So what is the targeted neighborhood in the southeast, since it obviously can't be Beechwood?
Re: “Improving neighborhoods”
Note to editor: Please run a find/replace on this article for the word investment. Replace it with sacrifice.
Re: “[UPDATED] RPO challengers lose legal battle”
So the Children's Crusade is finally over. Too bad that the RPO board had to waste time and money defending itself from a glorified temper tantrum.
Re: “ART: Geva cancels summer show "The Lifeguard"”
HI MJN,
I work for Geva and want to let you know that there is no more to the story than what we provided to the press. Forster never met with the playwright until Geva secured the rights to the show. He did express an interest in doing the show publicly but needed a producer like Geva to take it to the next step, Unfortunately, their schedules did not allow for a meeting until the days after we made our announcement. It was a meeting between the playwright and Mr Forster and then later a follow-up conversation with artistic director Mark Cuddy that lead to the writer rescinding the rights from Geva. There are currently no productions of THE LIFEGUARD currently planned any where . Geva does regret not being able to bring this new work and Mr Forster to our stage this summer.
Re: “From our cold, dead minds”
We can't support every study that those in academia want. Find a cure for cancer, yes. Forget about those other ridiculous studies we gear about all the time, even if they sound "scientific" in nature. The most recent was a grant of our tax dollars to study male duck appendages:
(CNSNews.com) - The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $384,949 grant to Yale University for a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”, according to the recovery.gov website.
If this is the kind of nonsense we are funding as "science", we certainly shouldn't be spending any taxpayer dollars on "political science".