STAAR Test: Let the Caving Begin

The new high stakes Texas state test to measure accountability in high school education, the STAAR test, takes effect this year with this year’s entering 9^th graders. Starting this year, students  must not only have a cumulative score of some amount to be determined at a later date on all of the STAAR end of course tests taken, but in addition to that, the test is to count for 15% of their grade in the course.

15% is peanuts.

15% hardly affects a student’s grade at all.

Nevertheless, parents from Beaumont to El Paso raised a hue and cry so loud about what this “harder test” will do to their children’s GPA and class rank (which determines which Texas university they get accepted to), that today, TEA Education Commissioner Robert Scott announced: “Never mind.”

Scott was advised that he had the purview to overrule what the state legislature mandated in their legislation that established this new accountability system.

So what he said today is this:

“Based on my conversations with the Governor’s Office and clarification of legislative intent from the House and Senate, I am modifying the Texas Education Agency’s House Bill 3 Transition Plan. The modification gives public school districts and charter schools the ability to defer implementation of the statutory provision that requires performance on an end-of-course assessment to count as 15 percent of a student’s final course grade”

 In other words, “Never mind.”  The high stakes test became less high stakes. He let the districts decide whether they were going to let the grade count or not, but do you think any district will let the test count for 15% of the grade if other districts opt out? In this litigious society of ours, a school district that declines to opt out of the relaxation of the rules is a school district begging to be sued by a parent.

But wait, it gets better. The provision to have the state test count for a percentage of a student’s grade was actually a good idea. Know why? When a test will not affect a student’s grade in the present tense, there is little motivation on the part of students to do their best. The school accountability system is a joke because students have not been given sufficient motivation to do their best.

You see, today’s youth is very much focused on “the now.” They could care less about the future. If a test affects their present grade, they are concerned. If it doesn’t they could care less. That’s why this idea was such a good one. Besides, if a whole instructional day is to be spent on a state test, let it count for something.

But no. The caving has begun. And now looking to the future, I can only begin to predict what percentage correct responses will be assigned to a “mastery” rating. Certainly not 70%. More like 50% or 45%.

Texas education. Making mediocrity work each and every day.

New Jersey Assembly OKs Gay Marriage Act

Well today the state of New Jersey became the latest state to join the exclusive club  of states that permit gays and lesbians to marry one another. This Reuters piece affirms that the vote was decisive at 42 for and 33 against. The bill awaits Governor Chris Christie’s signature, one that won’t be forthcoming, and the vote margins in either of New Jerseys houses are insufficient to override his veto.

Chris Christie, a self-avowed anti-big government governor, apparently isn’t anti-big government when it comes to legislating morality. When it comes to deciding that the love of one’s life cannot visit their loved one in his or her hospital room, or be included on his or her health insurance policy.

But Christie is clever. Or so he thinks. Christie wants to put the question to a popular vote. That is, representative government is not qualified to decide what the people want – a key principle in representative democracy. This issue, it seems, is so important to Christie that he thinks it should be put on a referendum.

Christie thinks it’s clever because he can duck out of being the Republican governor who bent to the will of the people by signing this legislation into law. But here is the key flaw to his logic.

New Jersey residents overwhelmingly support gay marriage. It’s in all the polls. Passage of a referendum on this issue is all but assured. But here we have Chris Christie on the one hand complaining about excess government spending and on the other demanding additional expense of public funds to hold a referendum on a settled issue.

An issue whose only additional expense, at this point, is the price of the ink that would have been used to sign the bill into law.

Chris Christie is rapidly becoming a poster child for Republican hypocrisy.

Mitt’s Not Itt Anymore

Doggy despoiler Mitt Romney has fallen out of favor with Republicans it seems. But not because he is a tormenter of canines, and he is that, but because he has finally been accused of the sin of not being unable to woo the Republican base. A base whose values are SO foreign to the American mainstream, that this cannot be better news to the Obama Re-Election Team.

Rick Santorum, who lost his own US Senate seat by 16% in the ’08 election, is now the front runner.

And why not? Everyone else, with the exception of Ron Paul, has led the polling at one point or another. If there is one thing Republicans agree on, it is that Ron Paul is a likeable enough fellow, but he is just a total maniac when it comes to policy.

Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum is the current Republican front liner in the race to the nomination. You know what they say in that regard? It is from the Holy Bible: The Last shall be First.

That is, the last one in the lead is the winner.

O praise Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Allah (and the spirit of the baobab tree) we have the answer to our prayers in Rick Santorum. Rick Santorum will boldly lead the Republican Party over the proverbial cliff.

Want to lose an election? Come out against a woman’s right to protect herself against conception. Thank you, thank you, thank you Pope Paul VI.

Adele, Ma Belle.

Well the Grammy Awards is over for another year and I got a pleasant surprise. The British pop singer Adele came away with 6, count ‘em 6, Grammys.

Whenever one of her songs comes on the radio, or Pandora, I stop and just listen to it. My blood pressure goes down. My life is extended.

Adele has a very soulful breathy voice that packs a punch when she wants it to. For someone so young she sounds so mature. A less raspy Norah Jones, the pop equivalent to Diana Krall.

I was happy to see good work rewarded by her peers.

If you haven’t heard Adele, you are in for a treat. The song “Rolling in the Deep” is the record of the year and she really belts it out. But this is the one that I like, “Someone Like You.” It has meaning for me.

President Pwns the Religious Right

If this latest foray in the area of guaranteeing access to free contraceptives to all American women wasn’t a fully planned out trap for religious conservatives, it should have been.

In making his “compromise” to the Catholic clergy, and indeed to any religious person opposed to contraception, President Obama surely set for them the perfect trap. He forced religious conservatives to own up and admit that they were opposed to women getting contraceptives, free or otherwise, on religious grounds.

Owning up to an idea that is anathema to a majority of Americans, and a grand majority of women.

And real irony of it is that the idea is to decrease the number of abortions performed on women – a hot-button issue with the religious right – by making birth control more available, especially to the poor.

And the whole beauty about this affair, and the timing of it is just this. The typical Republican meme on the economy got kyboshed in a hurry as soon as the numbers started to improve, forcing conservatives to return to their comfort zone of social issues, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.

Sometimes Democrats get to win on social issues. Doesn’t happen often but when it does the win is a sweet one.

It’s Mitt by a Nosehair

The Maine Caucuses are history, the votes are counted, and Mitt Romney won the day by 194 votes.

That is face-saving for the Romney campaign, but a victory it is not. Ron Paul, Ron Paul was his chief competitor and he just barely edged him. Ron Paul nearly won a New England state, a state that should have gone to Mitt Romney in a romp. Ron Paul, a southerner, a Texan, nearly carried Maine.

And get this, it’s even worse. A caucus was cancelled in one county, a very conservative county, on account of bad weather. The margin could have been even tighter.

So for Romney, it’s a victory, and a defeat all rolled up into one.

Uh Oh…Mitt’s In for Another Bruisin’

Maine has been conducting its caucuses all week long and the results will be announced tomorrow. I predict  Barack Obama will get the Democratic nod.

But that’s not news. What is news is that there are indications that Ron Paul, Libertarian Ron Paul, has a good chance of winning in Maine this time around. Winning in a state that Mitt Romney won easily in 2008 against John McCain – and Ron Paul.

Because unlike Mitt, Rick, and Newt, Ron has been actively campaigning in Maine. Paul needs a win at some point and Maine, “Live Free or Die” Maine, is his best shot and he darn well knows it.

I was wondering about this as I read earlier this week that even Ron Paul agreed that he would have to, at some point, win one of these races and was concentrating on caucus states. Now he seems “cautiously optimistic” that this is going to happen tomorrow.

So the news shouldn’t be that Ron Paul finally won one in the primary season, the news should be that this will deal Mitt Romney 4 defeats in a row, something that should have a huge deflating effect on things like support and fundraising.

And the news isn’t that Ron Paul has possibilities as a nominee, that is ludicrous. Nor The Newt. The news is that a Ron Paul win in Maine spells opportunity for Rich Santorum.

And that is good news indeed.

For Democrats.

Will Texas Have a Significant Primary or an Inconsequential One?

Before last Tuesday I figured that a delayed Texas Primary, delayed from Super Tuesday to April….or May….or June meant that the Texas Primary was going to be an inconsequential one.

Inconsequential in that I was thinking that the supposed nominee-to-be, Mitt Romney, was going to have his 1,144 delegates that would secure for himself the nomination at the Republican Convention.

Now after last Tuesday, I am not so certain. Romney keeps making these horrible gaffes exposing himself as a rich snob with no heart. It would be like electing Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons” to run our country.

And Republican primary voters are turning out in droves to vote for anyone but Romney, a vote that has swung heavily toward Rick Santorum as The Newt implodes in public.

So Texas could be a player, even late in the game.

A true disappointment for me because I was hoping for it all to be over in the Republican race so that only the truly agitated Tea Party faction of the Republican Party would care to show up at the primary polls to vote for their extremist candidates who are primarying mainstream Republicans across the state.

Because after the horrible behavior of the Texas Legislature in the 2011 session, Texas voters will be offered more of the same after experiencing 2 years of cutbacks in public services including education and police and fire protection. Who knows, maybe Texans will come to their senses and vote for the candidates who support the public services that Texans used to be proud of.

Democratic candidates, that is.

Rick Santorum’s Hat Trick

As I type this I am (in my mind, anyway) rubbing my hands together in eager expectation of total chaos in the Republican primaries this year. Rick Santorum swept the field in yesterday’s Colorado and Minnesota Caucuses, and the Missouri Primary.

Swept. The Field.

In the Colorado Caucus, Santorum bested Mitt Romney be nearly 6 points. This is a state that went for Romney in 2008 to the tune of 60% of the primary vote. Clearly, this year’s primary voters have either swung wildly to the right or, equally plausible, they’ve always been right wing, but didn’t know Romney as the right of center Republican as they do now. Or maybe it was the dog…

In the Minnesota Caucus, Santorum blasted by Romney by  28.4%. That is significant. Minnesota’s conservative Republicans, also known as primary voters, are obviously fired up about the right to work movement there and came out in droves to defeat Romneycare.

And in the Missouri Primary Santorum did even better, trouncing the well-financed Romney campaign by 29.9%. Missouri is pseudo-south and results there should bode well for Santorum’s chances in the southern primaries.

Why am I so gleeful? Who was the candidate that Richard Nixon wanted as his opponent in 1972? That would be Senator George McGovern. Who is the candidate that President Obama’s campaign like to face in the fall? Rick Santorum.

In a Rasmussen poll taken in mid January, they report that President Obama would win in a hypothetical race with Rick Santorum by 10 points – yeah, better than he did McCain in ’08. Now Rasmussen is a right-leaning polling group so I am guessing that that is a low-ball figure.

Rick Santorum scares the bejesus out of moderate Republicans and Independents. Rick Santorum is so classically under-funded that he is having difficulty getting his message out, which for him is probably a good thing. Rick Santorum is Jesus Christ’s gift to the Democratic Party.

Democrats and Jesus. We be mates.

Abbott: Seven Out of Ten Ain’t Bad

Texas district attorney Greg Abbott has just announced that he has come to substantive agreement with 7 out of 9, actually ten, groups enjoined in a lawsuit to throw out the 2011 redistricting maps. That’s good enough I guess he must be thinking.

After all, these are minority groups and you can’t hope to please them all, can you? They are so unreasonable after all.

So while seven litigants have signed on to an interim deal, two, and the NAACP, a not insubstantial minority group, have not.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

“…but the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the Black Legislative Caucus and the NAACP have not agreed to support the proposed maps.”

The 2011 maps were obviously drawn to deprive minorities of representation due to them because of their contribution to the growth in Texas’ population between 2000 and 2010. Lawmakers ignored that just as Abbott is ignoring the demands of 3 significant groups who have been discriminated against.

No, in ethnic discrimination, you don’t get to have a majority rules outcome. You satisfy everyone, or you satisfy no one.

Dogs Against Romney

It was inevitable. It was inevitable that someone come up with a Facebook page about the now infamous Romney family vacation to Canada. You know. The one where Mitt Romney strapped a dog kennel, essentially a crate to the roof of his station wagon and put in it the family dog, an Irish Setter named Seamus. And drove like a bat out of hell for 12 hours on the interstate.

As the story goes, as retold by one of his sons years later, the children noticed a stream of brown fluid going down the back window of the station wagon. The poor animal was so upset that he became physically ill.

So what did Mitt Romney do? He pulled over into a gas station and hosed off the dog and the crate. Then put them both back on the roof of his car and drove on.

Word has it that while vacationing in Canada Seamus made a break for it and ran away from these crazy heartless people.

So now there is a Facebook page that you can find here.

As we say in Facebook, LOL.

UPDATE: They also have a Blogger website. Fantastic!

Romney By 30 Points

That’s my prediction for the Nevada Caucus being held tonight. Mitt Romney is going to take this (rather inconsequential) state by a landslide.

Nevada may have an image of freewheeling big spenders and show girls, but in truth, Nevada has the second largest concentration of Mormons in the 50 states. Behind Utah.

And one thing I know, Mormon voters are every bit as enthusiastic about Mitt Romney’s candidacy as African-American voters were in 2008 for President Obama. Imagine it, the first African-American president followed by the first Mormon president.

We are living in unique times

Off With Her Head

Heads need to roll.

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Susan G. Komen for The Cure foundation announced that it was not going to continue to support Planned Parenthood with continued funding for breast cancer screening, a popular and necessary function of the group that saves women’s lives on a daily basis. The reason, as found here, is that one of the foundation’s directors, and who knows, maybe others, bent to the pressure of conservative congressmen who have been trying to drive Planned Parenthood out of the healthcare business for a couple of years now. Their sin? A small portion of the services that they provide to women is the performance of D and Cs. Abortions.

Komen foundation senior vice president and self-avowed lifelong Republican, Karen Handel, made a “retweet” of a Twitter posting by an anti-choice advocate “Just like a pro-abortion group to turn a cancer orgs decision into a political bomb to throw. Cry me a freaking river.” Obviously a reaction to the tremendous backlash reaction among pro-choice advocates upon hearing of the policy change.

The reaction was swift and angry from people of all political persuasions, and donations to Planned Parenthood came pouring in from all over. How, some asked, can the Komen foundation advocate for cancer prevention and cure when they withhold funds from one of America’s main healthcare provider to women who ordinarily cannot afford it?  Today the Komen foundation backpedaled and announced that they would continue to support Planned Parenthood.

And that’s fine. But it sounds really hollow. This reversal lacks sincerity. It is more in the nature of covering their collective behinds than being really and truly repentant. It’s more about image than a substantive change in policy.

That’s why Senior Vice President Karen Handel must lose her job. Karen Handel needs to go. And to make it sweeter, former Komen foundation director of community health programs, Mollie Williams, who resigned in protest of the new policy, should be rehired to replace Handel.

Do that, and I am a believer.

Groundhog Day 2012

Hear Ye, Hear Ye Hear Ye

On Gobbler’s Knob on this magnificent Groundhog Day, February 2^nd, 2012, Punxsutawney Phill, the Seer of Seers, the Prognosticator of all Prognosticators was summoned from his burrow in the old oak stump…After casting an appreciative glance towards thousands of his faithful followers, Phil proclaimed “As I look at the crowd on Gobbler’s Knob many shadows do I see. So six more weeks of winter it must be.”

OK, that’s it, Punxsutawney Phil is officially outted as a global climate change denier.

I don’t know about you, but here in Texas we are in a drought. Half the state burned up last summer and this winter is the mildest in recent memory. It is all due to global climate change that is slowly warming up the planet. Now who knows? It could be a natural cycle that has occurred so many times in the past.

The seas go in the seas go out, as they say.

But globally the greenhouse gas content in our atmosphere has escalated and the arctic sea ice is melting.

NASA makes a strong case for mankind’s role in global climate change. Something they were not allowed to do under the previous Republican administration.

So Phil, the groundhog of Punxsutawney PA has joined the crowd of ignoramuses in the Republican Party who are willing to sell their children’s and grandchildren’s futures down the river just so that we can continue to bow to present-day corporate greed and parsimony.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, Phil.

Federal District Court Judges are “Troubled”

I think we are seeing the writing on the wall this week as final arguments were made in DC yesterday on the Texas redistricting lawsuit. There is no way that the present district maps passed by the Texas state legislature last year will be allowed to stand. That much is certain. I don’t think I have ever seen this before. Well, yeah. I still remember Judge Sam Sparks telling Tom DeLay to “Run like a rabbit,” but it is a rarity that the federal district court tips their hand.

District court judges are “troubled” by some of the arguments made by the Texas attorney general’s office in defense of the process that was used to draw up state house, senate, and congressional district maps last year.

From The Chron:

“District Judge Rosemary Collyer voiced concern that the house and office of Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, an African-American lawmaker, were office stripped out of her congressional district, while mapmakers tucked San Antonio Country Club into the district of Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican leader, at his behest.”

“‘Did Lamar Smith's office get cut out of his district? I'll bet not,’ said Collyer, who added that she is ‘troubled’ by the process the GOP Legislature used and its defense of the procedures.”

“The judges also seemed baffled that Republican staffers who drew the maps testified that they had little guidance from the Republican lawmakers in charge of the process.

‘I have to scratch my head,’ said District Judge Beryl Howell.”

Amazingly, the state’s main defense is that they sought to “consolidate GOP power” in their redesign of district boundaries, not intentionally discriminate against racial minorities. All well and good, but because racial minorities have no affinity with the GOP, it is all one and the same thing, isn’t it? This is why minorities were discriminated against in the first place. They challenged the conservative agenda.

But it’s kind of fun watching the state attorney general’s office digging and digging. Digging a hole that they can’t hope to climb out of.

The Republican Malaise

Here we are early in the primary season, with the Florida Primary today, and promises of a double digit Romney victory, and it seems that Republican voters are still unimpressed with the field of candidates that remain.

According to the Pew Research Center, Republicans are singularly unexcited about their candidates. They report that the 44% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters dissatisfied with their field of candidates in early January have been joined by additional voters. The opinion group has grown to 52% dissatisfied at the end of January.  

And when asked which of the possible November candidates have an understanding of the needs of average Americans, 55% said that President Obama understands our needs, but Romney is flagging at 39% and even fewer believe Newt Gingrich has his hand on the pulse of American needs.

Republicans, in short are suffering through a malaise that is looking like what Democrats went through in 2010. When you are that unenthusiastic about your candidates, how do you justify dragging yourself to the polls to vote?

I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. This primary season is going to be hopelessly skewed to the right. Only the truly fanatical fringe will bother to show up at their primaries – or ones truly committed to a 1 term presidency for Barack Obama. The latter are Romney voters. The former is anyone’s guess.

And what will that mean in November? Such a lack of enthusiasm for the most probable nominee, Romney, means a walk in the park for Democrats. And I am beginning to sense a growing enthusiasm among Democrats as they begin to smell blood in the water.

The growing Republican Malaise is only good news for Democratic voters.

Conservatives Focus On the Past

OK, when I saw this headline at the Austin American-Statesman, “Perry to address CPAC conference” I had to ask myself this question: Why?

Isn’t he out of the presidential nomination race? Didn’t he prove to the nation that he had no qualifications to be president? That he is an ignorant slob?

Hey, I thought so. But not the case. And the reason this is not the case is that the Conservative Political Action Conference, to convene on February 9^th in Washington, DC cannot get past the past.

I read on, and saw the list of invited speakers:

“Other speakers at CPAC 2012, which will focus on training activists and developing strategies in hopes of defeating President Barack Obama in November, include former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and many of Perry’s former opponents for the GOP presidential nomination - Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.”

Oh please…Michelle Bachmann? Herman Cain? Perry? SARAH PALIN???

What is it with these people? Each and every one of the above named have either been outted as womanizers, crazies, cranks, or downright fools. CPAC loves them all, though.

But you know who CPAC loves the most? Yep, you guess it. They love them some Ron Paul. Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll in 2011. Ron Paul.

CPAC is about as relevant to this election as Abraham Lincoln’s stance on the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.

Diebold Leaks Puppet Masters’ Presidential Choice in 2012

This is hilarious. You might remember this group released nearly the same You Tube video in 2008. Their story then was John McCain would win the presidential election because he was the choice of the Dark Masters. Now they are back with the story that the puppet masters have picked Mitt Romney to be our next president.

As I mentioned to the one who posted this video on her facebook page, this wouldn’t be nearly as funny if it weren’t for the fact that there is more than a grain of truth to this story.

Hat tip to Betsy.

A Failure of Magnitude

Poor Mitt. Poor Newt. They haven't a clue, have they?

They argue about millions when most of us still are thinking of assets in the thousands. How out of touch is that?

Poor Newt – (Almost) Nobody Likes Him

These days the Republican contest for the presidential nomination seems more like high school than a political happening. One after one, the famous, infamous and established have lined up to bash Newt Gingrich to make good and well sure that he is not their candidate in the fall.

First, we hear that 3-time presidential hopeful Bob Dole has nothing good to say about him, this despite the fact that he has been absolutely silent about The Newt.

Up to now that is.

Bob Dole on Newt, courtesy of CBS:

“I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich, but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.”

Then there is Tom DeLay. Now Tom DeLay is a one-man band himself so he must know whereof he speaks when he compared The Newt to the Big Dog, Bill Clinton in a recent radio telephone interview.

From USA Today:

“He'll tell you what you want to hear. He has an uncanny ability, sort of like Clinton, to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up. When he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined.”

But not all of his former colleagues are dismissing The Newt wanting to just go away. One former colleague, Duke Cunningham, R-The Big House, has Newt’s back:

“Jailed ex-Congressman Duke Cunningham wants Newt Gingrich to know he's got the Republican presidential candidate's back.”

“Cunningham apparently has been watching the Republican presidential primary debates while spending 100 months in a Tucson, Ariz. federal prison. Cunningham, a Republican who represented northern San Diego, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion in 2005 in one of the biggest federal bribery scandals in recent memory.”

“Cunningham tells Gingrich in an electronic message he says he sent to the candidate last month that his fellow prisoners, and their families, support Gingrich.”

With friends like that, how can The Newt ever fail to capture the nomination?

Keeping my fingers crossed, Newt.

So all is not lost. The Newt has some support out there after all. Unfortunately none of them, on the inside anyway, can vote. But that’s OK, they have family members who listen to the political views of their incarcerated relatives all the time.