30 Seconds Over Tokyo

The historians among you well know, America was desperate for good news following the successive defeats one after another that piled on like dominoes after Pearl Harbor.   We were a second rate power and nothing we could do could make a change.   Then on the 18th of April, 1942, 132 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, America woke up to hear we’d bombed Japan.   Although we probably did less damage than two back packs did in Boston, it sent a shot of adrenelin through out the American psyche…..

I now know how it felt.

Just before finishing up, on John Young’s blog I came across this…  The school district of Dover signed a proclamation declaring Common Core null and void…  Although it’s effect upon the problem at hand, might have as much effect as a handful of planes at treetop level racing one time across a foreign country, the effect back home was exhilarating.   There is hope after all.  We are not pursuing the principles of quality education in vain against an enemy that will rule out nothing, if something gets in their way.

No employee of the Capitol School District shall be placed on an improvement plan due to Component 5

Someone else gets it. We are the good guys, after all.

Why would a district go against the governor, the secretary of education, the US Department of Educations?

Because they are wrong, that’s why.

It is wrong to punish those who set lofty goals and fail, but reward those profusely who lowball their goals, and just slip over them. Component 5 does just that. The poor teachers get raises. Good teachers get fired. “Get otta here you filthy animal..”

It is wrong to have administrators who themselves are put on performance plans be the very ones to be in charge of helping teachers on performance plans, pull themselves off.

It is wrong to have a teachers career depend 100 times more upon which words they use in their own self-assessments, than in how they, heaven forbid, teach children.

It is wrong to allow one's "favorite" teachers be themselves allowed to grade those scores making up their own assessments, but those "other" teachers must ship theirs off somewhere and await the score that is "given" to them.

It is wrong to put a teacher and administrator on administrative leave because they were unable to provide a legal accommodation because of the arbitrariness of the state DOE in interpreting the Federal DOE guidelines?

It is wrong to put a teacher and administrator on administrative leave since they could not be tested in their area of expertise, they were lumped in and given the average scores of other teachers working in other unrelated departments.

In one class room the DCAS margin of error was 25 points. The average growth goal was 50 points. So a teacher can be rewarded or fired, based solely on the margin of error… This is wrong.

The guidelines are set by the state and in alignment with federal regulations. However when a district follows them and discharges and employee, that district is the one who gets sued. As any common person can see from looking at all of the above, NO COURT IN THIS LAND WOULD DECIDE IN FAVOR OF THE DISTRICT. Any district who follows Component 5, will be liable for extreme damages.

For these reasons, the Capital School District has resolved it will refuse to terminate over component 5…

It was this generation’s 30 seconds over Tokyo…..

How Our Government Is Failing Our Students

If any of these are new to you, click and read the links.  Your eyeballs will fall out of their sockets.

Education policies based on standardization and uniformity tend to fail.

Policies based on distrust of teachers tend to fail. 

Judging teachers’ performance by students’ test scores is both substantively and procedurally flawed.

Fails to take into account Campbell’s Law, one of the best-known maxims in the literature on organizational behavior: if you impose external quantitative measurements to judge work performance that cannot be easily and clearly measured, all you will achieve is a displacement of goals 

More people are realizing that many of the organizations involved in “corporate reform” seem to need reforming themselves.

Those in charge of reforms are more interested in reforming their own bank accounts than our student’s education.

People wonder why reformers themselves aren’t held accountable.

Every pilot project has the chance to succeed or fail.  All of us in charge of anything in our lives know that one has to take some risk and explore new venues.  However, it is the dictator who upon finding that the process he planned does not work for anyone else but himself, … insists on doubling down and making things worse.  The crafty executives pull the plug and walk away with tons of respect for doing what was right.

So the outcome is certain.  Parents, students, teachers, and principals will prevail. The question now is how long will it take, and how many children will be done in by  the collateral damage.

Death Penality Hearings In Dover

Two big hearings in Dover today.  The first was on banning guns. The second was on banning the death penalty… The crazies couldn’t attend both.   The Death Penality was civil, honest, and mostly (9 to 1) in favor of the ban..

Here were some of the reasons offered to abolish the death penalty.

First the moral:  punishing someone by doing to them exactly what you are punishing them for, is convoluted logic.  God is against killing, so how does one tell a child killing is wrong when ones government does it?

Then there is the practical… Killing a killer does not bring back the dead.  In fact, it makes the family wait 25-35 years for a resolution.  Every appeal, makes them relive it all over. Life imprisonment is so much easier on a victim’s family, one verdict; it is done forever… Time to heal.

Delaware spent $2.3 million legal costs on appeals. Just give that to the victims family.  Not really, but get the point?  That money is a waste and is only spent because we have the death penalty.and therefore must give every option to make sure we are not killing another when other options are available.  That money can be better spent on other things.

Criminals who are only in for a year or two, are more dangerous to correctional officers than those in for life.  Life imprisonment is a greater punishment than dying. Dying is the easy way out. 

Now, for the reasons why we SHOULD keep Capital punishment….  There were two.  One, it worked in the movie True Grit (seriously) and second…. there are some really sick Dexters out there who like to watch people die…. 

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NRA Sponsored Terror Shoots Up New Castle Courthouse

Not really.  But think.  If the NRA had helped us keep guns out of the hands of criminals, instead of proposing that guns could be sold and bought by anyone with no questions asked….

This wouldn’t have happened.

Call your Senators and Congressmen.  Tell them to list the NRA as a terrorist group.

It might make their day!

Republican Offices
Phone (302) 577-8723
Fax (302) 577-6396

Republican Offices
Phone (302) 744-4171
Fax (302) 739-2773

Legislative Hall Office
411 Legislative Ave.
Dover, DE 19901
Phone: (302) 744-4172
Fax: (302) 739-2773

Police To Obama: “Bout Time!

It seem that no matter what Obama does these days he always comes out on the right side of the issue, and the Republicans always look like a bad live skit off Saturday Night Live….. You know, the ones so bad you just laugh at the fart noises?

Today the International Association of Chiefs of Police released the following statement…..

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) commends President Obama and Vice President Biden for the comprehensive package of proposals they announced to combat gun violence. The IACP believes that the proposals and actions reflect an effective, balanced approach to addressing the plague of gun violence in our communities and nation. As this process moves forward, the IACP will continue to work with the Administration, members of Congress, and public safety leaders across the country to enact these much needed reforms.

For many years, the IACP has been a leading voice in efforts to reduce gun violence. Our membership was, and remains, a leading proponent of universal background checks for gun purchases, the ban on military style assault weapons, high capacity magazines, and ensuring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has both a permanent director and sufficient resources to enforce our nation’s gun laws. The adoption of these, and other reasonable measures, will certainly assist in reducing the level of gun violence in our Nation.

Doesn’t that make David Anderson, Don Ayotte, Frank Knotts, Jon Moseley, all anti-police? Hey, wait a minute… One of those is an elected official for the city of Dover, and he is anti police? Hmm, he is running this year… I wonder if his constituents know it, ..that their active council person seeking a third term is anti police?

You can’t be for no regulation on guns, and be pro police.

Then Just Like That, Boom, It Went From White To Brown….

I’m tying together three threads to make a knot..

A. The election 2012 showed the end of political dominance by “white people” on the national stage.

B. John Stapleford wrote a derogatory piece in Wilmington’s News Journal whining that “blacks and browns” (his words) were lazy, no good, bums and would always not vote for a white guy, no matter how fly…..

C. Martin Luther King Blvd. is renamed off of Duke of York Streets, William Penn Street, and Court Street….

This 2012 election bamboozled Republican strategists because they totally neglected to account for the votes of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, who were heavily engaged in this election. To Republicans, these people never mattered. But, these people who never mattered, now have more votes. They, are the majority… and far more moral than any Republican Moral Majority could ever hope to be…..

John Stapleford’s piece was an attempt to denigrate this very vote. By saying thugs had overrun the election, he could still attempt to keep his values above water. He was trying to say….”our outdated values are still the true path; we were overwhelmed by critters and just lost one round, that’s all.” It didn’t fly. His audience almost to every man and woman, saw it as prejudice and nothing else. Instead, the die had been cast. This Obama was the direction America really wanted to go….

Dover changed the name. Now Dover is the 40th Capital City to have a Martin Luther King Boulevard. It will not be the last…. In a sad way, Delaware’s Colonial Heritage is being lost to the 20th Century… The Duke of York put Dover in the same class as Williamsburg. The colonial aspect of Dover is now gone. It is just old buildings on a street that happens to be named after the bravest American of the last century… Before there was correlation…. Now, what’s the correlation?

But that is … as it should be… Times change. And really… though sad to see 300 years of tradition swept away, exactly “who” is the Duke of York? How many of those voting in Dover itself, could have answered that question properly?

He, along with William Penn… have no meaning to people whose ancestors were sold, brought across the Atlantic, sold again, mistreated, and then once freed, quietly kept in second class status, until one man made so much noise it could be ignored no longer…..

It is proper and fitting that someone who has more name recognition and who deserves to be honored, replaces 300 years of tradition… We can only hope he may reign on that street sign, as long as did the Duke of York…..

The vote has passed. We are now in a new America, and it is good.

Delaware Has the Highest Per Capita Income of Any State

And they are solidly Democrat.   Why?  Because they are smarter than the rest of America.  That is why.  They figured out that the way to prosperity, was to expel Republicans from office and put Democrats in instead.

Per capita real GDP ranged from a high of $63,159 in Delaware to a low of $28,293 in Mississippi. Per capita real GDP for the U.S. was $42,070.

All evidence shows that Republican policy makes it’s people’s wealth,  worse. Much, much worse…   All the top states are solidly in Democratic control.  All the bottom states are solidly in Republican control.  So readers in other states (since we’re not going backwards anytime soon)  how rich do you want to be?

You are being lied to… You are being lied to by each and every single one of your Republican elected officials.

Delaware is based on the principal that when the wealthy get rich, through very fair taxation, everyone underneath benefits.  It is called, I think,  allowing the wealth to ……. trickle down……

Taxes and The Wealthy

Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..

So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….

I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……

On Saturday, February 26, at noon local time, we are organizing rallies in front of every statehouse and in every major city to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin.

‘Nuff said.