The problem with for profit education is . . . it's for profit. Anyone who's looking to make a buck off of running schools has a constant conflict of interest between the students' best interest and the bottom line.
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Arizona Editor
It almost looks like Lisa Graham Keegan and I agree. Almost. She has an op ed in the Republic praising the paper for its discussions of the problems with tuition tax credits.
I am extremely grateful to editorial writer Doug MacEachern and The Arizona Republic for clearly defining [...]
Allow me a naive moment here.
A filibuster is a delaying tactic where someone or a group of people talk endlessly on the Senate floor and continue talking until 60 Senators vote to end the incessant chatter. If no one can pull together 60 votes, the talking continues.
It's not' [...]
Imagine my surprise as I was reading through NY Times' 9th Annual Year in Ideas in its Sunday Magazine, when I came across the item, Forensic Polling Analysis. It's about uber-statistician Nate Silver's analysis of polling data from Strategic Vision LLC, in which he comes to' [...]
The NY Times has an article this morning on McCain's current position in the Senate, filling a leadership vacuum by putting himself in the spotlight. It's a fairly nuanced piece, showing McCain's personal and political strengths and weaknesses. And the headline does a pretty good job of' [...]
Two posts below praise the Republic (highly) and the Star (tentatively) for what they've written about tuition tax credits the past few days. But the East Valley Trib's editorial got it as wrong as the other 2 papers got it right.
I understand there's a the wall between' [...]
My post below gives the Star some credit for writing a good editorial this morning on the recommendations of the R-dominated House committee on tuition tax credits.
However, the editorial pales in comparison to the coverage in the Sunday Republic: 1 article, 5 separate opinion pieces and a graph. [...]
The Star has a good editorial this morning blasting the recommendations the R-majority committee on tuition tax credits put together. I've complained mightily for weeks (months?) about the Star's lackluster-to-absent coverage of the topic. Let's hope this is the paper's first installment on tuition tax credit and [...]
I could call this self parody, but for AZ legislators of the Republican persuasion, it's business as usual.
You probably remember that both the East Valley Trib and the Republic ran a number of investigative articles starting a few months back exposing all kinds of problems with the tuition' [...]
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Before I begin, David Safier's complaint that the Arizona Daily Star is AWOL again is applicable here. The editors' recent announcement that the Star will focus more on local content (read petty crime stories) means that the Arizona Daily Star is failing to report on the biggest political scandal [...]
It's bash-the-Star day, I guess. Two gripes in one day.
This morning I wrote about an awful, misleading headline. Now I'm complaining about what the paper didn't do.
McCain made some robo-calls about the health care bill that may have broken Senate rules. If you want to know more' [...]
Headline in the Star:
Patients to pay big in health overhaulActually, no. Read the article. It says some will pay more -- not "pay big," pay more -- many will pay less, and high income people (more than $1 million income for a family) and those with very [...]
Weird battle lines are being drawn in the payday loan wars these days. You expect the Ds and Rs to be on opposite sides here, with the Ds for ending payday loans and the Rs trying to figure out a way to keep payday loans without actually coming [...]
I've been gone for about a week, busy as well as in and out of web contact. Over the next few days, I'll try to catch up on some stray postings I didn't have time for.
Idiot's Guides have been big over the past few years. Goldwater Institute has created one for Republican legislators, a list it calls 100 Ideas for 100 Days: Budget Solutions and Ideas for State Elected Officials.
To be fair, nowhere does G.I. say Dems can't use it as well, [...]
I'm not always encouraged by the ed reform ideas I'm hearing, and that includes what's coming from Duncan's Dept of Ed. But here's where I see promise. The idea seems to be to encourage lots of approaches to improving education. If that's true, we have a decent chance [...]
Assistant Attorney General Vince Rabago filed suit against payday lender Quik Cash Friday. The company is one of the largest publicly traded payday lenders in the country. If anyone harbors illusions about payday lenders acting in a consumer-friendly way, this suit should put those fantasies to rest.
When Quik [...]
I've been wrestling with this one lately. A suit has been filed to give charter schools more money to make their allocations "equal" with district schools. That raises the question: do charters get less than district schools, and if so, should the state give them more?
The main issue' [...]
This is a public service announcement.
The Goldwater Institute's Daily Email has announced what they think we must do to protect what we gained when the Bill of Rights was ratified.
Spread the word about the Arizona Health Care Freedom Act, which could stop the federal government from dictating your' [...]
Here's the answer to the question, "How did the legislature come up with the $144 million figure for cutting soft capital to schools?" It comes from an email sent by LEAN Parents for Education.
In order to receive federal stimulus money, all US states had to agree not' [...]
Where does Brewer stand on payday loans, or repealing the law that would get rid of payday loans in Arizona? She's not sure. Remember the ballot measure that would have kept payday loans here? The one that lost big time?
Brewer said she couldn’t remember how she voted' [...]
The good news: good charter schools can be very good. For certain parts of the student population, they can be better than public schools.
The bad news: bad charter schools can be just awful. They're run either by incompetents or profiteers -- sometimes by incompetent profiteers -- and the' [...]
How do newspapers transition away from paper and still make enough money to survive? Here's one scenario I think might work. Create three levels of reading ease: Clunky with lots of ads (free), reasonably efficient and with fewer ads (moderate subscription cost) and smooth as silk (higher subscription' [...]
Here's another comment from the teacher in Tempe whose comment I moved to the front a few days ago. He spotlights one of the ironies good teachers understand. They complain, rightly, about budget cuts and unnecessary restrictions. But when the students walk in the classroom, all that goes' [...]
Commenters have been doing my work for me lately -- and better than I do it in many instances. Here's a terrific comment by davewave64 on the subject of rating teachers based on student test scores. As you'll see, he's in the ed research profession. My favorite idea:' [...]
As much as I've read about linking teacher salaries and retention to student testing, I've never found a satisfactory answer to this question: what about teachers in subjects that aren't tested?
The trend toward tying everything to tests is accelerating.
[New York's] Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Wednesday [...]
I received this comment on a post I wrote about some of the changes affecting teachers that were thrown in with the latest round of budget cuts.
I'm a teacher in the Tempe Union school district, and I now have my eye on the exit signs because of' [...]
I received an email this morning from a teacher at an Arizona independent school who is planning to ask his students if they were surveyed for the civics test Goldwater Institute used to create 3 separate studies comparing high school students attending public and private schools.
The question [...]
More on the survey results used for the G.I. civics study (No, I'm not obsessed, just very interested). Here's a way to get closer to finding out whether Strategic Vision LLC actually completed the survey for G.I. and didn't just make up the results.
It can be worth a' [...]
