School districts from coast to coast have reported the number of students failing classes has risen by as many as two or three times — with English language learners and disabled and disadvantaged students suffering the most.
“It was completely off the rails from what is normal for us, and that was obviously very alarming,” said Erik Jespersen, principal of Oregon’s McNary High School, where 38% of grades in late October were failing, compared with 8% in normal times.
And this is failing them even more.
Now, teachers have been instructed to give less homework, prioritizing the most important assignments. They’ve been encouraged to find alternatives to traditional lectures. Grading has been changed from a 100-point system to a 50-point so that missed assignments with zeroes hurt students less.
If you aren’t educating anyone, then you aren’t an educator.
It was just a normal start to the game between the Waverly High Tigers and the Portsmouth West High Senators in West Portsmouth, Ohio. Both teams were lined up and the game announcer directed everyone to stand for the National Anthem, but something went wrong. Instead of music, all you hear is silence during a livestream of the game.
The sound system was experiencing some technical difficulties and after several awkward minutes, a man’s voice begins singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
One of the Waverly parents, Trenton Brown, decided to sing the anthem to get the game going after some encouragement from his wife.
“I looked over at the announcer and the music didn’t play and didn’t play and I looked over and he was getting a little frustrated. My wife gave me a little nudge and said “Sing” and I said, “All right,'” Brown told CNN.
Although Brown said he has been singing and playing music most of his life, he had never performed the National Anthem solo.
“There was a lot of awkward silence … and then I started singing and that was it,” he said.
When he finished, he said he sat down and started his eating popcorn and drinking his Mountain Dew.
The recounts in Wisconsin have wrapped up and, pending ongoing legal action, the election results will likely be certified soon confirming that Joe Biden has won the state by about 20,000 votes or 0.4% of the voters. The results tell us a lot about the current makeup of the Wisconsin electorate and what the Republicans will need to do to win the governorship in 2022.
The biggest message of the 2020 election is that the Wisconsin electorate is almost perfectly evenly divided. In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by about 23,000 votes. In 2020, with about 200,000 more ballots cast, Biden defeated Trump by about 20,000 votes. At the top of the ballot, the state is evenly split.
The state legislative results were less evenly split. The Republicans lost a couple of seats in the state Assembly, but still retain a substantial majority. The Republicans actually gained a couple of seats in the state Senate to give them their largest majority in that house in more than thirty years.
While Democrats will bemoan gerrymandering, those kinds of legislative majorities cannot be drawn by wily cartographers. Those majorities are a reflection of the fact that liberal Democrats have heavily segregated themselves into a few areas of the state and have become far more liberal. In doing so, theDemocrats have moved away from middle-class and working- class Wisconsin and become the party of socialists, activists, and white-collar chauvinists who can afford to indulge bad ideas.
The 2020 election also showed that Republicans have made gains in most of the state. Trump increased his margins in the Fox Valley, central Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin, east-central Wisconsin, and in the rapidly growing Racine and Kenosha counties. The Democrats churned out huge vote totals in Dane and Milwaukee counties to win the state for Biden, but lost ground in almost every other area of the state.
In order to win in 2022, the Republican candidate for governor will need to appeal to those same Trump voters with the kitchen table issues that matter. First, a strong economy is good for all Wisconsinites and a strong economy is a diverse economy. Republicans must focus on championing the industries that matter to people who do not live in Madison and who do not have a college degree. Manufacturing, tourism, hospitality, construction, mining, milling, etc. are businesses that have provided family-supporting livelihoods for generations ofWisconsinites.
In particular, Governor Evers has spent the better part of a year ignoring the plight of small businesses with his dictatorial orders. Republicans must fight for the tavern owner in Fifield and the ski hill operator in Wild Rose. Fighting for them does not mean offering them a handout. It means getting government out of the way so that they can make a living.
Many Wisconsinites have seen the indifference of government throughout the ’Rona Recession. While government forced businesses to close and people out of work, many government employees continued to receive their full pay while not having to work. Schools closed, but teachers were paid. University of Wisconsin campuses sent kids home but kept the tuition and housing fees. Wisconsinites do not want to see their fellow citizens suffer, but they do want to see the suffering shared equally by government.
Republicans must work to make government accountable to the people it serves. Many of the people who voted for Trump did so because they felt that their government no longer served them. Republicans must champion government service in the humblest sense of the phrase. Republicans must champion a government that works for the people.
Specifically, too many of the public schools in Wisconsinhave shown that their priority is not serving the kids or the community. Their priority is serving the employees and unions. Against the best scientific guidance, too many public schools have whipsawed between models and left parents struggling to educate their own kids while juggling their jobs. Too many public schools have made it clear that education is not really that important and that when there is a health concern, every kid can be left behind.
Republicans should focus on providing educational choices for families when their public school abandons its obligations. School choice, charter schools, virtual academies, homeschool support, etc. are all viable options for families that deserve public funding. Billions of dollars for education. Not one cent for empty schools.
Wisconsinites deserve a pragmatic, frugal, hardworking governor who works for the issues that impact their daily lives. Most Wisconsinites just want to earn a living, provide their kids a good education, enjoy a good fish fry, root for the Packers, and be left alone. The next Republican governor must work forthem.
Everyone feels better after a good haircut, sheep included.
Ewes that are sheared more often are happier and produce lambs with better wool, according to a new study.
Researchers from Australia’s University of Queensland say Merino ewes who are trimmed twice during pregnancy, rather than the typical once, have higher wool productivity.
He explained that people have been gathering in groups, especially on holidays, which has led to large spikes in COVID-19 cases.
As a result, Tate said, the city has no alternative but to try to limit the spread in whatever capacity is available.
“Nobody wants to shrink business capacity,” Tate said. “But because people aren’t doing what’s necessary to stop the spread, the only option is where we can’t have them gathering — that’s all that’s left.”
“We talk about people having personal responsibility,” Tate said. “We’re here because people aren’t being personally responsible.”
The arrogance of these people…
According to Bowersox, the real problem is that people are ignoring the guidance of public health officials.
Which is our right. When did following the advice of public officials become a moral imperative that must be enforced with the violent power of government?
One of the law’s authors said it would only affect about 0.8% of taxpayers. Those affected will pay a progressive rate of up to 3.5% on wealth in Argentina and up to 5.25% on that outside the country.
AFP news agency reports that of the money raised, 20% will go to medical supplies, 20% to relief for small and medium-sized businesses, 20% to scholarships for students, 15% to social developments, and the remaining 25% to natural gas ventures.
They aren’t even pretending that this is for the Rona. Only 40% is going to something that could reasonably be claimed to be related to the virus. And if you think this will be a one time tax, I have a bridge to sell you. Once the tyrants find a new well of money, they will keep going back to it.
What the leftists in Argentina don’t understand (just like the leftists in America) is that people – particularly wealthy people – will react. They will hide their money, shift it overseas, move their businesses overseas, bury their money in the yard… whatever. They will find ways to avoid the tax. And in doing so, the government will not collect as much money as they thought and they will force all sorts of negative economic aftershocks and fuel illegal trade. And how will the little tyrants react? By onerous enforcement and extending the tax to more people. Then there will be more unrest and instability. This cycle has happened a thousand times.
by Owen | 1654, 5 Dec 2020 | Politics | 8 Comments
Whatever. His story on this has changed so many times that who knows what the truth is?
“In my view,” Biden told CNN, “there was one option there that was remaining: you could have done one more very low flight … spying down on the site” – a compound in Abbottabad – “to determine whether this was Bin Laden, because again, there was no certainty.
“ … And so I looked around the table, I said, ‘I didn’t think we had this many economists in the room. On the one hand, the other hand.’ I said, ‘Mr President,’ to give him space, I said, ‘I think you should wait.’ And do one more pass.’ Knowing that if you made the lower pass, they might observe it and he’d flee.”
Again echoing Obama, Biden said he and the president had a subsequent private discussion in which he advised the president to follow his instinct.
The video confirms what the campaign’s witnesses have sworn to in affidavits, Pick contended.
“Yes, people were sent home, told to stop working, stop counting, but some people stayed behind: Sure enough, just as our poll watchers – well, our monitors – had said,” Pick said, saying the video shows suitcases being pulled from under a table covered by a black cloth — purportedly holding thousands of ballots.
“WATCH: Footage of State Farm Arena in #Atlanta shows that after poll monitors and media were told counting was done, four workers stayed behind to count #ballots, at times pulling out suitcases containing ballots from underneath desks. Watch full video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=keANzinHWUA”
In presenting the evidence to the Georgia state Senate, Pick rejected an official’s claim that allegations of no poll monitor being present has been debunked, saying the video was just received Thursday and could not have already been debunked.
“Obviously, that’s not true,” Pick continued. “Whoever said that – I believe it was the Secretary of State [Brad Raffensperger] clearly wasn’t present: Check. Or hasn’t seen this video: Check.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday.
Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 32 feet (10 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter.
Chodas was proven right after a team led by the University of Arizona’s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mystery object, but — just on Tuesday — a Centaur from 1971 still orbiting Earth. The data from the images matched.
[…]
The object formally known as 2020 SO entered a wide, lopsided orbit around Earth last month and, on Tuesday, made its closest approach at just over 31,000 miles (50,476 kilometers). It will depart the neighborhood in March, shooting back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next return: 2036.
(CNN)President-elect Joe Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that he will ask Americans to wear masks for his first 100 days after he takes office, in a sign of how Biden’s approach to the virus will be dramatically different to President Donald Trump’s response.
“Just 100 days to mask, not forever. 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction,” Biden told Tapper during his first joint interview with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris since winning the election. The full interview will air at 9 p.m. ET.
If you think you need to wear a mask, please do so. If not, then that’s cool too. We are free-thinking people who can understand the personal risks and take appropriate actions as appropriate.
And if you believe it will only be for 100 days, I have a bridge sell you. We’re nine months into a two-week lockdown.
US airlines will no longer be required to transport emotional support animals after passengers insisted on bringing on board their horses, pigs, peacocks and turkeys for psychological reasons.
Wednesday’s rule change by the US Department of Transportation now says only dogs qualify as service animals.
The agency said unusual animals on flights had “eroded the public trust in legitimate service animals”.
Airlines say the old policy had been abused and was dangerous.
The new rule defines service dogs as “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability”, and says other animals should be treated by airlines as pets that can be placed in the cargo hold for a fee.
Many of the nation’s top companies, including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Ford, Google and Walmart, are calling on the new administration to address climate change and come up with long-term solutions in response to concerns from investors, customers, communities and employees.
The statement, which represented a cross section of corporate America, said it would support Biden’s decision to recommit to emissions reduction goals under the accord after President Donald Trump formally withdrew the country from the climate change agreement.
“Fighting climate change” = “lots of regulations.” Big businesses love regulations because they can afford to comply with them. Meanwhile, startups and small businesses can’t afford the army of lawyers and accountants to meet the burden. Big business always supports more regulations because they get a seat at the table to create the rules and it squeezes out competition.
The fact that Goldman Sachs and Walmart support climate change regulations does not mean that it’s good for us. In fact, for the lefties who have spent their lives demonizing these companies, why would you trust them now?
“Members of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association have passed away from complications from COVID-19,” Mizialko said.
She says the union does not intend to comply with the Republican legislation that would put teachers back in classrooms.
“This will not go on on our watch. We will not have our students and families shoved into buildings that are unsafe.”
The bill would require school boards to ensure “all hours of direct pupil instruction are provided by a teacher who is physically located in a school building.”
The Racine Unified School District (RUSD) says they think they can comply with a teacher in the room, but students learning virtually at home, which they were doing earlier in the year.
“They were teaching from their classrooms at their schools in a safe environment while students were safe at home,” said Stacey Tapp of RUSD. “So moving them back to their classrooms wouldn’t be a big switch.”
Bug virtual learning would be a big cost. The bill would require school boards to pay each parent $371 for a semester that is at least 50% virtual.
The Milwaukee School Board estimates that would cost $30 million.
“We would not be able to pay that. We don’t have $30 million. Where would we — where would we get it?”
$371 for a semester is a pittance. When schools decide to close, they are imposing thousands of dollars in costs and lost wages on families who are also paying for the closed schools. Frankly, I don’t thing the GOP bill goes far enough. The purpose of public education is to provide education. If the government schools won’t do it, then shift all of the money to schools that will.
City officials in San Francisco have banned all tobacco smoking inside privately owned apartment builidngs with three units or more, citing concerns about secondhand smoke. But lighting up a joint inside? That’s still allowed.
The Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to approve the ordinance making San Francisco the largest city in the country to ban tobacco smoking inside apartments, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The original proposal sought to ban residents from smoking marijuana in their apartments, but supervisors voted to exclude marijuana after cannabis activists said the law would take away their only legal place to smoke.
The first step toward realizing a more resilient and family-centered system is to reimagine how we fund education. In short, it’s time to start funding families, not the buildings that are meant to serve them.
Americans spend at least $720 billion on education each year. At around $13,000 per child, that puts the U.S. among the highest-spending countries in the world.
Instead of providing this benefit directly to families — as we do for higher education, childcare, and health care — in K-12, we send this money directly to school buildings. Taxpayer dollars are collected and sent to a central office, and zones are drawn around individual schools where students are required to attend or forfeit the funds raised for their education.
The pandemic has exposed the flaws in this system. School closures, loss of childcare, and difficulties transitioning to online and hybrid-learning models are having devastating effects on children. According to one report, an estimated 3 million students have received no formal education since schools closed in March. That’s the equivalent of every school-aged child in Florida failing to show up for school.
[…]
To create a more effective and more resilient education system, we must learn from what has proven effective during the pandemic — namely, the ability of those with resources to identify and pursue a variety of individualized learning opportunities to meet children’s needs. To provide these same opportunities for all families, governments should prioritize direct grants to families, education spending accounts, refundable tax credits, and myriad other ways to get money into the hands of families so they can build an education that fits their needs.
Those of us who have had it with COVID hijacking our lives (and American life) have weighed the risks and want us to return to “normal.” But the other half thinks we are nuts for “ignoring the science” and risking our lives and doing our part to keep spreading the virus.
So, we have a country, and a state, at odds with one another because we are on different timetables with different perspectives and different priorities. There is only one way to resolve these differences and that is for government to butt out and let people make decisions for themselves. One size fits all never works but it especially doesn’t work when you have a country of two sizes. Businesses that want to open at full capacity ought to be allowed to do so. Those that want to close, or limit their clientele, should be free to do that as well. If public schools want to close because of a virus that doesn’t make kids sick, that’s the prerogative of their school boards. But if private schools in the same community want to stay open because they understand the downside of not educating children is worse than the risks of COVID, they ought to be able to do that as well. That’s why the Racine case headed to the state Supreme Court is so critical. The Racine health department has issued an order closing all schools in the city (and some adjacent to the city) whether they are public or private. Wisconsin Institute For Law And Liberty (WILL) is suing. The right of the leaders of private schools to make their own decisions has to trump the rights of bureaucrats to take away those basic rights. Parents silly enough to send their kids to the mediocre (I am being generous) Racine Unified district have opted to exile them to another year of “virtual learning” in which they are going to fall even farther behind their peers. But the moms and dads who have opted to send their children to private schools shouldn’t be stuck with the decision made by leftist government officials afraid of their COVID shadows.
We all know the risks and ways to mitigate the spread of the virus. If you need to stay home, then do so. You are not harmed if I go to a restaurant with other people who are willing to accept the risk.
Seattle is preparing to slash the city’s police budget just as homicides in the city climb to their highest level in more than a decade.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is set to sign a city budget that includes an 18 percent cut to the Seattle Police Department, a move that comes after police reform activists demanded the police budget be reduced by half. Calls for police reform have abounded in cities across the country since May, when George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
The city council voted last week to slash about $69 million in funding for officer training, salaries and overtime, and get rid of vacant positions in the police department as well as transfer parking officers, mental health workers, and 911 dispatchers out of the department. The goal is to ultimately reinvest in alternatives to police in situations such as mental health crises.
Madison, WI – State Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) released the following statement today after being appointed Senate Vice-Chairman of the Joint Finance Committee:
“I am honored to be appointed to this position and grateful to Majority Leader-elect LeMahieu for this opportunity. Since being appointed to the Joint Finance Committee in 2017, I have advocated for common sense budgeting and fiscal responsibility.
“To taxpayers, I pledge to continue fighting for your interests and the wise stewardship of your hard-earned tax dollars. Decision-makers in Madison need to stay grounded in the realities faced every day by Wisconsin’s workers, farmers, and employers. Those realities will continue to guide my work on the Finance Committee.
“To my colleagues, I will work diligently to represent the interests of our chamber during the budget process. Senate Republicans have a great track record of pushing for more efficient, more effective, and smaller government that spends only what it needs and returns savings to the taxpayers. I look forward to working with each of you to craft the next state budget.
Senator Darling had been drifting more purple as her district has (she was even running ads bragging about how she was responsible for the most spending on government schools in the history of Wisconsin). Stroebel is a smart conservative and we couldn’t ask for a better Senator to help craft the budget.
CORRECTION: I mistook “vice”chair for “co”chair. Stroebel moved up in the leadership, but Senator Marklein actually took Darling’s position. Still… good moves that are good for Wisconsin.
MARINETTE – A longtime Republican lawmaker in northeastern Wisconsin will resign from the state Assembly weeks after winning his reelection bid.
State Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, will step down from his seat in the 89th Assembly District effective Wednesday, according to a news release. Nygren has represented the district — which includes portions of Marinette, Oconto and Brown counties — since 2006 and served four terms as co-chair on the powerful Joint Committee on Finance.
The state legislative results were less evenly split. The Republicans lost a couple of seats in the state Assembly, but still retain a substantial majority. The Republicans actually gained a couple of seats in the state Senate to give them their largest majority in that house in more than thirty years.
While Democrats will bemoan gerrymandering, those kinds of legislative majorities cannot be drawn by wily cartographers. Those majorities are a reflection of the fact that liberal Democrats have heavily segregated themselves into a few areas of the state and have become far more liberal. In doing so, the Democrats have moved away from middle-class and working- class Wisconsin and become the party of socialists, activists, and white-collar chauvinists who can afford to indulge bad ideas.
The 2020 election also showed that Republicans have made gains in most of the state. Trump increased his margins in the Fox Valley, central Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin, east-central Wisconsin, and in the rapidly growing Racine and Kenosha counties. The Democrats churned out huge vote totals in Dane and Milwaukee counties to win the state for Biden, but lost ground in almost every other area of the state.
In order to win in 2022, the Republican candidate for governor will need to appeal to those same Trump voters with the kitchen table issues that matter. First, a strong economy is good for all Wisconsinites and a strong economy is a diverse economy. Republicans must focus on championing the industries that matter to people who do not live in Madison and who do not have a college degree. Manufacturing, tourism, hospitality, construction, mining, milling, etc. are businesses that have provided family-supporting livelihoods for generations of Wisconsinites.
In particular, Governor Evers has spent the better part of a year ignoring the plight of small businesses with his dictatorial orders. Republicans must fight for the tavern owner in Fifield and the ski hill operator in Wild Rose. Fighting for them does not mean offering them a handout. It means getting government out of the way so that they can make a living.
