Steve Ostrin, who was assigned to a Brooklyn Rubber Room fifty-three months ago, might be that innocent man whom the current process protects. In 2005, a student at Brooklyn Tech, an élite high school where Ostrin was an award-winning social-studies teacher, accused him of kissing her when the two were alone in a classroom. After her parents told the police, Ostrin was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child. He denied the charge, insisting that he was only joking around with the student and that the principal, who didn’t like him, seized upon the incident to go after him. The tabloids ran headlines about the arrest, and found a student who claimed that a similar thing had happened to her years before, though she had not reported it to the police. But many of Ostrin’s students didn’t believe the allegations. They staged a rally in support of him at the courthouse where the trial was held. Eleven months later, he was acquitted.Where's the outrage here? Should there be outrage, or is the administration justified in leaving him in the "rubber room"? If they're justified in sending him into exile, should they be justified in firing him?
Nevertheless, the city refused to allow him to return to class. “Sometimes if they are exonerated in the courts we still don’t put them back,” Cerf said, adding that he was not referring to Ostrin in particular. “Our standard is tighter than ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ What would parents think if we took the risk and let them back in a classroom?”
The article goes on to call this case "a distraction from the real issue," but I think it's instructive here. The rubber room is an end-run around protections provided for teachers. It takes away the substance of the protections, leaving them with only protection for their paycheck. It also gives them a terrible choice: stay on the payroll of the city, collecting a paycheck in exchange for hours of boredom and stagnation, or leave, admitting guilt, and having no expectation of ever getting to perform the job they love.
Ok, this is a gross assumption, but... at least some of the rubber roomers are in this boat, I'm willing to bet.
It's indisputable that New York's rubber room system is broken. It's schizophrenic in that it has due process for the paycheck, but not for the job...
(Ebert, I trusted you! Oops.)
Sorry, folks. I'll try to find a more balanced article to read and start over some other day.
There are countless dedicated public school teachers in our nation. Guggenheim made a doc in 1999 focusing on them. But educators and the teachers themselves acknowledge that schools have teachers who are not merely incompetent, but even refuse to teach. Protected by the tenure guarantees in their union contracts, they cannot be fired. In some schools, their rooms are referred to as Classrooms of Death. A student assigned to them will fail. Principals know this, and every year engage in something variously known as the Lemon Dance or the Turkey Trot, transferring bad teachers to other schools, and praying that the new teachers they get may be better.from this Roger Ebert article: A Superwoman for Kenya, but America is Still Waiting for Superman. Anyone?
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/0
Sunday, pork tenderloin and baked vegetables
Monday, chili and quiche (the quiche came out a bit watery, and I forgot to add cheese til the end)
Wednesday(?), beef stroganoff over pasta
Friday, spinach, ham and cheese frittata, and steamed string beans
This is the direct result of somebody's attempt to "frame the message" surrounding healthcare reform. I don't think Obama's doing it, or the Democratic Party. Whose bright idea is this?
Edit: To clarify, I'm wondering where the idea came from, that any health care reform that doesn't include this specific thing is automatically a failure. I still remain unconvinced that a public option is required to make a meaningful reform to the nation's health system.
I'm in Portland, Oregon today and tomorrow, then I'll be in Seattle the rest of the week. Dinner mob tonight, and Wednesday. Let me know if you're in the area.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
- Location:US, Oregon, Multnomah
question for folks who believe
How does the evaluation of doctors, and resultant feedback mechanism for improvement over time, compare to the evaluation of schools and teachers defined in the No Child Left Behind act?
Her complaint, the one that actually came through in that interview: the bill provides positive incentives for doctors to discuss a living will with a patient, convincing them to have something on file saying what to do in the case they're incapacitated. She, and those like her, believe that in a time of good health, one is much more likely to say "yes, I don't want to go on living that way" than when faced with the actual situation.
Their problem is with living wills themselves; in some ways it's an extension of Terry Schiavo, but even worse; if Terry Schiavo had signed a living will asking to be removed from life support, these people would have argued that it should be ignored. I think. From what I hear in that interview.
So, they don't like living wills, and they really don't like the idea that more people will have them. It further validates what is, to them, a horrible weapon for a person to wield against their future selves... And in some ways, living wills provide the only legal path to assisted suicide in the country right now, albeit in extremely limited circumstances. And everyone knows what a great PR face Jack Kevorkian put on that issue.
So, I'll say this; while I disagree with the points, and I especially disagree with the way they are presenting their point... I do believe they're not necessarily making something out of nothing here; there is a bit of substance behind their complaint, and, if only we could have more civil conversations continuing where The Daily Show left off, we might find some common ground... eventually. Maybe.
Next year I when people start talking about flights to Gen Con, I'm going to make sure to send everyone email: "ALL THESE AIRPORTS ARE YOURS EXCEPT FOR ORD. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."
By the time I was on Somerville Ave., the deluge had begun. I pulled over under a convenient awning, and waited a few minutes for it to dry up. Packed my phone and new earbuds away safely and waited... and finally gave up waiting, and biked in the rain.
It was quite nice, actually. I got soaked, but as I passed through Union Square I decided I was up for a bit of a challenge, and went up Summer St. instead of Somerville Ave. This took me right over the peak of the hill, past that cathedral, and the only real issue I had with it was worry about cars passing me. The road's too narrow for a dedicated bike lane.
In any case, the beauty of that route is, once you hit the cathedral, you're done. I coasted all the way home. (Well, to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cheonameg's house for basement storage, since I won't be using my bike til next Monday...)Whee!
kajafoglio said it best, though: "As with all Harry Potter movies, it made me want to redecorate my house."Who would have thought that custhelp.com could possibly be real? :)
Man, it was fun following that eladrin wizard around the battlefield last night. Teleport me into that zone of acid, will you? Well, I'll teleport right back out atcha!
Me, playing a multiclass character... huh.
That sure puts my mind at ease.
