[The Guardian] White House acknowledges own role in 'over-testing' of American students as Obama says such evaluations should not be education's 'be-all and end-all'
The Obama administration on Saturday called for cuts in standardized tests for school pupils and acknowledged its own contribution to the problem of "over-testing", one of the hottest topics in education policy.
President Obama urged schools to cap standardized testing at 2% of classroom time. He also took responsibility for the federal government's creation of a culture in which testing had become the "be-all and end-all" in pre-college education.
Obama and outgoing education secretary Arne Duncan plan to meet teachers and school officials in the Oval Office on Monday.
"I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support," Duncan told the New York Times. Everyone knows the identification of incorrect answers on a test can lead to profiling.
[Breitbart] JERUSALEM--Ordinary Israelis are furious about the Obama administration's accusing Israel of committing acts of terrorism, drawing moral equivalency between the Jewish State and the terrorists who seek Israel's destruction.
On Oct. 13, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested at a forum hosted at Harvard that Israel's building additional residences in West Bank towns--which Israel's opponents refer to as building settlements, carrying the connotation that Jews are "settling" land that belongs to someone else--is provoking the current wave of attacks against Israel. The following day, Kerry's spokesman at the U.S. Department of State--John Kirby--was asked to clarify Kerry's remarks.
Kirby was asked, "You do consider it an act of terrorism. Okay, so that would suggest then that you believe that this is--that both sides are, in fact, committing these..." Kirby cut off the questioner to respond, "Well, I would say certainly individuals on both sides of this divide are--have proven capable of, and in our view [are], guilty of acts of terror."
Israelis whom Breitbart News talked to on the streets of Jerusalem were less than enthusiastic about the comparison.
Yoav Rotem is a tour guide in Israel, whose business takes groups to historical, cultural, and religious sites across the country, as well as conducting wine-tasting tours. Shown this quote, he responded, "It's a bit stupid. Two Israelis were involved in an act that was terrible but he's putting me in the same category as if I were a terrorist.
I do not want to wipe the Palestinian people off the map." Rotem noted that his perspective was as someone who deals daily with foreigners as he takes them on tours. He believes that Israelis who do not regularly deal with Americans might have a more blunt assessment: "Many regular Israelis would simply say of Kerry, 'He's a son of a bitch.'"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Guardian] White House acknowledges own role in 'over-testing' of American students as Obama says such evaluations should not be education's 'be-all and end-all'
