Dear Commons Community,

Frank Bruni weighs in on the Newt  Gingrich presidential candidacy death watch in his column today in the New York Times. 

“He has no nutritional value, certainly not at this point, as he peddles his ludicrous guarantee of $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, a promise that would be made only by someone with his own bottomless strategic reserve of crude. Doubly oily entendre intended.

There were calls for him to desist two weeks ago, after he lost Alabama, which abuts his home state of Georgia. But they fell on a deaf Newt.

There were fresh appeals last week, when he failed to wring even one measly delegate from Illinois on Tuesday and then Louisiana on Saturday. But Newt doesn’t need anything as prosaic as delegates, so long as there’s still pocket lint from Sheldon Adelson and the warmth of Callista’s frozen smile.

If he refuses to quit, we in the news media must quit him. Starve him of his very sustenance: attention. Exert a kind of willpower that we’ve lacked in this primary, which we turned into too much of a circus by encouraging too many clowns.”

Too many clowns indeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, Stuart Ewen, at Hunter College, passed on this link to a youtube video by Sir Ken Robinson, which in a fun way explains the problems with public education and recommends some solutions.  It is a must see for anyone interesting in our children and their educations.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Monday, the Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments in one of the most politically charged cases in years. Attorneys representing 26 states, most led by Republican governors, and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) will spar with Justice Department lawyers over what President Obama called his proudest achievement–health care reform.

Challengers will argue that requiring all Americans to buy health insurance is an illegal and unprecedented act of government overreach, while the Justice Department will counter that it’s a routine exercise of Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court will most likely hand down its decision in late June, right in the middle of the heated 2012 presidential election.

Yahoo News has the schedule for the three days  of testimony and arguments.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New data show a startling difference between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else.  In an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, Steve Rattner refers to a study that analyzed tax returns.  The results:

“In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 percent of the additional income created in the country that year, compared to 2009 — $288 billion — went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households.

Still more astonishing was the extent to which the super rich got rich faster than the merely rich. In 2010, 37 percent of these additional earnings went to just the top 0.01 percent, a teaspoon-size collection of about 15,000 households with average incomes of $23.8 million. These fortunate few saw their incomes rise by 21.5 percent.

The bottom 99 percent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income.”

His conclusion:

“The only way to redress the income imbalance is by implementing policies that are oriented toward reversing the forces that caused it. That means letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy and adding money to some of the programs that House Republicans seek to cut. Allowing this disparity to continue is both bad economic policy and bad social policy. We owe those at the bottom a fairer shot at moving up.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On the day that Rick Santorum won the Louisiana primary, Peggy Noonan had advice for Mitt Romney in her Wall Street Journal column. Having basically secured the Republican nomination, she calls on Romney to get serious and act like a presidential candidate and less like a goofball – I would add like most of the other Republican candidates.  To quote:

“Suit up and get serious. Now that everyone knows you’ll be the nominee, get off the goofball express. Cheesy grits, jeans, singing, being compulsively pleasant, calling your opponents lightweights—enough.

Use the next few months to get back to basics. Why do you want to be president again? Is the answer, “Because I’m a great fellow and it’s the top job”? Dig down deep for a better reason!

Here’s something Americans intuit about motivations in presidential politics. When a candidate is on a mission to rescue the country, they can tell. When it’s about the nation and not him, they can tell. When he has a general philosophy of government and politics, they will listen, and give a fair hearing.

But when a candidate says, not blatantly but between the lines, “I want to be president because I’m an extraordinary and superior human and want you to see me that way too,” well, that sort of subliminally gives a lot of people the creeps. They will see you as ego-driven, not purpose-driven. They may elect you anyway, but this year especially they won’t. “

Right on Peggy!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just spent much of the past week with a Middle States Accreditation Team visit to a university in Pennsylvania.   We made the usual evaluation of the university using a list of fourteen standards  and sent our report to the Commission on Higher Education.  However, our evaluation would never have uncovered a success story as told by Frank Bruni in his column in today’s New York Times.  He covers a lot of ground and some heavy issues (being gay, religion, abortion, overseas volunteer work, female circumcision) as seen through the eyes of a devout Catholic for whom college changed his life.

“College, he recently told me, had not only given him a glimpse of how large the world was but also shamed him about how little of it he knew.”

It is a resounding affirmation of a college education’s purpose.

Bruni juxtaposes this man’s life with Rick Santorum’s assertion last month that college is too often godless and corrupting.

This column is  a good read and important commentary about what we do in higher education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post is reporting that for trading the devoutly religious quarterback, Ted Tebow, to the Jets, televangelist Pat Robertson believes Manning and the Broncos organization deserve to be punished.   He is quoted as saying:

“So Peyton Manning was a tremendous MVP quarterback, but he’s been injured. If that injury comes back, Denver will find itself without a quarterback. And in my opinion, it would serve them right,”

This self-appointed and pompous TV huckster who uses religion to make a buck continues to demonstrate his ridiculousness.  Wishing an athlete an injury because of a trade is just another low point (of which there  have been many) for this charlatan.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Here is some light fare from the Huffington Post as we begin the weekend.

Bloomberg reports that the maker of the Etch A Sketch toy saw its stock surge on Thursday. The share price of Ohio Art Co. nearly tripled days after Romney’s campaign aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, told CNN, “You hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”

Romney’s opponents have pounced on the gaff, describing it as further evidence that Romney’s political positions are unpredictable and inconsistent.

The Associated Press reports that Ohio Art is thrilled to be a part of the national conversation. The company sent a huge box of Etch A Sketches to all the presidential campaigns as a thank you gift, according to the AP.

Talking Points Memo notes that Ohio Art Chairman Bill Killgallon has donated to Republicans in the past, but as of now, he has yet to donate to any presidential campaign.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York City high school English teacher, Tim Clifford, voiced his concerns about the new rubric for evaluating teachers in New York State. In a New York Times online article he gives the new framework an “F”.

As background, the New York State Education Department is establishing the  Danielson Framework as  the basis of teacher observations in New York State. It features 54 pages of rubrics that  attempt to evaluate teaching.

The version on the New York State Education Department Web site consists of 54 pages of rubrics, examples and explanations.

It breaks teaching down into four “domains”: Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. These are further divided into “elements,” of which there are 22.

Each element then lists criteria by which the teacher will be judged as Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient or Distinguished. For example, here is what a teacher must do to be considered Distinguished on the very first entry on the rubric, 1A: Demonstrating Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy:

Teacher displays extensive knowledge of the important concepts in the discipline and how these relate both to one another and to other disciplines. Teacher’s plans and practice reflect understanding of prerequisite relationships among topics and concepts and a link to necessary cognitive structures by students to ensure understanding. Teacher’s plans and practice reflect familiarity with a wide range of effective pedagogical approaches in the discipline, anticipating student misconceptions. (Page 2 of 54)

That’s only 1A. There are 21 more elements.

In Clifford’s view, this rubric is far too complicated to be of real use. To quote:

“I don’t think it’s possible to design and execute a lesson, or even a series of lessons, that would touch on all the elements required to deem a teacher Distinguished. I doubt Charlotte Danielson could do it, either. What this framework does is create anxiety for teachers who try to meet all 22 “elements” in the span of a 45-minute lesson, day in and day out.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum  said yesterday that Republicans should give President Barack Obama another term if Santorum isn’t the GOP nominee and for a second day compared rival Mitt Romney to an Etch A Sketch toy.  The Huffington Post reported Santorum reiterated an argument he has made before: The former Massachusetts governor is not conservative enough to offer voters a clear choice in the fall election and that only he can provide that contrast.

“You win by giving people a choice,” Santorum said during a campaign stop in Texas. “You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who’s just going to be a little different than the person in there.”

Santorum added: “If they’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.”

Santorum was referencing Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom’s comment Wednesday that “everything changes” for the fall campaign. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch,” he said on CNN. “You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”

I think President Obama should ask Santorum to campaign for him in the fall.

Tony