Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association – Speculation on the Supreme Court Decision!

Dear Commons Community,

Since the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia over the weekend, there has been much speculation on the outcomes of the cases currently before the Court. One of these cases is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, in which the plaintiffs argued that the Supreme Court’s 40 year precedent upholding the constitutionality of agency fees – or fair share fees – should be overruled. The full Court heard oral arguments in the case last month. The American Federation of Teachers, has argued that the Court should re-affirm that the payment of agency fees by nonmembers to support their fair share of the costs of collective bargaining is constitutional.  The AAUP general counsel Risa Lieberwitz offered her analysis in a blog post today on Academe Blog, “The Future of Friedrichs in the Supreme Court. It is her opinion that:

“No one knows for sure what will happen next in the Supreme Court, but one likely possibility is that the remaining eight justices will decide the Friedrichs case, with the likely outcome of a 4-4 decision. A 4-4 split vote leaves the lower court decision intact – in this case, the federal appellate court decision that ruled against the constitutional challenge, based on the 1977 Supreme Court precedent of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, which upheld the constitutionality of agency/fair share fees in the public sector workplace.”

If this does come to pass as per Lierberwitz’s posting, it will be good news for public-sector labor unions.

Tony

 

Jeb Bush Tweets Picture of a Gun with His Name on It and the Word “America” – Not Kidding!

 

Jeb Bush Gun

Dear Commons Community,

Republican candidate  Jeb Bush tweeted an image of a gun (above) given to him yesterday along with the single-word caption “America,” triggering a fusillade of mockery in tweeterdom.

Bush received the FNX-45 pistol — which was engraved with “Gov. Jeb Bush” — after visiting a gun maker, FN Manufacturing, in Columbia, S.C. The tweet went viral almost immediately, inspiring criticism and parody memes.  

Bush has made defending a broad interpretation of Second Amendment rights a pillar of his presidential campaign. On Friday, Bush said that if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became president, her likely Supreme Court Justice picks would attempt to eliminate the Second Amendment entirely. 

So, Jeb, what are you going to do with the gun?

You cannot make this stuff up!

Tony

 

 

History Supports Nominating and Confirming Supreme Court Justices in Presidential Election Year!

Dear Commons Community,

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has touched off another heated partisan battle between President Obama and the Congress.   President Obama feels it is his constitutional responsibility to replace Scalia now while Republicans in the Senate indicated they will not confirm any nominee until a new president is in office in January 2017.  The media has been closely following this story for the past two days.  Timothy S. Huebner, the Sternberg Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Rhodes College, has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times providing an  historical perspective of the issue.  Here is a summary:

“…history supports Mr. Obama. On 13 occasions, a vacancy on the nation’s highest court has occurred — through death, retirement or resignation — during a presidential election year. This does not include the most recent and frequently cited example, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan in November 1987 to fill a vacancy and won confirmation from a Democratic-controlled Senate in February 1988.

In 11 of these instances, the Senate took action on the president’s nomination. In all five cases in which a vacancy occurred during the first quarter of the year the president successfully nominated a replacement.

In the first of these instances, in January 1804, Justice Alfred Moore resigned from the court, and President Thomas Jefferson, who was running for a second term, successfully nominated a successor. In January 1892, the death of Justice Joseph Bradley prompted President Benjamin Harrison to nominate George Shiras Jr. to take his place. Although Mr. Harrison was locked in a race for re-election against Grover Cleveland, the Senate confirmed Mr. Shiras at the end of July. Mr. Harrison lost, but Justice Shiras remained on the court for the next decade…”

Dr. Huebner goes on to review a number of other similar situations.  His conclusion:

“To be sure, the Senate has rejected nominees for political reasons, increased the size of the court (for instance, during the Civil War) or reduced it (immediately after the Civil War). But in cases when vacancies have arisen during election years, the weight of history is clearly on the side of the president naming a successor and the Senate acting on that nomination.”

I doubt that the Senate Republicans will be swayed by Dr. Huebner’s history lesson.

Tony

Elizabeth Warren Disputes Republican Argument Against Filling Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court Seat!

Dear Commons Community,

The media is awash with articles and commentary regarding the new make-up of the US Supreme Court now that there is a vacancy due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  A  main question is whether President Obama can/should nominate a replacement given he is in his last year of office.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) claimed that it would be undemocratic to seat an Obama nominee in the president’s last year. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a legal scholar, explained in a Facebook post that since the American people re-elected Obama in 2012, his power to nominate a replacement has already been approved by the voters.

McConnell “is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice,” Warren wrote. “In fact, they did — when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes.”

The clause in the constitution empowering the president to name Supreme Court justices — Article II, Section 2 — does not include an exception for when the president only has one year left in office, Warren noted.  Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. I can’t find a clause that says “…except when there’s a year left in the term of a Democratic President.”

Of course, McConnell himself has acknowledged as much in the past, since he voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988, the last year of Reagan’s presidency.  

Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would be nothing short of hypocritical.

Tony

 

Republican Presidential Debate or Demolition Derby!

Dear Commons Community,

There was yet another debate last night among the six remaining Republican presidential candidates.  A good portion of it was a free-for-all with the candidates insulting each other and the partisan audience cheering them on.  The most popular word of the night was liar and was used by several of the candidates to cast dispersions at the others.  One of the candidates, John Kasich, who tried to stay above the fray, likened the debate afterwards to a demolition derby.  The most heated exchange was between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush over foreign policy especially when Trump criticized Jeb’s brother, George W. Bush, for taking the country into the Iraq War.  Here is a description of the exchange.   

“Moderator John Dickerson pointed out that Trump has said he would work with Russia as the country gets involved in Syria, ostensibly to fight the terrorist group ISIS.

Trump then negated Bush’s stance on Russia not being an ally of the US, saying that “Jeb is so wrong” in his assessment.

Bush retorted that Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t be an ally of the US and pointed out that Russian planes are attacking US allies in Syria. He called for a Sunni-led coalition on the ground to destroy ISIS.

“We’re supporting troops that we don’t even know who they are,” Trump said, repeating the line. “We have no idea who they are.”

Dickerson cut in and tried to move on, but Bush shot back at Trump.

“This is from a guy who gets his foreign policy from the shows,” he said. “This is a guy who thinks that Hillary Clinton is a great negotiator in Iran. We’re living in dangerous times. This is a man who insults his way to the nomination.”

Trump started talking over him.

“He spent $24 million in New Hampshire …” Trump said. “Give me a break!”

Dickerson cut in again.

“Gentlemen, let’s leave it there so I can ask a question of Sen. Cruz, who is also running for president,” he said, referring to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

But it wasn’t over there.

After Cruz answered a question, Bush and Trump went at it again. Dickerson asked Trump about former President George W. Bush campaigning for Jeb in South Carolina, mentioning that Trump has said that the former president should have been “impeached” for getting the US into the Iraq War.

“Obviously the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump said. He then attacked Jeb Bush for waffling earlier in the campaign on whether the war was a mistake.

“It took him five days before his people told him what to say, and ultimately he said it was a mistake,” Trump said.

Jeb then said that he was “sick and tired” of President Barack Obama blaming George W. Bush, his brother, for the “problems that he’s had.”

He continued: “I could care less about the insults that Donald Trump gives to me. It’s blood sport for him, he enjoys it, and I’m glad he’s happy about it. But I am sick and tired, I am sick and tired of him going after my family. My dad [former President George H. W. Bush] is the greatest man alive in my mind. While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I’m proud of what he did.”

“The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign,” Trump retorted.

“Remember that.”

The crowd booed loudly.

While Jeb was saying that Trump has “had the gall” to go after his mother, Trump talked over him.

“That’s not keeping us safe,” Trump said, continuing his point.

Jeb continued talking about his family, saying that his mother is the strongest woman he knows.

“She should be running,” Trump replied.”

Wow!  A video of the debate (almost two hours long) is below.

Tony

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/politics/what-youve-missed.html

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (1936-2016)

Antonin Scalia

 

Dear Commons Community,

Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died today at the age of 79.  Justice Scalia passed away due to natural causes at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a luxury resort in West Texas. Justice Scalia was the longest serving member of the Court having been appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.  A devout Catholic and the first Italian-American on the Court, Justice Scalia is survived by his wife, nine children, and twenty-eight grandchildren.

President Obama said of Scalia that “he had a brilliant legal mind, and that he was one of the most consequential justices and thinkers on the Court.”

President Obama also indicated that he plans to fulfill his constitutional responsibility to nominate a replacement for Scalia in due time.

May Justice Scalia rest in peace!

Tony

 

Gravitational Waves Detected for the First Time Supporting Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity!

Dear Commons Community,

For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.  As described in the press release:

Gravitational waves carry information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained. Physicists have concluded that the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed.

The gravitational waves were detected on September 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (09:51 UTC) by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, USA. The LIGO Observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and were conceived, built, and are operated by Caltech and MIT. The discovery, accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors… “This detection is the beginning of a new era: The field of gravitational wave astronomy is now a reality,” says Gabriela González, a professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University.

“To make this fantastic milestone possible took a global collaboration of scientists—laser and suspension technology developed for our GEO600 detector was used to help make Advanced LIGO the most sophisticated gravitational wave detector ever created,” says Sheila Rowan, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Glasgow.

Independent and widely separated observatories are necessary to determine the direction of the event causing the gravitational waves, and also to verify that the signals come from space and are not from some other local phenomenon.

Toward this end, the LIGO Laboratory is working closely with scientists in India at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, and the Institute for Plasma to establish a third Advanced LIGO detector on the Indian subcontinent. Awaiting approval by the government of India, it could be operational early in the next decade. The additional detector will greatly improve the ability of the global detector network to localize gravitational-wave sources.

Impressive accomplishment and great to see scientists across the globe working together to unravel the secrets of the universe.  Our governments need to fund more of these types of collaborations.

Tony

Video:  Abusive Teaching Methods at Success Academy Charter School!

https://youtu.be/c2MHDOiT8Ak

Dear Commons Community,

The video above was made by an assistant teacher at the Cobble Hill Success Academy Charter School, and is making its way on the Internet.  The video shows a teacher ripping up a student’s work and dismissing the student from the learning circle.  The New York Times has a highly critical article today referring to this incident as an example of the “abusive teaching” that goes on at the charter school.

“In the video, a first-grade class sits cross-legged in a circle on a brightly colored rug. One of the girls has been asked to explain to the class how she solved a math problem, but she has gotten confused.

She begins to count: “One… two…” Then she pauses and looks at the teacher.

The teacher takes the girl’s paper and rips it in half. “Go to the calm-down chair and sit,” she orders the girl, her voice rising sharply.

“There’s nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper,” she says, as the girl retreats.

The teacher in the video, Charlotte Dial, works at a Success Academy charter school in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. She has been considered so effective that the network promoted her last year to being a model teacher, who helps train her colleagues.

The video was recorded surreptitiously in the fall of 2014 by an assistant teacher who was concerned by what she described as Ms. Dial’s daily harsh treatment of the children. The assistant teacher, who insisted on anonymity because she feared endangering future job prospects, shared the video with The New York Times after she left Success in November.

After being shown the video last month, Ann Powell, a Success spokeswoman, described its contents as shocking and said Ms. Dial had been suspended pending an investigation. But a week and a half later, Ms. Dial returned to her classroom and her role as an exemplar within the network.

Success’s own training materials, provided by the network’s leader, Eva S. Moskowitz, say that teachers should never yell at children, “use a sarcastic, frustrated tone,” “give consequences intended to shame children,” or “speak to a child in a way they wouldn’t in front of the child’s parents.”

Ms. Moskowitz dismissed the video as an anomaly. 

But interviews with 20 current and former Success teachers suggest that while Ms. Dial’s behavior might be extreme, much of it is not uncommon within the network.

Success is known for its students’ high achievement on state tests, and it emphasizes getting — and keeping — scores up. Jessica Reid Sliwerski, 34, worked at Success Academy Harlem 1 and Success Academy Harlem 2 from 2008 to 2011, first as a teacher and then as an assistant principal. She said that, starting in third grade, when children begin taking the state exams, embarrassing or belittling children for work seen as slipshod was a regular occurrence, and in some cases encouraged by network leaders.

One day, she said, she found herself taking a toy away from a boy who was playing with it in class, and then smashing it underfoot. Shortly after, she resigned.

“I felt sick about the teacher I had become, and I no longer wanted to be part of an organization where adults could so easily demean children under the guise of ‘achievement,’” said Ms. Sliwerski, who subsequently worked as an instructional coach in Department of Education schools…

…Joseph P. McDonald, a professor of teaching and learning at New York University’s school of education, who viewed the video at The New York Times’s request, described Ms. Dial’s behavior as “abusive teaching.”

 “We don’t see enough here to know for sure that this classroom is typically full of fear, but I bet that it is,” he wrote in an email. “The fear is likely not only about whether my teacher may at any time erupt with anger and punish me dramatically, but also whether I can ever be safe making mistakes.”

Indeed, several of the current and former staff members interviewed said that the network’s culture encouraged teachers to make students fear them in order to motivate them. Carly Ginsberg, 22, who taught for about six months last year at Success Academy Prospect Heights, said teachers ripped up the papers of children as young as kindergarten as the principal or assistant principal watched. She once witnessed a girl’s humiliation as the principal mocked her low test score to another adult in front of the child.

In one instance, the lead kindergarten teacher in her classroom made a girl who had stumbled reciting a math problem cry so hard that she vomited. Ms. Ginsberg resigned in December because she was so uncomfortable with the school’s approach. “It felt like I was witnessing child abuse,” she said, adding, “If this were my kindergarten experience, I would be traumatized.” She is now teaching in Los Angeles.

Five of the teachers interviewed, including Ms. Sliwerski, described leaders at multiple Success schools and a Success supervisor in the teacher training program that the network runs with Touro College endorsing the practice of ripping up work if it was deemed not to reflect sufficient effort. The purpose, they said, was to get students’ attention and demonstrate urgency.”

Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy has been coming under fire in the news media for its teaching methods in the past couple of years. It should clean up its act if it wants to continue to be the poster child for quality charter schooling in New York City rather than as an example of a school that uses “abusive” methods.

Tony

P.S.:  After my initial posting, the New York Times contacted eight education specialists regarding their views of the above video, their responses can be viewed here.

 

 

President Obama Proposes Incentives to Achieve Socioeconomic Diversity in the Nation’s Public Schools!

Dear Commons Community,

Included in President Obama’s new budget proposal is a $120 million competitive grant program to help school districts devise and implement plans to get rich and poor children in the same classrooms. The initiative — called Stronger Together — provides funds for five-year projects to districts and groups of districts. The projects would allow schools to explore “ways to foster socioeconomic diversity through a robust process of parental, educator and community engagement, and data analysis.”  As reported in The Huffington Post:

“The budget proposal comes days after former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed disappointment with his inability to move the needle on the issue of school segregation during his seven years at the White House. 

“I would give myself a pretty low grade on that,” Duncan told education news outlet The 74

Duncan’s successor, John King Jr., has indicated that he will prioritize the issue of school diversity. 

“In today’s economy, diversity isn’t some vague ideal. It’s a path to better outcomes for all of America’s children. And the proposal we are announcing today will help show us the most effective ways [to] meet that goal,” King wrote in a Tuesday blog post about Stronger Together. 

Research from the UCLA Civil Rights Project shows that American schools have become increasingly racially segregated since the late 1960s — despite evidence showing that racially and socioeconomically integrated classrooms are academically beneficial for all children

While most programs enforcing racial integration in schools have been dismantled, a new report from The Century Foundation shows that programs promoting socioeconomic integration in schools have been on the rise. Since 2007, the number of school districts and charter schools supporting socioeconomic integration has more than doubled, the report shows. 

The White House’s proposed budget comes months after Congress passed a new major education law to replace the long-expired No Child Left Behind Act, called the Every Student Succeeds Act.”

This is a long-overdue proposal but is coming rather late in the President’s tenure.  For seven years, Arne Duncan focused most of his energies on assessment, testing, Common Core and teacher evaluation.  Billions of dollars were funneled through his Race to the Top initiatives but there was nothing for socioeconomic diversity.  In sum, if President Obama and Arne Duncan really wanted to fund and implement socioeconomic diversity programs, they should have done so years ago.

Tony

And Then There Were Six – A “Nightmare” for the Republican Party!

Dear Commons Community,

The New Hampshire primary claimed two casualties, Chris Christie and Carley Fiorina, both of whom suspended their candidacies yesterday for the Republican presidential nomination.  This was not surprising.  Christie had too much baggage (hugging President Obama after Hurricane Sandy, Bridgegate) for Republicans.  He will be remembered during this campaign for his brutal attack on Marco Rubio during the last Republican primary debate.

Carly Fiorina never caught on and many questioned her credentials.  She was a mediocre CEO at Hewlitt-Packard, however, there was a feistiness to her especially in her attacks of Hillary Clinton.

The six remaining candidates (Trump, Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, Bush, and Carson) will continue to duke it out.  Carson is likely to be the next candidate to drop out.  Trump has the lead and others will try to knock him off his game.

The Huffington Post is characterizing the current primary situation as a nightmare:

Donald Trump won New Hampshire with 35 percent of the vote on Tuesday, solidifying his place as the front-runner for the Republican 2016 presidential nomination when the party meets for its national convention in Ohio this summer.

But Cleveland, we have a problem. Hitting 35 percent is terrific, in baseball. In politics, it’a still 16 points shy of a victory, and neither Trump nor any other Republican has shown any signs of doing any better than 40 percent in any individual contest.

If the pattern continues — Trump is polling in the mid-30s in the next two nominating states, Nevada and South Carolina — The Grand Old Party could wind up with Trump as the top choice at its convention without the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination.

It’s the sort of implausible scenario journalists like to speculate about every four years, but there hasn’t actually been a so-called “brokered convention” since 1952, when Adlai Stevenson got the Democratic nod on the third ballot…

It all adds up to something of a nightmare for the Republican Party. In order to topple Trump, they need one candidate to rally around. Iowa and New Hampshire have left them with at least three, none of whom has a reason to drop out before March 15, when the contests start getting much larger and more mainstream.

“Two things are very real,” said GOP consultant and Fox News commentator Ed Rollins. “Donald Trump is not going away — you’re not going to knock him out early. And there’s not going to an establishment candidate who can move quickly.”

Tony