Ti’s The Season

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Ti's the season for Billo the Clown and Faux News to light up its annual "War on Christmas" nonsense. And this year Arizona's Accidental Governor kicks off the festivities. Arizona Capitol Times » Brewer brings Christmas, Hanukkah back to Capitol displays “I believe in calling something what it is, and it is … Read more

“It’s their party and they’ll purge if they want to…”

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: My apologies to Lesley Gore for the caption. The Republican National Committee will hold its winter meeting in January in Honolulu, Hawaii. Honolulu? Isn't Hawaii dismissed by conservatives as being "some sort of foreign, exotic place" not quite part of the United States, despite being the 50th state admitted to the Union … Read more

How do you rate teachers whose students aren’t tested?

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by David Safier As much as I've read about linking teacher salaries and retention to student testing, I've never found a satisfactory answer to this question: what about teachers in subjects that aren't tested? The trend toward tying everything to tests is accelerating. [New York's] Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Wednesday that New York … Read more

A public school teacher responds

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by David Safier I received this comment on a post I wrote about some of the changes affecting teachers that were thrown in with the latest round of budget cuts. I'm a teacher in the Tempe Union school district, and I now have my eye on the exit signs because of this. Which I'm sure … Read more