Tag Archives: gitmo

Friday Cat Blogging – 26 February 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is Hilbert resting magnificently on his red blanket on my desk. Upstairs, he has a gray-and-white polka dot blanket on Marian’s desk. I really need to clean this thing over the weekend. At this point, I think there might be more cat fur than actual blanket on my desk.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 26 February 2016

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Two Promising Factlets About American Schools

Mother Jones

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So how are our schools doing? Here are two factlets that crossed my radar yesterday.

First: Neerav Kingsland says that SAT scores of new teachers are rising and that most of them are staying in teaching for at least five years. He comments: “If I was going to bet on whether American education will improver, flatline, or get worse — I would look very hard at the academic performance of teachers entering the profession, as well as how long these better qualified teachers stayed in the classroom. The aforementioned data makes me more bullish on American education.”

Second: Adam Ozimek says we’re selling charter schools short when we say that on average they do about as well as public schools. That’s true, but there’s more to it:

I would like to propose a better conventional wisdom: “some charter schools appear to do very well, and on average charters do better at educating poor students and black students”. If the same evidence existed for some policy other than charter schools, I believe this would be the conventional wisdom.

….The charter sectors’ ability to do better for poor students and black students is important given that they disproportionately serve them….53% of charter students are in poverty compared 48% for public schools. Charters also serve more minority students than public schools: charters are 29% black, while public schools are 16%. So not only do they serve more poor students and black students, but for this group they relatively consistently outperform public schools.

It’s been a while since I took a dive into the data on charter schools, so I’m passing this along without comment. But it sounds right. I continue to believe that as long as they’re properly regulated, charter schools show substantial promise.

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Two Promising Factlets About American Schools

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Quote of the Day: American Health Care Is the Best in the World, Baby!

Mother Jones

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From Douglas Coupland, after contracting bronchitis from a chilly hotel room in Atlanta:

Finally, I dragged myself to a local medical clinic, and this is when things got really American.

By “really American,” he means that he ended up being part of a scam that involved deliberately not treating him in order to get him hooked on oxycodone. No worries, though. The socialist Canadian health system eventually saved him.

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Quote of the Day: American Health Care Is the Best in the World, Baby!

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Here’s the Story on Party ID: There’s Not Really Much of a Story

Mother Jones

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Several people have already commented on a new Gallup poll showing that Democrats and Republicans are continuing to lose ground to self-identified independents. And it’s true: the percentage of independents has risen steadily since 2008 from 35 percent to 43 percent.

But my advice is to ignore the noise. As Gallup itself says, “Although independents claim no outright allegiance to either major party, it is well-known that they are not necessarily neutral when it comes to politics.” Quite so. In fact, “leaners” tend to vote the party line just about as loyally as folks still willing to explicitly call themselves Democrats and Republicans. For most people, identifying as an independent isn’t so much a genuine political commitment as it is a lifestyle statement.

So here’s the chart to look at: Party ID plus the leaners. And the story it tells is fairly unremarkable. You can see spikes up and down as elections are held and the public gets tired of the party in power, but there’s not much of a long-term trend. I eyeballed the average party ID for both Democrats and Republicans in the Gallup chart, and it shows very little movement over the past few years: Democrats are down slightly from their long-term average—probably not surprising in the sixth year of a presidency—and Republicans have gained slightly.

If there’s a story to tell here, I don’t really see it. Perhaps pundits with sharper eyes and more column inches to fill will find something.

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Here’s the Story on Party ID: There’s Not Really Much of a Story

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Friday Cat Blogging – 18 April 2014

Mother Jones

I have to leave early today for yet another pulmonary checkup, so Friday catblogging comes a little ahead of schedule this week. Here is Domino pretending she doesn’t notice the fabulous feline shadow she’s casting in the late afternoon sun. But it is fabulous, no?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 18 April 2014

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