The 06/14/13 Joy Jar

14 Jun

This country is at one of those junctures that occur periodically. Some in the 4th Estate have ceded their role as watchdogs to become lapdogs and not journalists. Today’s deposit in the ‘Joy Jar’ are those brave folk willing to practice the profession of journalism because they believe in ferreting out the truth.

Mathew Felling of CBS News lists the 10 Best Journalism Quotes:


Number 10:

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

  • Oscar Wilde

    Number 9:

    Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

  • Thomas Jefferson

    Number 8:

    There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.

  • Walter Lippmann

    Number 7:

    The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants.

  • Samuel Johnson

    Number 6:

    A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.

  • Albert Camus

    Number Five:

    Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.

  • Henry Anatole Grunwald

    Number Four: (Aka: Whenever you can think up a reason to bring up Grace Kelly, do it.)
    The freedom of the press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it.

  • Grace Kelly

    Number Three:

    News is something someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising.

  • Lord Northcliff

    Number Two:

    Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

  • Thomas Jefferson

    Number One: (You’ll thank us for this at the picnic.)

    A news story should be like a mini skirt on a pretty woman. Long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting.

  • Anonymous, linked to a Texas newspaper editor

© 2007 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500486_162-3013288-500486.html

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N.Y. case: Unpaid interns should be paid for tasks

14 Jun

In Interns: the new indentured servants? Moi wrote:

When one thinks of interns, one usually thinks of an eager young undergraduate trying to make a favorable impression on a future employer. Steven Greenhouse reported in the New York Times that the The unpaid Internships, Legal or Not

The question is whether employers caught in a vice between declining revenue and rising costs are using internships as a source of labor without having to comply with labor regulations? 

Steven Greenhouse did a follow-up article which reported about new labor regulations from California. In California Labor Depart. Revises Guidelines on When Interns Must be Paid Greenhouse reports in the New York Times about the California rules.

Greenhouse explores an even more troubling trend in his New York Times article, With Jobs Few, Internships Lure More Graduates to Unpaid Work:

Melissa Reyes, who graduated from Marist College with a degree in fashion merchandising last May, applied for a dozen jobs to no avail. She was thrilled, however, to land an internship with the Diane von Furstenberg fashion house in Manhattan. “They talked about what an excellent, educational internship program this would be,” she said.

But Ms. Reyes soon soured on the experience. She often worked 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., five days a week. “They had me running out to buy them lunch,” she said. “They had me cleaning out the closets, emptying out the past season’s items.”

Ms. Reyes finally quit when her boss demanded that she also work both days of a weekend. She now works part time as a model. Asked about her complaints, the fashion firm said, “We are very proud of our internship program, and we take all concerns of this kind very seriously.”

The Labor Department says that if employers do not want to pay their interns, the internships must resemble vocational education, the interns must work under close supervision, their work cannot be used as a substitute for regular employees and their work cannot be of immediate benefit to the employer.

But in practice, there is little to stop employers from exploiting interns. The Labor Department rarely cracks down on offenders, saying that it has limited resources and that unpaid interns are loath to file complaints for fear of jeopardizing any future job search.

No one keeps statistics on the number of college graduates taking unpaid internships, but there is widespread agreement that the number has significantly increased, not least because the jobless rate for college graduates age 24 and under has risen to 9.4 percent, the highest level since the government began keeping records in 1985. (Employment experts estimate that undergraduates work in more than one million internships a year, with Intern Bridge, a research firm, finding almost half unpaid.)                 

“A few years ago you hardly heard about college graduates taking unpaid internships,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president at the Economic Policy Institute who has done several studies on interns. “But now I’ve even heard of people taking unpaid internships after graduating from Ivy League schools.”

Matt Gioe had little luck breaking into the music and entertainment industry after graduating with a philosophy degree from Bucknell last year. To get hands-on experience, he took an unpaid position with a Manhattan talent agency that booked musical acts. He said he answered phones and looked up venues. Although he was sometimes told to make bookings, he said he received virtually no guidance on how to strike a deal or how much to charge. But the boss did sometimes ask him to run errands like buying groceries.

“It was basically three wasted months,” he said.

Mr. Eisenbrey said many companies were taking advantage of the weak labor market to use unpaid interns to handle chores like photocopying or running errands once done by regular employees, which can raise sticky legal questions.

Eric Glatt, who at age 40 interned for the movie “Black Swan,” is one of the few interns with the courage to sue for wages over the work he did.                                               http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/business/unpaid-internships-dont-always-deliver.html?hp

Before accepting an internship, the potential intern should ask some questions. https://drwilda.com/2012/05/06/interns-the-new-indentured-servants/

Danielle Kurtzleben reported in the U.S. News article, Unpaid ‘Black Swan’ Interns Get Court Victory: A New York court rules in favor of unpaid interns, but don’t expect the practice to die anytime soon:

The days of doing menial office work for free may soon be in the past. This week, a judge ruled in favor of two former unpaid interns. Judge William H. Pauley III declared that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated the law by not paying former interns Eric Glatt and Andrew Footman. Labor advocates are hoping it will be the start of a sea change in the way employers offer internships. But that shift could be a long time in coming. 

Glatt and Footman filed suit in 2011 against Fox Searchlight, saying their internships on the production of the 2009 film “Black Swan” violated labor laws. The interns did work such as filing, making coffee, getting signatures on documents, and assembling office furniture, and claimed that they should have been paid for that work under the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

That law lays out six criteria that an internship must meet in order to be unpaid. Among those are the stipulations that the internship must be for the benefit of the intern and must not displace other employees. In addition, the employer of an unpaid intern should get “no immediate advantage” from the intern’s presence – in other words, the intern ought to be there to shadow employees and learn, but not to do productive work. 

The judge found that the “Black Swan” internships fell far from meeting these standards. The decision states that, while Glatt and Footman “received some benefits from their internships” in the form of résumé fodder, references and production knowledge, the interns got the short end of this deal: “Searchlight received the benefits of their unpaid work, which otherwise would have required paid employees,” the judge wrote, adding that “the defendants were the ‘primary beneficiaries’ of the relationship, not Glatt and Footman….” 

This is the first decision of its kind favoring unpaid interns and classifying them as workers, says Juno Turner, an attorney with Outten & Golden LLP, the New York law firm that argued the case, and she believes the effects could be far-reaching…. 

That may imply that many people have been employed unlawfully as unpaid interns, perhaps without themselves or their employers even realizing it. Questions over the legality of these internships have been years in the making. As a Labor Department official put it in a 2010 New York Times article, “If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law.”

The Fair Labor Standards Act has long had clear criteria for unpaid interns, so how did employers get into the unpaid-intern habit? One attorney says it’s a function of employers not understanding the law, instead opting to simply do what other employers are doing…. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/06/13/judge-hands-down-rare-victory-for-unpaid-interns

Case Western Reserve University has an excellent set of questions in the article, Questions to Ask an Employer:

Describe the type of work I would be doing or the types of projects I will be working on.

  • What makes this organization unique?
  • What are the short-term and long-term objectives of the organization?
  • How is the training or orientation program for new employees structured?
  • What characteristics would the ideal job candidate have for this position?
  • Can you tell me about the people/positions I would be reporting to?
  • What do you see as the most challenging aspects of the position?
  • When and how will job evaluations take place?
  • When can I expect to hear from you about my candidacy?
  • What have other [co-ops, interns, new employees] done at the company in the past?
  • How many [co-ops, interns] are typically employed by the company at one time?
  • What percentage of your [co-ops, interns] are hired after graduation?
  • What are the areas of anticipated growth for the company?
  • What is the structure of the company and how does this department fit in?
  • What are the opportunities for advancement?
  • What is your (the interviewer’s) position in the company? (Ask for a business card)
  • Does the company assist with relocation [if necessary]?
  • What is the next step in this search?
  • When can I expect to hear from you about my candidacy?
  • What skills or attributes are you seeking in a candidate that I have not addressed?

http://studentaffairs.case.edu/careers/tips/interviewing/ask.html

In a tight economy, people are desperate for just about any type of opportunity. Don’t let this desperation play into the avarice of an employer who sees the potential intern as unpaid labor with no thought of providing either training or a path to a permanent position.

This seemingly innocuous issue is a real sleeper.

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The 06/13/13 Joy Jar

13 Jun

Moi was walking down the street and she noticed all the wheels. They were on buses, cars, bicycles, scooters, and carts. The wheels make it easier to get from here to there and to carry loads. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the wheel.

 

 

 

 

“Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…the wheel, New York, wars and so on…while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man…for precisely the same reason.”

Douglas Adams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.”

Dave Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 “The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, HE was a genius.”

Sid Cesar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it,”

Ursula K. LeGuin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign it.”

Anthony J. De Angelo

 

 

 

 

 

 “The wheel of fortune turns round incessantly, and who can say to himself, “I shall today be uppermost”

Confucius

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The wheel is come full circle.”

William Shakespeare

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Maine Supreme Court case: Transgender students and bathroom access

12 Jun

 

An emerging issue for schools is how to accommodate different populations of students. The Maine Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the case of Nicole Maines, a transgender student. The Intersex Society of North America defines transgender in the article, What’s the difference between being transgender or transsexual and having an intersex condition?

 

People who identify as transgender or transsexual are usually people who are born with typical male or female anatomies but feel as though they’ve been born into the “wrong body.” For example, a person who identifies as transgender or transsexual may have typical female anatomy but feel like a male and seek to become male by taking hormones or electing to have sex reassignment surgeries.

 

People who have intersex conditions have anatomy that is not considered typically male or female. Most people with intersex conditions come to medical attention because doctors or parents notice something unusual about their bodies. In contrast, people who are transgendered have an internal experience of gender identity that is different from most people.

 

Many people confuse transgender and transsexual people with people with intersex conditions because they see two groups of people who would like to choose their own gender identity and sometimes those choices require hormonal treatments and/or surgery. These are similarities. It’s also true, albeit rare, that some people who have intersex conditions also decide to change genders at some point in their life, so some people with intersex conditions might also identify themselves as transgender or transsexual.

 

In spite of these similarities, these two groups should not be and cannot be thought of as one. The truth is that the vast majority of people with intersex conditions identify as male or female rather than transgender or transsexual. Thus, where all people who identify as transgender or transsexual experience problems with their gender identity, only a small portion of intersex people experience these problems. http://www.isna.org/faq/transgender

 

It is important to know what type of accommodation is sought.

 

AP reported Lawsuit brought by transgender student over bathrooms, harassment goes to Maine Supreme Court:

 

 

Maine’s highest court heard arguments Wednesday over whether transgender students can use the bathroom of their choice, and the girl at the heart of the case said she hoped justices would recognize the right of children to attend school without being “bullied” by peers or administrators.

Nicole Maines, now 15, watched lawyers argue over whether her rights were violated when the Orono school district required her to use a staff bathroom after there was a complaint about her using the girls’ bathroom.

Maines said after the hearing in Bangor that she hopes the Supreme Judicial Court will ensure no one else experiences what she went though.

“I hope they understood how important it is for students to be able to go to school and get an education and have fun and make friends, and not have to worry about being bullied by students or the administration, and to be accepted for who they are,” said Maines, who now attends a high school in southern Maine.

Her family and the Maine Human Rights Commission sued in 2009 over the school’s actions, but a state judge ruled that the school district acted within its discretion. Maines is a biological male who from an early age identified as a girl.

At issue is whether the school violated the Maine Human Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation. State law also requires separate bathrooms for boys and girls in schools.

Melissa Hewey, lawyer for the school and school district, said afterward it should be up to the Legislature to clarify the issue.

“To the extent that the people in Maine decide that this law in Maine should be changed, then that should be done. But right now the law is what it is, and our school district didn’t violate it,” she said.

The case goes beyond just the bathroom issue to the broader question of what’s best for transgender students, said Jennifer Levi, director of Transgender Rights Project for the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders.

“At the core of this case is whether the promise of equal educational opportunities for transgender students is realized,” she said. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/12/lawsuit-brought-by-transgender-student-over-bathrooms-harassment-goes-to-maine/#ixzz2W2npauHR

 

 

The Transgender Law and Policy Institute explains the issue in the article, Ways that U.S. Colleges and Universities Meet the Day-to-Day Needs of Transgender Students written by Brett-Genny Janiczek Beemyn

 

 

Bathrooms
Because gender-diverse students are often subject to harassment and violence when using male- or female-specific campus restrooms, a rapidly growing number of colleges and universities are creating gender-neutral bathrooms, either through renovations or by simply changing the signs on single-stall male/female restrooms. Currently, more than 150 campuses have gender-neutral bathrooms, including Oberlin College, which has two gender-neutral bathrooms in its student union and at least one in every residence hall; the University of California, San Diego, which has changed male/female signs on 88 single-stall restrooms in campus buildings; and the New College of California, where all campus bathrooms are gender-neutral. Many of the colleges and universities with gender-neutral bathrooms, including New York University, Ohio University, UCLA, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, list the locations of these restrooms on their websites.

Along with developing gender-neutral restrooms, some institutions, such as American University, Kent State University, Ohio State University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Washington State University, have implemented or are in the process of implementing policies requiring that all extensively renovated and newly constructed buildings include at least one gender-neutral bathroom.

The University of Arizona has established a bathroom policy that affirms that individuals have the right to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. The statement is available at http://fp.arizona.edu/affirm/restroomaccess.htm.

Locker Rooms

As with male and female bathrooms, public locker and shower rooms can be uncomfortable, intimidating, and even dangerous places for transgender students, who may be outed as transgender if they have to undress in front of others. Partly in response to this issue, a growing number of campuses, including Ohio State University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Oregon, have created private changing rooms when they have renovated or built new recreation centers. These facilities not only serve the needs of transgender students, but also parents with children of a different gender than themselves, people with disabilities who require the assistance of an attendant of a different gender, and anyone desiring greater privacy.

 

http://www.transgenderlaw.org/college/guidelines.htm

 

 

There are pros and cons to gender neutral bathrooms.

 

 

Debate.org asks the question: Should schools have gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students?

 

      • Gender Segregation is Wrong

Multi-stall gender neutral washrooms are the way to go because gender segregation is wrong. Gender segregation is based on the idea that “men” and “women” are the only choices to pigeonhole people into. We all know that gender is a spectrum and not a binary. Segregation is also wrong because because it creates a “us and them” mentality between the sexes and harms gender equality. When we unite all persons and do away with gender segregation then we all build a better society!

Posted by: Anonymous

  • Equality for all

    We need to move forward and stop putting people in to little boxes. We should embrace diversity of every individual, i.e. those who don’t fit into either the socially created “male, female”. Everyone is different and yet we are all the same, so I think it time to make things easier for all those that don’t fit into any boxes and more forward into acceptance.

  • Looks that way

    If they aren’t comfortable with transgender students picking a bathroom, they need to provide them with another one. These kids are demonized enough without being told where they can and cannot go to the bathroom, if we’re so ill equipped to handle this that this is the only way to avoid conflict then sadly so be it.

  • Safety is priority

    All people should feel safe using the bathroom. Besides the fact that discrimination is so last year. Suicide and homicide rates of individuals who identify or are perceived as transgendered are some of the highest in the country. And we worry about designating bathroom (most of which already exist— we just have to change the signs) as gender neutral? This can prevent bullying, prevent anxiety, and create a more accepting atmosphere. Let’s do it.

    Posted by: Anonymous

  • Should schools have gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students?

    Yes. Trans folk have to live in fear of where they’re going to use the bathroom in public, and no one should have to live with that. Even if their I.D. indicates their preferred gender, they can still get harassed, still get arrested, and still be discriminated against. It would be best if all trans folk could use their preferred restroom, but until that happens, we should provide gender neutral bathrooms for everyone that doesn’t fit into the gender binary.

    Posted by: Anonymous

  • Yes, schools should support gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students. A gender-neutral bathroom has many uses.

    Transgender individuals already face enough ridicule for their lifestyle. These lives they live however are no more or less human than ours. Having access to a safe place they can use and not feel unwelcome or unwanted should be a part of every building in America. Beyond the benefit for transgender students, gender-neutral bathrooms can provide a safe place for families who have small children that may need to change or feed their child while in a public place that want some privacy.

    Posted by: Anonymous

  • Yes, they should have gender-neutral bathrooms.

    First of all, being trans* is not a choice, and I doubt that any school aged child would have had a sex-change at their age. Another thing, bisexual preference is who you date, gender identity is who you are. Anyway, I’m not sure about trans woman, but most trans men choose not to have a “full sex change” because of the risks. So if you go into a women’s bathroom and see a person dressed in slacks, button up shirt, a tie and a beard, you’d object, wouldn’t you? Now let’s say they go into the women’s bathroom and see someone that knows them at a woman. They could call the school and get that person suspended from school or even expelled. Transgendered students are more common than you think; whether out of the closet or not. It wouldn’t cause any harm to people who are not transgender, so why not just give up this one thing for the sake of others?

    Posted by: Anonymous

  • Gender is a term that was created within the last 50 years.

Biologically, there are only two options – male and female. To claim that sex is fluid is insanity. Furthermore, there is a movement brought to you by Massachusetts that promotes “transgender” childhood. Kids as young as 3 are told by their parents that they can choose what they want to be. If this trend continues, it will spell the end of civilization.

Posted by: Anonymous

  • No. Why should they have to inconvenience themselves?

    Are we talking about kids that have undergone sex changes already? Because if so, then I say to use the nurses bathroom or something. Like the person before me said, We cant pander to every sexual preference. Why should a school have to spend a ton of money for a kid that Chose to change his gender?

    Posted by: Lincoln

  • No, we cannot pander to every sexual preference.

    That is probably a bad way to put it, because I do know it’s not considered a preference. It’s clear that a transgender person being forced to use a bathroom that is designed primarily for one sex rather than another would be disadvantaged, but how many students in any one school is actually a transgender? Are we supposed to build them an entirely separate facility, and if we did would that not make them stand out more as being different? It would be more practical to make all bathrooms gender neutral, sort of like the unisex bathrooms that you sometimes see in airports. But even that would be a huge monetary investment designed to be politically correct to a very low percentage of the population.

    Posted by: haightstreet

    http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-schools-have-gender-neutral-bathrooms-for-transgender-students

 

 

Resources:

 

Best Practices for Transgender Students – The Transgender Law …

 

 

 

GUIDELINES: HOW TO HANDLE TRANSGENDER STUDENTS

 

What is Transgender? – YouTube

 

Where information leads to Hope. ©  Dr. Wilda.com

 

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

 

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

 

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                           http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

 

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Douglas County Colorado experiments with variable teacher pay

11 Jun

 

Moi wrote in Study: Teacher merit pay works in some situations:

 

Teacher compensation is a hot education topic. The role of evaluations in compensation, merit pay, pay based upon credentials and higher pay for specialty areas are all hot topics and hot button issues. The Center for American Progress has a report by Frank Adamson and Linda Darling Hammond. In the report, Speaking of Salaries: What It Will Take to Get Qualified, Effective Teachers In All Communities  Adamson and Darling- Hammond write:

 

As Education Trust President Kati Haycock has noted, the usual statistics about teacher credentials, as shocking as they are, actually understate the degree of the problem in the most impacted schools:

 

The fact that only 25% of the teachers in a school are uncertified doesn’t mean that the other 75% are fine. More often, they are either brand new, assigned to teach out of field, or low-performers on the licensure exam … there are, in other words, significant numbers of schools that are essentially dumping grounds for unqualified teachers – just as they are dumping grounds for the children they serve….

 

Download this report (pdf)

 

Download the executive summary (pdf)

 

Melanie Smollin has an excellent post at Take Part, Five Reasons Why Teacher Turnover Is On The Rise Marguerite Roza and Sarah Yatsko from the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Education have an interesting February 2010 policy brief.

 

Stephanie Simon of Reuters writes in the article, Valuing Physics Over P.E., Colorado Schools Test Novel Pay Scale:

 

A wealthy school district in Colorado is launching a radical experiment that sets a different pay scale for each category of educator, ensuring that even the best third-grade teacher would never earn as much as a veteran high-school math teacher.

The new system, which takes effect next month for all 3,300 educators in suburban Douglas County, Colorado, has sparked fury and resentment among some teachers and some parents. But it has also drawn interest from superintendents around the nation.

“It’s quite novel,” said Eric Hanushek, an education economist at Stanford University.

School districts across the United States have traditionally treated all teachers the same; no matter what grade or subject they taught, they started at the same base salary and received the same raises for experience and advanced degrees.

In recent years, districts have tried to differentiate a bit by offering merit pay to their most effective educators, signing bonuses for teachers in high-poverty schools, and pay bumps for those in hard-to-staff fields, such as special education. But Douglas County’s system goes much further.

The district’s chief human relations officer, Brian Cesare, said he asked school administrators, “Which jobs keep you up at night because they are so difficult to fill?” Using the answers as a gauge of supply and demand, he divided teaching jobs into five salary bands.

Most elementary, art and physical education teachers are in the lowest bracket; their annual salary tops out at $61,000. Middle-and high-school English teachers can earn up to $72,000. High-school science and math teachers draw upper salaries of $82,000. At the very top: Special education therapists, who max out at $94,000.

QUIRKS IN SYSTEM

The broad categories contain some quirks: The district is more selective about kindergarten and first grade teachers than other elementary teachers, Cesare said, so they fall in a higher bracket. Middle school social studies teachers are considered easy to hire, so they’re in the lowest bracket.

The goal, Cesare said, is to “pay the top more… the bottom less.”

No teacher currently employed by Douglas County will have to take a pay cut, but if they’re earning more than their market value, their merit bonuses will be smaller, Cesare said.

A sprawling swath of suburbia between Denver and Colorado Springs, Douglas County is one of the wealthiest in the nation, with a well-regarded school system. A slate of conservative Republicans took control of the school board in 2009 and has pushed through a series of controversial policies, including expanding the number of charter schools and providing vouchers to help students pay tuition at private and religious schools. The voucher system is being challenged in court.

The board abolished traditional tenure protections for teachers in 2010 and said last year it would no longer recognize the teachers’ union after contract negotiations hit an impasse.

With no contract to set guidelines on salaries, performance evaluations or working conditions, the board is free to impose systems like the new market-based pay rate.

“We no longer exist,” said Brenda Smith, the president of the local union, who has mustered protests against the new system but cannot block it.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/douglas-county-teacher-pay_n_3417079.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

 

 

What the various studies seem to point out is there is no one remedy which works in all situations and that there must be a menu of education options.

 

Resources:

 

A Lively Debate Over Teacher Salaries                         http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/05/a-lively-debate-over-teacher-salaries/

 

Are Teachers Overpaid?                                                http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/02/are-teachers-overpaid/

 

Some Teachers Skeptical of Merit Pay                   http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/13/some-teachers-skeptical-of-merit-pay/

 

Related:

 

Washington D.C. rolls out merit pay                                https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/washington-d-c-rolls-out-merit-pay/

 

Report from The Compensation Technical Working Group: Teacher compensation in Washington                                      https://drwilda.wordpress.com/tag/teacher-recruitment/

 

Fordham Institute report: Teacher pensions squeezing states https://drwilda.com/2013/06/07/fordham-institute-report-teacher-pensions-squeezing-states/

 

Where information leads to Hope. ©  Dr. Wilda.com

 

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

 

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

 

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©                           http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

 

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The 06/12/13 Joy Jar

11 Jun

 

Yesterday’s ‘Joy Jar’ was to give thanks for being human. Humans have a wide variety of characteristics from they walk with Angels to satan wouldn’t have them in the family because they are so evil. The best human qualities form a tapestry called humane. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the quality of being humane.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.
Cesar Chavez

With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
William Lloyd Garrison

One can not be just if one is not humane.
Luc de Clapiers

An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties.
Jef Raskin

One can not be just if one is not humane.
Luc de Clapiers

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The 06/11/13 Joy Jar

11 Jun

 

Moi went to a NASA exhibit at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle which looked at the history and importance of the space station and space exploration. A major reason some support space exploration is that they want to plant humans as a species all over the universe. That got moi thinking about whether there is something unique about being human. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the quality of being human.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
George Orwell

“There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.”
C. JoyBell C.

“The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simple because the person living it had been doing so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.”
Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“This is good, life must continue, we are fighting barbarians, but we must remain human.”
David Benioff, City of Thieves

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I am not a human being; I am a human becoming.

Unknown

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The 06/10/13 Joy Jar

10 Jun

 

Moi had the great honor and the pleasure to preview the NASA exhibit, Destination: Station at Pacific Science Center in Seattle. The exhibit is totally awesome and does a good job of explaining the role of the Space Station in exploration. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is space exploration.

“Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“We hold the future still timidly, but perceive it for the first time as a function of our own action.”
J.D. Bernal, The world, the flesh & the devil;: An enquiry into the future of the three enemies of the rational soul

Ever since there have been people, there have been explorers, looking in places where other hadn’t been before. Not everyone does it, but we are part of a species where some members of the species do—to the benefit of us all.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Reaching For the Stars: America’s Choice,
Natural History Magazine, April 2003

I have no doubt that Christians can support the exploration and use of space. The so-called “science commission” in Genesis 1:28 certainly seems to apply to any part of the material creation which God places within man’s reach.

Rev. Paul A. Bartz, Communications Director, Bible-Science Newsletter, October 1990

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The 06/09/13 Joy Jar

9 Jun

 

Moi will be going to the ’30 Years of Japanese Fashion’ exhibit at Seattle Art Museum at the end of the month. To beef up her fashion chops moi went to the movie, ‘Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs’ which was a hoot and really showed the creativity of high fashion and those famous windows at Bergdorfs. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the creativity of high fashion.

“I think there is beauty in everything. What ‘normal’ people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it.”

Alexander McQueen

“The only real elegance is in the mind; if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.”

Diana Vreeland

“Fashions fade, style is eternal.”

Yves Saint-Laurent

“Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way you live.”

Gianni Versace

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

Coco Chanel

“Elegance is the only beauty that never fades.”

Audrey Hepburn

“I have always believed that fashion was not only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence.”

Yves Saint Laurent

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
Oscar Wilde

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‘Public Access ‘to research

9 Jun

A huge issue in research is open access or public access. Peter Suber proposes one definition in Open Access Overview:

Many OA initiatives focus on publicly-funded research.

  • The argument for public access to publicly funded research is strong, and a growing number of countries require OA to publicly-funded research.

  • The campaign for OA to publicly-funded research usually recognizes exceptions for (1) classified, military research, (2) research resulting in patentable discoveries, and (3) research that authors publish in some royalty-producing form, such as books. Recognizing these exceptions is at least pragmatic, and helps avoid needless battles while working for OA to the largest, easiest subset of publicly-funded research.

  • The lowest of the low-hanging fruit is research that is both royalty-free and publicly-funded. The policy of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a good example.

  • But the OA movement is not limited to publicly-funded research, and seeks OA to research that is unfunded or funded by private foundations (like the Wellcome Trust or Howard Hughes Medical Institute).

http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

A consortium of groups is looking at open access for research in the U.S.

Jennifer Howard writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, Universities and Libraries Envision a ‘Federated System’ for Public Access to Research about public access to research:

This week, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries are offering a plan they call the Shared Access Research Ecosystem, or Share.

Share would expand on systems that universities and libraries have long been building to support the sharing and preservation of research. The groups behind Share have been circulating a document, dated June 7, that lays out the basics behind the idea.

Academic institutions have invested heavily in “the infrastructure, tools, and services necessary to provide effective and efficient access to their research and scholarship,” the document says. “Share envisions that universities will collaborate with the federal government and others to host cross-institutional digital repositories of public-access research publications.”

Under Share, each university or research institute that gets federal research money would designate an existing digital repository “as the site where its articles will be deposited for public access and long-term preservation,” meeting the requirements of the Obama administration’s policy. Many universities already have digital repositories up and running. Those that do not could piggyback on the repositories of other institutions. A smaller institution could designate one of its state’s public universities as its deposit site, for instance.

The document also emphasizes elements that would be essential to make Share a viable way to comply with the new public-access policy. For example, principal investigators would need identifiers such as Orcid numbers to track their research activity, and every publication would need to have copyright-license terms embedded in its metadata so that repository systems would know how to handle it.

With those protocols in place, Share would be “a federated system of university repositories,” John C. Vaughn, the Association of American Universities’ executive vice president, said in an interview. “Potentially there’s a way to connect the whole corpus of U.S. higher-education institutions that receive federal research funding.”http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/universities-and-libraries-envision-a-federated-system-for-public-access-to-research/44147?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

Here is the statement of the National Research Council, NAS Forum:

Statement on Expanded Public Access to Publications

May 14, 2013

National Research Council, NAS Forum

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memorandum, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research,” provides new opportunities for a productive partnership between research universities and Federal research funding agencies. Enhanced access to the results of federally funded research accelerates the pace of scientific discovery, promotes innovation, and enriches education.

Research institutions are mission-driven, and common to their individual missions is a shared commitment to create and build upon new knowledge, make accessible the results of their research, and preserve information for future generations. The member universities of the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities conduct nearly two-thirds of federally funded research, and their members generate a significant percentage of the peer-reviewed scholarly publications covered by the OSTP memorandum. Research libraries, with others in their institutions, supply much of the infrastructure in support of this research and in many cases also provide access to the final peer-reviewed scholarly publications and digital data produced by institutional researchers. Research institutions also have a long history of and experience with collaboration.

It will be important that the policies federal agencies develop minimize the cost and complexity of compliance with grant requirements for both principal investigators and their institutions. University budgets are stretched thin with few discretionary resources. Federal research funding is under considerable pressure, and there is understandable concern within the university research community that implementation of a broad national public access policy should proceed, but in a manner that respectfully balances the rewards that will come from making research results more widely available with any sacrifices to current research progress the effort may entail.

The OSTP memorandum wisely provides agencies with latitude in developing and maintaining the public access repositories called for, stipulating that such repositories could be maintained by the agency funding the research, another federal agency, or through a public/private partnership with external parties. We believe that the most important issue at this time, however, is not who builds and operates the repository but the functionality of that public access resource.

Functional Properties of Public Access Repositories

Our three university and library associations believe that the following functionality considerations will be key to achieving the public access goals of the OSTP policy directive:

1. Copyright or IP rights should not be assigned to final peer-reviewed scholarly publications in an exclusive manner that would prohibit preservation, discovery, sharing, and machine-based services such as text mining. Similarly, federal policies can stimulate the development of new tools and services (human and machine), and licensing arrangements should ensure that no one single entity or group secures exclusive rights.

2. In order for the broad goals of the OSTP plan to be achieved, agency compliance requirements should be transparent, and deposit requirements should be easy for the researcher – or institution or publisher depositing on behalf of the researcher — to accomplish. In addition, agencies should develop effective grant tracking tools in advance of public access policy implementation that will enable universities to better manage compliance with agency regulations. To the extent possible, agency requirements should be comparable across agencies to minimize the burden on universities of mandated compliance requirements.

3. Final peer-reviewed scholarly publications should be linked openly to their source data to the extent possible to allow for reuse and replication of results, and such links should be established in a generalizable, sustainable manner.

4. Open standards are necessary to ensure interoperability in repository system design for search and discovery, and the metadata describing publications should be based on open standards to ensure that the public can read, download, and perform text mining on the publications.

5. Agencies should require the use of persistent, unique identifiers for grants, publications, data, and authors to foster reuse of content and development of new services by individuals and machines.

6. A variety of forms of metrics and identifiers should be supported to provide information on access, use, and impact of final peer-reviewed scholarly publications.

7. Final peer-reviewed scholarly publications from publically funded research should be accessible to persons with disabilities consistent with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

8. Bulk downloads of the corpus of scholarly publications for research purposes should be allowed under specified terms and conditions developed by agencies in consultation their external constituencies.

The Role of University Repositories

The experience of many research university institutional repositories demonstrates that they can operate effectively with the functional properties noted above. Members of the higher education community are initiating a study of the feasibility of federating existing institutional repositories and other campus-based infrastructure into a virtual repository which, in cooperation with federal funding agency repositories and others, could serve as a distributed system in support of the goals of the OSTP Public Access Policy. Such an approach would build on extensive, existing cyberinfrastructure already in place. This feasibility study will build on earlier work already conducted, in particular, a recent NSF report, A Feasibility Study for a National Science Foundation Open-Access Publication Repository. Should this current study demonstrate that such a federated system could be integrated into and extend current capabilities and capacities in an efficient and effective manner, we suggest that OSTP, federal agencies and other pertinent partners carefully consider joining with research universities in its creation and use as one component of the requirements of the OSTP article repository. The feasibility study will have to address a realistic timeline for implementation and the sustainability of the institutional repository model, including stability and adequacy of the business/financing plan. The study also will need to address the development of common standards and capacities to support comparable functionality across institutional repositories and the incorporation of universities and organizations not included in the AAU/APLU/ARL memberships.

Harvard Law has Notes on the Federal Research Public Access Act:

This page is part of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP).

 

The bill itself

  • The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) requires “free online public access” to a very large swath of publicly-funded research in the United States. It strengthens the open access (OA) mandate at the NIH by reducing the maximum embargo period from 12 months to six months, and extends the strengthened policy to all the major agencies of the federal government.
  • It doesn’t merely reduce the maximum embargo to six months, it requires OA “as soon as practicable” after publication (Section 4.b.4), but no later than six months after publication.
  • It asks agencies to come up with their own policies within the general guidelines laid down in the bill. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution and agencies are free to differ on the details. They will have one year from the bill’s passage to develop their policies (4.a).
  • The FRPAA guidelines require agencies to mandate “free online public access” for agency-funded research. The guidelines do not define “free online public access” (4.b.4). Nor do they stipulate the timing of deposits, only the timing of OA. For researchers employed and not merely funded by the federal government, FRPAA allows no embargo at all (4.c.2).
  • Like the NIH policy, FRPAA applies to the authors’ peer-reviewed manuscripts (4.b.2), not to the published editions of their articles. Like the NIH policy, it allows consenting publishers to replace the peer-reviewed manuscripts with the published editions (4.b.3). It does not apply to classified research or royalty-producing work such as books (4.d.3). It also exempts patentable discoveries, but only “to the extent necessary to protect a…patent” (4.d.3).
  • Unlike the NIH policy, FRPAA doesn’t specify the OA repository in which authors must deposit their manuscripts, the way the NIH specifies PubMed Central. FRPAA leaves this decision up to the individual agencies. They could host their own repositories or make use of existing repositories, including the institutional repositories of their researchers. FRPAA only requires that the repositories meet certain conditions of OA, interoperability, and long-term preservation (4.b.6).
  • FRPAA and the NIH policy differ slightly in how they secure permission for the mandated OA. The NIH requires grantees to retain the non-exclusive right to authorize OA through PubMed Central. If a given publisher is not willing to allow OA on the NIH’s terms, then grantees must look for another publisher. FRPAA requires agencies to “make effective use of any law or guidance relating to the creation and reservation of a Government license that provides for the reproduction, publication, release, or other uses of a final manuscript for Federal purposes” (4.c.3). The FRPAA approach gives agencies more flexibility. Agencies may use the battle-tested NIH method if they wish. They may use a federal-purpose license such as that codified in 2 CFR 215.36(a) (January 2005) if they wish. Or they may make use of “any [other] law or guidance” that would be “effective” in steering clear of infringement.
  • FRPAA does not amend copyright or patent law (4.e).
  • FRPAA applies to all unclassified research funded in whole or part (4.b.1) by agencies whose budgets for extramural research are $100 million/year or more (4.a). This includes the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation.
  • FRPAA mandates OA for more research literature than any other policy ever adopted or ever proposed.

Contents

Every issue has both pros and cons.

The pros and cons of open access detailed in the Nature article,Open Access by Kate Warlock:

Supporters of Open Access to scientific literature often portray it as the definitive and inevitable model for scientific publishing, but it is far from being the last word on new modes of access. In reality, stakeholders in scientific publishing are in the midst of adjusting to the revolutionary new possibilities offered by the Web and the online journal article for scholarly communication.

In this Nature forum, a range of stakeholders in scientific publishing have made their cases at length, and often persuasively. Agreement in the industry on the best route forward remains distant, however, and the level of emotion behind the debate has served in some cases to obfuscate discussion. This article aims to provide an independent assessment of the key arguments, and to flag up areas where questions remain unanswered.

Proponents of a move to open access argue that this will benefit science and society in general. A report published last April by the UK Wellcome Trust1 assumes that “the benefits of research are derived principally from access to research results”, and therefore that “society as a whole is made worse off if access to scientific research results is restricted”.

Part of the remit of not-for-profit organisations such as the Wellcome Trust which fund research may be the full dissemination of results. But even where research is publicly-funded, taxes are generally not paid so that taxpayers can access research results, but rather so that society can benefit from the results of that research; in the form of new medical treatments, for example. Publishers claim that 90% of potential readers can access 90% of all available content through national or research libraries, and while this may not be as easy as accessing an article online directly it is certainly possible.

Funding for scientific research also comes from a variety of sources – in some countries such as Australia and New Zealand around 80% of R&D funding comes from the public purse, while in Japan and Switzerland only about 10% is government-funded1. It is therefore not necessarily the case that taxpayers fund most scientific research.

Another criticism of open access is that payment for publication could create conflicts of interest and have a negative impact on the perceived neutrality of peer review, as there would be a financial incentive for journals to publish more articles. The importance of the role of peer review does not diminish under an Open Access model, and structures need to be in place to ensure that peer reviewers are not unduly influenced by the needs of their publishers.

In some ways though this argument can apply as much to the current subscription-based system as publishers often justify price increases on the grounds of an increase in the number of journal articles published. This suggests that there are financial advantages for both Open Access and subscription-based publishers in publishing more articles. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/34.html

Research can be impacted if a system to share knowledge is not devised.

Resources:

Overview: The NIH Public Access Policy

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research                                                                           http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research

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