Race to the Top on Steroids

EDUCATION: Race to the Top on Steroids

After 10 years, it’s time to revisit former President George W. Bush’s signature domestic policy achievement, No Child Left Behind. President Obama on Tuesday asked for a rewrite of the revolutionary standards-based law. He wants to set a high bar for states and school districts and give local governments more flexibility for achieving those goals.
There’s just one problem. Obama is modeling his education proposal after the current Race to the Top grant program, which is unpopular with Republicans on Capitol Hill. “Race to the Top should be the approach we follow this year as we replace No Child Left Behind with a law that is more flexible and focused on what’s best for our kids,” Obama said in his State of the Union address, according to the written version of his speech.
Yet GOP lawmakers in charge of this year’s spending bills are looking to eliminate funding for the Education Department’s competitive grant program, which rewards extra money to states that demonstrate innovative ways to boost student achievement. Republicans and other critics of Race to the Top say the government isn’t clear about how it doles out the money and that it is is too dictatorial about the award criteria.
Nonetheless, no one disputes that No Child Left Behind needs some attention. At the very least, lawmakers need to tinker with the fast-approaching 2014 deadline when all states must demonstrate 100 percent proficiency in K-12 education standards. Without any change, school districts across the country will face punitive measures in a few years.
House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., has said he wants to tackle No Child Left Behind in pieces, preferring to steer clear of a massive, unwieldy rewrite of the law. “My goal is to pull back federal involvement in the day-to-day operation of our classrooms so the innovation and accountability being driven by states and local schools has a chance to succeed, and I hope we can find agreement in Washington to allow that to happen,” Kline said on Tuesday.
Obama is sensitive to critiques about an overbearing federal government, but the administration is unlikely to relax its achievement criteria for the sake of giving more power to states. Still, Obama made sure to state that education reform isn’t “just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals, school boards, and communities.” 

Assam BJP committed to develop Varun Gandhi

BJP committed to develop Assam: Varun Gandhi

BJP MP Varun Gandhi today asserted that his party was committed to the development of the poor in Assam.

"Assam cannot progress unless and until the condition of the poor improves. If the problems of the poor are not addressed, other odds of the society cannot be wiped out," Gandhi told a rally at Siphajhar in Darrang district.

The state was plagued by many problems and the time had come to create a new Assam which the BJP is committed to provide, he said.

"BJP is taking the forthcoming assembly elections in the state very seriously and is contesting to form a new government at Dispur (the state secretariat)," Gandhi said.

News From: www.dnaindia.com

Amanda Knox appeals trial Experts to review evidence

Experts to review evidence at Amanda Knox appeals trial

Independent forensic experts will have 90 days starting next month to review crucial evidence linking American student Amanda Knox to the murder of her British roommate, an appeals court said Saturday.

Knox was convicted in 2009 of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith Kercher, and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Her co-defendant and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted and sentenced to 25 years. Both have denied wrongdoing.

Their lawyers have disputed DNA traces used to back up their convictions and obtained an independent review at the start of the appeals trial.

The experts appointed by the appeals court, Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti from Rome's Sapienza University, were formally sworn in at a hearing Saturday, the first of the new year. They will begin their review on Feb. 9 at a university lab, conclude by May 9 and report their findings to the court on May 21.

Kercher was stabbed to death the night of Nov. 1, 2007. Her body was found in a pool of blood the following day in the apartment the 21-year-old shared with Knox. They were both exchange students in Perugia, a university town in central Italy.

Prosecutors maintained in the first trial that Knox's DNA was found on the handle of a kitchen knife they believe to be the murder weapon, and that Kercher's DNA was found on the blade. They say Sollecito's DNA was found on the clasp of Kercher's bra.

The defense says those DNA traces were inconclusive and that they might have been contaminated when they were collected and analyzed.

The two independent experts can either make new analyses on the DNA traces that were found, or, if that isn't possible, review the analyses that had been carried out by previous forensic experts and assess whether they are reliable. Experts appointed by both the prosecution and the defense will be present during the review.

While the evidence review is being carried out, the trial will continue with witnesses sought by the defense aimed at challenging the reliability of a key prosecution witness who said he had seen Knox and Sollecito by the house the night of the murder. Knox and Sollecito insist they were at Sollecito's house.

The next hearing is on March 12.

News From: www.kansascity.com

Medium TV Series Finale

Medium series finale Farewell to one of TV best families

Medium never got the love and attention it deserved, and after seven psychic seasons on two different networks, the series comes to a close tonight. The gory crime-solving and supernatural elements of the show were fun, but the best part of the show was always its realistic portrayal of a stable, happy family, squabbles and all.

Joe and Allison DuBois are a close second to Eric and Tami Taylor for my favorite married couple on TV — playful, loving, expressive, and they’re terrific parents, too. Before Modern Family was getting all the (totally deserved!) credit for its realistic, not-at-all annoying kid actors, Medium‘s trio of blond munchkins were tearing it up. (Especially Maria Lark.) The DuBois women might be able to communicate with the dead, but they also argue over spelling tests, or who might need glasses, or who finished the cereal or passed her driving test. More Info

Speaking to the Public

The King’s Speech had the unfortunate luck of being labeled as an Oscar-hungry film quite early, dating back to the hysterically enthusiastic reaction that followed its initial screening at the Toronto Film Festival last year. Reviews have been almost exclusively positive, lauding Colin Firth’s role as the stammering King George VI as career-defining, a performance so inexpressibly perfect that you will be reduced to a blubbery, buttery heap of tears by the time the credits roll.

Rather than refute these claims, it would be much more productive to qualify the aspects of The King’s Speech that seem to have audiences so sheepishly smitten. The film follows Firth as the second-born son of King George V, a gruff and baritone Michael Gambon unwilling to accept his son’s speech impediment. World War II is coming to England, and Firth’s formidable stammer is forced into the public eye after his elder brother (Guy Pearce) abdicates the throne to marry one of those goddamn Americans. Following his wife’s counsel (Helena Bonham-Carter as the queen, charming and cheek-boned as ever), the new king starts unorthodox speech therapy with Australian Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). The two men’s relationship provides the dramatic crux of the film, artfully balancing bits of humor and drama as Logue’s therapy sways from shaking jowls to childhood trauma.

The king’s stammer sets the stage for the necessary moments of painful tension as Firth’s desperate chokes and coughs invoke despair, courage and eventual exultation. The opening scene forces the poor prince in front of a microphone to read his father’s statement to the entire British Empire via radio, and from then on our sympathies are forever his. Yet the main reason for the broad success of The King’s Speech is not its approach to what is basically an underdog story, but rather its sheer, unabashed Britishness. The film was orchestrated by a largely British administration, set in a time of heady British significance, and embodies the sort of stout, dignified resilience so often associated with our neighbors across the pond. Every room is prim and proper regardless of the royal presence, and the arbitrary social monarchy so often associated with Britain acts as the film’s entire skeleton. Rather than let that stuffy dignity seep into the film’s juicy bits, however, director Tom Hopper maintains a detached, airy humor to the whole affair, from Derek Jacobi’s perfectly preposterous Archbishop to Rush’s Dr. Logue, who seems entirely unimpressed with the aristocratic posturing, but is willing to put up with it for the sake of his friend. The English style of sharp, clean regality appeals as much to an aging American public fed up with 3-D as it does to native Brits, and has profited immensely as a result.

While The King’s Speech hardly makes any mistakes, it seems unwilling to risk anything worth losing. The relationship between Firth and Rush drives the film at the cost of developing any of the other characters’ intimacy, reducing them instead to charged moments and lockedstares that ultimately reflect back on Firth alone. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop Hopper from trying, and Firth’s connections with his wife, brother and father cannot move beyond one dimension. Once Hopper establishes the brother as cruel, the father as rough and the wife as supportive, their roles plateau and become little more than material through which the two central characters may work. This safe mentality extends to the dialogue, full of witty little quips and sly retorts that had the matured crowd in my theater tittering relentlessly, reaching for their oxygen masks in hopes of relief.

That said, however, The King’s Speech has turned something that could have been unforgivably boring into a sharply engaging film. It has joined This Is England and Wallace and Gromit in the pantheon of supremely British films that are actually accessible to the American viewer, and will probably get Colin Firth an Oscar in the process. Geared towards an older audience more appreciative of the subtle aspects of character and connection, The King’s Speech is an example of how filmmaking need not rely on the bells and whistles of a digitized era to simultaneously entertain and share a message with its audience.






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