Posts Tagged ‘label’
No Child Left Behind – creates failure for U.S. public schools
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday his department estimates that four out of five schools in the United States will not make their “No Child Left Behind” benchmarks by the law’s target year of 2014 — and when the test scores are counted for the current school year, numbers could show that U.S. schools are already at that failure rate.
He blamed that failure rate on the law itself, not on schools.
“This law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed. We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk,” Duncan told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Duncan pointed out that federal law requires states and districts to “implement the same set of interventions in every school that is not meeting AYP [adequate yearly progress], regardless of the individual needs and circumstances of those schools…”
“By mandating and prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions, No Child Left Behind took away the ability of local and state educators to tailor solutions to the unique needs of their students,” Duncan said calling the concept “fundamentally flawed.”
Republicans on the committee questioned any increase in the budget in the current economic climate.
The few Republicans who think there should be public education, that is.
RTFA. You know most of this. Bush’s plan enforced a classroom ethic that teachers should train kids to be test-takers. That applied only to tests designed to be a single national standard.
Unfunded mandates, of course. No beancounter is ever going to propose paying for their demands.
Amazon offers house brand in electronics accessories
Despite the stagnation of book, music and DVD sales, Amazon.com is gaining momentum as a retailer of almost every other kind of product.
Like many general retailers, Amazon seeks to forge direct ties with manufacturers wherever it can so that it can keep a larger percentage of the profits. Just as shoppers might find Safeway cereal, RadioShack batteries and Wal-Mart diapers, Amazon has sold such “private label” items since 2004, including Pinzon bath towels and sheets, Strathwood patio furniture, and Denali power tools.
Now, Amazon is expanding its private-label line with AmazonBasics, a new collection of consumer electronics items.
The items are not all that exciting, at least for now. They include HDMI cables, Ethernet cords, and blank CDs and DVDs.
All will be shipped in Amazon’s recycled cardboard frustration-free packaging, which gives people another opportunity to avoid those hermetically sealed plastic clamshell containers from other vendors.
Just being able to open the fracking package makes a difference for me. Hopefully, I will no longer need the old pair of kitchen shears I keep in the study.
