Archive for September, 2015
Guest Post: Opt-Out Ends The Madness Of High-Stakes Testing
Kevin from Exceptional Delaware asked if we could share his post. The State Board of Education is having their monthly meeting at 1:00pm today. The Parent Strike press conference will begin prior to the meeting at 12:30pm in front of Legislative Hall in Dover. If any of our readers attend, let us know in the comments.
As a proud advocate of parent opt out, I watched in horror as Governor Markell vetoed legislation created for parents and their fundamental rights. The News Journal refers to House Bill 50 as giving parents the right to opt out. This is wrong. It’s about honoring a parental right that already exists, an attempt to codify that right and stop schools and the Delaware Department of Education from punishing schools over parent opt-out.
Today, the State Board of Education will have their monthly meeting, and they will discuss Regulation 103. To give some quick back-story here, Regulation 103 covers school accountability. Born out of Race To The Top, Delaware won in the first round partly because we already had this regulation in place. Race To The Top was an abject failure. But the DOE and the State Board are attempting to further legitimize this program under the guise of the Delaware School Success Framework. This “school report card” is nothing more than Federal mandate PLUS the many layers of complexity the DOE added to it. This regulation will put any Title I school in jeopardy if the students don’t perform well on Smarter Balanced. This week, we will hear about the creation of 10 new so-called “Focus Schools” and 4 “Focus Plus Schools”. The DOE will attempt to sell this as yet another way of “fixing” these high-need schools. The truth is, these labels are punitive in nature and are just another step before they become “Priority Schools”. We all know how that went a year ago.
Thursday Daily Delawhere [9.17.2015]
The photographer of this photo (urban_eye_ on Instragram) calls this the most Wilmington/Delawarish photo in existence.
Republicans now think ginning up hatred for 20 years, maybe not such a good idea afterall
“Centrist” Republicans ditched the ideal that politics is transactional a long time ago. Even so-called “moderate” Republicans accepted that compromise and consensus were dead over decade ago. Mike Castle’s idea of centrism was to consistently vote with his uncompromising house leadership, then send out statements regretting that Democrats couldn’t move more to the right. When […]
Carney Jumps in the Gov. Race, Expect the Musical Chair Race to Accellerate
Congressman John Carney (D) filed paperwork today to launch his campaign for governor next year.
“This is an opportunity to serve and meet the challenges that we face here in Delaware,” Carney said during an exclusive interview with The News Journal on Wednesday. “They are frankly challenges that every community and every state in the country faces right now.”
Carney, 59, who will bring deep government experience to next year’s race, said his campaign will focus on restoring Delaware’s middle class, improving public education and addressing Delaware’s budget issues. […]
The Paper of Record notes Carney’s long experience in government, with his connections to both Senator Carper and Senator Biden, and that it really was supposed to be Beau Biden running next year.
Carney spoke with the vice president by phone a little more than two weeks ago. Carney said he wanted to consult with the vice president about his plans to seek the governor’s office.
“This opportunity to serve comes because of the vice president and his family’s worst nightmare, which is Beau’spassing,” Carney said. “It’s a very personal thing. I just needed to know that he was comfortable with it. He could not have been better, he encouraged me to run. I can tell you it’s lifted a huge burden off my shoulders in terms of making that decision.”
Biden called Carney again Wednesday morning to wish him well, the congressman said.
Comment Rescue: Dorian Gray, Education And The Uncomfortable Truth
I keep going back to Dorian’s comment on my Education post. Here is what he said:
Wednesday Open Thread [9.16.2015]
![Wednesday Open Thread [9.16.2015]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DL.Open_.Thread.White_-240x180.png "Wednesday Open Thread [9.16.2015]")
Vice President Biden took aim at Donald Trump’s hard line on undocumented immigrants, CBS News reports.
Said Biden: “I don’t want anybody to be down right now about what’s going on in the Republican Party. I’m being deadly earnest about this. I want you to remember, notwithstanding the fact that there’s one guy absolutely denigrating an entire group of people. Appealing to the baser side of human nature. Working on this notion of xenophobia in a way that hasn’t occurred in a long time. Since the Know-Nothing party back at the end of the nineteenth century.”
Politico: “The vice president offered no updates on his own 2016 deliberations. But he criticized the real estate mogul in unusually stark terms, while urging the crowd not to take ‘Trump and the stuff you’re hearing on the other team’ to heart.”
He is definitely running a shadow campaign in all but name. Which I like because I like Biden and we need people out there criticizing Trump. But I also don’t like it. Either announce or don’t.
Businesses that like favorable treatment rate DE courts #1 !!
Huzzah, for the Diamond State!! The home of tax free shopping, and judgement free litigation. Report: Delaware Legal System Remains Nation’s Best Wilmington, DE – A new survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranked Delaware first for the fairness and reasonableness of the state’s legal system, rating the state number one for the tenth […]
Is another GOP government shutdown over Planned Parenthood lies inevitable?
I’m seriously asking. Does anyone know if Boehner and McConnell can muster up the vestiges of the “moderate” Republicans and vote on a budget with the Democrats? I mean, I doubt they would because it will mean their jobs, but assuming they would do the right thing, and put the country first… COULD THEY? A […]
Scratch a modern Republican and you reveal a fascist
This new YouGov poll demonstrates something that I’ve been saying for a while. Republicans don’t like, and do not feel very attached to the our crappy old Democracy. It is messy. They lose… a lot. Many of them, (even, no doubt, Republicans you may consider sober, and level-headed), would just as soon see a military […]
Tuesday Open Thread [9.15.2015]
![Tuesday Open Thread [9.15.2015]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DL.Open_.Thread.Blue_-240x180.png "Tuesday Open Thread [9.15.2015]")
Rick Klein: “If the first debate was all about Donald Trump, the second debate figures to be about the anti-Trump. The Republican race has not so much changed as it has solidified over the past six weeks, erasing any doubt about Trump’s front-running status. But now, Trump will have a different on-stage neighbor – Dr. Ben Carson – and a whole stage full of rivals who need to move to Plan B when it comes to handling the man in the middle. Trump is about to see more incoming fire than even he (maybe) is capable of effectively returning. The Club for Growth is announcing its anti-Trump media campaign on Tuesday, and Wednesday night is primed to become a Trump pile-on. It brings a new set of dynamics to the race – or, at least, the hope of that when it comes to the 15 candidates not named Trump.”
Tuesday Daily Delawhere [9.15.2015]
Sunset (or rise) in the White Clay Creek State Park. Photo by the Jason Gordon on Instagram.
Monday Open Thread [9.14.2015]
![Monday Open Thread [9.14.2015]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DL.Open_.Thread.Gray_-240x180.png "Monday Open Thread [9.14.2015]")
Michelle Goldberg at The Nation looks at the gender double standard regarding Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton:
In a Washington Post piece titled “The Amazing Honesty of Joe Biden,” Chris Cillizza writes, “Where Clinton is struggling with the perception that she is neither honest nor trustworthy, Biden is all honesty. Where Clinton is cautious and closed off, Biden is spontaneous and an open book.” Russell Berman writes at The Atlantic, “Clinton’s poll numbers are sinking, at least in part, because she is seen, once again, as the epitome of caution and parsing. Biden may be the consummate politician, but he is seen as the opposite.”
Cillizza and Berman are right about the perceptions. It seems worth pointing out, however, that no woman has the option of this kind of candor. Try to answer this question: Is there a single woman in America about whom anyone could say, “Everybody likes her, right?” (I mean besides Beyoncé, who is worshiped for her aloof perfection.) A female candidate who was prone, as Biden is, to veering off script and saying things she should not wouldn’t seem frank and lovable. She would seem sloppy and unstable. No woman could say on national television that she might be too emotionally fragile to run for president, and still be seen as someone who could actually run for president.
