My e-mail Address

It appears someone may be sending out false information using my email address. Please advise me if you receive an email over my name that appears to be advertising something.

I am not the sender.

Thanks,

Merle

Supreme Court Gun Decision - Three Cheers for 5 Judges

Those of you that believe in the right to keep arms in your homes and are pushing for the right to bear arms should be pleased that the vote was 5-4 in our favor with the newest "judge" Sotamayor voting no. When Kagan gets on the court, Sotamayor will have another bleeding liberal conspirator.

Beware, in fact, be very aware of the direction this country is heading especially after the Democrats and a few Republicans vote her on the court.

John Stossell - More Guns Means Less Crime

John is saying what most people with common sense and a belief in government by the people. Much of Mainstream media is so out of touch with reality. Hollywood's appeal to peoples lack of much moral structure to their lives; people who spend hours watching sitcoms, violence, using drugs, watching overpaid athletes "performing" (think Chicago Cubs) and having little idea how our "best and the brightest" are following the "Pied Pipers", (Obama, Daley, Frank, Pelosi, Holder, Waters, Dodd and their ilk) into a type of subservience still practiced by Chavez, Castro, and their ilk, plus some Republicans.

Even the National CEO Roundtable is trying to apologize for supporting ObamaCare, already called "disastrous ObamaCare", in hopes that Obama would throw the financial and business world a bone to that part of our society still paying living wages and above; those who still pay taxes on profits, only to be betrayed.

How could they be so greedy and naive?

Those elected and appointed officials who would deny private ownership of guns are in on the master plan to to take this country away from those people paying attention and put the federal government in charge of our lives. Either that or they are so naive and too busy to really read, see, and hear what is covertly and openly happening.

Then again, polls show that at least 30% of our citizenry would prefer to have the government run their lives.

The long-range future of this country and for those that believe in the original Constitution has seldom looked more bleak.

Please read.

Merle Widmer


More Guns Means Less Crime
By John Stossel

You know what the mainstream media think about guns and our freedom to carry them.

Pierre Thomas of ABC: "When someone gets angry or when they snap, they are going to be able to have access to weapons."

Chris Matthews of MSNBC: "I wonder if in a free society violence is always going to be a part of it if guns are available."

Keith Olbermann, who usually can't be topped for absurdity: "Organizations like the NRA ... are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country."

"Trying to?" Well, I admit that I bought that nonsense for years. Living in Manhattan, working at ABC, everyone agreed that guns are evil. And that the NRA is evil. (Now that the NRA has agreed to a sleazy deal with congressional Democrats on political speech censorship, maybe some of its leaders are evil, but that's for another column.)

Now I know that I was totally wrong about guns. Now I know that more guns means -- hold onto your seat -- less crime.

How can that be, when guns kill almost 30,000 Americans a year? Because while we hear about the murders and accidents, we don't often hear about the crimes stopped because would-be victims showed a gun and scared criminals away. Those thwarted crimes and lives saved usually aren't reported to police (sometimes for fear the gun will be confiscated), and when they are reported, the media tend to ignore them. No bang, no news.

This state of affairs produces a distorted public impression of guns. If you only hear about the crimes and accidents, and never about lives saved, you might think gun ownership is folly.

But, hey, if guns save lives, it logically follows that gun laws cost lives.

Suzanna Hupp and her parents were having lunch at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when a man began shooting diners with his handgun, even stopping to reload. Suzanna's parents were two of the 23 people killed. (Twenty more were wounded.)

Suzanna owned a handgun, but because Texas law at the time did not permit her to carry it with her, she left it in her car. She's confident that she could have stopped the shooting spree if she had her gun. (Texas has since changed its law.)

Today, 40 states issue permits to competent, law-abiding adults to carry concealed handguns (Vermont and Alaska have the most libertarian approach: no permit needed. Arizona is about to join that exclusive club.) Every time a carry law was debated, anti-gun activists predicted outbreaks of gun violence after fender-benders, card games and domestic quarrels.

What happened?

John Lott, in "More Guns, Less Crime," explains that crime fell by 10 percent in the year after the laws were passed. A reason for the drop in crime may have been that criminals suddenly worried that their next victim might be armed. Indeed, criminals in states with high civilian gun ownership were the most worried about encountering armed victims.

In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries occur when residents are home. But in the United States, where many households contain guns, only 13 percent of burglaries happen when someone_s at home.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the Heller case that Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun ownership was unconstitutional. District politicians then loosened the law but still have so many restrictions that there are no gun shops in the city and just 800 people have received permits. Nevertheless, contrary to the mayor's prediction, robbery and other violent crime are down.

Because Heller applied only to Washington, that case was not the big one. McDonald v. Chicago is the big one, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on that next week. Otis McDonald is a 76-year-old man who lives in a dangerous neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. He wants to buy a handgun, but Chicago forbids it.

If the Supremes say McDonald has that right, then restrictive gun laws will fall throughout America.

Despite my earlier bias, I now understand that striking down those laws will probably save lives.

Unemployed? Offer Gulf Cleanup Jobs

The government should use left-over Stimulus Act jobs instead of spending it on museums, trails and welfare. Put the private sector in charge with the government using funds from various emergency sources but mainly from the $20 billion BP fund. Or the government will still be organizing this in June, 2012. Pay maybe $20 a hour plus bus fare to the selected hiring sites. Supervisors? Pay them maybe $25 an hour and a weekly bonus of say $300 for excellent performance. For those who work, pay bus fare back from their start point when no longer needed. For those who come and then decided not to work, let them find their own way back.

Strike a special room rate deal with the motel owners who should be glad for help and might offset some costs. Starting points would be local unemployment offices determining how many unemployed the gulf can handle at each selected need arrival points. Those not hired could be asked to stay on stand-by. Government employment offices or the places the unemployed go to file or pick up their checks. They have lists of unemployed and should know who to call.


All unemployed must be U.S. citizens with a letter of recommendation from their last employer.

Lot of details that can be worked out such as accident insurance, etc.

A system similar to this should have been set up years ago and could have been used at Katrina and been in place for this catastrophe. And when we have a massive terrorist attack worse than 9/11.

Don't think this plan as any merit? Do you think the government had much of a plan? Were government regulators doing their job or weren't their enough of them in this crowded drilling area? And on such a risky proposition as drilling in water a couple of miles below sea level??

This whole mess was poorly handled by both big business and big government. Obama is using this disaster to further his agenda of populism and socialism by putting the entire blame on the private sector. He looks more like Chavez every day in every way.

Please don't waste your time criticizing me. Just come up with a better plan to employ the un-employed on an environment saving project. Maybe even consider reviving the CCC of the 1930's?

BelWood Update

My LTE was featured in the Sunday edition of the Journal Star. Find it under Spotlight on the editorial page with my picture. One of the many things I called attention too was the printed statements last week that the total cost of the new B-W had reached $54.6 million not $45 million as twice reported by the JS.

Questions? You can attend committee of board meeting or ask me for current info. I was probably wrong about BelWood having $5 million on hand. It appears to be less.

Thanks to the JSEB for printing my editorial. If you pay property taxes in Peoria County you should be concerned.

The Rise of Muslim Power in Our Large Cities

I have a folder full of clippings to back up most of what is stated here. The only way businesses do move back into Detroit is through heavy government subsidies.

Then again, subsidies are nothing new in this area but as yet we are no where near like most of the big cities in this country.

Merle

THE TRAGEDY OF DETROIT -- Muslims Take Over

Multiculturalism in full view - yet the lame street media totally ignores it.



THE TRAGEDY OF DETROIT
This is a powerful message about the failure of the Great Society.

How in the world do we get out of this mess? This is a perfect example of how good intentions without good foresight can produce an absolute nightmare. Never underestimate the downside of human nature. The author of the following piece is a U.S. journalist who writes for seventeen national and two international magazines.

THE TRAGEDY OF DETROIT : HOW IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURALISM DESTROYED IT
By Frosty Wooldridge

For 15 years, from the mid 1970s to 1990, I worked in Detroit , Michigan . I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash was everywhere! Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it and just ignored it.

Tens of thousands and then, hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing and food stamps! With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10 and, in one case, one woman birthed 24 kids as reported by the Detroit Free Press-all on American taxpayer dollars. A new child meant a new car payment, new TV and whatever mom wanted. I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson's "Great Society" flourish in Detroit . If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out to take money for doing nothing.

Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America , outside of Richard Daley in Chicago , rode Detroit down to its knees. He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence and arrogance. As a black man, he said, "I am the MFIC." The IC meant 'in charge'. You can figure out the rest. Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent
African-Americans.

As a United Van Lines truck driver for my summer job from teaching math and science, I loaded hundreds of American families into my van for a new life in another city or state. Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. At the same time, legal and illegal immigrants converged on the city, so much so, that Muslims number over 300,000. Mexicans number 400,000 throughout Michigan, but most work in Detroit .

As the whites moved out, the Muslims moved in. As the crimes became more violent, the whites fled. Finally, unlawful Mexicans moved in at a torrid pace. Detroit suffers so much shoplifting that grocery stores no longer operate in many inner city locations.

You could cut the racial tension in the air with a knife! Detroit may be one our best (extreme) examples of multiculturalism: pure dislike and total separation from America !
Today, you hear Muslim calls to worship over the city like a new American Baghdad with hundreds of Islamic mosques in Michigan , paid for by Saudi Arabia oil money. High school flunk out rates reached 76 percent last June according to NBC's Brian Williams. Classrooms resemble more foreign countries than America . English? Few speak it! The city features a 50 percent illiteracy rate and growing. Unemployment hit 28.9 percent in 2009 as the auto industry vacated the city.
In Time Magazine October 4, 2009, "The Tragedy of Detroit : How a great city fell and how it can rise again," I choked on the writer's description of what happened.

"If Detroit had been savaged by a hurricane and submerged by a ravenous flood, we'd know a lot more about it," said Daniel Okrent. "If drought and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we'd see it on the evening news every night. Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it - if natural disaster had devastated the city that was once the living proof of American prosperity, the rest of the country might take notice.

But Detroit , once our fourth largest city, now 11th and slipping rapidly, has had no such luck. Its disaster has long been a slow unwinding that seemed to remove it from the rest of the country. Even the death rattle that in the past year emanated from its signature industry brought more attention to the auto executives than to the people of the city, who had for so long been victimized by their dreadful decision-making."

As Coleman Young's corruption brought the city to its knees, no amount of federal dollars could save the incredible payoffs, kick backs and illegality permeating his administration. I witnessed the city's death from the seat of my 18-wheeler tractor trailer because I moved people out of every sector of decaying Detroit .

"By any quantifiable standard, the city is on life support. Detroit 's treasury is $300 million short of the funds needed to provide the barest municipal services," Okrent said. "The school system, which six years ago was compelled by the teachers' union to reject a philanthropist's offer of $200 million to build 15 small, independent charter high schools, is in receivership. The murder rate is soaring, and 7 out of 10 remain unsolved. Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans , unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit , the unemployment rate is 28.9% That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point nine percent."

At the end of Okrent's report, and he will write a dozen more about Detroit , he said, "That's because the story of Detroit is not simply one of a great city's collapse. It's also about the erosion of the industries that helped build the country we know today. The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century. If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to get up, what does that say about our future?"

As you read in my book review of Chris Steiner's book, $20 Per Gallon, the auto industry won't come back (to Detroit ). Immigration will keep pouring more and more uneducated third world immigrants from the Middle East into Detroit -thus creating a beachhead for Islamic hegemony in America . If the 50 percent illiteracy continues, we will see more homegrown terrorists spawned out of the Muslim ghettos of Detroit . Illiteracy plus Islam equals walking human bombs. You have already seen it in Madrid , Spain ; London , England and Paris , France with train bombings, subway bombings and riots. As their numbers grow, so will their power to enact their barbaric Sharia Law that negates republican forms of government, first amendment rights and subjugates women to the lowest rungs on the human ladder. We will see more honor killings by upset husbands, fathers and brothers that demand subjugation by their daughters, sisters and wives. Muslims prefer to use beheadings of women to scare the hell out of any other members of their sect from straying.

Multiculturalism: what a perfect method to kill our language, culture, country and way of life.

I PRAY EVERYONE THAT READS THIS REALIZES THAT IF WE DON'T ALL STAND UP AND SCREAM AT WASHINGTON AND OUR CITY LEADERS THIS IS WHAT AWAITS AMERICA . IF YOU FOLLOW THE NEWS AT ALL YOU KNOW THIS HAS HAPPENED IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE AND SPAIN .. IF YOU THINK THIS IS JUST A BUNCH OF HOOEY AND YOU FEEL NO DUTY TO FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY, THEN I'M SORRY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT WILL TAKE FOR YOU TO STAND AND FIGHT.

Frosty Wooldridge

Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

With all the comments about Valda Shipp, I am most interested about the conduct of teachers under her principalship and the quality of the students who were present under her leadership and the quality of the student who moved on to other schools, either by regular promotion or for other reasons.

I doubt whether this article fits her philosophy of education.

I am still looking for an article I have filed that talks about the substantial increase of cheating in our public school systems most of it blamed on the NCLB, which in my research, says the act failed to accomplish what it set out to do. I doubt whether cheating was condoned while Mrs. Shipp was principal.

I have never judged a persons accomplishments totally on scores. I was in business, one way or another, and no one ever asked to see my grade scores nor did I ask for grade scores when I hired. Whoever I promoted to lead, was usually subject to criticism by a few. As long as this person was my selected leader, I listened and acted ONLY when I had all the facts. The "anonymous" comments to my blog have never touched on the key issue, results in the progress through life of her students.

I never fired a leader by trying "to walk he or she out of the building".

Merle Widmer

This article below comes from Dr. Jerry Becker, SIU and he is recommended to be read by all in education and concerned parents.

"Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores"

By Trip Gabriel


The staff of Normandy Crossing Elementary School outside Houston eagerly awaited the results of state achievement tests this spring. For the principal and assistant principal, high scores could buoy their careers at a time when success is increasingly measured by such tests. For fifth-grade math and science teachers, the rewards were more tangible: a bonus of $2,850.

But when the results came back, some seemed too good to be true. Indeed, after an investigation by the Galena Park Independent School District, the principal, assistant principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering.

The district said the educators had distributed a detailed study guide after stealing a look at the state science test by "tubing" it - squeezing a test booklet, without breaking its paper seal, to form an open tube so that questions inside could be seen and used in the guide. The district invalidated students' scores.

Of all the forms of academic cheating, none may be as startling as educators tampering with children's standardized tests. But investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing ratchet higher - including, most recently, taking student progress on tests into consideration in teachers' performance reviews.

Colorado passed a sweeping law last month making teachers' tenure dependent on test results, and nearly a dozen other states have introduced plans to evaluate teachers partly on scores. Many school districts already link teachers' bonuses to student improvement on state assessments. Houston decided this year to use the data to identify experienced teachers for dismissal, and New York City will use it to make tenure decisions on novice teachers.

The federal No Child Left Behind law is a further source of pressure. Like a high jump bar set intentionally low in the beginning, the law - which mandates that public schools bring all students up to grade level in reading and math by 2014 - was easy to satisfy early on. But the bar is notched higher annually, and the penalties for schools that fail to get over it also rise: teachers and administrators can lose jobs and see their school taken over.

No national data is collected on educator cheating. Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers - thousands annually - cross the line between accepted ways of boosting scores, like using old tests to prep students, and actual cheating.

"Educators feel that their schools' reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake," said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. "That ends up pushing more and more of them over the line."

Others say that every profession has some bad apples, and that high-stakes testing is not to blame. Gregory J. Cizek, an education professor at the University of North Carolina who studies cheating, said infractions were often kept quiet. "One of the real problems is states have no incentive to pursue this kind of problem," he said.

Recent scandals illustrate the many ways, some subtle, that educators improperly boost scores:

¶ At a charter school in Springfield, Mass., the principal told teachers to look over students' shoulders and point out wrong answers as they took the 2009 state tests, according to a state investigation. The state revoked the charter for the school, Robert M. Hughes Academy, in May.


¶ In Norfolk, Va., an independent panel detailed in March how a principal - whose job evaluations had faulted the poor test results of special education students - pressured teachers to use an overhead projector to show those students answers for state reading assessments, according to The Virginian-Pilot, citing a leaked copy of the report.

¶ In Georgia, the state school board ordered investigations of 191 schools in February after an analysis of 2009 reading and math tests suggested that educators had erased students' answers and penciled in correct responses. Computer scanners detected the erasures, and classrooms in which wrong-to-right erasures were far outside the statistical norm were flagged as suspicious.

The Georgia scandal is the most far-reaching in the country. It has already led to the referral of 11 teachers and administrators to a state agency with the power to revoke their licenses. More disciplinary referrals, including from a dozen Atlanta schools, are expected.

John Fremer, a specialist in data forensics who was hired by an independent panel to dig deeper into the Atlanta schools, and who investigated earlier scandals in Texas and elsewhere, said educator cheating was rising. "Every time you increase the stakes associated with any testing program, you get more cheating," he said.


That was also the conclusion of the economist Steven D. Levitt, of "Freakonomics" fame and a blogger for The New York Times, who with a colleague studied answer sheets from Chicago public schools after the introduction of high-stakes testing in the 1990s concluded that 4 percent to 5 percent of elementary school teachers cheat.

Not everyone agrees. Beverly L. Hall, who, as the superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools has won national recognition for elevating test scores, said dishonesty was relatively low in education. "Teachers over all are principled people in terms of wanting to be sure what they teach is what students are learning," she said.

Educators ensnared in cheating scandals rarely admit to wrongdoing. But at one Georgia school last year, a principal and an assistant principal acknowledged their roles in a test-erasure scandal.

For seven years, their school, Atherton Elementary in suburban Atlanta, had met the standards known in federal law as Adequate Yearly Progress - A.Y.P. in educators' jargon - by demonstrating that a rising share of students performed at grade level.

Then, in 2008, the bar went up again and Atherton stumbled. In June, the school's assistant principal for instruction, reviewing student answer sheets from the state tests, told her principal, "We cannot make A.Y.P.," according to an affidavit the principal signed.

"We didn't discuss it any further," the principal, James L. Berry, told school district investigators. "We both understood what we meant."

Pulling a pencil from a cup on the desk of Doretha Alexander, the assistant principal, Dr. Berry said to her, "I want you to call the answers to me," according to an account Ms. Alexander gave to investigators.

The principal erased bubbles on the multiple-choice answer sheets and filled in the right answers.

Any celebrations over the results were short-lived. Suspicions were raised in December 2008 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which noted that improvements on state tests at Atherton and a handful of other Georgia schools were so spectacular that they approached a statistical impossibility. The state conducted an analysis of the answer sheets and found "overwhelming evidence" of test tampering at Atherton.

Crawford Lewis, the district superintendent at the time, summoned Dr. Berry and Ms. Alexander to separate meetings. During four hours of questioning - "back and forth, back and forth, back and forth," Dr. Lewis said - principal and assistant principal admitted to cheating.

"They both broke down" in tears, Dr. Lewis said.

Dr. Lewis said that Dr. Berry, whom he had appointed in 2005, had buckled under the pressure of making yearly progress goals. Dr. Berry was a former music teacher and leader of celebrated marching bands who, Dr, Lewis said, had transferred some of that spirit to passing the state tests in a district where schools hold pep rallies to get ready.

Dr. Berry, who declined interview requests, resigned and was arrested in June 2009 on charges of falsifying a state document. In December, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation. The state suspended him from education for two years and Ms. Alexander for one year.

Dr. Lewis, now retired as superintendent, called for refocusing education away from high-stakes testing because of the distorted incentives it introduces for teachers. "When you add in performance pay and your evaluation could possibly be predicated on how well your kids do testing-wise, it's just an enormous amount of pressure," he said.

"I don't say there's any excuse for doing what was done, but I believe this problem is going to intensify before it gets better."
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PHOTO SIDEBAR: Karren Bailey, center, and Joan Anderson, right, Norfolk, Va., school officials, discuss an inquiry.
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PHOTO SIDEBAR: Cheat Sheet -- Articles in this series will examine cheating in education and efforts to stop it. Dianne Edwards, top, and Tonia Bush, principal and assistant principal of a school near Houston, resigned in a scandal.
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Jerry P. Becker

Valda Shipp

Allegedly, Mrs. Lathan purposely came to the building late in the afternoon to remove Mrs. Shipp from her position, I find that quite interesting and believe proper protocol would have been to meet with her after hours. I understand that Mrs. Shipp has two weeks before any termination would come into effect.

I confused schools where Valda taught. It was of course at Franklin and I did visit her and was welcomed to come back at any time. Valda has two boys from a previous marriage. One just graduated from college and one just graduated from high school.

It is easy to take pot shots at someone on a blog site without letting readers know who you are. I will no longer accept "anonymous attacks". Give your name or your comment will not appear on my site.

Thanks you and I stand behind Mrs. Shipp for the same reason I voted for Jeff Lickiss for #150 school board. I know Jeff to "stand up and be counted" While Mr. Crawford is a nice person, so was my mother and I would have wanted her to sit on this school board. The system needs people who can tell it like it is. Why do you think the perception and reality of administration and of the #150 system causes so many kids to line up for Charter Schools while others move out?

The community at large does not want to pay 54% of their property taxes to baby sit kids. Some speak of "compassion" which has become an over-used term in a society threatened by outside threats that are real.

The Collapse of Discipline and Respect

It's general, not just in the schools and streets but in the homes of rich, middle income and poor. I blogged on this subject before, "You Can do What you Want to do" 6/20/07; "Spanking in Schools", 8/20/08; "Disrespect Revisited", 11/20/07; "Bad Decisions Have Created Bad Schools", 8/02/06; "Strictness Isn't the Same as Being Mean", 8/02/06; "Why We're Reluctant to Reprimand Other People's Children", 7/27/06; "Shift the Blame", 2/28/06; "What's Ahead for Your County (Peoria)", 3/04/06 and other blogs on disrespect and lack of discipline enforcement.

I write this article because I know Mrs. Valda Shipp believed that schools and classrooms get quickly out of hand once the "kids" figure out the teacher, principal administration and boards weaknesses. As far as I know, she never let that happen to the kids under her care and education.

Ever since Dr. Harry Whittaker left the Superintendents job and retired, discipline at #150 has gone down hill in a hurry in too large a % of the school.If the firing of Mrs. Shipp was over discipline problems expect the new @27 million new Glen Oak School to be one of the most costly mistakes made by Ken Hinton and the school board.

Failure to enforce discipline problems have been THE major reason for the decline of the American Public School System. Under any circumstance the district will lose another disciplinarian Principal.

Both Valda and Mark's two daughter work for Mark in his successful insurance business. Both are courteous and friendly.

Valda Shipp Terminated

The former successful Principal at Harrison School and former Glen Oak Principal was terminated today by the new District #150 Superintendent. When I visited Harrison while Valda was Principal, I noted the way the kids respectfully presented themselves. I know that Glen Oak was a challenge and that it had gone downhill before Valda arrived.

I consider Valda and her husband Mark, long time friends of mine. Mark indicated that no written reason was given for her dismissal. I can only hope and pray on behalf of the family that outcomes will not appear so bleak for Valda in the future.

Where is Everybody Going?

This front page header appeared in the Journal Star on June 18, 2009. "Census report show Peoria County loses population, while Tazewell and Woodford (Counties) experience increases." "Peoria County population decreased by about 500 people between 2000 and 2007", said the writer. The article quoted reasons (excuses?) by public officials but if you are a consistent reader of my blogs over the past years, I have spelled out the real reasons. Inconsistent leadership, big egos sparking a wave of spending on enhancements people living in other areas can visit without paying what can only be rapidly rising Peoria County and City property taxes. Taxes to pay for what is being built, or has recently been built or is on the "to be built" horizon like the Marriott, the PRM, the new County Nursing Home (you do not need to live in Peoria County to live in the Peoria County Nursing Home), the new $100 to $300 million in mandated new sewer systems, a failing and aged public water system infrastructure, a new Peoria Park District Headquarters, a possible jail expansion and a couple dozen new projects on all public officials wish list such as a Minority Opportunity Center, Eagle Point, redesign of our downtown, interest and principal and interest payments on failed tax-supported projects like Midtown Cub Food and FireFly.

Not to mention the real or perceived reputation of Peoria Public School District #150. And millions for trails that NO DOUBT will cause people to move to Peoria by the hundreds - thousands? While our streets, curbs, highways, sidewalks, etc. are in the worst condition of my memory. And certainly more empty business buildings that I have seen in Peoria in my memory. And City pensions moving out of sight with other public body pensions and health benefits catching up.

The JS writer gathered this information from the U.S. Census Bureau. The new census will give more data but my observations are what growth there is in Peoria is on shrinking farm land in the Northwest sections of the City of Peoria.

Do More Degrees Make Teachers More Effective?

From Dr. Jerry Becker comes this missile. From my own experience many of the people I met in my life had far more degrees and education than I had. Too many lacked a major attribute.

Common sense.

Merle

Will the Real Effective Teacher Please Stand Up?


By Anthony Rebora


What makes some teachers better than others? A new study from the Rand Corp. concludes that, well, it's tough to know [see http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9526/index1.html ]


Abstract: Teacher effectiveness is typically measured by traditional teacher qualification standards, such as experience, education, and scores on licensure examinations. RAND researchers found no evidence that these standards have a substantial effect on student achievement in Los Angeles public elementary, middle, and high schools. Alternative measures of teacher qualifications and different kinds of reward systems might be more effective at improving teacher quality.

The study, which examined data from the Los Angeles Unified School District over a five year period, found that there was little correlation between teacher effectiveness (as measured by student test-score progress) and any particular qualifications or credentials. That includes years of experience, education level attained, or licensure test scores. Even initially failing a licensure exam showed no "statistically significant link" to a teacher's future effectiveness.

So what now? The study suggests that "education experts" may need to "develop alternative measures that will more accurately predict classroom performance." (Better be on the lookout for those.) In the meantime, there's always performance pay: "[I]t might be promising to reward teachers for their performance rather than for qualifications that are not associated with their ability to improve student achievement," the study notes.


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