Teacher tenure under severe fire in U.S.

By Trip Gabriel and Sam Dillon, New York Times, January 31, 2011

Governors in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and New Jersey have called for the elimination or dismantling of tenure. As state legislatures convene this winter, anti-tenure bills are being written in those states and others. Their chances of passing have risen because of crushing state budget deficits that have put teachers’ unions on the defensive.

“It’s practically impossible to remove an underperforming teacher under the system we have now,” said Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, lamenting that his state has the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation...
The former school chancellor of Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee, who campaigned against tenure as early as 2007, has made abolishing it a cornerstone of a new advocacy group, Students First, which has advised the governors of Florida, Nevada and New Jersey.

All are Republicans, but Ms. Rhee, a Democrat, insisted that the movement was bipartisan.
“There’s a willingness to confront these issues that has never before been in play,” she said, noting that some influential Democratic mayors, including Cory A. Booker in Newark and Antonio R. Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, have also called for making it easier to dismiss ineffective teachers.
Everyone has been a student in a classroom where a teacher at the front of that classroom should never have enetered the profession. And everyone also knows a horror story about a teacher who, in their view, did not deserve tenure. As a former, now retired, member of the O.S.S.T.F. (the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, the union for high school teachers in Ontario), over a twenty-plus year career in private and public schools in Ontario, I am also aware of the names of teachers who needed to be retired, removed, or terminated. And the reasons are as diverse as are the reasons for supporting a policy of tenure.
First, it is tragic that the American education system is now calling on this deep reservoir of resentment against tenure, at a time when both the performance of students is at an all-time low and the pressures of budget cuts are at an all-time high.Also at an all-time low is the public reputation of labour unions. It is far too easy and far to glib to point the gun at the tenure policy, as one of the most important remedies of the system. It is one of the issues that require address, but certainly not the only one.
While there is research that links student performance to teacher performance, the question of how to evaluate a teacher's performance has been a significant conundrum for decades. Let's look at some of the variables that constitute teacher performance:

• subject knowledge and enthusiasm
• preparation of detailed lesson plans
• outline of specific expectations for students
• classroom management and organization
• capacity and skill to motivate students' learning
• student enrolment and evaluation patterns
• student performance on examinations, tests and assignments
• continuing scholarship and peer leadership
• integration into both the school community and the local neighbourhood
• respect for and from students of all backgrounds, interests and abilities
• mental, emotional and physical health and wellness including the capacity to withstand social and political pressures
• examplary role model for students intellectually, socially, culturally, and relationally

The list, while not to be considered complete, or exhaustive, begs some questions. While each of these qualities has both an objective and a subjective aspect to it, only the objective aspect achieves a standard measurement approach. Certainly, the subjective qualities, and the ranking of each quality in its importance to a specific school principal, board, city, town and perhaps even state or province will vary widely from place to place.
Another variable is the quality of the evaluator(s) and their perspective on the teacher being evaluated and the relative importance of each criterion. There is, and has always been, a significant degree of subjectivity in evaluation of teacher performance.
In the days of provincial examinations for graduating students English essays were submitted to various "markers" at the same ecaluation session, and the grades ranged from A to F on the same essay. Similarly, a teacher's grade will depend on the quality, consistency, reliability and veracity of the evaluation process.
And to reduce the process to some kind of exclusively objective evaluation is to completely miss the point of the exercise.

Mubarak will not run in election in September, 2011

Hosni Mubarak will not run in the upcoming elections in Egypt in September.
In his public, recorded statement, he pledged to the Egyptian people, and to the international leaders, his decision not to run. However, he also indicated that he hopes to remain in office until then, handing off the leadership of the government in a more stable situation than the current unrest.
While referring to the looting and violence that has marked the uprisings, he did not mention the repressive actions of his administration that have so provoked the thousands, if not millions, in the Tahrir Square in Cairo.
There is word that the U.S. dispatched a former ambassador to Egypt under the George H.W. Bush presidency, to convey the decision of the current administration that Mubarak's time as president is over.
Now, we wait for the reactions of the people in the streets of the cities of Egypt, to ascertain the impact of the president's address.

Turkey and Iran support Egypt's protesters

From AlJazeera website, February 1, 2011
Turkey has finally broken its silence over the Egyptian crisis after major newspapers criticised the government for its inexplicable silence on the issue.

Addressing members of his AKP party in parliament, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, has thrown his weight completely behind the protesters in Egypt.
Erdogan appealed to Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president: "You have to listen to the wishes of the people in order to create security and stability. First you must take steps that are good for Egypt. You must take steps that satisfy the people."
Erdogan said on Tuesday that he was putting off a visit to the Egyptian capital of Cairo next week, but would go once Egypt returns to normal.
Turkey is hailed as the only democratic country in the Muslim world.
'Reforms needed'
Erdogan called for anti-government protesters to refrain from violence and protect the country's cultural heritage. "Everyone has the right to fight for freedom, but without violence,” said the Turkish PM.
"You must not forget that the people who oppose you are still human, still your brothers."
He also talked about political reforms in the Middle East. “Our greatest wish in Egypt and Tunisia is that reforms are implemented as soon as possible, but also that peace and security are established,” said Erdogan.
He also underlined Turkey’s priorities towards supporting democratic cause. He said: "I spoke to president Barack Obama. He found it important to hear Turkey's view as a democratic country in the region."
Iran sees 'Islamic Middle East'
Also supporting Egyptian protesters is the government of Iran.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the Foreign Minister, said Iran will offer its support to the protesters in Egypt.
"On our part we are going along with the freedom seekers of the world and support the uprising of the great nation of Egypt. We sympathise with those injured and killed" in the protests, he said.
Iran said on Tuesday the uprising in Egypt will help create an Islamic Middle East but accused US officials of interfering in the "freedom seeking" movement which has rocked the Arab nation.
Salehi, who was officially endorsed by the Iranian parliament on Sunday as foreign minister, said the uprising in Egypt "showed the need for a change in the region and the end of unpopular regimes."
"The people of Tunisia and Egypt prove that the time of controlling regimes by world arrogance (the West) has ended and people are trying to have their own self-determination," said Salehi, who also oversees Iran's controversial nuclear programme.

Jordan's Government removed...this story is like lightning!

From AlJazeera website, February 1, 2011
King Abdullah II of Jordan has sacked his government in the wake of street protests and has asked an ex-army general to form a new cabinet, Jordan's Royal Palace has announced.


King Abdullah's move on Tuesday comes after thousands of Jordanians took to the streets, inspired by anti-government protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Jordanians had been calling for the resignation of prime minister Samir Rifai who is blamed for a rise in fuel and food prices and slowed political reforms.
A Jordanian official said the monarch officially accepted the resignation of Rifai, a wealthy politician and former court adviser, and asked Marouf Bakhit to form a new cabinet.
"[Bakhit] is a former general and briefly ambassador to Israel who has been prime minister before. He's someone who would be seen as a safe pair of hands," Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle East policy studies at London's City University, said.
"I wouldn't see it as a sign of liberalisation. With his previous premiership, he talked the talk of reform but little actually happened," she said.
Protests have spread across Jordan in the last few weeks, with demonstrators blaming corruption spawned by free-market reforms for the plight of the country's poor.
Many Jordanians hold successive governments responsible for a prolonged recession and rising public debt that hit a record $15bn this year in one of the Arab world's smallest economies, heavily dependent on foreign aid.

Glimmer of Hope in new state in Southern Sudan

By Frank Langfitt, NPR website, January 31, 2011
Earlier this week, officials in Southern Sudan announced the preliminary tally for January's referendum on splitting Africa's largest country in two. The results: an avalanche.

Nearly 99 percent voted to secede from the north. In July, Southern Sudan will become the world's newest nation.
Now comes the hard part: building a new state after decades of war.
Road To Progress
The southern Sudanese, with huge help from the United States and many other countries, are trying.
Southern Sudan has about 25 miles of paved roads in an area nearly the size of Texas. By the end of this year, it should have its first paved highway to Uganda. The project is financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development and will cost American taxpayers $200 million over five years.

"Southern Sudan, because of the decades of war, has so little infrastructure," explains Bill Hammink, who overseas USAID in Sudan. "They are really starting construction here, starting from scratch in many ways."
Hammink says the new road will cut the costs of imports from Uganda, on which Southern Sudan depends, and boost trade. That's critical for an economy facing high prices, high unemployment and almost complete dependency on oil.
The goal of the United States and other donors is to prevent the failure of another state in Africa.
"We all know in Sudan during the civil war, 2 million people died, 5 million people at least became refugees," says Ambassador Barrie Walkley, U.S. consul general in Juba, Southern Sudan's capital. "We don't want to see anything like that happening again."
We hear of failed states in Africa frequently, in fact so often that the mind seems to gloss over the details of millions of people who attempt to survive simply "without"....
In this age of tech-communications, there is a considerable lag time between the many glaring and seeminly hopeless needs of those barely registering on our individual and community and national richter scales, and our effective collective responses. The needs seem so great, and so unending that one has to wonder if there is not a need for a global institution to co-ordinate, monitor, generate informatiion and co-ordinate the collection and distribution of funds from as many countries as are willing to offer. Perhaps agencies like UNESCO are already doing some of this work; nevertheless, perhaps its scope needs to be enhanced, or perhaps it needs to be linked to a broader and more substantive agency, along with the IMF, for example, to get serious about the poverty that faces the people of the world wherever they live.
It was only last week that the plutocrats meeting in Davos to discuss the impact of globalization actually mentioned that the poor need to benefit from that initiative. Imagine, the rich starting to think about the poor!
Now there is a piece of news that is worth contemplating. What might be next?

Oil Profits Embarrassing? Not Likely!

From CBC News Website, January 31, 2011
Exxon profit up 53%
The parent also reported Monday, with Exxon saying net income grew 53 per cent in the fourth quarter as oil prices rose and the company increased production.
The largest publicly traded oil company in the world on Monday reported earnings of $9.25 billion US, or $1.85 per share, the highest since its record profit of $14.8 billion in the third quarter of 2008. In the year-ago quarter, Exxon earned $6.05 billion, or $1.27 per share.
Shares of Calgary-based Imperial Oil Limited (The Canadian arm of Exxon) rose more than four per cent Monday after the integrated oil company reported fourth-quarter profits rose by 50 per cent.
Its stock ended trading Monday at $44.65, up $1.95 cents, or 4.6 per cent.
Earnings were helped by higher prices for crude oil, higher retail prices and improvements in refinery operations.
Net income for the three months ended Dec. 31 was $799 million, or 94 cents per share, compared with $534 million, or 64 cents per share, a year earlier.
Analysts polled by Thomson-Reuters were, on average, expecting 65 cents per share.
Revenue was $6.9 billion, up from $5.9 billion and above analyst expectations of $5.9 billion.
Earnings for the full year were $2.2 billion or $2.59 per share, up from $1,579 million in the full year 2009, an increase of 40 per cent.
Imperial, which is majority-owned by Houston-based ExxonMobil, is Canada's largest petroleum refiner and has 1,850 retail service stations across the country.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2011/01/31/imperial-oil-profits.html#ixzz1ChXGXtEOWith the price of oil well above $90 per barrel (CDN), on yesterday's markets, is it any wonder that the world is watching profits like these in the oil industry. While BP suffers from the Gulf of Mexico fiasco, other oil companies are getting richer faster than many other segments of the North American economy.
And for the ordinary motorist, in Canada, at least, yesterday we were paying something like $1.15 per litre, or well above $4 per gallon.
It is the disconnect between these prices and the relatively slow development of alternative energy vehicles that makes one wonder about the relationship between the auto companies and the oil companies.
We are continuously being bombarded by advertising from the oil companies, including Exxon, that they are working vigorously to develop alternative energies, and with profits like these, they should certainly be able to do many different things to continue their profit margins.
There is a kind of resigned inevitability to the attitudes of many ordinary motorists to the news of profits of this magnitude, while we all know that those rising prices will be passed on to the consumer of many goods and services that are depending on that same oil to reach their markets and their customers.
Is this another of the numerous indicators that continue to squeeze the general public, including rising food prices and rising heating costs and rising energy costs...coupled with falling or static wages...leading to an unsustainable equation for many people in many countries?
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2011/01/31/imperial-oil-profits.html#ixzz1ChWmRox9
From CNN Wire Staff, February 1, 2011
Oil giant BP suffered an annual loss for 2010 because of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it announced Tuesday.

It reported a loss of $4.9 billion, but that includes $40.9 billion set aside pre-tax in charges related to the spill.
It will also start paying dividends to shareholders again, it announced. They'll get 7 cents a share for the fourth quarter of 2010.

Muslim Brotherhood: Who? Where? And what role and demands?

By Sonia Verma, Globe and Mail, January 31, 2011
At first, some analysts wrongly assumed the Brotherhood was playing puppet master to the protesters.

Its members are often imprisoned for speaking and its very existence is outlawed. The truth, however, is that the young, Internet-savvy Egyptians who used Facebook and Twitter to mobilize are overwhelmingly secular.
They view the Brotherhood as passé, in some cases part of the very establishment they are fighting to sweep aside. The Brotherhood, meanwhile, was caught off-guard.
Asked why the group didn’t take part in the first massive demonstration which coincided with Police Day, a senior member of the Brotherhood told The New York Times they didn’t want to desecrate a national holiday.
“We should all be celebrating together,” Essam El Erian said. The Brotherhood subsequently issued a flurry of mixed messages. First, they refused to collectively back the protesters, then they condoned individual members to march. Two days later, the Brotherhood called out all of its membership onto the streets. Now they want an official role in any new government....
Mr. Mubarak has made clamping down on the Islamists a major focus for his government. Last week, he denounced them for infiltrating the protests with looters, and accused them of fomenting unrest. But while the Brotherhood is officially banned, it has been quietly allowed to operate within limits for years.

Analysts, as well as those on the street, have begun to ponder an end to the Brotherhood, as well as Mr. Mubarak. They say both forces have historically fed off of each other and would be equally irrelevant if Egypt begins a new chapter.
Brotherhood around the world

Gaza: The Palestinian organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza portion of the Palestinian territories, is officially recognized in the Brotherhood’s charter as its Palestinian branch.
Sudan: Politics in Sudan have long been closely linked to Egypt, and several high-ranking members of Omar al-Bashir’s government in Sudan are Brotherhood members.
Jordan: The Brotherhood-aligned Islamic Action Front party is tolerated by the monarch. The party had the largest number of seats in a toothless parliament dominated by independents until 2010 elections, which they said were unfair and boycotted.
Iraq: The Iraqi Islamic Party, which evolved out of the Brotherhood, was part of government after the 2005 election, but its members have now been split among several parties.
Syria: Membership in the Brotherhood has been a capital offence since 1980, and the movement has been largely underground since being crushed in the 1982 Hama uprising and subsequent massacre that left thousands dead.
Algeria: The Movement for the Society of Peace party, which has its roots in the Brotherhood, is part of the governing coalition.
There are some western sources who claim that AlQaeda and The Muslim Brotherhood are enemies.
There are others, like Richard Clark, formerly a member of the National Security team in Washington, who say that AlQaeda is waiting to establish a government in many of the middle eastern countries that is opposed to the interests of the U.S. Whether that includes the Muslim Brotherhood seems uncertain.
The spectre of a monolithic group of single-minded Islamist states, dependent on the votes of the people for their stablity, all of them speaking and acting with a single voice seems a little remote to this observer. However, the fear generated in the west by the developing story in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and perhaps other countries, given the contempt for the U.S. that is common in the region, is palpable.
As one young Egyptian put it, "The U.S. always sides with the winner, the power winner, and not with the poeple and that's why we hate the U.S."
It is the U.S. umbrella over the state of Israel that is causing must uncertainty in many quarters It appears that one of the issues facing the next several months and years in the Middle East, is the future of the state of Israel, if reports can be believed that Muslims of many stripes and colours do not support the peace treaty between Mubarak and Israel. And the Muslim Brotherhood is alleged to be among those in that camp.
Millions of Muslims, even in different countries, with different governments, could still appear like a tsunami to the relatively small, if effective and certainly intelligent and courageous, government and people of Israel.
And the U.S., along with others, is committed to the peace and security of that country while Iran, for one, as quite possibly others, are publicly and unequivocally committed to the destruction of Israel.
As the rabbi in Montreal whose home was recently vandalized cried, "I do not understand why I am hated for being who I am!"
Neither do we understand why Israel is so hated for being what  and who she is.