It's about time. Sometimes Obama gets it right, even if he has the wrong motives.
Barack Obama is ordering that nearly all hospitals allow patients to say who has visitation rights and who can help make medical decisions. But his reason is that he wants to pander to gays and give them equal rights when it comes to their partners.
This is a payoff for an earlier campaign promise Obama made in exchange for the gay vote. Not such an amazing reason, when there are so MANY varieties of reasons for this move. And not only gays will profit.
Couples who were living together have wanted this right for years. And in my case, the majority of my family no longer lives near me. In fact, my siblings all live overseas. So close friends and significant others have taken the place of family many years ago. And this is common in an America where people are constantly on the move. *I* am the mutant, having stayed in Florida for as long as I have.
Sadly, this change of policy is something that only a Democrat would have instituted, which shows how stagnant the Republican party has become.
Crist Makes Another Bad Decision
Despite my earlier belief that Crist couldn't possibly make another boneheaded move, he just vetoed a bill that would make teachers ... *gasp* ... work for their pay and demand job performance based raises.
Wow, that was close! Let's not get carried away! Good thing the unions got in the way, or we might have something in Florida resembling real education.
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3 comments:
"Performance" based pay is a fancy way of saying that teachers who teach at wealthy schools get a pay raise, and everyone else can go screw themselves. Simply basing teacher pay on test scores merely guarantees that teachers lucky enough (or connected enough) to teach in wealthy districts will make more money while having an easier time teaching.
As for tenure... well, actually, I have no problem with elimination of tenure. If you're a good teacher (employee/management politics aside), you'll keep your job. If you're a lousy one, then you dont deserve to. But using test scores to determine teaching quality isnt a very good system. A better system would be to hold principles accountable. Here in Dallas, a lousy teacher can be gotten rid of at the end of the year, but lousy principles tend to stick around for at least three. As usual, though, Management gets the rewards and the power, but none of the consequence.
Saur, wigga please. Get rid of all the black teachers just because they are bad teachers? They took that certification test like 4-times. Give my Homies a break.
I tell you I miss having chicken sandwiches with Charlie at Harvey's. The girls always loved him. Before I come down this summer I'm getting a spray-on tan. Try to control yourself.
Most people under 30 don't believe this, but there really are education methods that work consistently. The modern education establishment doesn't like them, because they aren't wrapped in that touchy-feely-white-cottony crap, but they exist. The Singapore method comes to mind. Phonics. Drill. Basic content building upon itself. Math facts. If you give the students the basics and build along the way, there is no need to teach to the test. Instead, you have different schools of education treating other people's kids like lab rats and resisting all efforts to take accountability. I say first send in Donald Trump to deal with bad teachers, Chuck Norris to deal with bad parents, and then apply merit pay to the survivors.
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