A couple of years ago, while my brother and I were spending time with our sick mother, my kids were bored, though understood the importance of what we were doing. My son and step-daughter both saw it as the most boring trip to California we ever made. I agree, but we had to fight to break our mother out of a corrupt healthcare scam cycle where she was shuttled from one facility to another based ONLY on how much they could get from her insurance and Medicare and not on what her care required. But that is another story. Bottom line from that is if you have an elderly family member, get help finding the right care from them and DON'T TRUST the care facilities AT ALL. And if you need help out in California, I have the name of the person you need because he helped us starting on that trip.

But I diverge. My kids were bored. So my son, Jacob, started singing what was then his favorite song: Tom Lehrer's Elements Song (later on his favorite music was Woodie Guthrie songs...now it's all Pokemon). And my step-daughter filmed it with her phone (HA...that beats the Star Trek communicators...they didn't have a camera in those) and posted it on YouTube:

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For over a generation, Republicans and their conservative allies have been screaming about "the sanctity of marriage" and how government must step in to preserve and protect it. This, they claim, is especially true with regard to raising children.

The problem is, they have no idea what they are talking about.

From 2002 to 2007, a period when Republicans controlled just about everything, the percentage of births to unmarried women in this country rose by 26%, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Clearly, Bristol Palin is not an anomaly; even women in their 20s and 30s are choosing to have babies out of wedlock.

This is not a new trend; births to unmarried women have been rising for decades. But it is clear that the Republican screed on this subject is mere words, and that everything they try in the phony name of morality is worthless.

This is awesome! Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is co-sponsoring the DREAM Act of 2009:

According to Gillibrand, estimates indicate 50,000 to 65,000 students would benefit from the DREAM Act each year.

The Senator says the DREAM Act would create better opportunity for New York's immigrant students in two ways:

First, it would repeal an outdated section of immigration law that discourages states from providing in-state tuition and other higher education benefits to New York students born outside the U.S., and without legal immigration status.

The bill would also allow students who are eligible for the DREAM Act to qualify for conditional permanent resident status which would put them on a path to citizenship upon acceptance to college, graduation from high school or being awarded a G.E.D.

Under this plan, students would have six years to obtain this temporary status, during which the student must have graduated from a two-year college or vocational college, studied for at least two years toward a bachelor's or higher degree, or served two years in the U.S. military. Any student who commits a crime or serious misconduct would not be eligible.  read more »

[I hope this post about the changes to No Child Left Behind proposed by Congress proves interesting. It was originally posted on Edwize and written by Edwize blogger Maisie.]

Lest you think that the debate over reauthorizing No Child Left Behind is hard-to-follow/wonkish/a tempest-in-a-teapot or anything like that, note that Jonathan Kozol today entered his 76th day of a partial hunger strike over NCLB.

In protest over that law, Kozol, the widely-published, passionate advocate of educational equality, has taken himself into the realm of serious danger.

He's sick of NCLB. Mandating math and reading tests and punishing schools and students who do not meet their targets is "turning thousands of inner-city schools into Dickensian test-preparation factories," Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page quoted Kozol as saying. It has "dumbed down" school for poor, urban kids and created "a parallel curriculum that would be rejected out-of-hand" in the suburbs.  read more »

[I hope this post about the changes to No Child Left Behind proposed by Congress proves interesting. It was originally posted on Edwize and written by Edwize blogger Jackie Bennett in response to a New York Times editorial.]

Every corner of the educational community has protested the consequences of No Child Left Behind, including that the law has narrowed the curriculum and unfairly penalized schools already making progress.

In spite of that, an editorial in the NY Times defends the status quo. Referring to proposed NCLB revisions, the Times complains that the changes will "allow schools to mask failure in teaching crucial subjects like reading and math by giving them credit for student performance in other subjects."

Yet, just one paragraph earlier the Times has this to say: "Faced with poorly educated workers at home — especially in science — American companies are increasingly looking abroad."  read more »