NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Charter School Advantage In New York City, some students are making huge achievement gains.

Posted By on August 8th, 2016

Mayor Bill de Blasio is touting a huge improvement in New York City student test scores this year as evidence that his progressive policies are succeeding. “I can’t stop smiling,” gushed schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. Their dirty little secret is that charter schools are driving the city’s academic progress.

According to new state testing data, citywide student proficiency increased this year on average by 7.6 percentage points in English and 1.2 percentage points in math to 38% and 36.4%, respectively. Some have attributed the city’s gains, which mirror those statewide, to shorter and easier tests.

Yet strikingly, proficiency at charter schools this year jumped 13.7 percentage points in English and 4.5 percentage points in math to 43% and 47%, respectively. In other words, charter students have improved by two to four times as much as the citywide average.

A recent analysis by Families for Excellent Schools found that New York City charters, whose student populations are more than 90% black and Hispanic, raised their local community school district proficiency rates by 13%. More than 70% of charters outperformed local district schools in math and English. Black and Hispanic students who attended charters scored 73% higher than their counterparts at district-run schools. CONTINUE AT SITE

POLITICS Comments turned off

Clinton Short-Circuits the Truth To avoid admitting that she lied, Hillary offers a ‘master class in obfuscation.’ By L. Gordon Crovitz

Posted By on August 8th, 2016

About two-thirds of voters say Hillary Clinton isn’t “honest or trustworthy,” which in most elections would be decisive. With so much media focus on Donald Trump, it’s worth parsing Mrs. Clinton’s most recent efforts to persuade voters of her honesty.

Late last month, Fox News’s Chris Wallace played clips of Mrs. Clinton’s statements over the past year about her unsecure home email server. Then he said to her: “After a long investigation, FBI Director James Comey said none of those things that you told the American public were true.”

Mrs. Clinton’s reply: “Director Comey said that my answers were truthful.”

Not even close. Mrs. Clinton denied sending or receiving classified email, but Mr. Comey told Congress: “There was classified material emailed.” Mrs. Clinton claimed there was “nothing marked classified”; Mr. Comey testified: “That’s not true.” He cited more than 100 classified emails, 36 of them top secret. “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation,” Mr. Comey said.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Judea and Samaria in a Region of Failed States by David P. Goldman

Posted By on August 8th, 2016

With the collapse of several artificial nation-states created by the victors of the First World War, the entire region from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf has entered a prolonged period of instability. The Syrian and Libyan states have ceased to exist; the Iraqi State is near collapse; the Lebanese state is hostage to Iran; the Turkish state has just survived a military coup and is descending into authoritarian rule; and Saudi Arabia will not be able to buy domestic peace much longer if oil prices remain low. Egypt survived a revolution and counterrevolution to return to the status quo of military rule, but depends on subsidies from the Gulf States.

Non-state actors now occupy the political and military space left vacant by the collapse or decline of nation-states. That is emphatically true in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and increasingly true in Turrkey. The most fanatical and determined of these actors play the decisive role—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria and the Iran-backed Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. Ethnic and sectarian divisions that were contained by the region’s autocracies have turned into vehicles for existential war.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Thought of the Day – “Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump” Sydney Williams

Posted By on August 8th, 2016

The Seven Social Sins, as given in a sermon by Frederick Lewis Donaldson

at Westminster Abbey, London, March 20, 1925

“Wealth Without Work

Pleasure Without Conscience

Knowledge Without Character

Commerce Without Morality

Science Without Humanity

Worship Without Sacrifice

Politics Without Principle”

The above quote seems appropriate when meanness and partisanship have replaced respect and collaboration, when cronyism substitutes for service. Nowhere are these characteristics so apparent as with the two candidates our major parties have chosen as their standard bearers.

It is why so many despair at our options. The world is a dangerous place. Capitalism, which has done more to lift people out of poverty over the past two hundred years, is under siege. Western economies are underperforming. Political correctness is pervasive. Divisiveness is ubiquitous: between rich and poor, black and white, Muslims against Christians and Jews, liberals versus conservatives. The list goes on. And who have we nominated to address these problems? A loud-mouthed real estate developer and TV personality and a scheming, duplicitous politician whose lies and corruption exceed anything we’ve seen.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

RUTHIE BLUM: THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION

Posted By on August 8th, 2016

The politics of educationhttp://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16895 Leave it to the Palestinian Authority and the leaders of Israel’s haredi community never to miss an opportunity to hinder the populations they supposedly represent. On Sunday, after the announcement that extra funding was going to be funneled into east Jerusalem schools that offer the Israeli curriculum, the PA Education Ministry […]

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The “Anti-Normalization” Campaign and Israel’s Right to Exist by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on August 8th, 2016

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8656/anti-normalization-israel For many Arabs and Muslims, the conflict with Israel is not about a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines. These opponents have no intention of recognizing Israel’s right to exist, even if it allows for the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. A leading […]

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Coup-Weary Turkey: Directionless and Insecure by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on August 8th, 2016

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8618/turkey-coup-direction The more Ankara feels distant to Washington, the more it will want to feel closer to Moscow. As Western leaders call on President Erdogan to respect civil liberties and democracy, Erdogan insists he will consider reinstating the death penalty: “The people have the opinion that these terrorists [coup-plotters] should be killed. Why should I […]

POLITICS Comments turned off

Naturally, Dhimmi Gen. Allen Supports Hillary by Diana West

Posted By on August 7th, 2016

Ret. Marine Gen. and former ISAF commander John R. Allen, who spoke for Hillary Clinton at the DNC convention last week, has now taken on the role of Clinton campaign surrogate to attack Donald Trump for having “no credibility.”

Let’s talk about credibility — Allen’s.

Allen is a lot more than square shoulders and four stars. He is 1) a perfect exemplar of dhimmitude, an Islamic apologist extraordinaire, one who has even rationalized the murders of his own men by Muslim “insider attacks” (see below); 2) Allen stands as tall as a moral midget, “exonerated” by a Pentagon IG in much the same way as Hillary Clinton was “exonerated” by the FBI.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Should America Remain Globally Engaged? By Richard Baehr

Posted By on August 7th, 2016

A review of: America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century By Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, Oxford University Press, 2016

Two Dartmouth Professors of Government, Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, have written a timely book examining whether it would be wise for the United States to continue with the basic global strategy it has pursued since the end of World War 2 — what the authors call “global deep engagement.” This strategy has been called into question not only by other academics, who propose an alternative strategy of American retrenchment, but also by several prominent candidates for President this year, including the Republican standard-bearer Donald Trump, the Democratic runner-up, Senator Bernie Sanders, and several of the earlier Republicans contenders. President Barack Obama has to some extent retreated from the deep engagement approach in some areas, while adhering to it in others.

To their credit, the authors make their case independent of commentary on the candidates, and stick to an argument for why the long term strategy is still a suitable one for American foreign policy practitioners.

The deep engagement strategy, according to the authors has three principal components:

Managing the external environment in key regions (Europe, Asia, the Middle East) to reduce near and long-term threats to U.S. national security,
Promoting a liberal economic order to expand the global economy and maximize domestic prosperity,
Creating, sustaining and revising the global institutional order to secure necessary interstate cooperation on terms favorable to U.S. interests.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Daryl McCann :The Audacity of Crooked Hillary

Posted By on August 7th, 2016

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2016/08/audacity-crooked-hillary/ The Clintons have acquired a vast personal fortune since leaving the White House but not from the billions bestowed upon their eponymous foundation by Russians, Colombians, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Indians and Africans. The scam is a little more sophisticated than that Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash (2015) and the documentary (2016) of the same name […]