Look... please stop repeating all the same Republican defenses to Palin as the VP choice and make up your own mind.  Palin is not a maverick pick, she's a token pick for McCain who hopes to get Hillary voters and win an election regardless of whether she is the best choice for the country, but Hillary voters are smarter than that. So much for "Country First" This choice is a blessing for Obama because it contradicts all the arguments that McCain brought up about Obama.. and what Country First is he talking about?  Its interesting to me that there is no diversity at this convention. Why is that? and I'm not talking about the few wealthy black people sprinkled throughout the convention.  America is full of all ethnic backgrounds and cultures but I see none of that represented at this convention.  Maybe its because it doesn't fit into the "values" of the Republican Base.  No one wants to say it but I will... I'd love to hear your responses.

If there is discussion, then we should discuss all of the points of view.

-Evolution

-Christian/Muslim/Jewish creationism (because this is the same story from the same source)

-Hindu creationism

-Inuit creationism

-Aborigine creationism

-Native American creationism

-Chinese creationism

-Greek creationism

-Scientology's theories of how the world was created

-And any others

This should accompanied by a curriculum teaching critical thinking and evaluation, philosophy and world history.

I saw your link, thank you - you don't need to reproduce it.

These are the sweeping generalizations being pushed out of AK and her supporters. Some of us like a whole lot more detail and not just adjectives.

As for the outside DC, sorry - don't buy it when so many quotes from her reflect a totally Alaskan-centric focus. Again, I'm one of 299 million Americans who don't live in AK - I need someone in DC who understands DC.  Being an outsider has more than one connotation and they aren't all positive.

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

to bite -

Hasn't Barack been saying Washington is broken? Perhaps that's why he spent so much time on the campaign trail rather than in the Senate

Who has missed the most votes in the Senate while campaigning? John (since we're apparently on a first name basis with the candidates). Perhaps he thinks by not voting it will reinforce his "maverick" claim.

I'm amused by the efforts of Republicans to attack Obama with arguments that are often worse for McCain and Palin. The more you show me that it's all you've got the more I want to go out and get fitted for a dress for an inauguration ball ;)

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When Barack Obama headed the $160 million Annenberg challenge he turned down math-science grants for Hispanic kids, in favor of giving to essentially political organizations.

Non-partisan source for this issue, please?  Please point to the documents that prove this.

I live in Chicago (in the city, not in the suburbs), I work in education, and this is news to me.

No, actually, I don't make a good argument for school choice - school choice is understood as givign taxpayer dollars to parents to spend as they please on education. I don't believe in that.

Again - willfull ignorance you are playing here Anne - I do not advocate the teaching of religion in public school and that is obvious. What I wrote was that if you want creationism included in a public school curriculum, it would only be considered if it is offered as I described although I still doubt I'd support such a class without scrutinizing how it fit into the entire high school curriculum.

I believe that if you want creationism taught at all, it's either in an elective with all other religions and not in a science class of any type, or its in your parochial or private school that you pay for with your money, not mine.

Did you answer the question about creationsim in parochial schools in AK? Or your top private schools - what do that do?

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

Anne - no - it's not expected if an individual is pursuing a position in a government charged with governing 299 million people outside of AK.  What the quotes of Palin's demonstrate to me is an absence of thought ot aspiration to be in DC or govern 299 million people whose interests may be in direct conflict with Alaskans.

She'll need to work on discussing and devising complete responses to such concerns. I look forward to those.

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

Anne - I'll give the benefit of the doubt to you and just advise you about the Fordham foundation.

It is the most stridently in favor of privitzation of education that exists as a non-profit. I will say, they've been very critical, thank goodness, of the charter schools in Ohio and that gives us hope that as far as trying to develop charter schools as true charters, they have an interest. But their efforts to transform public education into one driven by school choice - in the sense I described earlier, is known to most people who know anything about the foundation.

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

Actually, I have seen an improvement in CPS (Chicago Public Schools) since the 1970's.  I wish I could say that there has been more.  CPS' enormous size (over 400,000 students), the socioeconomic status of its students (2/3rds from lower income families), and the diversity of its population (the students in my local public school speak 25 different languages at home) means that it is also an enormous challenge to manage.  The size of CPS' student population is larger than many American towns. 

This is significant because educational research shows that it is MUCH easier to obtain higher performance in smaller districts, schools and classrooms.  Size is one of our largest challenges.

Adding to this complexity are the long standing tensions between CPS administration and the teacher's union.  And there are faults on both sides.  I think more teachers should be evaluated on their classroom skills and held accountable/fired if they don't measure up, but the union makes this extremely difficult.  On the other hand, the administration does many things to make teachers' work more difficult and doesn't seem to support teachers very strongly.  So teachers feel pulled between parents, kids, principals, and administators with fewer resources and more complexity in their classrooms that more homogeneous suburban schools are blessed with.

Even with our size, diversity and complexity, we have a higher graduation rate than other school districts close to our size, including  Detroit, Baltimore, New York, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Houston.  We have a public high school in the Top 20 of the Greatest US Public High Schools as ranked by Newsweek (and no other school district our size does).  Lower performing schools are being weeded out and closed down while other schools are being reinvigorated and invested in.  

Do we still have problems?  Yes, a district of our and diversity size will always have problem, I imagine.  But we are working pretty hard on many different programs at many different schools in the district to address these.

I think you mention in the original post that you are from Alaska, yes? So I'm interested to know from you, what you think about that specific to Alaska school reform effort.

Parents will not be able to afford private schools even if we had 100% of our taxpayer money given to them to choose as they desire. But as I amsure you know, the primary objection to such suggestions is that it is my money and I do not want my money spent on religious institutions of any kind.  Likewise, geographic realities make such 100% consumer-driven markets untenable as far as providing any semblance of equality in educational opportunity.

Jill
Writes Like She Talks