TEACH TO THE TEST FAILS

America is not producing Rodans.

America's school children are being cheated. They are not learning to think. They are being taught to pass standardized tests.

Bush 2 recognized there was a problem in teaching and evaluating the quality of teaching. Prior to his election, minorities and poor whites were being passed for social reasons. Get the kids through the system and out.

Bush 2 signed into law in 2002 the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In good faith, he thought it was the solution to the problem. He was wrong. Fourteen years later, the educational process is worse rather than better.

NCLB required standardized testing. From pre-K to 12th grade. In three areas only. Reading, math and science. Each State would be responsible for devising its own standardized tests. Most were strictly multiple choice. A few with essays added.

Schools would be evaluated based on the results. Teachers inadvertently were evaluated also. If the school did badly on a standardized test, it followed that the teachers must have taught poorly.

Some States required one standardized test in reading per semester. Others up to nine.

Recognizing that test results were being viewed the hall mark of competent teaching, administrators and teachers began teaching to the test. In other words, the test was everything. All else was forgotten. Like other courses such as Social Studies and the arts. 

It became drill and kill. Teach students how to pass a multiple choice test in the three areas.

Practice/drill sessions became common place. Whereas generally one to nine tests were scheduled per semester, it now became as many as fifty plus. Over the course of the full school year, practice testing in excess of 100 tests.

Big numbers. Left no time to teach students to think. Teaching to the test was a rote way to learn. Like knowing the alphabet and being able to repeat it, counting to 100, etc.

The for real tests were required to be done on a computer. Ergo, the practice drills were also done on computers. Which meant that the computer room was no longer available for anything but testing. There was no time for students to otherwise use the computers.

Children were not being challenged. Even the smartest became bored with the drilling.

Many got the jitters. Fear. Especially the younger ones. It was heaped upon them by certain teachers who stressed the importance of the test and that the kids had to do well. Vomiting during the test became a problem. So much so that the Stanford-9 examination came with instructions on what to do with the test booklet in case a student vomited on it.

It did not take long to recognize that test scores were being used to reward and punish, in one fashion or another, schools and teachers. Some schools and teachers became encouraged to cheat the system for their own gain.

Some teachers began erasing and correcting answers. Answers on multiple choice questions were made with a # 2 pencil.

The teachers in one Atlanta school held weekend pizza parties during which student answers were corrected.

In 2015, 11 employees of a particular school district were convicted by the federal government of racketeering for changing answers.

Some administrators and teachers are guilty of gaming the results. Low performing students are encouraged to stay at home on school days. Or even worse, counseled to quit school or be suspended before the test is administered.

Money comes into play. The U.S. Government Accountability Office claims standardized testing is cheap. No burden on States or school districts. The Office says the cost per student for test purposes is $2 a year. The tests are computerized. Take one hour. Graded by a computer. The government claims costs are minimal.

Don't tell that to Texas or Florida. In 2003, Texas' education budget was $9 million. In 2012, $88 million. Florida spends an average of $250 million yearly to an outside firm to administer Florida's Comprehensive Assessment Test. 

Eighty six percent of Texas' school districts report standardized tests are "strangling our public schools."

China produces some of the smartest graduates in the world. The federal government uses China as an example of standardized testing being successful. 

Such was once thought so. By China itself. No more. China is in the process of departing drill and kill. Chinese educators today admit standardized testing has produced only "competent mediocrity."

The Obama administration has become anti-standardized testing. In 2014, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the testing was "sucking the oxygen out of the room." He promised to do something about it.

So far, nothing has been done. The problem is politics. Present day Republicans say the States should control education and that the Education Department should be abolished. Obama says the federal government has to have a hand in it. 

The problem is money again. The States do not have the money to properly run an educational system. History tells us so. The money has to come from the federal government. He who pays the fiddler calls the tune.

At some time since the NCLB was passed, the federal government provided that parents could opt their children out of the standardized testing program. Parents country wide were complaining. There was to be no adverse impact on any of the students opted out. 

Thousands of parents have opted their children out. To avoid the useless testing and pressure it placed on them.

One thing the federal government has for sure are too many laws and regulations interpreting them. One of the problems involving NCLB and opting out reared its head in a Manatee County, Florida court room last friday. The Judge, Karen Gievers. I sense her to be a defender of children.

Federal law permits opting out. Several parents opted their children out in Manatee County. The students were third graders. Some honor students.

The counties are the bad guys. The counties say because the children did not take the standardized tests, they cannot be promoted. They must be held back. The fact that some are honor students is immaterial.

Everything is money.

Federal law says ninety five percent of students must take the standardized tests. In order to qualify for federal funds. Less than 95 percent have taken the test in many school districts over the years with no repercussion.

There is an older law referred to as the retention law. I am not sure if a federal or State one. I suspect State. Which ever, immaterial.

The retention law says if a student does not take the standardized tests, the student will be retained. Fancy for not passed.

Several counties fear they will lose funding. Note again the retention law was passed before the opting out one. I would assume opting out superseded retention. Note again also that the 95 percent has not been met by many school districts nation wide over the years with no penalty applied.

This is the first time retention has been utilized. It is academic class achievement versus retention. Recall, several of the students were honor ones. All had passing grades otherwise.

The counties wanting to hold the children back are counties who are impacted if school funds come up short. 

The Florida Department of Education takes the position that opting out never mandated that students be held back.

Judge Gievers has indicated she will rule this week. She may already have ruled by the time this column gets to press. I suspect she will rule with the students and chastise the attorneys against them. It's a for shame thing.

During the hearing last friday, several of the students testified. Eight to 9 year olds. Each cried. One mother, also. The mother of an honor student. Through her tears, she could be heard saying her daughter was a good girl and she and her husband good parents.

All these happenings as a result of No Child Left Behind. Hard to believe. The law an admirable try. Much flowing from it a disgrace.

MOMMY, I'M HUNGRY

Venezuela. Once one of the richest countries. Its oil reserves the third largest in the world. 

By the mid 2000s, everyone was eating. Average consumption 2,790 calories a day. Thanks to Hugo Chavez. Venezuela's President from 1999 to 2013.

Chavez was a SOCIALIST among socialists. He wanted everything for the people. With the people making minimal contribution to paying for things. The government would pay.

Oil was big. Chavez smarter than the oil companies. He nationalized the oil companies and other foreign industries. with the stroke of a pen. All profits then went to the Venezuelan people.

Chavez's goal was to expand access to food, housing, health care, and education. He initially succeeded in all areas.

Eventually however, Chavez's extreme socialism began to falter. A society cannot be the end all to all. Especially when few contribute in any significant degree to their own support. 

Oil revenues fell. The high oil profits of 2003-2007 became a thing of the past. It was oil profits that sustained Chavez's socialistic society.

Food a perfect example. Chavez fed everyone. Till the ceiling caved in.

Chavez had the price of all food stuffs set with a ceiling. The people paid no more. The government picked up the tab for the rest. The rest equating to significantly more than the people could directly pay.

Literally, everyone got fat.

Most of the food was not grown in Venezuela by Venezuelan farmers. It was imported. The oil profits were more than sufficient to pay the cost.

When things started getting bad, Chavez got sick. The two not related. The last four years of his life Chavez was fighting to save his life and Venezuela's at the same time.

He failed.

Chavez died in 2013 from a massive heart attack and advanced colon cancer. Venezuela had become corrupt. He had opposition. There are those who believe Chavez was murdered.

Nicolas Maduro became President. Inept and incompetent from day one. A puppet of the military. The generals wanted to rule Venezuela. From 2013-2016, they succeeded. Today, the generals run everything. They hold all cabinet posts. They hold Maduro in their hands. He dances to their tune.

The government is corrupt. The generals are eating, economically and food wise. They want for nothing. As does the puppet Maduro. And a handful of high level civilians.

At the same time, the people starve.

The first inkling of a problem came in 2013. Maduro had been President less than a year. Venezuela ran out of toilet paper. Once a person is without, the realization hits home that toilet paper is a necessity of life.

There is still a shortage of toilet paper.

Store shelves had less and less food. Eventually no food. People waiting in lines for hours. When finally in the store, nothing remained for sale.

In 2014, food shortages hit 28 percent. In 2015, 75 percent. Forget the percentages in this year of 2016. Famine has moved in. Maduro has declared a national food crisis.

Food has become precious.

The New York Times described the situation as follows: "Venezuela is convulsing from hunger."

2016 also became the year that water became in poor supply. 

Inflation is expected to exceed 700 percent by November.

There is no work. Factories cannot operate. There is no electricity. Maduro provides electricity 1-2 days a week. Maintenance has been neglected thereby causing the inability to produce electricity.

Families need food. People have been forced to extreme measures. 

Last year, garbage was a source of sustenance. However, garbage pails only hold so much food products that last only so long when many are searching. Then a point is reached where there is no garbage. People have nothing or little to eat.

Stealing a neighbor's food came next. Only so much to steal, however. 

This year evidences just how bad things have become.

Home pets, generally dogs and cats, were killed and eaten by families. If a family could not kill such a loved one or could not afford to feed the pet, the pet was dropped off on a highway. There others not fond of the pet would pick it up and take the pet home for dinner. 

Pets are no longer in supply.

Next were the zoos. In the last thirty days. First chickens, rabbits and the like were stolen and eaten. Then larger zoo animals.

Very recently, a Caracas zoo was broken into in the middle of the night. A black stallion was one of the zoo's featured animals. When zoo staff arrived in the morning, all that was left of the horse were its head and ribs.

What next? Hunger goes on at the same time the food supply dwindles even further. Cadavers? I don't know.

To appreciate Mommy, I'm hungry, consider the following.

Families only eat every second day. Some every third. Only one meal. Children included.

Children are malnourished. They faint in class. Some die. Their bodies nothing but skin and bones. The outline of ribs visible. Hands swollen. Skin stuck to bones. Bellies swollen.

Mothers try to make babies sleep till noon to avoid a breakfast of non-existent milk/food.

Whatever is available to eat is fried. With flour. Empty calories. Unhealthy. Nevertheless, adults and children develop bellies. The battle of the bulge. Not a healthy fat, if there is one.

People eat what they can find. What they find is not healthy.

There is a black market. Except for the generals and a handful of people, the others are poor. They cannot afford black market prices. 

Meat. What meat? Most have not eaten meat since last December.

On the rare occasions food is available, the cost for a family of five for bare necessities for a month is $226. The problem is few are working. There is no work. 

$226 is a lot of money. Especially in a society where the average monthly salary of one working is $15 a month

Medicines/hospitals are the same. Not enough of anything.

Diseases such as malaria and mange have returned. These diseases were eradicated years ago. Neither inoculations nor medicines exists. People are once again vulnerable.

Dengue fever a problem. The disease was controlled with medication. No medication means dengue is likely to be a death sentence.

There are no medicines to treat HIV/Aids. Many HIV inflicted are moving into the Aids category because necessary medicines are lacking. 

Hospitals have neither equipment nor medicines. They are filthy. Cleaning products not available. Nor gloves, saline, antibiotics, painkillers, morphine, and anesthesia.

Operations cannot be performed. Not only because of a lack of what is listed in the preceding paragraph. There is no electric power. Therefore, no air conditioning. The risk of bacterial infection becomes too high to operate.

Cockroaches on every floor and every wall.

There is a sick humor to all this. People are dying. There are no coffins. Cannot be manufactured nor imported. No power, no money.

Chavez hated America. He thought Bush 2 was the devil. Recall his sulfur comment before the United Nations.

Chavez was close friends with Fidel Castro and Raul Castro. As is Maduro.

As Castro blamed the United States for everything for fifty years, Chavez and Maduro blame the United States also. Especially Maduro.

Maduro claims the United States caused Chavez's cancer colon by secretly infecting him with cancer. He further claims the people are poor and without food because of Americans. Finally, he keeps his people in line by telling them the United States is preparing to invade. Just as Fidel Castro did.

I am not sure why I wrote about Venezuela this week. Is there a message? A lesson to be learned?

It hits home that here has to be a balance between socialism and liberalism. Both are needed in a society. However, Venezuela went to far to the left. Totally.

Beware of crazy leaders? Maduro is on the crazy side. A nut. Weigh your vote heavily in the November election.

What else, I don't know. I think I wrote this column because it is a tale of sickness and sadness. Everyone should be aware. It could happen anywhere anytime. No nation is immune. Even the United States.

GERMAN PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS

ews were not the only ones persecuted by Hitler. Several other groups also. One being homosexuals.

Note that no Hitler inspired destruction of any group equaled in number those of the Jewish religion. Six million a hard number to equal.

Homosexual numbers were significantly less. German record keeping was not as precise as those for Jews. For that reason the specific number of homosexuals killed or otherwise maimed is unknown.

German dislike of homosexuals was first officially recorded in 1871. Kaiser Wilhelm I, under the guiding hand of Chancellor Bismarck, established the German Empire. Paragraph 175 of the new criminal code outlawed acts of unnatural indecency between men.

From a legal perspective, unnatural indecency was vague enough to be unenforceable. Six years later, the German Supreme court defined the crime as an intercourse like act. 

The language was still vague and indefinite. Arrests and convictions of homosexuals were infrequent.

Now comes Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1900 per his direction, the German Regular Police began compiling lists of suspected homosexual men. The lists became known as pink lists. The pink lists were religiously kept. However, no one paid attention to them till 1932. The eve of Hitler's assumption of power.

Ernst Rohm was one of Hitler's closest supporters and a friend from the early 1920s. 

Rohm was a bully. A tough guy. His followers likewise. He and his followers were also homosexuals. Openly so. Their sexual preference having drawn world wide attention.

Rohm headed up the SA under Hitler. Brownshirters. They carried out Hitler's directions. However with greater frequency began acting as free agents.

The SA grew to three million members. Rohm the leader.

Rohm and his followwers became a threat to Hitler. Directly and indirectly. For political reasons, Hitler needed the support of the Army High Command. Older military types. Generals. They feared Rohm was going to run the military.

The Treaty of Versailles limited the German Army to 100,000 troops. Rohm's SA was not considered part of the German Army. Rohm had three million troops under his command.

Rohm had to go. One of Hitler's closet friends and first supporters. The relationship was of no concern to Hitler.

June 30, 1934 to July 2, 1934, is known as The Night of the Long Knives. Hitler had Rohm and his high level officers assassinated. Shot or hung. Without trial. Rohm was one of the first to go.

Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering became the new power persons supporting Hitler. The SS and Gestapo the significant parts of the power group.

In 1936, Himmler created a special department of the Gestapo to deal with homosexuals.

Paragraph 175 was revised to give its words meat. Minimal involvement between men constituted homosexual behavior. Simple looking and simple touching. Homosexuals became so frightened that they stopped acknowledging fellow homosexuals if they saw them on the street.

During the next several years, nearly 100,000 men were arrested under the revised Paragraph 175. The pink lists started in 1900 were taken out of dusty boxes and back rooms to assist in identifying homosexuals.

Understand that Hitler used homosexuality as an excuse to get rid of Rohm and his followers. Rohm's death was not the end of his negativity re homosexuality. It was a popular cause. With the military, the people, everyone. Hitler rode its crest.

In a speech given by Hitler on August 4, 1937, Hitler said ".....homosexuality is actually as infectious and as dangerous as the plague."

Once arrested, conviction was a certainty. The law provided a choice to the guilty party. Castration. Or a long jail sentence. It was felt castration would automatically cure sexual deviance. It guaranteed the victim a shorter sentence.

Some homosexuals never saw a court room. They were immediately hauled off to a concentration camp.

The SS ran the concentration camps. The law empowered the court and camp officials to order castration without the victim's consent.

Homosexual concentration camp inmates were also subjected to involuntary experimentation, mutilation and death by camp doctors experimenting to find a way to cure homosexuality.

Three reasons were given as to why homosexuality had to be dealt with. In reality, merely excuses for poor treatment of homosexuals. The truth lie deeply in German souls. The eternal fear of homosexuals.

The first reason involved society's sexual balance. Germany had lost 2 million men in World War I. Two million more were thought to be homosexuals in the 1930s. Four million men not helping to produce babies.

Result: Fewer babies would be born. Resulting further in the death of a nation. So it was thought. Himmler said: "A people of a good race which has too few children has a one way ticket to the grave....."

The second reason was that homosexuals as a group would be a state within a state. A self serving group. The fear was a come the revolution thing.

Finally, homosexuality was a degeneracy. It threatened the masculinity of Germany. Homosexuals were effeminate and would not be able to fight for the Fatherland.

Homosexuals were poorly treated by guards and other inmates while in concentration camps. It is estimated 60 percent died from brutal treatment.

In 1940, Himmler directed that when homosexuals were released from jail, they were to go directly to a concentration camp. No passing Go.

World War II ended on May 8, 1945. You would assume the Allies would free the homosexuals as they did the Jews and other concentration camp prisoners. No. It was not to be. The Allies transferred the homosexuals to German prisons to serve the balance of their sentences under Paragraph 175.

In June 1956, Germany passed a Reparation Law for Victims of National Socialism. Those who had been in concentration camps were given a certain amount of money. The law clearly disqualified homosexuals from such compensation.

Paragraph 175 remained in force and effect till 1994 when it was abolished following the reunification of East and West Germany.

It was not until 2002 that Germany did something to fully recognize the injustice done to homosexuals. The German Parliament pardoned all homosexuals convicted by the Nazis under Paragraph 175.

The shame of it all is that it took from 1871 to 2002 to correct things. To recognize the wrong done homosexuals. Especially under Hitler. One hundred thirty one years.

I cannot understand how the Allies in 1945 sent homosexuals to prison rather than home. To finish their Paragraph 175 sentences. The good guys at the time, the Americans, English, French and Russians, were blind to the wrong being done.

I suspect intentionally blind.  Homosexuality was abhorred by "normal" people. They didn't care.

Look how far most societies have come. Same sex marriage. Same sex partners permitted to adopt. Even into transgenderism.

It took a long time.

Germany is not a stable society. Probably never has been. Enjoys ruling with an iron fist. Authoritarian. Think of its leaders. Even today's. Merkel is a hard ass.

Same sex marriage is still not legal in Germany. They are at the civil partnership stage. Called a Registered Life Partnership.

Interestingly, the German Supreme Court for several years has been suggesting the German Parliament amend the law to permit same sex marriage. Apparently German law does not permit their Supreme Court to rule directly on the issue. The issue has come up. The Parliament has consistently refused to approve same sex marriage.

At the same time, Germany has legalized prostitution. Berlin is the whore house of the world. 

I don't understand.

It is my opinion the German people remain intolerant and non accepting of homosexuals.

One cannot research and write an article of this nature without the issue of whether Hitler was a homosexual arising.

Most historians say no.

The issue of whether Hitler and Rohm engaged in homosexual play in the 1920s also comes into question. 

Historians suggest a strong perhaps.

Most historians, with few exceptions, believe Hitler was a ladies man. He had many girl friends before Eva Braun. He kept them under cover so as not to affect his political image. A typical politician.

It is claimed Hitler loved Eva Braun. His girl friend/companion for 13 years before their marriage.

Hitler never married till the last day of his life. Recall, he married Eva Braun and 24 hours later killed her and poisoned himself. 

Historians tell us Hitler never married prior to the Braun episode because he felt a wife and children would be too much baggage to carry. For a man who was seeking to conquer the world. He could not effectively lead if he had to be concerned with a family.

We have had a first Catholic President, a first black President, and soon perhaps a first woman President. The day will come when we will have our first homosexual President. 

Already many lower courts are presided over by homosexual and lesbian judges. I suspect it will be a first United States Supreme Court Justice before a President.