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A former Atlanta third grade teacher tearfully testified Monday that she gave in to pressure from an administrator to cheat on standardized tests. Stacey Smith, who taught at Usher-Collier Heights Elementary School, said testing coordinator Donald Bullock dropped off test booklets at the end of a day when students had been taking the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in 2009.

WASHINGTON — Almost a third of this year’s high school graduates who took the ACT tests are not prepared for college-level writing, biology, algebra or social science classes, according to data the testing company released Wednesday. The company’s annual report also found a gap between students’ interests now and projected job opportunities when they graduate, adding to the dire outlook for the class of 2013. “The readiness of students leaves a lot to be desired,” said Jon Erickson, president of the Iowa-based company’s education division. The ACT reported that 31 percent of all high school graduates tested were not ready...

Ex-congressman Jackson is eligible to receive $8,700 dollars per month in disability pay due to his bipolar condition and could receive a partial federal pension of $45,000 per year once he reaches 65. While on the city council, Sandi Jackson had automatic pension contributions of more than $50,000 withdrawn from her pay, even though she chose not to be a member of the city pension fund.

Although disgraced Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. suddenly developed a “mood disorder” as the feds were about to indict him, he qualifies for generous government disability payments because it’s considered a debilitating mental illness. Of interesting note is that Jackson Jr., sentenced this week to 2 ½ years in prison for corruption, never showed any symptoms of a “mood disorder” during his 17 years as a federal lawmaker. The mental illness surfaced abruptly last summer as the congressman, a member of Judicial Watch’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians list, was about to get criminally charged. The feds had been breathing...

Detroit’s bankruptcy and the problems facing its pension funds offer two important lessons to other communities. One is that state and local governments need to do a much better job managing retirement funds. The other is that they should not pre-emptively reduce hard-earned benefits at the first sign of trouble. Several state and local pension systems around the country are under serious stress. Not surprisingly the hardest hit retirement funds are in places devastated by global economic forces like Detroit, as well as inland cities in California like Stockton, which was battered by the real estate collapse and has also...

Looks like Phys-Ed major is the way to go!  h/t Kirby

Many states, especially California and Illinois, have had severe pension underfunding problems for many years. However, new actuarial pension rules will finally force states to admit the problem. Thus, it should not be surprising that talk of "technical bankruptcy" and “service insolvency” is growing. Here are some pertinent ideas from California on the Brink: Pension Crisis About to Get Worse   Moody’s new credit standards for public pensions would nearly double the unfunded liabilities for state and local pension plans in California to $328.6 billion from $128.3 billion. California has the second lowest credit rating at Standard & Poor’s of all 50 states;...

Gaza needs to bring back public hangings, senior court official Khaled el-Batash argued this week in an interview with the local media outlet Filistine. Batash said courts should have their own police, who would implement court rulings by publicly executing condemned criminals. Public executions would serve to deter Gaza residents from serious crime, he argued. Hamas has instituted the death penalty for several crimes, among them murder, rape, drug dealing, and “collaborating” with Israel, a charge applied to those who provide information on terrorist activity that is used to assassinate terrorists or otherwise thwart attacks.

Verizon, the phone company whose disclosure of customer data to the federal government is at the center of the furor over cooperation by technology companies with top-secret national security programs, has offered a precise, clear, but little-noticed public explanation of why it did what it did. The Verizon explanation is not in the vague and cryptic memo the company issued last week after the Guardian exposed its program. It came, instead, in the company’s annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, included in Verizon’s annual report to shareholders.

More Minnesota public employees are staying on the job longer -- a result of the struggling economy and a change in the rules for public workers who have long enjoyed incentives to leave the workforce in their late 50s. Last year, about 60 percent of new retirees from Minnesota's public workforce -- not including public safety workers -- waited until they were 62 or older to retire. Just seven years ago, that figure was 40 percent, according to data from Minnesota's three statewide public pension plans. This trend is expected to accelerate sharply. Within the next decade, there won't be...

Broke Detroit's Pension Fund "Trustees" Use Public Funds To Fund Hawaii Trip Tyler Durden 05/25/2013 12:46 -0400 "When you have city employees, police, and firefighters have taken pay cuts, it doesn't look good," is the somewhat understated response from Detroit's emergency manager to the city's latest debacle. Amid the deepening financial crisis the crumbling region faces, four trustees of its public pension funds spent $22,000 of retirement funds to attend a conference at Waikiki Beach, Honolulu. "It's one of these things we trustees must do to stay on top of the field," is how one of the trustees defended the...

The city of Detroit may be facing a deepening financial crisis but that hasn't stopped four trustees of its public pension funds from spending $22,000 of retirement system funds to attend a conference in Hawaii this week. One well-attended session covered how to avoid front-page scandals. According to presenter Lydia Lee, a pension attorney from Oklahoma, the session touched on a topic familiar back in Detroit: The indictment this spring of two former city pension officials for an alleged $200 million bribery and kickback scheme, in a case that will come to trial next March.

President Obama and his administration now find themselves in the middle of not one but two tough situations: the tragic killing of four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of tea-party and other conservative groups. At best, they are cases of bad mishandling and embarrassment; at worst, they rise to the level of legitimate and consequential scandals. At this point, the significance of each is more in the eye of the beholder. Liberals and Democrats tend to de-emphasize both affairs, while many conservatives and Republicans think that each rises to the level...

The public paid limited attention to last week’s congressional hearings on Benghazi. Fewer than half (44%) of Americans say they are following the hearings very or fairly closely, virtually unchanged from late January when Hillary Clinton testified. Last October, 61% said they were following the early stages of the investigation at least fairly closely. The national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted May 9-12 among 1,000 adults, finds that Americans are deeply split over how both the administration and congressional Republicans are handling the situation. Four-in-ten (40%) say the Obama administration has generally been dishonest when it comes to...

NEW YORKA New York City public elementary school has adopted an all-vegetarian menu, serving kids tofu wraps and veggie chili. Public School 244 is the first public school in the city to go all-veggie. The animal-welfare group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says it might be the first all-veggie public elementary school in the nation. Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott says he's proud of the "trailblazing" school. He ate the new food with children on Tuesday.

Four Pittsburgh firefighters are suing seven companies that manufacture fire trucks or sirens, claiming they've lost hearing due to the blaring sirens. (snip) They're claiming that Mack Trucks Inc., Seagrave Fire Apparatus LLC and five other firms "knew or should have known the products ... were inherently dangerous, defective and hazardous to human hearing." The men claim they've suffered irreversible hearing loss "due to exposure to the intense noise." The firefighters are seeking unspecified monetary damages

Private religious schools perform better than public schools, and public charter schools performed no better than regular public schools, according to a new study by William Jeynes, professor of education at California State University at Long Beach and senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton. Jeynes spoke Monday with The Christian Post about the study. He found that religious, mostly Christian, school students were a full year ahead of students who attend public and charter schools. The results of his research were recently published in vol. 87, issue 3 of the Peabody Journal of Education in an article titled,...

EditorÂ’s Note: Graphic descriptions follow (You were warned). WhatÂ’s that you say about sequestration and consequences of it? Apparently Barack Obama talks about sequestration pains, while he and his family is indulging in vacations at our expense, but thereÂ’s more. In light of the current cases concerning sodomites at the Federal lever seeking to undermine and redefine marriage, the Obama administration is spending $350 million to indoctrinate children sexually. While the White House says sequestration has eliminated funds for children touring the White House, President Obama has no problem spending $350 million federal tax dollars for sexual indoctrination programs starting...

As a 15 year old, I never imagined my activism in politics would translate into controversy for me at school. My name is Benji Backer and I attend a public high school in Appleton, Wisconsin. I have always supported the public school system and plan to do so for the rest of my life. Many Americans who stand up for the public school system and the unions believe there is no attempt to sway opinion or that students with opposing beliefs are singled out. Unfortunately, experiences I have had with harassment and bullying prove that wrong. This is a timeline...

Working for the public good has also worked well for one California county administrator’s bank account. According to reports by several newspapers, Alameda County, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is paying its County Administrator Susan Muranishi, north of $400,000—for life. This includes a generous base salary of $301,000, plus taxpayer-funded deferred pension plans paid for by the county. The pension accounts are set by a formula that multiplies years of service by 2 to 3 percent of the top salary to calculate the benefit, the San Jose Mercury News reports. With 38 years of service under her belt, the...