QUOTE OF THE DAY
Chicago Tribune: How a new school plans to incorporate ‘principles of the lean startup’
Bennett Day School, which opens late this month in Chicago’s West Loop, plans to offer the self-guided Reggio Emilia learning approach to students in early childhood through middle school. Founders say the school will serve children ages 2 to 6 and that, by 2016, a campus will open on West Grand Avenue and serve students through eighth grade. The school was founded by private equity investor Cameron Smith, former Francis Parker teacher Kate Cicchelli and Josephinum Academy director of finance Shuchi Sharma. Smith, the CEO, explains how the school aims to foster an entrepreneurial mindset.
Washington Post: 50 ways schools ‘cheat’ on high-stakes standardized tests
In March 2013, Atlanta Schools superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 other educators and administrators were charged in a 65-count indictment on racketeering charges in what prosecutors say was a conspiracy to cheat on high-stakes standardized tests. Those 35 were just a fraction of the more than 175 principals and teachers found by state investigators in 2011 to have cheated to make it seem as if students were doing better on tests than they actually performed because the scores affected the adults’ jobs.
Many of those educators have been fired or quit since, and 21 pleaded guilty — and received probation — to an array of charges including making false statements to authorities. (You can read scathing excerpts from the original indictment here.) Now a dozen of the indicted educators are going on trial, though Hall, who prosecutors say was the mastermind behind the cheating enterprise, won’t be one of them. Hall, who is suffering from breast cancer, won an indefinite delay in her trial from a judge.
The start of the proceedings for the Atlanta 12 is a good time to look at all the ways that some school administrators and educators “cheat” on high-stakes tests. It was compiled from government and media reports by theNational Center for Fair & Open Testing, known as FairTest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the misuse and abuse of standardized tests. Here are 50-plus ways to “cheat”
Thomas Sowell: Attacking Achievement
New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, like so many others who call themselves “progressive,” is gung-ho to solve social problems. In fact, he is currently on a crusade to solve an educational problem that doesn’t exist, even though there are plenty of other educational problems that definitely do exist.
The non-existent problem is the use of tests to determine who gets admitted to the city’s three most outstanding public high schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. These admissions tests have been used for generations, and the students in these schools have had spectacular achievements for generations.
These achievements include many Westinghouse Science awards, Intel Science awards and — in later life — Pulitzer Prizes and multiple Nobel Prizes. Graduates of Bronx Science alone have gone on to win five Nobel Prizes in physics alone. There are Nobel Prize winners from Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech as well.
Oregon Live: Intel’s new tax deal is a whopper: $100 billion investment, 30 years
Washington County and Hillsboro offered Intel three decades of property-tax breaks under a new deal outlined Monday, aiming to secure up to $100 billion in investment and the chipmaker’s role at the heart of Oregon’s economy.
The agreement was widely anticipated, as Intel’s torrid expansion in Washington County has the company bumping up against the ceiling of its previous package of tax breaks years earlier than expected. Even so, the scale of the new pact is astonishing.
County officials say they have not estimated how much money Intel will save in the deal, but based on the value of prior agreements the total is probably in the neighborhood of $2 billion.
Chicago Sun Times: The Watchdogs: Millions in taxpayer subsidies to lure conventions
When conventions and trade shows threaten to leave McCormick Place or Rosemont for Orlando, Las Vegas or elsewhere, officials at the lakefront and suburban convention centers have a carrot to offer to keep those shows here:
A pot of taxpayer money they guard so tightly they’ve tried to keep secret how it’s spent, the Chicago Sun-Times has found.
Over the past three years, $26.5 million from Illinois taxpayers has been spent to lure the International Housewares Association’s trade show, the Radiological Society of North America convention and 79 other shows to McCormick Place under an obscure provision of a 2010 law passed to save Chicago’s convention industry by lowering the cost of union labor, records show.
Another $10 million has gone to Rosemont, which uses the money to subsidize dozens of events at its village-owned convention center — including several editions of the International Gem & Jewelry Show — as well as to repair its parking garage and pay off debt.
For the third consecutive year, the private firm hired run the Illinois Lottery has failed to bring in the profits it promised to raise for the state, even as its parent companies continue to be paid more each year to provide games and services.
According to a Tribune review of preliminary year-end data, Northstar Lottery Group posted a net profit of $738 million – nearly a quarter billion less than it pledged to bring in for the 2014 fiscal year, which ended June 30.
The figure is less than the company raised for the state in the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years after it became the first private company in the nation to take over day-to-day operations of a state lottery.
Daily Herald: Term limits may be on Arlington Hts. ballot in November
An Arlington Heights resident is trying again to get term limits for elected officials enacted in Arlington Heights, and has presented petitions that may get the initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot.
This is the second time Bill Gnech has tried to get a term limits petition on a ballot. In 2013 he filed a petition, but it was criticized as poorly worded and thrown off the ballot due to its format and the number of signatures.
On Monday, Gnech came back to the village clerk’s office carrying 273 pages of petitions — with room for 10 names on each page — said Arlington Heights Village Clerk Becky Hume.
Chicago Tribune: City Hall fights back at red-light camera hearing
A contingent of City Hall lawyers and officials appeared in a tiny hearing room to defend the city’s automated traffic ticket program during a three-hour hearing at which an administrative judge said he is throwing out tickets because yellow light times are too short.
The city’s heightened sensitivity follows a Tribune investigation that detailed suspicious spikes in red-light camera tickets throughout the city, including cases of inconsistent enforcement and yellow light times.
During Monday’s hearing, administrative judge Robert A. Sussman upheld three automated camera speeding tickets but threw out two red-light camera tickets after determining the yellow light time fell short of the minimum three seconds required at all city lights.
Sun-Times: Why health care innovation is about to blow up in Chicago
Adam Piotrowski got stuck when he tried to start a medical device company here three years ago.
“I knew Chicago was a great place to start a business, but it was hard to find a place to be based where I could develop and set up prototypes, work with a variety of resources nearby and get in touch with all of the people I needed to,” the Oak Park native said. “I had to find my own office space, start everything from scratch, and it was hard to find and hire talent. It was hard to have conversations and network because no life science hub existed.”
Piotrowski is trying again, and this time he is excited to apply for membership in Chicago’s newest innovation incubator, Matter, expected to open in early 2015 next to digital tech hub 1871 at the Merchandise Mart.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
