Five of the 11 convicted were "testing administrators" or "resource officers." Two more were principal/assistant principal. Thinking about it, these are probably the people who stood to gain the most by inflating the overall performance of the school. Individual teacher merit pay doesn't seem like a huge enticement: would you really risk your career for a couple thousand dollars? Being labeled a success at turning around failing schools or districts...well, it got Hall named "National Superintendent of the Year." The administrators are the ones being judged on the aggregate test scores; they're the ones with power over individual teachers; it's not surprising that a top-down conspiracy would develop.

Federal judges are appointed to life terms in order to reduce the temptation to cheat. It turns out that all people are susceptible to pressure; almost all people will do things they "know" to be wrong if given enough enticement or peer pressure. If you give teachers a system of merit pay, some of them will game the system. If you impose a set of penalties, they will game the system. Pile those rewards/penalties on a system where teachers in districts with engaged and active parents get better resources, and you're just begging for trouble. "Social promotion" is as old as formal education. NCLB was supposed to be an administrative block to it, but it turns out teachers find a way around.

I find it very interesting that, 2 days before these verdicts, the GA legislature repealed the requirement that students pass a standardized test (CRCT) as a condition of graduation. And made it retroactive, so all those students, going back 10 years, who passed all their classes but were denied diploma for failing a section of the CRCT can now get their diplomas. ie: The state has legislated in the same social promotion that APS parents are up in arms over and that drove NCLB.

The only guilty verdicts, aside from RICO, were for "making false statements," and only half of the defendants were guilty even of that. The two (3?) people charged with theft were found not guilty. No one was even charged with fraud. This makes it all seem like an organization dedicated to the criminal enterprise of denying its own existence.

I get that it's technically not a crime to change the answers on someone else's test, putting the prosecutors in a bind to impose penalties, but RICO seems really blown out of all proportion. Maybe it would have made more sense if they'd been able to try Dr. Hall before her death. Maybe she's the one who really committed/benefitted from the immoral but not illegal actions of her henchmen, but we didn't get to see that.

Afrikaners appear to have 'appropriated' an entire continent.

Please to remember that the United States of America began as a federation of largely independent countries, rather like the Holy Roman Empire or the nations of the Italian Peninsula prior to the Resurgence. Not unlike the European Union. There are an awful lot of countries whose formal name includes something like "Federal Republic of" or "People's Republic of," but no one's going around insisting to call residents of Berlin "bundesrepublicers," even though there is a lot of Germanic territory outside the borders of Germany. In 100 years, there will be a lot of people calling themselves "Europeans," because they're part of the EU, even though EU boundaries will not coincide with continental boundaries.

Please remember you're reading this part of "the internets" in English and that English idioms, such as "American" for residents of the United States of America, may not translate literally into your native tongue any more sensibly than the converse. Unless you think "Voy a hacer changuitos" actually means "I'll make little monkeys." The rest of us will go on calling residents of the USA "Americans," residents of the ESM "Mexicans," and residents of the RF "French," when writing in English.

The motion of the center of mass is not where the metabolic power of walking goes, any more than the rise and fall of the mass of a pendulum requires external power. That's kind of the point of this: the potential energy of the high center of mass converts to kinetic energy at the low center of mass like a pendulum, and elastic mechanisms in your tendons let you 'bounce' off the ground. This device reduces the muscular effort required to bounce.

Most of the energy cost lies in lifting each leg and swinging it forward with each step. You don't have to do that on a bicycle, and its why the widget is only good for ~7% of total energy cost.

I suppose this depends on your perspective. Admission rates at Harvard/Stanford/MIT are around 6%; Cornell, Duke and the like 15%; Baylor, Georgia Tech, U Mich around 40%. Those are all great schools and offer great educations. The marginal benefit from attending Stanford (#4) over Cornell (#15) or Baylor (#70) is pretty negligible, and I would put all those schools in the "top tier," and 40% admission rate is not even one-very selective.

Most of those schools don't treat their own MOOCs the same way they treat their residential classes (ie, don't offer credit for them). Those that are experimenting with online courses for credit, or even online degrees, do so as a separate track from their MOOCs. Online classes serve a difference audience with different goals than residential instruction.

No, that's exactly the point. Vast numbers of kids spend their first couple of years "growing up." Some of them fail miserably, most of them muddle through fairly well, and some of them excel. What company can afford to take the risk hiring an untrained person, without even a 'track record' of trainability, when that kid may decide he'd rather spend lunch drinking beers?

College isn't supposed to be job training - you may get some skills that are useful in a job, but the point is not to teach you how to be a junior programmer at Microsoft. College, especially residential college, is life-training: how do you balance your freedom to do bong hits all day with your responsibility to pay rent? How do you balance your desire to post /. with your employer's desire that you accomplish tasks? How do you get stuff done when your teacher/manager is a clueless moron? What kinds of tasks/problems do you enjoy?

If you've figure that out by the time you're 18, you're truly exceptional. Not special-snowflake exceptional, but Bill Gates exceptional. College, and even a job, are likely to hold you back. Unfortunately, many people think they are Bill Gates, when they are only a special snowflake.

Not everyone in the audience can tell the difference between good acting and poor acting. They say, if the story is good, the audience won't notice that Hamlet is wearing a digital watch. Same goes for acting talent.

There are many flavors of "Religious Freedom Law,"but at least the Indiana law applies to the employees as well as the businesses. So, Joe's lawnmower service may refuse people on the basis of religion at the policy level, but Joe, the employee of Starbuck's, may also refuse to serve people on the basis of his personal beliefs. The law is intended to prevent Starbuck's from firing Joe for his expression of personal religious freedom.

The first line of defense is the stop sign. The second line of defense is the guards yelling "Stop!" The third line of defense is a gate. The fourth line of defense, in this case, was a pair of parked police cars that the SUV (reportedly) rammed through.

Guards discharging their weapons was decidedly not the "first line of defense." I'm not sure what else could reasonably have been done in short enough time, to stop a vehicle with demonstrated willingness to perpetrate violence, but ramming through the parked cars seems like pretty good justification for extreme measures.

The historical database of license plate sightings is a terrific source of circumstantial evidence against people suspected of wrongdoing.

eg: your wife turns up dead. You renewed her life insurance policy a month ago. Three weeks ago, your car made several visits to "the bad part of town," possibly while you were at a murder-for-hire meeting. Nevermind that your insurance policy renews every February, and that a water main break diverted your commute.

Many things look suspicious once suspicion is upon you: the concern with a vast trove of location and communication history is that it is more likely to be twisted to make an honest man look corrupt than it is to find a criminal before he acts.

We're talking about a state law here, which presumably represents the general will of the people of the state. If Indiana puts up border signs saying "Welcome to Indiana, Gays may be refused service" it doesn't really matter whether 90%, 1%, or 0% of businesses actually do so - putting it in the law declares it a value of the people of the state.

Orthogonal issues: this is not about stocking a particular product, this is about making a product equally available to any person. If the clothing store refuses to fit you until you pledge devotion to Allah, or if the best coffee shop in town demands you kiss a copperhead snake before you place your order, then maybe you'd have a complaint.

If you really want to push the coffee-tea analogy, would you take a large, diverse group of friends to a coffee shop that explicitly refuses to serve tea, knowing that some of your friends prefer tea? I suspect you would find a different shop/state that is more willing to accommodate your group. You might even tell the store owner that you're sad you couldn't bring your party to his place, but for the discrimination against tea.

Yes. "Freedom of religion" does not contain any qualifiers. Your religion doesn't have to have a specific number of adherents, it doesn't have to have a long and glorious history, it doesn't have to have won wars against any other religion. It only has to be a set of beliefs or principles you take on faith. Those beliefs can change every 20 seconds, based on communication from from $DEITY, personal revelation, or direction of wind. "Freedom of religion" means that Catholicism is just as valid, and has exactly the same privileges as Quakerism, Sikhism, Jedism, or Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. Just because you believe your One True Faith does not negate my One True Faith.

It's worth pointing out that "Freedom of Religion" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The courts have frequently found that the needs and safety of secular society trump religious practice. Perhaps most notably, faiths that support polygamy may not have multiple bondings recognized as marriage. Even snake-handling is illegal in many states.

Yes. Google's power over advertisers lies in Google's exclusive access to user information. Advertisers pay Google to figure out who would be good recipients of advertising, based on the belief that Google can identify those people better than the advertiser. If Google sells its collection of user data, then the advertiser will be able to make that determination for itself, and Google loses its main advantage over other ad-distribution networks. You do not sell the goose that lays golden eggs.

The point of failure is usually the stud that holds the bolt. In typical US, wood-frame construction, this is a 2x4, with the bolt centered, leaving really just about 3 cm of pine wood holding the door closed. "Kick the door down" is also a euphemism for any form of forced entry, most likely a 40 (one man)-100 (two man) pound battering ram.