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Saturday, September 24, 2011
Obama to outline plan overriding education law (AP)
WASHINGTON ? States are about to get some guidance from President Barack Obama about how they can get around provisions in the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law ? a step the administration has undertaken to effectively gut the law since Congress had been slow to rewrite it.
In advance of Obama's speech Friday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said states would be able to seek waivers around requirements in the law if they can meet certain requirements the White House favors. He has said the emphasis will be more on growth than actual test scores, but revealed few specifics on how the plan would work.
"We would have loved for Congress to have acted," Duncan said Thursday. "Congress isn't, and at a time when we have to get better faster than before ... the law on the books is stifling the innovation and creativity we see all around the country and we just want to get out of the way and outreach that."
The No Child Left Behind passed in 2001 with widespread bipartisan support and much fanfare. It sought to hold schools more accountable for student performance and get better qualified teachers in classrooms. When schools were deemed as failing after set periods of time, extra tutoring and school choice have been offered to students, under the law.
A component of the law that said all students must be proficient in math and reading ? meaning all students must by 2014 meet grade level standards in those subject areas ? has been hugely unpopular. Critics say the law created too much of an emphasis in classrooms on standardized tests with stakes so high that it may have even created an environment where school officials in some districts opted to cheat.
Duncan has warned that 82 percent of schools next year could fail to reach proficiency requirements, and thus be labeled as a "failure." Duncan has said it's "dishonest" for schools to receive the label if they are showing real improvements, and the law is creating a "slow-motion educational train wreck." He's also said that many states under the law have lowered standards instead of making them more rigorous and that the law fails to differentiate between a high-performing school with one or two subgroups underperforming and a low-performing school where everyone is struggling.
The law has been due for a re-write since 2007, and Obama and Duncan had asked that it be overhauled by the beginning of this school year. But a growing ideological divide in Congress in recent years has only complicated efforts to do so.
The GOP-led House education committee has forwarded three bills that would overhaul aspects of it, but has yet to fully tackle some of the more contentious issues such as teacher effectiveness and accountability. Key Democrats on education issues on Capitol Hill, such as Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., have said they understand why the administration is moving forward with its plan.
But Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House education committee, has questioned if Duncan even has the authority to offer waivers to states in exchange for such changes. He's said the president has allowed "an arbitrary timeline" to dictate when Congress should get the law rewritten, and that the committee needs more time to develop its proposals, which it is doing. And, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the ranking Republican on the Senate committee with oversight over education, said the plan represents a shift in power from states to the federal government.
Duncan has said his plan would not undermine what Congress is doing because the waivers could serve as a bridge until Congress acts.
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Kimberly Hefling can be reached at http://twitter.com/khefling
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On the Net: Education Department: http://www.ed.gov/
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Friday, September 23, 2011
Poland's jobless rate down to 11.6 pct in August (AP)
WARSAW, Poland ? Government statistics show that Poland's jobless rate inched down to 11.6 percent in August from 11.7 the previous month.
The Central Statistical Office said Friday that 1.85 million people in the country of 38 million were registered as jobless at the end of August. It was almost 8,000 fewer unemployed compared to July but more than 55,000 fewer than in August 2010.
The drop in the jobless rate was due to seasonal jobs in agriculture, construction, tourism and forestry, as well as from buoyant economic growth. Poland's economy is growing at about 4 percent this year, though it is expected to slow to about 3 percent growth next year due to the economic turmoil in Europe.
Poland has faced high unemployment since the ex-communist country adopted a market economy in 1990.
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UK police arrest 7th terror suspect in Birmingham (AP)
LONDON ? British police say a seventh man has been arrested in a counterterrorism operation that began earlier this week.
West Midlands Police said Thursday the 20-year-old was detained in the central England city of Birmingham, on suspicion of "the commission, preparation or instigation" of a terrorism act.
Six other men, aged 25 to 32, were arrested Monday in the same city. Officials said the arrests related to Islamic extremism and were one of the year's most significant anti-terror operations.
Police said they had been given until midnight Sunday to charge the men, release them or apply for a further extension.
Terrorist suspects can be held for up to 14 days before they must be charged or released.
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Thursday, September 22, 2011
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Abbas tells U.N. chief Palestinian bid on track (Reuters)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) ? President Mahmoud Abbas told U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday that he would push ahead with plans to seek full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state, a move the United States and Israel say could lead to disaster.
Abbas met Ban at the U.N. headquarters and reaffirmed that he planned to ask this week for a Security Council vote on Palestinian membership despite the certainty of a U.S. veto, his spokesman Nabil Abu Rdaineh said.
Ban, through whom any application must be made, told Abbas he would "perform his duties under the U.N. charter," and called for the Israelis and the Palestinians to resume negotiations "within a legitimate and balanced framework," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
Earlier, Abbas said "all hell has broken out" over the statehood bid, and acknowledged it carried risks for his Palestinian Authority, which depends on international financial aid for its survival in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
"We decided to take this step and all hell has broken out against us," he told reporters on his flight to New York, but added that he would not be swayed.
"From now until I give the speech, we have only one choice: going to the Security Council. Afterwards, we will sit and decide," he said.
The United States and Israel wanted to keep the peace process restricted to "a bilateral dialogue" overseen from afar by Washington, he said. But for nearly two decades, or since the Oslo Accords in 1993, this dialogue had failed, prompting the U.N. membership move.
CHOICES AHEAD
Abbas has said he will present his application to the Security Council on Friday.
With a U.S. veto looming at the Security Council, the Palestinians have said they could also go to the U.N. General Assembly to request an upgrade in their standing from an "entity" to "a non-member state" -- a move they say is likely to pass with support from at least 126 members of the 193-member body.
Abbas' meeting with Ban was expected to be followed on Monday by a meeting with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who warned that both Israel and the Palestinians were courting disaster by clinging to the status quo.
"The only solution is to resume talks," Juppe said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain, like other members of the European Union, remained committed to a solution that would see an independent Palestinian state emerge peacefully alongside Israel.
"We ... have withheld our position on how we would vote on any resolution that may come forward in the General Assembly in order to exert as much pressure on both sides to return to negotiations," he told SkyNews in an interview.
The United States says it opposes the Palestinian bid for full U.N. membership on the grounds that only a resumption of a two-decade old negotiation process can advance the cause of peace. It has also said it would not support a Palestinian vote in the General Assembly.
RISKS APLENTY
A U.S. Security Council veto would carry huge diplomatic risks for Washington, which could find itself further isolated alongside Israel as political turmoil sweeps the Middle East and unleashes new fears of instability.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Sunday to discuss Ashton's recent trip to the region, part of a frantic effort to persuade the Palestinians to avoid a showdown.
Senior diplomats from the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators -- also met on Sunday and were expected to hold further meetings this week.
The Quartet has for months been trying to put together guidelines for future peace talks, but Abbas has said they have offered nothing new.
The last round of the U.S.-backed talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu collapsed nearly a year ago. The Palestinians pulled out after Israel declined to extend a partial moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank on land the Palestinians want for their state.
Apart from borders, key points of contention include the status of Jerusalem, the future of Palestinian refugees and whether Israel should be acknowledged as a Jewish state.
The Palestinians say they will not resume talks unless the moratorium is reinstated. Israel says talks should resume without preconditions but that it accepts the idea that the Palestinians should ultimately have their own state.
U.S. President Barack Obama is under pressure from Congress to back Israel's stance, and some U.S. lawmakers have said they will try to cut American aid, totaling some $500 million a year, if the Palestinians refuse to back down.
Israeli officials, meanwhile, have said the Palestinian move could spur retaliation -- which could exacerbate the financial crisis facing the Palestinian Authority because of a shortfall in aid from Arab states.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he expected that the Palestinian bid to join the United Nations would fail and that this might help them "come to their senses" and rejoin direct peace talks.
(Additional reporting by John Irish; writing by Andrew Quinn; editing by Philip Barbara)
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