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Florida offers look at problems with education law

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Tags: law, miami dade schools, pablo martinez monsivais

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Published on: February 13, 2012

President Barack Obama speaks about flexibility for states with the No Child Left Behind law, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Education Secretary Arne Duncan applauds prior to President Barack Obama speaking about No Child Left Behind, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Map shows adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act by state

MIAMI (AP) ? By almost any measure, Norma Butler Bossard Elementary is a top performing school in Miami: It has consistently been rated an ‘A’ by the state, and students have achieved high scores on Florida’s standardized math and reading exams.

Yet when it comes to the federal No Child Left Behind law, the school hasn’t lived up to expectations. Last year, 79 percent of students had to be at grade level in reading and 80 percent in math. Overall, the students exceeded those goals. But two groups ? English language learners and the economically disadvantaged ? did not.

“This is a crystallization of the challenge,” said Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Responding to an outcry from the states and congressional inaction on rewriting the law, President Barack Obama on Thursday told 10 states, including Florida, that they will be freed from the strictest elements of the law, including the requirement that all students be up to par in math and reading by 2014. In exchange for flexibility, states had to present individualized plans aimed at ensuring all students leave school ready for college and career. The plans must set new achievement targets, rewarding high performing schools and focusing on those that are struggling.

“We can combine greater freedom with greater accountability,” Obama said at the White House.

Florida, home to several of the nation’s largest school districts, offers a look into what went wrong with the law and why states are now clamoring for relief.

No Child Left Behind was signed into law by former President George W. Bush a decade ago with the intention of closing the vast achievement gaps between poor and affluent students, whites and minorities. A key part of the legislation requires states to set annual benchmarks for the percentage of students scoring proficient in math and reading on state standardized exams, leading up to 100 percent proficiency in 2014.

Each school is held accountable for the performance of every student group ? minorities, English learners, and the poor ? in meeting those benchmarks.

If any one of those groups does not meet the targets, the school falls out of compliance. Schools that don’t meet the goals for two consecutive years are labeled “in need of improvement,” and a series of corrective steps comes into play, including student transfers to a higher performing school, providing tutoring, replacing staff or even closing.

Florida had passed significant education reforms shortly before No Child Left Behind went into effect, including an A-to-F school grading system based on student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. After 2002, there were two separate school evaluations ? the state’s and the one provided through No Child Left Behind.

Increasingly, those painted two contrasting pictures of a school’s progress.

While the number of schools in Florida that earned an ‘A’ on the state’s annual report card has steadily increased, the number meeting No Child Left Behind requirements has dramatically decreased. Last year, just 10 percent of Florida elementary, middle and high schools met the annual proficiency benchmarks required under the federal law.

“Are we saying over 90 percent of schools are ‘failing?’” Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson said. “The answer is no.”

In many of the schools, just one group of students was behind. At Miami’s Norma Butler Bossard Elementary, a majority Hispanic school, 78 percent of poor students scored at grade level in reading ? one point behind the No Child Left Behind target. English language learners lagged behind by nine points in reading and two in math. The majority, however, were performing above the goals set by the law.

“It was confusing to parents and students and teachers when you get two sets of criteria and two sets of grades,” said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association. “You begin to wonder which one’s real.”

Then there are schools like Holmes Elementary, a school in a struggling neighborhood north of Miami’s downtown. Just 18 percent of students were at grade level in math in the 2002-03 school year. By last year, that number had jumped to 65 percent ? a 47 percentage point percent increase. Yet students had still not caught up to the rising numbers expected under No Child Left Behind and the school had been in danger of being closed next year.

“That is an iconic school in Miami,” Carvalho said. “The previous performance was not acceptable and we changed everything about that school.”

Closing it, he said, “would have been extinguishing the beacon of hope.”

Robinson is reluctant to say No Child Left Behind didn’t work ? he praised it for shining a light on the performance of all student subgroups ? but says that over time, it rubbed up against the state’s accountability system.

“It just didn’t make any sense,” he said.

Many also say the 2014 goal to have all students proficient in math and reading is unrealistic.

“There’s always going to be children that need additional help and there’s always going to be children who are ahead of the curve,” Blanton said. “It was treating every single class of students exactly the same.”

District leaders are hoping that under the waiver a school’s long-term progress will be taken into account and that they’ll have more flexibility on interventions. Under the current law, districts that repeatedly fail to meet the benchmarks are required to set aside federal money to pay for outside tutoring. But many researchers say that’s been ineffective.

“The results are not there,” Carvalho said.

Carvalho said that another big burden of the law was providing transportation for students in failing schools to one that is higher performing. With larger percentages of schools falling out of compliance with the law, opportunities to transfer were vanishing.

“It becomes very tough to accommodate students,” he said.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott said he was enthusiastic about the opportunity to have more local control.

“Anytime we can do that where we get to make our own decisions because we know how to take care of our own children that’s a big positive,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Bill Kaczor in Tallahassee and Tamara Lush in Tampa contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-02-10-No%20Child%20Left%20Behind-One%20State/id-6f54944c1e804a7a83a3155acf069fa0

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The reality regarding Internet Law – Is in the processing of graphics …

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Tags: law

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Published on: February 7, 2012

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Source: http://hzmbedu.com/2012/02/the-reality-regarding-internet-law/

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Payroll taxes: Tax relief ? for now ? Business Management Daily …

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Tags: law, payroll tax rate, self employment income

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Published on: February 3, 2012

Just when it looked darkest, Congress revived a tax break for employees, at least for the short term.

Alert: New legislation enacted late in 2011 temporarily extends the ?payroll tax holiday? for two more months. And Congress is already working on an extension for the remainder of 2012.

The president signed the ?Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act? into law on Dec. 23, 2011. Without the extension, employees would be paying an additional 2% payroll tax on wages received through Feb. 29, 2012.

Here?s the whole story: Both employees and employers must pay a 6.2% Social Security payroll tax on wages up to an annual wage ceiling. The wage ceiling for 2012 is $110,110 (up from $106,800 for 2011). The 1.45% Medicare tax payroll tax applies to all wages.

The 2010 Tax Relief Act provided a one-year reprieve for employees by reducing the? usual 6.2% Social Security tax withholding rate by 2% to only 4.2% for wages paid in 2011.? Self-employed individuals who pay Social Security tax as part of the self-employment tax were also entitled to a 2% Social Security tax rate reduction on net self-employment income earned in 2011. ?

Now the new law extends the 2% Social Security tax rate reduction for two months to give Congress time to hammer out a new agreement. Employers should use the updated payroll tax rate immediately, but no later than Jan. 31, 2012.?If an employer overwithholds on an employee?s payroll tax in January, it should make an offsetting adjustment as soon as possible, but no later than March 31, 2012. (IRS News Release 2011-124) ?

Recapture rule for high-income folks

Special rule: The new law also includes a recapture provision for employees who receive more than $18,350 in wages in the first two months of 2012. This threshold is based on the annual wage base of $110,000 multiplied by 2/12. These high-income employees must pay an additional tax equal to 2% of the amount of wages above $18,350 received in January and February (not to exceed? $110,100)? The recapture tax is paid on the employee?s 2012 federal income return.

Example: You?re paid an annual salary of $150,000 on a monthly basis. So your wages for the first two months of 2012 are $25,000 ($150,000 ? 12 x 2). Because your wages exceed the limit, you must pay a recapture tax of $133 ($25,000 ? $18,350 x 2%) when you file your 2012 return.

The new law also extends unemployment benefits for 2 million individuals and avoids a 27% cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians.

Tip: The cost of the new law will be offset by increased fees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans.

Source: http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/29788/payroll-taxes-tax-relief-for-now

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Nation’s oldest federal judge dies at age 104 (AP)

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Tags: federal district judge, law, law clerks

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Published on: January 27, 2012

WICHITA, Kan. ? As the nation’s oldest sitting federal judge in history, U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown allowed himself few concessions to his advancing age as he insisted on presiding over significant and often complex cases right up until his death at 104.

Brown died Monday night at the Wichita assisted living center where he lived, his law clerk, Nanette Turner Kalcik, said Tuesday.

During his long tenure, the senior judge in Wichita repeatedly tried to explain why he had not yet fully retired from the federal bench.

“As a federal judge, I was appointed for life or good behavior, whichever I lose first,” Brown quipped in a 2011 interview with The Associated Press. How did he plan to leave the post? “Feet first,” Brown said.

He came to work at the federal courthouse every day until about a month ago when his health deteriorated, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten said. Undeterred, the ailing Brown then had his law clerks bring work to the hospital and later to the assisted living center while he recuperated. His law clerks were with him virtually non-stop, taking turns to be there except at night during the past few weeks.

Brown was appointed as a federal district judge in 1962 by then-President John F. Kennedy.

“When Judge Brown spoke, we listened because_ while nobody has seen it all ? he certainly came closer to it than anybody I have ever known,” Marten said. “And his message was always the same: remember who you are and what your job is.”

In 1979, Brown officially took senior status, a type of semiretirement that allows federal judges to work with a full or reduced case level. He continued to carry a full workload for decades.

“I do it to be a public service,” Brown said in the AP interview. “You got to have a reason to live. As long as you perform a public service, you have a reason to live.”

His long tenure on the federal bench surpasses even that of Joseph Woodrough, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit who, until Brown, had been the longest practicing judge in the federal judiciary when he died in 1977 shortly after turning 104.

“Judge Brown always said he hoped he would be remembered as a good judge, not just an old judge ? and I think it was a sincere concern of his,” U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren said.

As a federal judge, Brown could have retired at full salary, but he never had a real interest in that, Melgren said.

“He frequently encouraged ? or, you know, frankly even admonished us ? to remember that our duty as judges was to take the responsibility for the administration of justice in our courtrooms and collectively in our district court,” Melgren said. “He was very committed to it.”

Brown’s stooped frame nearly disappeared behind the federal bench during hearings. His gait was slower, but his mind remained sharp as he presided over a tightly run courtroom even after turning 104 last June.

Brown removed himself from the draw for assignment of new criminal cases in March, and by the time he died he was no longer presiding over hearings. He kept an active civil caseload, but during the last months of his life referred evidentiary hearings on his remaining civil to magistrate judges for their recommendations before making a decision.

“I will quit this job when I think it is time,” Brown said last year. “And I hope I do so and leave the country in better shape because I have been a part of it.”

Another of his law clerks, Michael Lahey, said he took a turn for the worse just a week before his death.

“He finally wore out,” Lahey said. “He maintained his abilities right up to the end.”

Among the cases he was still handling when he died is a constitutional challenge to a new Kansas law restricting insurance coverage for abortions. He also was presiding at the time over a multi-defendant lawsuit filed by Omaha-based Northern Natural Gas Co. in its bid to condemn more than 9,100 acres in south-central Kansas to contain gas migrating from an underground storage facility.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson has practiced law in Brown’s courtroom for 20 years as a federal prosecutor and for more than seven years before that as a private attorney.

“Judge Brown ran his courtroom in a firm and fair manner so you knew when you were going into Judge Brown’s courtroom you had better know the rules and you had better follow the rules,” Anderson said. “On the other hand, there was no more compassionate judge than Judge Brown.”

Anderson recalled an incident that occurred when Brown was about 98. A cell phone started ringing in the courtroom ? twice. Nervous lawyers pulled out their cell phones to make sure they were turned off. Then, while sorting through some paperwork on the bench, the judge realized it was his own cell phone that had gone off.

“He immediately fined himself $100 and held himself in contempt and said, `I guess I learned my lesson,’” Anderson recalled.

Brown ? who was born on June 22, 1907, in Hutchinson, Kansas ? was six years older than the next oldest sitting federal judge. At least eight other federal judges are in their 90s, according to a federal court database.

Brown started his career with the law firm of Williams, Martindell and Carey in Hutchinson. He graduated from the Kansas City School of Law, which later became the law school for the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Except for two brief breaks from the firm ? one at age 27 when he was elected Reno County attorney and the other at age 37 when he joined the Navy ? Brown spent his Hutchinson career practicing law there. In 1939, he became a partner.

He moved to Wichita at age 50 after receiving his first federal appointment as a bankruptcy judge in 1958. Four years later, he was appointed a federal district judge.

He outlived two wives and only moved into an assisted living center in recent years.

“His impact is more than he lived to be 104,” Melgren said. “He was a model for us for how we are to conduct ourselves as judges.”

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_brown

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Balloon Juice ? We're certified, all legal-like

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Tags: john kasich, jon husted, law

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Published on: December 21, 2011

by Kay

I?m really pleased about this because it finally feels as if rank and file Democratic and liberal voters care as much about ensuring that every lawful voter has access to a first class ballot as rank and file Republicans and conservative voters care about setting up roadblocks to a first class ballot.

The enthusiasm gap on this is narrowing:

A referendum on House Bill 194, a sweeping reform of election laws, will appear on the November 2012 ballot, Secretary of State Jon Husted?s office announced Friday.
Opponents of the bill, largely Democrats and voting rights activists, collected 307,358 valid signatures, according to the secretary of state?s office. Petitioners needed 231,150 signatures to put the law on the ballot.
The successful petition drive comes on the heels of Democrats? victory in overturning Senate Bill 5, a controversial collective bargaining law. That law, supported by Republican Gov. John Kasich and GOP legislative leaders, was overwhelmingly rejected in the November election.
Members and supporters of the Fair Elections Ohio coalition cheered the news Friday and predicted victory next November. By hanging a referendum on HB 194, Fair Elections Ohio preserved the existing elections law through at least next year?s presidential contest. That means a 35-day window for early voting and other practices seen as advantageous to Democrats in 2008 will remain in effect.
President Barack Obama carried Ohio by four points that year. His re-election campaign participated in the HB 194 petition drive. ?Today?s news is also further proof that we have a solid and robust grassroots organization in the state, and we plan to carry this momentum into 2012 and look forward to getting the vote out early next year,? Greg Schultz, state director for Obama for America, said in an emailed news release sent by the Ohio Democratic Party.
Husted, a Republican, last month ruled that the petitioners came up about 10,000 signatures short of the requirement. Ohio law, however, provides an extra 10 days to collect supplemental signatures in such a case.

I really believe the petition drive took this issue front and center, and forced us to talk with one another about the nuts and bolts of voting process, a process that is, outside the fiction that is created in the studios of Fox News and the pages of the Wall Street Journal, a dull and ordinary set of specific rules. Take away the New Black Panther Party nonsense and other politically useful allegations and voting process, the real one, the one that exists, is boring. Boring but important.

Mickey Mouse doesn?t really vote, and dead people are removed (or not removed, yet) from the voter rolls when the state or county receives official notice of their death and gets around to removing them. Since people move from state to state and county to county, voters who register in one state or county sometimes die in another, hence the delay, but that?s a less interesting story than ?dead people are voting!? so the first impression is the one that sticks.

Voting process wouldn?t merit much national coverage at all from the political press if it were presented honestly, because the news personalities would have to sort through the weeds of state law and explain it all. They?d end up reciting state-specific nitpicky regulations rather than excitedly narrating explosive video clips, which is why it?s a difficult issue to take to actual voters, if one intends to present it honestly.

December 19, 2011 1:12 pm Posted?in:?Domestic Affairs, Election 2012 ?18 Comments

Source: http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/12/19/were-certified-all-legal-like/

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AG Holder vows to enforce civil rights protections (AP)

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Tags: chief law enforcement, law, washington attorney general

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Published on: December 14, 2011

WASHINGTON ? Attorney General Eric Holder vowed Tuesday to use the full power of the Justice Department to enforce civil rights protections for voters in next year’s elections amid a flurry of activity by states to redraw political boundaries and impose requirements that could reduce voting by minorities who enthusiastically supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

In prepared remarks for a speech in Austin, Texas, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer urges the country to “call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success.”

“Instead, encourage and work with the parties to achieve this success by appealing to more voters,” Holder said.

Holder was making his remarks at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum. As president in 1965, Johnson was instrumental in passing the landmark law used by the Justice Department to ensure voting rights in Texas and all or parts of 15 other states, most of them in the South and all of them with a history of discrimination against blacks, American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaskan Natives or Hispanics.

Holder was appearing in a Republican-controlled state which has taken a redistricting dispute with civil rights groups all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a separate dispute, Texas also has enacted a photo ID requirement that the U.S. Justice Department is examining for possible discriminatory impact on voters. In addition, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin have enacted more stringent voter ID laws this year.

Texas Democrats, voting-rights advocates and minority groups had harshly criticized the photo ID law, but were unable to block its passage in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

In September, the Justice Department’s civil rights division said it needed the racial breakdown and counties of residence of the estimated 605,500 registered voters in Texas who do not have a state-issued license or ID. The division also asked how many of voters have Spanish surnames. Under the federal Voting Rights Act, the new Texas law needs Justice Department approval in order for it to take effect.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111213/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_holder_civil_rights

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