Balta1701

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 05:03 PM) No, but should parents and taxpayers settle for a system where bad teachers are hard to remove because they can claim any rating of their performance is somehow invalid? The question in reply is...how exactly are the parents judging bad teachers? If there was an easy answer to that, then the answer to your question would be "no". But if there's no standard metric of student performance that correlates with the actual performance of a teacher...and you remove teachers based on those metrics, you have a situation where both good and bad teachers face removal because the system cannot differentiate between them. Should parents and taxpayers settle for a system where good teachers are removed because the system itself does a poor job of evaluating teacher quality?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:52 PM) What percentage of the costs is that? Pulling together data from 2 or 3 sources, found a court case that suggested ~10% of the students in chicago public schools in the 90's could be classified as special needs, and a different source suggested that nationwide on average a special needs student costs 1.9x as much as a non-special-needs student.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:55 PM) The part about the State of Illinois being one of the lowest with funding education is somewhat misleading. Most states collect property taxes and distribute them fairly evenly to school districts while illinois has the property taxes go straight to the school districts in the area. So this makes it look like the state doesn't contribute much compared to other while in reality is just the way it is distributed is different. We don't really have less funding it's just that we have rich school districts and poor school districts. But that sets up this issue in Chicago entirely because it leaves no mechanism for redistribution from wealthy districts to poor districts, and as has been noted previously, the CPS area is one of the most poverty-ridden school districts in the country, with nearly 90% of its students qualifying for the federal free/reduced price meal programs.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:43 PM) Trib now reporting Liriano NOT starting in MIN, it will be Santiago-Quintana-Peavy for that series, per the game notes the team distributed. Anyone else getting the feeling Coop doesn't like Liriano?

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:46 PM) As we all know, this is great for Gordon's confidence. It worked great for the last hitters we tried to develop. And hey, I'm sure he'll be back in the lineup ready to do damage tomorrow. Maybe he'll get lucky and the pitcher will be easy to hit. Let me go check who's pitching...Verl-something or other. That guy can't be any good.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:45 PM) Wonder why ADA and Weezy swapped LF and CF? That can't be right...

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:37 PM) That's a legit beef. But I want to know exactly what they want it to be, not what they don't want it to be. The real problem is that there's nothing out there I've seen that really gives a good, fair, overarching scale by which teacher performance actually can be judged. The teachers might not have a good answer to your question, but when no one has that answer, does that mean they should settle for a bad answer to it?

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:29 PM) This is from another teach friend of mine (but who does not work for CPS and is not on strike): "I eat, breath, and sleep teaching. Love that i'm living my dream but I'm physically and mentally exhausted. Thinking of just moving into my classroom since I don't leave until 5:30 anyways. The sad life of a first year teacher." 5:30!?!?!? Wow. That must be rough. What time does the person arrive in the morning?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 04:05 PM) I don't care where they find the money, but they need to stop finding it in the form of tax increases. IL/Chicago has the highest effective taxes in the nation now...and after the recent tax hikes in both areas, in almost everything they could find to tax, my local taxes have more than DOUBLED over the course of a year. Easy to say when you aren't the ones paying it...but I am. My income tax DOUBLED. What I pay on my house DOUBLED. We aren't talking a few bucks here...but thousands per year. With the highest taxes in the nation, they should be able to fix these issues without further taxation, it's gotten out of hand. My family now has about 5,000 LESS because of these recent increases...and what have they fixed? Not a single f***ing thing. So to anyone who suggests even more taxes/fees...f*** you right in the face. A few bits of data from "The Chicago Reporter" I don't know Illinois state government well enough to know where the money the state collects gets to, but I thought in particular the last nugget was particularly noteworthy.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 01:35 PM) Clueless Obama already apologized to the murderers. Apparently some random YouTube video made them go berserk. He said YouTube needs to be censored, as to not offend Muslims. He then bowed and apologizd again. Just in case anyone is reading this thinking t's true, ithe only word in it that is true is "Murderers".

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 01:43 PM) It's already occurring. iPhone5 is 4", better quality screen, 3 mics for noise cancelation, 20% lighter and 18% thinner than the 4S. Uses an A6 chip, 2x faster/2x faster gfx than iPhone4s. LTE. Same talk time with 3G or LTE (8 Hours). Etc...etc... Same camera in 4s, despite being thinner, better low light. Can take 28megapixel panoramas. 720p facetime front facing camera. So basically it's a large upgrade but it's not going to rewrite the book. That's actually what I was afraid of...I was hoping they had something astonishing in this model that would make it a no-brainer to upgrade.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 02:49 PM) lol Yep, I hate teachers unions because I cant get blood from a stone. Id be glad to give every school air conditioning, Id be glad to give every a brand new shiny computer and every resource imaginable. But where is the money coming from? The other way to look at it is...if you don't give the kids enough resources to actually get a quality education in the first place, you're taking money away from the future.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 01:43 PM) I'd like to see De Aza, Wise and Ramirez all attempt one bunt tonight, somewhere during the game. Down the 3B line. I can't believe the only time we've tested Cabrera over there is with Youkilis. Scherzer is a tough pitcher, it would benefit the team to shake things up and get them off balance. Wise tried one last night and missed.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 11:28 AM) ...what? It took me a minute too. The invisible Obama that only the Republicans can see controls the media, saw that the article said something about Al Qaeda, Invisible Axelrod in chair next to him gave a call to Yahoo asking them to change story, then asked them to change story again.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 11:25 AM) I wouldn't be against that. But then you also degrade your defense for the later innings. By how much though? Youk isn't that incredible of a defender. But if you're really worried about that...then tell Youk to do everything he can to take the walk. That's something he's good at.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 11:24 AM) ive read that in certain unions, strikers are given strike pay in order to try to compensate for not getting paid by their employers. Is this true of the CTU? If so, it would help explain why a lot of my anti-union CPS friends are downtown dressed in red and smiling for the camera with $300 sunglasses on. A lot of unions will keep "Strike funds" to compensate struggling workers during a strike, to keep unanimity and to keep them from reaching a point where they feel compelled to cross picket lines. People's mortgage payments come due whether they're on strike or not. But usually, that money is no where near the amount they earn while actually working.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 11:09 AM) It was from a Yahoo! article that was changed from (in order): AQ did it, to AQ-ties did it, to Islamists did it. http://news.yahoo.com/u-ambassador-libya-t...-091505030.html Thank you, that's actually interesting.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 11:02 AM) Sorry, I guess the group had "ties" to AQ. My bad. Can you even back that up? Seriously, it looks like an "Angry mob" from press reports.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 11:01 AM) Hell, I don't know. I'm not the manager. I would have used O-Dog. But there could be more to it then we know. What we do know is it didn't work and really looked terrible in the process. He did the usual "chop the bat downwards" that people who aren't good/experienced at bunting do.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 10:59 AM) I doubt they're trying to bunt a splitter in practice and then a 95 mph inside fastball. Lost in the debate about the bunt was him swinging at a terrible 0-2 pitch. You would figure that if he was a good bunter, he would have had at least one sac bunt in Boston by fluke. When you put a guy in an 0-2 hole by asking him to do something he's clearly not comfortable doing...you cannot be surprised when he looks bad on the third pitch. That's not an uncommon one there at all.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 10:59 AM) This is the first time a US Ambassador has been killed in 33 years. 1979...Iran I'm guessing?

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 10:56 AM) Rahm Emanuel's worst nightmare She took his finger?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 10:56 AM) I think it's safe to assume that Duke likes to troll with "outrageous!" opinions. Topic edited pending someone actually proving that statement with something?

Duke, can you back that up? Any reason not to change the thread title, or are we just assuming "any group of angry people in middle eastern country = Al Qaeda"?

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 12, 2012 -> 10:45 AM) Orlando Hudson: 33 sac bunts in his career Kevin Youkilis: 0 So we asked an 8 year veteran with 0 successful sacrifice bunts to bunt, and we expected a positive result?