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September 22, 2011 — TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Striking teachers in Washington state's third-largest school district voted Thursday afternoon to accept a contract, ending a walkout that has kept students out of class for eight days. The union for the Tacoma school district's 1,900 teachers announced that the vote at a high school gym was 98 percent in favor. The vote was on a deal reached Wednesday night after more than seven hours of talks at the office of Gov. Chris Gregoire, who had asked negotiators to stay until the two sides could reconcile their differences. The governor has no direct control over Washington schools but stepped in to use her influence as a mediator. Union leadership touted the contract at a news conference late Wednesday, calling it "what we've been asking for." "We have a fair contract that respects teachers and is also good for the students of Tacoma," said Andy Coons, president of the Tacoma Education Association. "We want nothing more than for school to start on Friday."Teachers were told the three-year contract would keep salaries and class sizes the same. On the most contentious issue of teacher transfers, the contract calls for a committee of union and school district representatives to recommend a fair policy. |
Wednesday
Striking Washington Teachers reach compromise
Thursday
September 22, 2011 — OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — A Tacoma teachers union that has been on strike for 10 days is preparing to vote Thursday on a new contract proposal brokered in late-night talks with the governor.
Ratification of the deal would allow students to return to school Friday after eight days of cancelled classes. Union leadership touted the contract at a news conference late Wednesday, calling it "what we've been asking for."
The announcement came after more than seven hours of talks at the office of Gov. Chris Gregoire, who had asked negotiators to stay until the two sides could reconcile their differences. She has no direct control over Washington schools but stepped in to use her influence as a mediator.
Will you join me and President Obama in insisting that Congress get busy fixing our jobs crisis—and pay for it by asking millionaires and billionaires like Warren Buffett to pay their fair share?
Tell your lawmakers to start fixing America’s jobs crisis—and let them know you’ll hold them accountable if they won’t
Sincerely,
I, Praetorian
Tell your lawmakers to start fixing America’s jobs crisis—and let them know you’ll hold them accountable if they won’t
Sincerely,
I, Praetorian
Tuesday
Offenders and Victims - misconceptions about child pornography
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
The Police Chief magazine, vol. 74, no. 3, March 2007
By Michelle K. Collins, Director, Exploited Child Unit, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Alexandria, Virginia
Offenders and Victims
There are several misconceptions about child pornography. Some believe child pornography refers to baby-in-the-bathtub pictures and others are under the impression that child pornography images are 19-year-old women dressed up in pigtails and schoolgirl uniforms. Neither of these descriptions constitutes child pornography. Child pornography is not pictures of teenagers romping on a beach; it is pictures of children, often babies in diapers, being violently molested. Not only did these children suffer the initial sexual victimization, they will continue to be exploited every time their image is traded online among individuals who use these images to fuel their sexual desire for children. These traded images are photographs of actual crime scenes.
As a result of NCMEC’s collecting data regarding child pornography investigations in the United States and around the world, a greater knowledge has been gained regarding the perpetrators of these crimes. In almost all cases tracked by NCMEC, the abuser was an adult with legitimate access to the child victim. In fact, in those cases where the child has been identified by law enforcement, 35 percent of the abusers were a parent of the child victim. Twenty-eight percent of the abusers were neighbors or trusted family friends of the child victim. Although it may be difficult to accept, the offenders who photograph the sexual abuse of children are typically in a position of authority in the children’s life. Not surprisingly, few children disclose their abuse to a trusted adult.
Another disturbing trend investigators have noticed is the dramatic drop in the age of the child victims seen in these sexually abusive images. According to data collected by NCMEC, 58 percent of identified child victims are prepubescent. Sadly, 6 percent of the identified children were only infants at the time the sexual abuse occurred and the images were produced. And although NCMEC does collect information regarding children from other countries who were used in the production of child pornography, most of the children known to NCMEC are from the United States.
Law Enforcement’s Response
Over the last decade, law enforcement has proven itself highly effective in identifying and apprehending individuals who transmit child pornography on the Internet. On a federal level, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) are working these crimes effectively. In addition, strong networks of trained law enforcement professionals are working on the state and local levels through the 46 federally funded task forces devoted to stopping Internet crimes against children (ICAC). The successful teamwork among these agencies is reflected in the large number of arrests they make each year.
In the last eight years, there has been a collective awakening in law enforcement regarding the need to identify the children seen in the images. Today, law enforcement considers as part of its mission not only using the child pornography images to charge a defendant but also scrutinizing the images for any possible clues that could lead to the location of the abuse. Many of these children are being abused in the basements and living rooms of their homes across the United States. Few of these children will disclose their abuse to a trusted adult. Thus, in recent years, investigators working child pornography investigations have begun to examine each disturbing image and video to find a clue that could lead to the rescue of a child from an abusive situation.
History of CVIP
In 2002, as a result of the court decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (535 U.S. 234, 2002), the Supreme Court decided that computer-generated child pornography was not considered illegal if no actual child was used in the production of the images. The Supreme Court maintained that these images are not criminal because there is no live victim, hence no real child.
This ruling allowed defendants to argue that the child pornography images found on their computers are actually images of virtual kids and not real children. In response to this defense, many prosecutors try to establish the actual identity of the children seen in the illegal images. Since determining the identity of children in child pornography may be difficult or even impossible, this presents additional challenges when prosecuting cases. CVIP is playing a critical role in helping to ensure the successful conviction of child pornographers.
CVIP analysts, in cooperation with in-house federal law enforcement partners, work with law enforcement and prosecutors to ensure convictions of child pornographers. Most importantly, CVIP analysts closely examine the heinous images for any clues that might point to a location of the abuse. The efforts of law enforcement across the country have been astounding. In the first four years of CVIP, law enforcement has notified NCMEC of more than 900 child victims rescued from the hands of their abusers.
Evidence Reviews
Local and federal law enforcement agencies are able to submit copies of seized child pornography to the federal law enforcement agents assigned to NCMEC, accompanied by a written request that the images be reviewed for identified children. After a review of all of the pictures on the defendant’s computer, a child identification report is provided to the submitting agency listing every single picture containing an identified child. In order to protect the child’s privacy, this report contains detailed information about the law enforcement agency that identified the child.
Image Analysis
The most critical function of CVIP is the ongoing effort to rescue the unidentified children seen in sexually exploitive images. There are many children still suffering at the hands of their exploiters who need to be located. While reviewing evidence submitted by law enforcement, CVIP analysts closely examine the images and videos and document all investigative clues that could lead to the location of a child victim. Once a location has been determined, CVIP enlists the assistance of the appropriate law enforcement agency to identify the child victims. Many children have been rescued from ongoing exploitation as a result of the cooperative efforts between CVIP and law enforcement.
This case highlights the importance of image analysis and cooperative investigations involving federal and local law enforcement agencies. During the course of providing technical assistance to the ICE and U.S. Secret Service, CVIP analysts reviewed several child pornography images of six prepubescent girls. The CVIP analysts had never seen these pictures before, which heightened their concerns that these children might still be in an abusive situation. Many of the sexually explicit photographs showed the girls in various rooms of a private home that provided critical clues for a location.
CVIP analysts began an aggressive analysis of the images with the hope of identifying the six young girls. CVIP reviewed the images, one by one, and documented a significant number of investigative clues. The first clue that led CVIP analysts to the children’s location was an envelope seen in the background of one of the images. Image enhancement provided the analyst with the name of a storage facility. Internet searches for this company indicated six possible locations in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area.
The second clue that indicated that the victims lived in the Minneapolis area was a particular picture in which a child’s uniform is seen draped over a chair. Partially visible on the uniform was the text MINNEA. CVIP analysts believed that this clue, along with the envelope, could help law enforcement find the victims. In addition to a possible location, CVIP analysts determined that many of the images were taken with an Olympus digital camera between March and October 2004.
NCMEC referred the case to ICE’s field office in Minneapolis. ICE agents coordinated the investigation with the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the Burnsville Police Department. The investigators created a mini-taskforce and successfully identified all six children within a few days. During the search warrant of the abuser’s home, many of the items seen in the photographs were seized as evidence. The U.S. attorney’s office successfully convicted the producer of these images on 24 counts of manufacturing child pornography, one count of possession of child pornography, and one count of receipt of child pornography.
Newly Identified Victims
During the course of child sexual exploitation investigations, law enforcement investigators frequently encounter children who have been pornographically photographed or videotaped. It is an unfortunate reality that many of these pictures will be uploaded to the Internet for the enjoyment of others. It is often difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement to determine whether photographs of locally identified victims have been traded with others. NCMEC can generate reports for law enforcement documenting where specific pictures have been seen. These reports have been incredibly helpful to law enforcement and prosecutors who were looking to ensure convictions on charges of distribution.
More than 900 children seen in these horrific images already have been identified, but there are many sexually abused children who still need to be rescued. It is critical that law enforcement agencies notify NCMEC when they’ve identified a child who was pornographically photographed, whether they believe the images were distributed or not.
Victim Identification Laboratory
Every week, CVIP staff members view thousands of illegal images of children where the victim appears to be in the United States yet has not been identified. CVIP analysts work to identify the location of these children by looking for distinguishing clues in the background such as newspapers, calendars, and envelopes. Such unique identifiers may not be recognizable to CVIP staff members, but it is highly probable somebody may recognize them. Based on the assumption that more children can be located if more people are looking at the backgrounds, NCMEC created an aggressive new tool in the fight against child pornography called the Victim Identification Lab.
In summer 2006 the first-ever United States–based victim identification lab was launched at the Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas, Texas. It was a cooperative effort involving NCMEC, the ICAC task forces, the FBI, ICE, and the USPIS. The purpose of the lab was to create a secure environment where law enforcement officers could review sanitized, nonpornographic images that contain potential clues in the background that may be regionally identifiable.
Sunday
Half of Texas' Students Have Been Suspended, Study Finds
Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.
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- Using discipline records of nearly 1 million Texas middle and high school students that cover much of the last decade, researchers found that more than half of them were suspended or expelled at least once between 7th and 12th grades, that the punishments were applied unevenly among students of different races, abilities, and schools, and that students disciplined with these methods were more likely to repeat a grade or drop out of school than students who were not punished in the same way.
The study, unveiled Tuesday by the Council of State Governments Justice Center in Bethesda, Md., and the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University, involved the discipline and criminal records of all Texas students who were 7th graders in 2000, 2001, and 2002, and tracked all of them through one year past the date when they would have graduated with their original class.
In the study, “Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement,” researchers found that of the half a million times students were suspended or expelled, only 3 percent of those suspensions or expulsions were for behavior Texas law requires be punished that way. The rest were at the discretion of school officials.
Although the study involved just one state, the authors argue that it has implications for the rest of the country because Texas has the second-largest public school system in the country and one where almost two-thirds of students are nonwhite.
The goal of the study was to prompt policymakers everywhere to look closely at school discipline.
“We hope other states will follow Texas’ lead and put their systems under similar scrutiny,” said Michael D. Thompson, director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Justice Center. He raised a key question he said state education leaders should ask themselves: “Is our state’s school discipline system getting the desired results?”
The study found that the average number of days on which students missed at least some class time due to a disciplinary incident was two days for out-of-school suspension, 27 days for a placement at an alternative school, and 73 days if they were placed in a juvenile justice program.
While the numbers gleaned from analyzing student discipline in Texas may be shocking, the state’s rate of expulsions and out-of-school suspensions, at 6.9 percent, is lower than that of some other states, including California, at about 13 percent, and Florida, at about 9 percent.
Repeat Offenders
One statistic uncovered by the analysis of Texas discipline and juvenile justice records was that 15 percent of students were punished by suspension or expulsion 11 or more times. Those repeat actions make the effectiveness of those types of punishments questionable, Mr. Thompson said.
“Seeing how common it is for students to be suspended or expelled ... we probably can do better,” Mr. Thompson said. Also, the study raises concerns about how nearly half the students disciplined 11 or more times also were in contact with the Texas juvenile justice system, raising the specter of the so-called “school-to-prison” pipeline.
In addition, at schools within Texas with similar demographics, the use of the punishments varied widely, “indicating, I think, that it’s possible by relying less on suspensions and expulsions to reduce juvenile justice involvement and improve academic performance,” he said.
The Texas Education Agency, which helped the researchers match students’ school discipline and juvenile justice records, said the report highlighted some important weaknesses in Texas schools.
“It can be painful to look at numbers that aren’t flattering,” said Suzanne Marchman, a spokeswoman for the agency. But whether the report triggers individual schools to look at their discipline systems or drive policy at the legislative level is an open question. “No one wants a drop out,” Ms. Marchman said. “It brings up that dialogue: How can we address this issue at hand?”
In particular, if students’ punishment entails being sent to an alternative setting or juvenile justice setting, school districts need to be sure the teaching at those schools is high quality, she said.
“School districts need to take a closer look at the level of instruction that’s taking place at these alternative settings when [students are] punished so when [students] are released back to districts they’re not behind academically and they’re not frustrated,” she said, triggering a cycle of misbehavior that sends a student back to one of those alternate settings.
However, the agency also wanted to offer one cautionary note about interpreting the study.
“It gives the impression that 60 percent of the students in Texas are criminals or badly behaved,” Ms. Marchman said. But because of discrepancies in how punishment is administered between schools and districts, some students might be suspended for an infraction such as wearing flip flops or tank tops on the first offense while another school might give students several chances first.
RELATED BLOG
In recent years, Texas has taken steps to address the way students are disciplined, and the report’s authors said lawmakers and Gov. Rick Perry were supportive of their work.
The Texas Legislative Budget Board recently examined
six school districts’ disciplinary practices, and the Texas legislature has changed some state laws pertaining to punishing students. For example, “persistent misbehavior” is no longer a reason for expulsion; school districts are now required to consider mitigating factors such as self-defense and a student’s disability before making a disciplinary decision; and the state education department had to create minimum standards for the disciplinary alternative education programs students are required to attend.
six school districts’ disciplinary practices, and the Texas legislature has changed some state laws pertaining to punishing students. For example, “persistent misbehavior” is no longer a reason for expulsion; school districts are now required to consider mitigating factors such as self-defense and a student’s disability before making a disciplinary decision; and the state education department had to create minimum standards for the disciplinary alternative education programs students are required to attend.At the same time, other behavior violations have been added to the list of things for which school districts must or can punish students, including sexting and bullying.
Also recently, the state has begun offering training to districts interested in learning about positive discipline methods, and a pilot program this year is using statewide data to document student achievement and measure the effectiveness of specific professional development programs and activities.
Discipline Disparities
Some groups of students were more vulnerable to suspension or expulsion than others, the study found.
For example, 75 percent of African-American students were expelled or suspended, compared to 50 percent of white students.
Also, 75 percent of students with disabilities were suspended or expelled, compared with 55 percent of students without a disability. Students classified as having an emotional disturbance were more likely to be suspended or expelled, while students with autism or mental retardation were less likely than students without disabilities to be punished the same way.
The report didn’t make specific policy recommendations, but noted the gradual toughening of school discipline policies nationwide, triggered in part by a spate of school shootings in the 1990s. The 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act requires schools that accept federal money to expel students for one year if they bring a weapon to school.
A few years later, many school districts started adopting zero-tolerance discipline policies toward drugs, alcohol, and violent behavior. Some 79 percent of schools had these policies in place by 1997. While expulsion for some students means attending an alternative school, as it does in Texas, in some states, students are simply out of school altogether as they serve their punishment term.
An American Psychological Association study in 2006 found that zero-tolerance policies may negatively affect academic outcomes and increase the chances of a student dropping out.
While Mr. Thompson said the Texas study isn’t strictly focused on the zero-tolerance discipline, that practice is part of a larger discussion about student discipline policy.
“We look forward to launching a national project to identify policy strategies ... to get better outcomes for these kids,” he said.
Vol. 30, Issue 37
I, Praetorian
Tuesday
The Counterfeit Culture - Useful Observations for Understanding why Collapse is Inevitable
by Mike Adams edited by I, Praetorian
by Mike Adams edited by I, Praetorian
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Through a devolving web of greed, self-serving power and a departure from fundamental ethics, Western culture has, over the last hundred years, become the counterfeit culture.
Nothing is real anymore - not the food, not the money, and certainly not the evening news. And because it's not real, it's not sustainable. That's why it's headed for collapse, which isall too real, as many people are about to find out.
In the mean time, here are some observations about the counterfeit culture in which we all frustratingly find ourselves. It's all about corporations, governments and institutions being "in the business of" counterfeiting something - faking something or pretending to create something of value when they really aren't. Ring a bell?
The Counterfeit Culture
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