Friday, June 07, 2019






Former Parkland security officer Scot Peterson charged with neglect for not entering school

About time the gutless wonder was called to account.  How did a coward get into that job?

Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a news release that Peterson's inaction cost people their lives.

A former Parkland, Florida, school safety officer who failed to confront the gunman when 17 people were fatally shot at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, was arrested Tuesday on multiple charges, including child neglect and perjury.

Scot Peterson, who worked as a security officer at the campus, was charged with seven counts of neglect of a child and three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said.

The charges carry a maximum potential sentence of 96 and a half years in state prison, the Broward State Attorney's Office said.

Lawyers for Peterson denounced the charges as "unprecedented" and "spurious." "The State’s actions appear to be nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at politically motivated retribution against Mr. Peterson," attorney Joseph DiRuzzo said in a statement to NBC News. "The charges against Mr. Peterson should be dismissed immediately."

Seventeen students, teachers and staff were killed in the shooting on Feb. 14, 2018, and another 17 were injured. A former student, Nikolas Cruz, is charged with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.

Cruz has pleaded not guilty although his public defenders said he would plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Prosecutors want the death penalty.

Peterson, 56, was the only other person at the school with a gun when the shooter opened fire.

He was taken into custody in Broward County after a 15-month investigation that showed he "refused to investigate the source of the gunshots, retreated during the active shooting while victims were being shot and directed other law enforcement who arrived on scene to remain 500 feet away from the building," the state law enforcement department said.

Department Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a news release that Peterson "did absolutely nothing" to stop the shooting, and that cost people their lives.

“There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives,” Swearingen said.

The State Attorney's Office said the law enforcement department interviewed more than 180 witnesses, as well as reviewed video surveillance during the investigation.

"All the facts related to Mr. Peterson’s failure to act during the MSD massacre clearly warranted both termination of employment and criminal charges. It’s never too late for accountability and justice,” Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony added.

Peterson, who was fired Tuesday from the Broward County Sheriff's Office, said during a June 2018 interview with NBC's "Today" that he did not go into the building because of miscommunication.

"I didn't get it right," he said. "But it wasn't because of some, 'Oh, I don't want to go into that building. Oh, I don't want to face somebody in there.' It wasn't like that at all." "Those are my kids in there," he added. "I never would have sat there and let my kids get slaughtered. Never."

Peterson was booked into the Broward County Jail on a $102,000 bond. Under the terms of his bond, he must wear a GPS monitor, surrender his passport and is prohibited from possessing firearms while the case is pending.

Jeff Bell, president of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association, told NBC News on Tuesday that the union has concerns with the child neglect charges due to the caveat that someone must be a caretaker.

"Does that mean now that any time an officer is assigned a detail that involves children around the country, are they now caretakers?" Bell asked. "I worry about future officers, not just Scot Peterson, being charged by overzealous prosecutors with child neglect when we’re not caretakers."

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime died in the Parkland shooting, told Peterson to "rot in hell" on Twitter Tuesday.

"You could have saved some of the 17," Guttenberg said. "You could have saved my daughter. You did not and then you lied about it and you deserve the misery coming your way."

The brother of Meadow Pollack, another student who died in the attack, said on Twitter that he hoped Peterson spends "the rest of his life in prison."

"He cowered in Parkland while my sister died defenseless and lied about his failure to confront the shooter," Hunter Pollack said.

SOURCE 







Some Colleges are Committed to Ideological Diversity

When you send your youngster off to college, you might not mind that they will have to walk on eggshells, respect taboos, snitch on fellow students for politically incorrect jokes and learn to use ad hominem arguments as a means to attack ideas they find "disagreeable." If that's your preference, you can choose from a wide variety of America's top-ranked colleges. If you want to send your youngster to colleges that are seriously committed to civil and diverse debate, pick up a copy of the June 2019 edition of Reason magazine for some guidance.

Professors Debra Mashek and Jonathan Haidt authored "10 Colleges Where You Won't Have to Walk on Eggshells." Mashek and Haidt are, respectively, faculty members of Harvey Mudd College and New York University. Haidt is the co-founder of the Heterodox Academy and Mashek is its executive director. Heterodox Academy is nonpartisan and boasts a membership of more than 2,500 faculty and college administrators who advocate for open inquiry and civil disagreement on college campuses and in academic disciplines.

The Mashek and Haidt article discusses 10 colleges in alphabetical order. Among them is Chapman University, whose president, Daniele Struppa, is "an outspoken advocate of academic freedom and freedom of speech." Struppa has little tolerance for the political correctness so prevalent at most of the nation's colleges.

The University of Chicago has set the gold standard on free speech and open inquiry. In 2014, it created its "Statement on Principles of Free Expression" (aka the Chicago Principles). Those principles provide the framework for thinking about the importance of dissent as well as the role of the university for establishing the platform for debate. University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer says, "We have an obligation to see that the greatest variety of perspectives is brought to bear on issues before us as scholars and citizens." The Chicago Principles, or substantially similar ones, have been adopted by 55 schools across the nation. In June 2018, the University of Chicago received Heterodox Academy's Institutional Excellence Award in recognition of its stellar culture and support for open inquiry.

Other colleges listed in the Mashek and Haidt article, where students won't have to walk on eggshells include Arizona State University, Claremont McKenna College, Kansas State University, Kenyon College, Linn-Benton Community College, St. John's College, University of Richmond and Purdue University. It's worth noting that Mitch Daniels is president of Purdue University and former two-term governor of the state of Indiana. Daniels and his interim provost Jay Akridge wrote this message to the Purdue community: "At Purdue, we protect and promote the right to free and open inquiry in all matters and guarantee all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen challenge and learn."

In my opinion, it is truly a tragic state of affairs when free speech and free inquiry require protection at most institutions of higher learning. Indeed, it has been freedom in the marketplace of ideas that has made the United States, as well as other western nations, leaders in virtually every area of human endeavor. A monopoly of ideas is just as dangerous as a monopoly in other areas of our lives such as monopoly in political power and the production of goods and services.

At the end of Professors Mashek's and Haidt's article, they come up with a few suggestions for parents. Visit the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education website to find out about a particular college's agenda to suppress free speech. By all means, check out the Heterodox Academy website. Search the college's website for terms such as "open inquiry," "freedom of expression" and "free speech." Examine the college's calendar of events to see whether speakers with diverse opinions are invited. Visit the campus. Talk with actual students about their experiences. In this article, Mashek and Haidt give specific questions to ask. I'd add to their list of things to do on a campus visit: Talk to the local police, bartenders and hospital people about the college. They might give you insights that an admissions officer would choose to keep hidden.

SOURCE 






Common Core Has a Core Problem

Instead of leading to better education, the standards have devolved into a battle over funding.

“Contrary to our expectation, we found that [Common Core] had significant negative effects on 4th graders’ reading achievement during the 7 years after the adoption of the new standards, and had a significant negative effect on 8th graders’ math achievement 7 years after adoption based on analyses of NAEP composite scores.” —The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction and Learning (C-SAIL) preliminary study, 4-1-2019

Uh oh. That Race to the Top money of 2012 — totaling over $400 million — that served as the bolus to prime the funding pump for America’s schools employing some form of Common Core State Standards didn’t work. It seems, the data shows, it even had a detrimental effect. But maybe it was that the money was insufficient. Right?

Wrong. That federal funding was accompanied by an additional $7 billion in Student Improvement Grants that directly targeted low-performing schools by Barack Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan. Money seemed plenteous.

So, what exactly has happened? Based on data analyzing the outcome of all but four states — Alaska, Texas, Nebraska, and Virginia — that moved to adopt some version of Common Core, the 640 pages of K-12 curriculum and testing mandates from 2010-2013 that was promised to produce academic gains, kids’ education actually suffered.

It seems, according to a longitudinal study, that students not only failed to make gains but tracked with “troubling” results showing “the magnitude of negative effects tend to increase over time.”

Specifically, after billions of dollars spent on new textbooks, new curriculum, and a new world of aggressive and frequent testing — along with the hours of work devoted to the change required of our teachers and students — the declines in performance measured for 4th-grade reading and 8th-grade math reached statistical significance.

That means the results are scientifically sound and can be replicated using data, measurement, and objective means. Bottom line, Common Core cost American taxpayers dearly and was a headache for teachers who dealt with teaching tests and taking tests instead of mastering academic information. But students were the biggest losers with a measurable decline in scores not just looking at reading and math in K-12 but, according to The Federalist’s Joy Pullman in a November 2018 piece, both ACT and SAT scores reflected similar declines: “Students’ readiness for college-level English was at its lowest level since ACT’s creators began measuring that item, in 2002. Students’ preparedness for college-level math is at its lowest point since 2004.”

But is the media reporting the failure of another attempt to reconfigure public education? Are parents up in arms that proficiencies are still lagging after more promises and programs? Oh, no. The crisis is that President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has the audacity to ask questions like the following in searching for a better way to approach preparing our children academically:

Why do schools close in the summer?

Why are schools assigned by your address?

Why do students have to go to a school building in the first place?

Why is choice only available to those who can buy their way out?
Or buy their way in?

Why do we limit what a student can learn based upon the faculty and facilities available?

These were just a few of the questions asked by Secretary DeVos in a January speech at the American Enterprise Institute for a conference themed, “Bush-Obama School Reform: Lessons Learned.”

Americans have been taxed hundreds of billions of dollars for the purpose of public education under the guise that the U.S. Department of Education, created by the Carter administration, is the authority on educational excellence. DeVos’s comments reflect the hard truth that federal mandates, federally required testing, and federal standards to get federal money are tied to power that originates in Washington, DC, when parents working directly with teachers to provide the best options for their children are the ones who know best.

It’s 2019. America was told in 2000 that No Child Left Behind was the program to get our kids academically prepared for their futures. In 2008, the idea was the rigor of Common Core would be reinforced through new curricula as well as constant testing. And here we are, almost two decades later, waiting for some new-fangled-program to be the game-changer for students in our K-12 public schools.

Empowering parents to have more choice and control over the per-pupil-funding allocated for their child is a goal of the Trump administration and other states making reforms. But be prepared. When money is placed in the hands of taxpayers instead of a government bureaucracy to spend and steward, the fight is not about academic results. It’s about power and funding control.

That’s at the core of this critical issue.

SOURCE 




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