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Monday, December 19, 2011

News The Monday Morning News

Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 8:33 AM

Deathy Weekend: North Korea's resident megalomaniac Kim Jong Il. Czechoslovakian and intellectual badass Vaclav Havel. Deloris Gillespie, the woman set on fire in her elevator, was allegedly killed by a man she knew over a $2,000 debt. Meanwhile: "The death toll from a devastating late-season storm in the southern Philippines rose Sunday to more than 700 after massive floods washed away entire villages, drowned residents who had been sleeping and swept victims out to sea, authorities said."

Pulitzer-Winning Cartoonist David Horsey: Quits the PI.

The Seattle Achievement Gap: Among black students:

African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black students who speak another language at home — typically immigrants or refugees — according to new numbers released by Seattle Public Schools. [...]

Only 36 percent of black students who speak English at home passed their grade's math test, while 47 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Other black ethnic groups did even better, although still lower than the district average of 70 percent. In reading, 56 percent of black students who speak English passed, while 67 percent of Somali-speaking students passed.

The Seattle City Council: Set to ban plastic bags this afternoon and discuss placing a library levy on nex year's ballot. Here's the council agenda.

Fourteen-Year-Old-Girl: Confronts Rick Perry for his opposition to gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

The Top News Story of 2011: When George W Bush killed Osama bin Laden. Second place was Japan's nuclear tsunami quake.

Is Christmas a Christian Holiday? Nope, never was.

Polling on the Iowa Caucuses: A Dem robopoll finds Ron Paul at the top of the heap. Polling from this time in th 2007 suggests it doesn't matter. Meanwhile, Ben Smith opines on the potential nightmare of a predictable Romney-vs. Paul contest that must be covered nonetheless.

Have Fun for an Hour: With this.

Comments (16) RSS

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African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black students who speak another language at home"

Uh oh, the standard Slog meme that black kids do poorly in schools because of white racism just blew up in your faces. Quick, better start rewriting your narrative. Is it any wonder African immigrants don't being called 'black' in the US?

Posted by There is no achievement gap, only a parenting gap on December 19, 2011 at 8:38 AM

@1 that's a standard slog theme?

i'm glad ignore even trolling the education threads

kim jong-il dying is huge

Posted by Swearengen on December 19, 2011 at 8:43 AM

About that Seattle times education story -- Am I the only one to notice that the reporter doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word trend? Numbers from a single year are not a trend, they're a snapshot of that year. Is it going one direction or another? Or stagnant? Who knows? Can't tell. No trends here.

Posted by Steven Bradford

on December 19, 2011 at 9:00 AM

My kid's class is an outlier I guess...the only child in my son's class taking advanced math is an African-American female, and five white males of varying nationalities just three to six points away in state testing scores from "exceeding standards" and stuck with regular math.
When I took Beginning German those who'd never been exposed to German did better on tests than did those who learned German among family, because we had no bad habits to unlearn.

I don't give much credence to SPS district statistics because they contradict what I know of my SPS school.

Posted by Keister Button on December 19, 2011 at 9:02 AM

This one newspaper town now has zero political cartoonists. Thanks, Frank!

Posted by DOUG.

on December 19, 2011 at 9:05 AM

Can the Slog tech wizards fix the "Doh 404 error" that happens with a couple posts every day on the mobile site? It's happened for well over a year but now that there are ads I feel like I can complain.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/mobile/…

Posted by raku on December 19, 2011 at 9:24 AM

So, will the plastic bag ban include those little courtesy plastic bags that grocery checkers put around meats, ice cream, and other such things that can drip or smell?

Posted by Phoebe in Wallingford on December 19, 2011 at 9:34 AM

Raku, they either a) don't give a shit; b) aren't technically competent enough to fix it; or c) never read the comments here and aren't aware of the problem.

My money's on "c."

I agree; it is a major pain in the ass, though.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty

on December 19, 2011 at 9:35 AM

my stepson tutors advanced math at new holly. all his students are immigrants from e. africa or se asia.

you can lead a horse to water, etc.

Posted by Max Solomon on December 19, 2011 at 9:45 AM

Here's the source of the tone matrix:

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Might not be this dude's original idea, or maybe it is, I don't know, but this is where this particular iteration came from.

Posted by Zebes

on December 19, 2011 at 9:46 AM

@6 - It's any post with a poll in it. I agree, annoying as hell. Rarely I'll actually be able to get to one of those posts and vote, but usually I have to go back to the index and skip the posts with polls in them on my Android phone.

Posted by NaFun

on December 19, 2011 at 9:59 AM

It's because we call the highly skilled tech professionals "monkeys," I'll bet. Those apes really take offense to that, and then they get all passive-aggressive 404 error-y 'n stuff.

Posted by TVDinner

on December 19, 2011 at 11:17 AM

@7 i believe meat and produce bags will stay.

Posted by internet_jen on December 19, 2011 at 11:54 AM

@1 "I don't give much credence to...statistics because they contradict what I know..."

The motto for flat-earthers, birthers, truthers, climate change deniers, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, the Seattle Police Department and on and on...

Posted by gnossos on December 19, 2011 at 12:22 PM

@1: ...and the parenting gap has nothing to do with racism? How shortsighted you are! All the better to ignore reality with, I guess.

Posted by venomlash on December 19, 2011 at 1:16 PM

That Christmas article is shit. All the links go to fucking Wikipedia. Did a twelve year old write that?

And if you actually read the Wikipedia links, they say that the Roman Catholics were celebrating Christmas on December 25 as early as 354 fucking AD.

But the article seems to care only for what the Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans did, egregiously misinterpreting their dislike of Christmas as "too pagan" when obviously their issue was that Christmas was too Catholic.

Which makes total sense, doesn't it? They were the Protestants after all.

(I'm always having idiots tell me I ought to be celebrating Christmas even though I'm not Christian and they make asinine arguments like that all the time. It's just as dumb as Bill O'Reilly and his ilk.)

Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn on December 19, 2011 at 2:29 PM