Playahata

The Scars of Stop-and-Frisk

A short documentary film on New York’s stop-and-frisk policing focuses on Tyquan Brehon, a young man in Brooklyn who says he was stopped more than 60 times before age 18.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — It’s a jaw-dropping prescription for fixing city schools.

“Professor” Michael Bloomberg said Thursday he would accomplish more with less by slashing the teaching staff in half — and that’s just the beginning, reports CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer. He looked like he was from another planet when he dressed as a hippie for a political show, but the mayor’s blueprint for fixing city schools have some asking “what was he smoking?”

“If I had the ability to just design the system and say ex cathedra this is what we’re going to do you would cut the number of teachers in half and weed out all the bad ones,” Bloomberg said. That’s right. The mayor told people at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology conference it would be far better to run city schools with way fewer people. And, by the way, on the billionaire’s perfect planet that would mean cramming more kids into each classroom.

“And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students,” Bloomberg said.

Andrea Spencer is dean of the School of Education at Pace University.

“When I heard the statement I was really shocked,” Spencer said. “There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that half of the teachers in any system are ineffective. What there is evidence to support is the fact that larger classes really place detriments in the way of learning.” (more…)

More than 600,000 people were stopped and questioned by police last year – the highest number since the NYPD began releasing the data in 2002. Police stopped 601,055 people in 2010, an increase of about 4.3% from the 575,304 stopped the year before. Of those stopped, about 14% were given summonses or arrested. The remaining 86% were questioned, but not charged or issued a summons. It’s not clear how many were frisked.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the numbers show glaring disparities between whites and people of color stopped by police. Black and Latino men accounted for 85% of the stops last year. “Unfortunately, the pattern of stopping innocent New Yorkers continues,” Lieberman said. “The pattern of stopping enormous numbers of overwhelmingly African-American and Latino men continues.” (more…)

Glossed over in the recent stories about the New York City Department of Education and school closings is that one of the schools targeted for closing is The Urban Assembly Academy of History and Citizenship for Young Men (UAAHC), one of two all male high schools in the city. It is being considered for closure based upon school report grades received under an administrator who no longer works at the school as of August 2010. Despite having new leadership and changes in curriculum, the future still looks grim for a school that has successfully surpassed the odds and graduated Black males at a rate 15 percentage points higher than the city, even in it’s worst year. For more on the school check the this link http://uaahc.tumblr.com/
Watch here as a teacher from the school makes a spirited defense of the school to the Depart of Education panel.

John Oliver says Muslims are allowed to put a mosque near Ground Zero, just like Catholics can build a church next to a playground.