Michael Benjamin: Unequal enforcement of the school cell phone ban means it should end. (Post)
More than a thousand academics have signed a letter against the rise of high-stakes tests. (Daily News)
Nashville denied a proposal for a charter school that would open in a middle-class part of the city. (WSJ)
Illinois could reduce the promised return from its teacher pension system, high at 8.5 percent. (WSJ)
Nycdoenuts
While Michael Benjamin has a point, the reality is that the school cell phone ban should end because it interferes with student learning. The ban denies a fantastic learning tool to students (and not just the ones who have these devices either. Some smart grouping and good pedagogy can ensure that all students have access to the information these phones can access during class).
Thee good news is that its probably just a matter of time before a BYOD policy is enacted (about 550 days until the old man leaves office). That would fix the inequality issue spoken about in the piece and the (really stupid) idea of denying students access to information on their devices during class.
Larry Littlefield
“Lowering the assumed return rate could increase liabilities at the fund serving 101,000 retired public-school employees by billions of dollars. The Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System was 46% funded as of June 30, 2011.”
People keep saying this, and it isn’t true. What will have to be paid depends on the level of benefits, the actual INCOME returns, and the extent to which pensions were retroactively enhanced and underfuned in the past.
Not only does it not matter in the end what it is assumed, it doesn’t even matter if stocks temporarily go up or down, something that is gleefully ignored in bubbles. If you don’t pay benefits with actual income, and sell off your assets to do so instead, there will be no return on the assets you no longer have regardless of the assumed or actual rate of return.
Basically, these mature funds should be paying almost all their benefits from interest and dividends, not half. If they are selling assets to pay benefits, they are in a death spiral.
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