Questionable Headlines

[Gravdigr]

The new Yahoo format is a little, uhh, well...:

[Gravdigr]

I also ran across this nugget:



That, my friends, is a salesman!

[Flint]

Awesome. That is the ultimate goal of all religious officials, and this man has cut out everything superfluous and gotten right to the point. Something about God, some book/scroll or something, fill in the blanks with some other crap, and basically suck my penis. That's patricarchal monotheism.

What better way to get your wang slobbered on than to equate it to some religious bullshit which was bullshit to begin with?

The real genius here is that he has connected the supernatural event to the actual cumshot.

[Sundae]

I wish I had a photo. I would have, if I'd remembered this thread existed.
I'd have bought the paper just for you and scanned it in.

Channel Four are broadcasting a call to prayer at 03.00 every morning during Ramadan.
For some reason, minor noise-making groups are up in arms about this, suggesting it threatens community cohesion or somesuch waste of words.

The Sun's sensitive headline for the story?
"Ramadan-a-Ding-Dong"

I laughed all the way home.

[Gravdigr]

DNA, evidence, and, apparently, Lisa Marie Presley.

[ZenGum]

DNA and evidence?


Wot, no ouija boards or "cop-hunches"?

[Gravdigr]

Not a headline, but, still, questionable.



Also, BJ Upton is not Caucasian.

[ZenGum]

Also, he's clearly bunting, probably as a sacrifice, but at best for a single, who ever he is.

[Lamplighter]

This "news" article could or maybe should go in the "Faux Science" thread...

ABC News
SYDNEY LUPKIN
July 31, 2013

Top Hospitals Fall Flat in Contested New Report

Consumer Reports said some of the nation's top hospitals
performed the worst when it came to patient outcomes.
Massachusetts General Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgeries,
which are both ranked top in the nation for various specialties
by U.S. News and World Report, got the lowest Consumer Reports Rating possible: a solid black circle.
<snip>
"The problem I have with this is that teaching hospitals,
which did poorly in this report, tend to have more complicated patients,"
said Dr. Richard Besser, chief health medical editor for ABC News.

"More complicated patients will tend to be in the hospital longer.
Community hospitals, which did better in this report,
often refer their more complicated cases elsewhere."

Remember all the "radial keratotomy" business ?
Our Medical School's Dept of Ophthalmology did not do them at all,
but instead treated all the cases with bad outcomes...
It was a very steady business.

[Happy Monkey]

"The problem I have with this is that teaching hospitals,
which did poorly in this report, tend to have more complicated patients,"
said Dr. Richard Besser, chief health medical editor for ABC News.

"More complicated patients will tend to be in the hospital longer.
Community hospitals, which did better in this report,
often refer their more complicated cases elsewhere."

Sounds like how charter schools often have better scores than the public schools that feed them.

[Clodfobble]

Also, it is exactly like how charter schools often have worse scores than the public schools that feed them.



Charter schools in Texas, classified by type: in the greater Austin area, there are 30 charter schools.

--4 are non-members and thus unclassified, but I happen to know that two are for special needs kids, one is for delinquents, and one is an alternative Montessori-style curriculum where you don't get grades
--12 are "college preparatory"
--7 are "dropout recovery" or "RTC/JDC" (meaning a judge ordered attendance)
--7 are "specialized mission" (this includes those with a narrowly focused curriculum, like professional-level fine arts or vocational skills, as well as the school for extracurricular prodigies that compacts bare state requirements into a 4-hour day so the kids can spend the rest of the day playing violin or doing gymnastics or whatever thing they do.)

Based on the above, I believe you could make the claim that no more than half of the charter schools are likely to have higher-than-average test scores. The others will be lower.

But there's no need to derail the thread, it's all been said before, anyway.

[glatt]

That's a lot of charter schools. Maybe if you have too many charter schools in a given population, then the charter school self selecting magic doesn't work.

[Clodfobble]

I don't know, as a percentage it's not really that high. Not all of them serve all grades. There are 120 schools in just Austin ISD, and the greater Austin area includes Round Rock ISD, Leander ISD, Georgetown ISD, Pflugerville ISD, and Manor ISD as well. I know one family that even commutes from Elgin (30 minutes outside the city, where there are zero charter schools of any kind.)

Plus, they really do all serve different needs. There's only one of those 30 I would consider putting my kids in. Not because they're all bad schools, but because they're not appropriate for my particular kids. Charter schools most definitely should not replace the public school system; they are by definition meant to serve a minority, not the majority. But there are children who don't fit the mold of the public school system either, and they should be given an alternative.

[Clodfobble]

I got too curious, and we are kind of in a hippie/alternative area, so I counted the rest of the schools:

Round Rock ISD: 51 schools
Leander ISD: 38 schools
Georgetown ISD: 18 schools
Pflugerville ISD: 28 schools
Manor ISD: 12 schools

So 30 compared to 267, total percentage 30/297 = 10.1% of schools in the area.

[Lamplighter]

Just FWIW, from Clod's link above...

The Texas Charter Schools Association (TCSA) is the statewide Association
representing over 80% of the students in open-enrollment charters –
448 charter campuses and more than 135,000 students.
Public charter schools vary in mission and model, serving a diverse range of students.

An Association survey of our membership indicates that
16% of Texas charter schools serve high school students
that have dropped out, or are at-risk of dropping out of school.

Additionally, 28% focus on college preparation,
40% serve a specialized mission,
5% are educating students in residential treatment or juvenile justice programs,
and 11% are serving Pre-K and Elementary students.

Clod, there's a couple of somewhat ambiguous remarks in this quote.

Do you have any feeling that the 80% means there are 20% more in open enrollment,
or, the 20 % are closed enrollment.
If the latter, what sort of schools are those ?

Also, what sort of situations are the "40% specialized mission" ?

I guess my (false- ?) impression here in Oregon is that most of our
charter schools are religious- or home-schooling types of schools.