A slowed, darkened NYC begins to stir to life

A woman shops for groceries by flashlight in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. ConEd cut power to some neighborhoods served by underground lines as the advancing storm surge from Hurricane Sandy threatened to flood substations. Floodwaters later led to explosions that disabled a substation in Lower Manhattan, cutting power tens of thousands of customers south of 39th Street. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A woman shops for groceries by flashlight in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. ConEd cut power to some neighborhoods served by underground lines as the advancing storm surge from Hurricane Sandy threatened to flood substations. Floodwaters later led to explosions that disabled a substation in Lower Manhattan, cutting power tens of thousands of customers south of 39th Street. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A beachfront house is damaged in the aftermath of yesterday's surge from superstorm Sandy, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in Coney Island's Sea Gate community in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

A woman photographs the Manhattan skyline, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 in New York. Much of lower Manhattan is without electric power following the impact of superstorm Sandy. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

A car is upended on a mailbox on Surf Avenue in Coney Island, N.Y., in the aftermath of Sandy on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. Sandy, the storm that made landfall Monday, caused multiple fatalities, halted mass transit and cut power to more than 6 million homes and businesses. (AP Photo/Ralph Russo)

A beachfront house is completely destroyed in the aftermath of yesterday's surge from superstorm Sandy, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in Coney Island's Sea Gate community in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Two days after superstorm Sandy brought New York to a standstill, residents itching to get back to work and their old lives noticed small signs that the city might be getting back to ? well, not quite normal.

Morning rush-hour traffic appeared thicker than on an ordinary day as people started to return to work in a New York without functioning subways. Cars were bumper to bumper on several major highways.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday morning, reopening it after a rare two-day closure.

Perhaps most promising, though, was the people waiting at bus stops ? a sign that mass transit was trying to resume even as the subway system and some vehicle tunnels remained crippled by Sandy's record storm surge.

Rosa Diaz, a 58-year-old diabetic, waited for a bus to take her to the Bronx so she could she could keep an appointment with her endocrinologist. She lives in the Flushing section of Queens but is staying with her mother, who lives in a senior residence in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood ? with no power.

"It's horrible," she said. "Thank God, I bought gallons and gallons of water to drink and to wash with."

Even though workaday life was slowly returning, there was little false hope.

"Clearly, the challenges our city faces in the coming days are enormous," Bloomberg said Tuesday as officials warned that power might not be back until the weekend for hundreds of thousands of people accustomed to their cosmopolitan lives.

While some bus service resumed and some bridges reopened, transit officials said they couldn't predict when the subway would run again after suffering the worst damage in its 108-year history.

The storm's deadly impact grew grimly clearer as the worst of it moved off: The death toll rose to 22 in the city, including two people who drowned in a home and one who was in bed when a tree fell on an apartment. A fire destroyed as many as 100 houses in a flooded beachfront neighborhood in Queens, while firefighters used boats to rescue people in chest-high water.

For the 8 million people who live here, the city was a different place one day after being battered by the megastorm ? a combination of Hurricane Sandy, a wintry storm and a blast of arctic air.

Schools were shut for a second day and were closed Wednesday, too. And people inside and outside the city scrambled to find ways to get to work.

In lower Manhattan where power was out, traffic streamed off the Brooklyn Bridge but slowed as it approached downtown. There were few signs that traffic was being directed by police through intersections with darkened stoplights.

Buses have resumed partial service and are free, for now. And the city has modified taxi rules and encouraged drivers to pick up more than one passenger at a time.

Jeff Storey, of Goshen in the Hudson Valley north of the city, is a regular on the Metro-North Railroad and has been forced to work from home this week. He may have to switch to a bus until commuter rail service is running again, he told the Times-Herald Record of Middletown.

For Jill Meltz, a 45-year-old resident of the Upper West Side who works in advertising, Wednesday was the first day she felt good about going out. But it wasn't quite business as usual.

"It'll be back to normal when Starbucks opens," she said, glancing at a still-dark coffee shop.

Faced with the prospect of days without power and swaths of the city plunged into darkness at night, police brought in banks of lights and boosted patrols to reassure victims of a monster storm that they won't be victims of crime.

Some prominent galleries in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood hired private security and apartment building superintendents suddenly became guards. In Coney Island, about 100 police officers stood on corners or cruised in cars to guard a strip of vandalized stores and a damaged bank, to the relief of shaken residents.

"We're feeling OK, but at first we felt worried," 12-year-old Oleg Kharitmov said Tuesday as he walked his dog with his parents by the bank. "I'm pretty happy that the cops are here."

There was little sign of a crime wave, although police made multiple arrests in the city Monday and Tuesday, officials said. Charges included burglary, criminal mischief and trespassing. In one incident, three men were arrested on burglary charges after they struck a Radio Shack in Rockaway Beach, Queens, on Tuesday morning.

As night fell, nerves frayed.

Yvique Bastien waited outside an apartment complex with her two sons, her daughter, 4-month old grandchild and a pushcart full of supplies, hoping to get a ride to a relative's home from a member of her church. With the power out, it wasn't safe to stay, she said.

"We don't know what can happen to us," she said.

Bloomberg promised "a very heavy police presence" in the darkened neighborhoods, which include much of Manhattan south of the Empire State Building, from the East River to the Hudson River. Even outside the blackout areas, police deployed vans and patrol cars with their roof lights on, along with officers on the streets in a robust show of force.

Problems with high-voltage systems caused by the storm forced the utility to cut power Tuesday night to about 160,000 additional customers in Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Consolidated Edison, the power company, estimated it would be days before the last of the hundreds of thousands of customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who lost power have electricity again. For the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County, with even more outages, it could take a week.

___

Associated Press writers Meghan Barr, Verena Dobnik, Frank Eltman, Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Karen Matthews, Alexandra Olson, Jennifer Peltz, Verena Dobnik and Hal Ritter contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-10-31-Superstorm%20Sandy-NYC/id-8cfb390ef3bc4d7b902d704dd7e754d2

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5-0 Falcons knock out RG3, beat Redskins 24-17

LANDOVER, Md. (AP) ? Robert Griffin III isn't the type of quarterback to run out of bounds, and Sean Weatherspoon knew it. The Atlanta Falcons linebacker kept up the pursuit and went for the tackle. His upper body rammed into the helmet of the rookie who doesn't shy from contact.

Griffin was down and done. A mild concussion, according to Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan. On a day in which the Falcons' usually powerful offense was a bit out of sync, the defense had made a play that changed the game.

Matt Ryan went on to lead three scoring drives in the fourth quarter Sunday, scraping together enough points for a 24-17 win that gave the Falcons their first 5-0 start in franchise history.

"I felt like he was still turning upfield, so I was just trying to make a play," Weatherspoon said. "Most quarterbacks would probably slide out of bounds or run out of bounds, but he's a tough guy."

And there was no dispute. It was a clean hit.

"It felt like a good play," Weatherspoon said. "I think it gave us a little energy."

The play turned a third-and-goal from the 3 to a fourth-and-goal from the 5 late in the third quarter. The Redskins then kicked a field goal to take 10-7 lead, and Griffin's replacement, fellow rookie Kirk Cousins, managed one big play in his NFL debut that put Washington in front one more time in the fourth quarter.

But, otherwise, the post-Griffin section of the game belonged to the Falcons. Julio Jones dexterously got both feet inbounds on an 18-yard catch just beyond the pylon. Matt Bryant stayed perfect on the year with a 53-yard field goal. Michael Turner ran 13 yards for the go-ahead score with 2:46 to play. The defense intercepted Cousins twice in the final two minutes.

The Falcons, mistakes and all, remain the only unbeaten team in the NFC.

"I don't know why you want to ask me any questions," Atlanta receiver Roddy White joked as he stood at his locker. "We stunk it up in early in the game."

The Falcons didn't score until the final minute of the first half, but Ryan kept throwing and throwing and throwing. He finished with 34 completions on 52 attempt for 345 yards with two touchdowns and one interception ? a screen pass picked off by Washington linebacker Ryan Kerrigan and run back 28 yards for the game's first score. Ryan also fumbled away a snap, Atlanta's first lost fumble of the season.

Tony Gonzalez caught 13 passes for 123 yards and a touchdown. Jones had 10 receptions for 94 yards. White snagged four passes for 68 yards. Turner ran for 67 yards on 18 carries. Impressive numbers ? until you remember that Washington has one of the worst pass defenses in the NFL.

"We were our own worst enemies in the first half," Atlanta coach Mike Smith said.

The Redskins (2-3), losing their eighth consecutive home game, were meanwhile left to deal with an ironic wound. There was abundant concern that Griffin was susceptible to injury when he was taking hard hits while running option plays frequently in his first three games.

But Shanahan scaled back the option over the last two weeks. Griffin didn't have a designed run play Sunday. He ended up getting hurt while scrambling because he couldn't find an open receiver ? something that every quarterback does.

Team spokesman Tony Wyllie said the Heisman Trophy winner was examined by an independent neurologist before being sent home from the stadium and will be evaluated again Monday. Griffin also got a cut on his chin.

"When he wasn't really sure what the score was, what quarter it was, we knew he had a mild concussion," Shanahan said.

About three hours after the game, Griffin tweeted: "I'm ok and I think after all the testing I will play next week."

Cousins, a fourth-round pick from Michigan State, went three-and-out in his first possession. Sav Rocca shanked the punt, and the Falcons drove 47 yards to take a 14-10 lead on Jones' catch.

But Cousins put the Redskins ahead again about a minute later, when Santana Moss ran deep down the middle without a defender anywhere near him. The 77-yard pass made the score 17-14 early in the fourth quarter.

Ryan came back with two drives that gave the Falcons the win. Bryant's field goal tied the game, and Turner's run was the decisive score.

Cousins had two more chances to rally the Redskins, but Dunta Robinson and Thomas DeCoud picked him off to end Washington's final two drives.

"With Robert not being in there, definitely allowed them to change up their scheme," said Redskins running back Alfred Morris, who ran 115 yards on 18 carries. "They were flying downhill a lot faster. It definitely affected our running game. Once he wasn't in anymore, they were just able to pin their ears back."

NOTES: Washington K Billy Cundiff ? already on thin ice after missing three field goals the previous week ? was wide right from 31 yards in the second quarter. ... Falcons injuries: RB Antone Smith (hamstring) and LB Stephen Nicholas (ankle).

___

Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

___

Online: http://bigstory.ap.org/NFL-Pro32 and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/5-0-falcons-knock-rg3-beat-redskins-24-222219209--nfl.html

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The Farce and the Hope of New York City's Annual School Report ...

Failed public schools will be Pharaoh Bloomberg?s legacy to New York City. It will be his pyramid if you will, built on the sweat and misery of the educators and students he has held in captivity for so long.

The Department of Education released the annual report cards for elementary and junior high schools this past Monday.

These report cards routinely have wild differences in school grades from year to year. The rubrics are always changing, leaving principals and teachers in the dark on how they will be assessed.? Having had to endure the annual release of school report cards under the Bloomberg regime, most NYC educators would probably admit they are no less arbitrary than a roll of a die. Both of them have six possible outcomes that all seem equally likely. Neither changes in the school program nor the way one shakes the die before rolling can secure a particular outcome.

I know another high school teacher in one of Bloomberg?s small schools sharing a building with four other small schools. Students routinely score horribly on state exams, well below the citywide average. The administration is mired in incompetence. The principal is a nepotism case. Teachers are mostly inexperienced and the work environment is toxic. There are no advanced placement classes. Yet, the school has never received any other grade but an A.

At the same time, the school in which I teach scores well above average on state exams, has several AP classes and a flourishing special needs programs. Any way you slice it, my school should have much higher grades than the other one. Yet, we have never received an A. Instead, we have bounced between Bs and Cs.

This point is demonstrated in New York State?s Quality Review assessment. Azi Paybarah explains in his article that the QR is based on a ?two- or three-day school visit by experienced educators who visit classrooms, [and] talks with school leaders as part of their evaluation of the school.? Schools are rated in many different categories on a rubric with four possible outcomes. From lowest to highest they are ?underdeveloped?, ?developing?, ?proficient? and ?well developed?. It is a more in-depth and comprehensive assessment than the city?s report card system. The most recent Quality Review for my school resulted in ?well-developed? and ?proficient? scores across the board. For the school of my colleague, it was mostly ?developing? with maybe one ?well-developed?. This disparity between state and city assessments of DOE schools is pretty common.

Not too long ago, a neighbor of mine was asking me about possible high schools for her 8th-grade son. I mentioned a few schools I considered good off the top of my head. She gave me a quizzical look and said she had never come across any of the schools I mentioned in her research. Apparently, she was thumbing through the city?s high school directory and only considering schools with an ?A? rating. The way the DOE simply labels schools with letter grades lends itself perfectly to parents quickly scanning the list for the highest rated schools.

I told the parent that, rather than looking at the city?s letter grade, she should take a look at the state?s Quality Review. She appreciated the advice, although it is a tough sell to the majority of parents like her who work many hours a week. As Paybarah explains again, the QR ?has a few charts and check-boxes. They?re relatively [heavy on] words, and lack easy-to-consume indicators like letter grades. They require more work from parents, in other words.?

To be sure, no attempts to assess schools are perfect. But imagine you are making a decision as to where you will spend the next four years of your life, whether it is an apartment, a college or a job. Would you make your decision based upon a pile of esoteric charts where the thinking is pretty much done for you? Would you want those charts to be the only basis for a simple letter grade? Chances are that you would not. Chances are you would try to track down first-hand accounts, read some sort of in-depth expert reviews and visit the place yourself. Chances are that you would synthesize these pieces of thoughtful information in order to form an opinion. After all, nobody wants to be stuck in a place in which they will be miserable for so long.

Knowing these circumstances, one would think that the DOE would come up with a more stable rating policy for its schools. What can a parent honestly tell about a school that gets a C one year and an A the next year? The DOE rates schools every year. It changes the rubrics just as often, leaving administrators, teachers, students and parents in the dark about what exactly is expected of them. Schools are not compared with every other school in the city. Instead, they are compared with a small cohort of schools. Many times, these cohorts include charter schools, schools located in much better neighborhoods or schools that are part of Bloomberg?s ?showcase schools? that get a disproportionate amount of funding. Some schools have art and music while other schools have many online classes. Are these differences accounted for when the DOE rates schools? We do not know, since the DOE has been anything but forthcoming about how schools are measured.

Would it not make more sense for the DOE to take a page from the QR?s playbook and rate schools every three years, or at most every two years, to determine if a school either maintains its gains over a longer period of time or has instituted policies that create improvements over the long haul? Rating schools every year by ever-changing standards is not the type of system that encourages administrators to think long-term.

Much can speculated as to why Bloomberg decided to approve a rating system of this nature. The obsession with annual ratings measured in bar graphs and statistics, along with the stress on constant ?improvement?, is straight from the business world. It is the corporate managerial philosophy brought to New York City?s schools by a mayor who seems incapable of thinking in any other terms but corporate. Short term gains measured in numbers is what drives not only the Bloomberg education regime, but the entire education ?reform? movement. It is a strategy that encourages short-term thinking throughout the entire system, from DOE officials all the way down to students. It is the same type of short-term thinking that encouraged the reckless Wall Street speculation responsible for the economic slump in which we are currently mired.

It would be semi-comical if the only impact of these school report cards was a few million misled parents. Unfortunately, the stakes are much higher. Not only are principal and teacher bonuses tied to these ratings at many schools, but they also play a large role in determining whether or not a school closes. By the time Bloomberg is out of office, he will have closed over 100 schools in his 10 years as mayor. One of those schools might have been Bushwick Community High School if not for the heroic activism of its students, teachers and administrators. Bushwick Community is a ?second chance school? for students who have not received a high-school diploma by the time they are 18. I wonder what schools Bushwick Community was measured against for its report card? Is there a fair way to compare Bushwick Community to any list of cohorts in NYC?

This is why so many teachers, students and parents see the DOE?s report cards as bludgeons with which to destroy schools in the most impoverished communities. As Michael Winerip explained in an article earlier this year, the schools that receive the lowest grades tend to be in the poorest communities. Consequently, these are the same communities that have seen their schools hollowed out in favor of charters. The few DOE schools that serve middle class or affluent students, or schools whose buildings are not attractive enough for charter school operators, tend to get higher report card grades. People who say there is a conspiracy here to suck the resources from the neediest students so they can be handed off to the private sector might not be off base. The ever-changing manner in which schools are measured, combined with the DOE?s refusal to clearly explain their grades, certainly do nothing to dispel these conspiracies.

In the past, criticism of the DOE?s school report cards have united teachers, students, parents and administrators. Whether it is a school like Bushwick Community whose very existence was threatened by these grades, or a school like mine who clearly should have received higher than some of the schools getting As, everyone can agree that it is an injustice to punish schools for performing poorly when what is expected of them is kept a big secret. As educators, we would never assess our own students like this. As parents, we would be derelict in our duties if we failed to lay out clear expectations for the children we raise. Yet, for Bloomberg, Walcott and the corporate junta who seized control of our school system 10 years ago, they operate with total impunity. The accountability Bloomberg promised for himself has never materialized and never will as long as he is in office. As the old saying goes, the fish rots from the head. If NYC?s school system is rotting, we know exactly where to look for the cause.

Finally, as an exercise of pure speculation on my part, the school report cards might be another reason why Bloomberg refuses to sign a new contract with the United Federation of Teachers. As it stands now, NYC has a deadline of mid-January to approve some form of assessment that will count for 20% of the new teacher evaluation regime. If that deadline is not met, NYC risks losing millions in federal Race to the Top funds. It seems that this assessment will only be agreed upon once a new contract is squared away. With Bloomberg?s apparent stance of leaving a new teacher contract for the next mayor, it seems pretty unlikely that NYC will even come close to that January deadline.

Is this because he fears that laying out a simple and clear teacher evaluation will throw a monkey wrench into his secretive school report card system? After all, if these assessments measure both students and teachers, how would he not be required to factor them into the school report cards? I cannot imagine having an assessment like this and keeping it outside of the school report card rubric. If state exams like Regents factor heavily into them, why not these local assessments? Bloomberg might fear losing some control of the biggest bludgeon he has at his disposal to privatize the school system. A collectively bargained citywide assessment clearly written in the contract is anathema to the fluid and clandestine school grading regime being used now.

As much as we understand that Bloomberg?s school grades are hokum, maybe Bloomberg?s intransigence on this issue is a blessing in disguise. Without a new contract with a collectively bargained local assessment, we get no Race to the Top funds. This means, in all likelihood, that NYC would have effectively opted out of Race to the Top. Sure, this makes it easier for Bloomberg to close more schools by continuing these arbitrary school report cards. But this is nothing we are not already used to in NYC. In fact, the victories at both Bushwick Community and Grover Cleveland High School might be signs that Bloomberg is losing momentum on this front anyway.

It might be asked how I can support a course that will not only deny our schools millions of dollars, but serve as an excuse for Bloomberg to cut school budgets even further. I can support it for a few reasons. First of all, we are getting federal funds now and getting budget cuts all the same. There is no reason to assume that getting RTTT money will change this dynamic. I do not assume this because, second, the cost that it will take to implement the local assessments mandated by RTTT will probably equal if not outstrip any funds the city gets. After all, Bloomberg will use local assessments as an excuse for some more wasteful no-bid contracts to education data companies like Wireless Generation (or whatever they are calling themselves now). We have no reason to believe that one red cent of any RTTT money will find its way into the classroom. In the end, RTTT would be a net loss for NYC. Not only will the students of NYC be denied the money, but RTTT mandates will turn their schools into non-stop testing factories.

In the end, the devil that you know is always better than the devil you do not know. We know where Bloomberg is coming from in regards to education and it seems most New Yorkers are catching on as well. On the other hand, RTTT is a federal monolith that will merely add another major front to the war being fought to save public education in our fair city.

So maybe, for once, Pharaoh Bloomberg?s stubborn incompetence will turn out to be a good thing. Wishful thinking? Maybe. Let us wait and see.

Source: http://theassailedteacher.com/2012/10/08/the-farce-and-the-hope-of-new-york-citys-annual-school-report-cards/

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Sudan military plane crashes, killing 15

From Isma'il Kamal Kushkush, For CNN

updated 1:32 PM EDT, Sun October 7, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The plane had 22 people onboard, Sudan's military says
• Seven people survive the crash

Khartoum, Sudan (CNN) -- A Sudanese military plane crashed southwest of Khartoum on Sunday, killing 15 people, state media said.

The plane, which had 22 people onboard, was headed to El Fasher town, according to a military spokesman.

Seven people survived.

Before the plane split in half and erupted in flames, the captain called in a technical emergency, said spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khalid.

In August, a government plane crash in Sudan killed 32 people, including four Cabinet ministers and other top government officials.

Another military plane on a reconnaissance mission crashed in December, leaving six people dead.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/07/world/africa/sudan-crash/index.html?eref=rss_latest

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