‘Teacher evaluations’ won’t help in classroom
To the editor:
Having taught in Clark County School District high schools for 25 years, I read the Review-Journal's Dec. 24 story about new teacher evaluations with bewilderment.
Nevada Public Instruction Superintendent Guthrie indicates that this new system will cost $20 million to initiate, yet can currently be used to evaluate only about a quarter of Nevada's teachers. It was rather unclear how the remaining 75 percent of teachers will be evaluated.
In fact, your story indicates that the evaluation system for the remaining 75 percent of teachers whose students are not state tested is rather unfair because it is based in part on school performance and not individual teacher performance. Then, these same teachers will also be evaluated on "... actions outside the classroom influencing instruction." What educratic bunk!
The bottom line is that the corporate educrats currently running things in Nevada and Clark County are attempting to turn the art of teaching into a science. Can't be done. Things vary so greatly between students, classrooms, schools, and school districts, that one model cannot fit all.
While taxpayer money will continue to enrich the private companies who provide the resources for these school reforms, it will not enhance education in the classroom one iota.
ROBERT BENCIVENGA
HENDERSON
No need to know
To the editor:
I am shocked that the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, will not be testifying as to what she knows about the death of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
The Secretary could tell us what she knows and what she told the president and what the president told her about the death of four Americans in Benghazi.
Apparently, since President Barrack Obama has been re-elected, the American people don't really need to know the details and the facts surrounding those deaths. It won't make any difference to some Americans, so why bother to inform any of us what the details are?
There is no reason to suspect that anyone would hold back vital information, no matter how embarrassing or illegal the details.
And Santa Claus personally delivered all those presents on Christmas eve.
JEFF SAUER
LAS VEGAS
Christmas bonus
To the editor:
It's good work if you can get it. In case you haven't heard, GM (Government Motors) is paying its 48,000 employees Christmas bonuses of $5,000 to $7,000. All this while owing the taxpayers billions.
Makes me feel like running out an buying a new Chevy Volt ... not!
ROBERT GARDNER
HENDERSON
Arming the radicals
To the editor:
More lunacy from our leadership. In January, we're going to use taxpayer money, billions of dollars, to send 20 F-16s and 200 M1A1 tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt!
Does anyone in our administration recall that one of their leaders recently swore that the Brotherhood's mission is to destroy Western civilization? Right now, as part of that plan, they are about to implement a new Constitution establishing Sharia law in Egypt and stripping religious liberties from Christians.
Without question, we have more pressing domestic issues that could use the billions of dollars that are going to be used to provide weapons for a government opposed to U.S. interests.
Right now, we can't agree on which domestic expenditures to cut ("entitlements" such as Social Security cost-of-living increases?), or whose taxes will be raised, but we're going to borrow billions to send weaponry - not humanitarian aid - to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Absolutely incredible.
Until the Obama administration can prove that this expenditure of taxpayers' money is being used to enhance U.S. national security interests and the security of the Israeli people, Congress should not allow such irresponsibility.
JERRY PATCHMAN
LAS VEGAS
Making it easy
To the editor:
I am fully in favor of driver's licences for illegal aliens. With a name, a photo and an address, even the federal government won't have any trouble deporting them.
EDWARD DODRILL
LAS VEGAS
Psychos roam at large
To the editor:
Regarding the Dec. 21 letter "Protect our rights, but ban assault weapons": Another naive gun owner makes common cause with the Fast and Furious enablers - some of whom were involved in the government's murder of innocent children at Waco - to flack for an assault weapons ban like the ineffectual one that expired in 2004.
Democrat surrogates Occupy Wall Street and the unions stage riots whenever they don't feel like expressing themselves by peaceful means. Try telling your average psychopath or liquored-up hooligan that this shouldn't serve as a validation of their own violent behavior.
Democrats and their ACLU handmaidens who sued and legislated to prevent families of violent psychotics from getting them proper treatment should take some blame for mass murders. Read about the next mentally deranged killing machine in "I am Adam Lanza's Mother" at Gawker.com.
LYNN MUZZY
MINDEN
