La. La. Land - Education Week on our testing abyss

Monday's Blogs from the Bog!

Monday's Blogs from the Bog!

• EDUCATION WEEK ON OUR 'TESTING ABYSS'

  JUL 21 Education Week's EdWatch blog takes a look at our current snafu over Common Core in this post. To anyone outside the state, we certainly look like a bunch of dummies who can't agree on something as critical as what to teach our kids. That's good - right?

• WE'RE THE BIGGEST LOOSER, BUT NOT IN A GOOD WAY

  JUL 21 This story on The ABC out of Australia gives Louisiana some international notoriety that we really don't want. According to this story, Louisiana is one of the fastest-disappearing land masses on the planet. The planet. So, obviously we need to hold off on that levee board suit, because making Big Oil mad is much more serious than this.

• JOSH CAFFERY PRESENTING HIS BOOK

  JUL 21 This hour-long YouTube video is worth watching; it's Acadiana boy, Red Stick Rambler and now big-shot author Josh Caffery, presenting his book on the Lomax recordings at the Library of Congress. It's an interesting talk about music, stories and the priceless recordings of John and Alan Lomax.

• IS THIS HOW PRIVATIZATION 'WORKS'?

  JUL 21 Blogger Tom Aswell is keeping us up to date on what's going on in Baton Rouge again, this time looking at the status of the privatization of the state Office of Group Benefits. Since the work was privatized, the fund balance has plummeted by about $250 million, Aswell reports. The office is spending about $16 million in the red every month, he says.

• CLANCY: JINDAL'S PLAYING 'DIRTY POOL'

  JUL 21 Columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the recent developments surrounding Common Core in this post. Gov. Jindal's 'politically motivated attacks' against the curriculum have become so 'heavy-handed' that even his usual supporters can't take it, Clancy opines.

• ANOTHER VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST?

  JUL 21  Blogger Bob Mann is reviewing the similarities between Bobby Jindal's recent political speeches against gay rights, contraception and the like to similar speeches made against integration and school desegregation decades ago. The rhetoric is similar, Mann says, except that back in the 50s and 60s it was states' rights and now it's called religious liberty.

• 'UNFORTUNATE RETURN TO THE OLD SOUTH'

  JUL 21 Columnist Edward Pratt writes about the PBS documentary on segregation that prominently featured the secessionists in Baton Rouge who are trying to create their only little white city. (He said he kept expecting to hear banjos) But even if the documentary was heavy-handed, the fact remains that putting up barriers helps no one, Pratt writes.

• FORMER KPLC WEATHERMAN MOVING TO ABC

  JUL 21 Rob Marciano, a former meteorologist at KPLC in Lake Charles, has been named senior weather guy at ABC, this post on TVNewser reports. In between those gigs he worked for CNN and Entertainment Tonight.