text:
Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to discuss the state of American education—which in some ways is one and the same with the American economy.
I believe that the quality of our education system says as much about the long-term health of our economy as the stock market, the unemployment rate and the size of the gross domestic product.
That's because the quality of our work force and the intellectual breadth and depth of our future leaders is directly related to the quality of education we provide today.
So I begin my remarks by recognizing America's common agenda to promote economic security through education.
I know you are shortly releasing an evaluation of the reform climate in all 50 states and I don't want to get ahead of your announcement so I won't speak to any specifics. But I do want to speak broadly to the issues raised by your report because they are very much on point with the nation's urgent need for education reform.
First, let me salute you for focusing on states because a lot of the authority to improve schools is at the state level—as it should be:
- States set standards and develop tests.
- They hold schools accountable.
- They set the length of the day and year.
- They adopt laws governing labor agreements and regulate charter schools.
- They also set funding levels and in most states pay about half the bill.
At the same time, the capacity to drive change is much more at the local level—where administrators, principals, and teachers are making everyday decisions affecting the classroom.
- Hiring and firing.
- Training and support for teachers.
- Decisions around curriculum and budgets.
- And they find ways to address challenges from violence to high dropout rates.
And, of course, it is in the classrooms where the most important teaching and learning occurs—and the critical relationship between teacher and student is developed. As we work together to reform the system of education, we can't forget that ideas have to work — not just on paper—but in practice every day in the classroom. If we are not directly impacting and improving the quality of instruction in our nation's classrooms, then we will continue to miss the mark. That's where we can change children's lives.
All of which raises a very important question: what exactly is the proper federal role?
Clearly, with respect to low-income children, English language learners and children with disabilities—there's a longstanding federal responsibility to help overcome structural barriers to learning, but beyond that — what should the federal government do to improve education?
No Child Left Behind expanded the powers of the federal government to impose accountability. That was the consensus at the time—but I'm on record saying that—when I was in Chicago I didn't look forward to a call from Washington. Now that I'm here I'm even more convinced that our role is to support—not dictate — education reform at the state and local level.
States and school districts don't need a prescription for success. They need a common definition of success—which is why I am very pleased that 48 states and the District of Columbia are working toward common college and career-ready standards. This isn't a national mandate — it's a national movement, driven locally, and it couldn't come sooner.
Study after study shows that state standards vary wildly and the states with the lowest standards are lying to children—by telling them they are ready for college or work—when they are in fact unable to compete—and the evidence is everywhere at every level.
NAEP—which is the organization that periodically administers a national test to a sampling of students from across the nation—just issued a report showing that 30 states set 4th grade standards too low.
And the news gets worse as students get older. International test results show that we are 10th in the world in 8th grade science and fifth in the world in 8th grade math.
Part of the problem is that many of our teachers in these subjects in the middle grades don't have the content knowledge. Another part of the problem is that many education schools are not preparing teachers well for the classroom.
When you look to high school, only 73% of our children graduate—and in many urban areas it's closer to 50 percent—condemning whole generations to social failure. We have to focus more on graduation rates—or outcomes—not just test scores.
I just met with military officials to talk about the fact three out of four young people today are ineligible to serve our country. Academically, they are not ready. They want a bigger investment in early childhood education because the education crisis now threatens America's ability to protect itself—let alone our ability to compete in the global economy.
Whether you see improving graduation rates and reducing dropout rates as a fight for social justice, as an economic imperative, or as integral to national security, it is a battle we must win. By most measures, our system of higher education remains the best in the world, but only 40% of the current generation of 25 to 34-year-olds have degrees. The President's goal is 60% by the end of the next decade, but we won't get there unless we add more rigor and help more people succeed
Your report cites the fact that too many incoming college freshmen are unprepared. Nearly 40% need remedial education and many eventually drop out.
And according to a 2008 report on workforce readiness by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, many college graduates are not ready to work.
And most high school graduates are simply deficient for even entry-level jobs.
Another problem is the enormous segment of the adult population that is fundamentally out of step and under prepared for the new economy—high school dropouts, the unemployed, immigrants with little English-language skills, and middle-aged workers in declining industries.
Something like 90 million Americans fit into one of these categories—and as a society we face a stark choice. We can either retrain our people or face the potential burden of a large and growing underclass.
So there's a very compelling case for reforming public education at every level—and doing so with a sense of urgency. What's especially hopeful is that people of every political stripe understand that education is one issue that can and must bring us together.
The fact that your report is co-authored by two think tanks on either side of the political divide adds a lot of weight to the findings and the recommendations.
I have met with Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle and they all share the view that education is the one issue that rises above politics and ideology.
I have had conversations with Minority leader John Boehner, and the ranking minority member of the House Education Committee John Kline. I have traveled to Wyoming with Senator Enzi, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee that oversees education—and most of the other Republican committee members as well.
And of course I've met with their counterparts on the Democratic side, including Tom Harkin and George Miller—both of whom have long and distinguished records on education and are deeply committed to reform. Through dozens of meeting with political leaders, I've been impressed by a common sense of mission. No one feels the status quo is good enough. But if anyone is still not convinced that education is the most bipartisan issue in America today—the surest proof is that I am now traveling the country visiting schools with two people whose political DNA couldn't be less alike—Rev. Al Sharpton and Speaker Newt Gingrich.
In fact we will be in Baltimore this Friday visiting schools—and I am deeply grateful to them both for their interest and enthusiasm.
The Speaker has been offering some very thoughtful suggestions on how to work with Congress and Reverend Sharpton has informed our thinking around community engagement and support — and they are both important as we move forward.
On a side note, let me just say that I am well aware that the Chamber of Commerce opposes the administration's health care, energy and financial reform proposals. These are honest disagreements and we need to work through them.
But differences on those issues should not prevent us from collaborating on education. I appreciate your statement of support of our work last week. You understand that we face a big challenge and I commend you for your ideas—which are reflected across the administration's education agenda.
In a few days we will release the final application for Race to the Top—a $4 billion dollar reform program unlike anything in the history of this department or in the history of education reform.
This program is built around four core areas of reform:
- High standards
- Better use of data
- Improving the quality and effectiveness of teachers and principals
- And turning around our lowest performing schools.
The remarkable thing about Race to the Top is what it's already accomplished — even before we have spent a dime.
California and Wisconsin recently enacted legislation allowing the use of student achievement data in evaluating teachers. The President and I were in Madison last week to celebrate the effort.
Eight states have increased charter caps, expanded enrollment or boosted funding. Similar efforts are under consideration in six other states.
There's an equally important phenomenon underway. There's a growing understanding among forward-thinking labor leaders that they must do more to drive education reform.
In partnership with local unions, Delaware recently developed a new system of teacher evaluation which incorporates student achievement and sets classroom goals for teachers. In Texas, Colorado, Florida, Chicago, and dozens of places across America school districts and unions are working together on performance pay. We have to shine a spotlight on excellence.
A new labor agreement in New Haven includes many reforms important to our agenda—from evaluation and compensation to interventions in struggling schools — and it was overwhelmingly approved by the local union. The membership is telling their own leadership that they want to be a part of that change. Places like right here in D.C., and then Detroit, now have the chance to leapfrog and take reform to another level.
I believe the threat to unions is not things like charter schools and performance pay. The only threat to unions and all of us in education is academic failure. No one talks about labor reform in high-performing schools. But in the worst schools, work rules are always the focus.
We need to change the frame around reform and recognize that the crisis in education goes far beyond labor issues. Where we see academic failure, we need to get to the core of what is really preventing student achievement.
It includes everything from low standards to weak curriculum, absent parents to unmotivated students, underfunded schools and limited educational options. Meaningless evaluation systems breed apathy and distrust. Erratic and inconsistent management create dysfunctional schools and systems that ignore the needs of children—and in many ways that drives the labor problems.
When companies struggle, we don't start by firing the workers. We change leadership—and in many schools and districts—we have to look at leadership.
Now let me be absolutely clear about this: labor issues are an impediment in many places, and we must continue to challenge them. District by district, state by state, we have a unique opportunity now to challenge past practices that don't work for children or adults.
But the plain fact of the matter is that we have thousands of terrific schools with union teachers and thousands of underperforming schools without them.
That includes many charters and low-performing schools in right-to-work states where labor laws are weak or non-existent—and these schools should all be held accountable.
So if we are going to move forward and meet America's educational challenges we must do so with an absolute commitment to honesty and truth—not ideology and politics. Good schools must be replicated, and bad schools must be transformed.
We have to look at student outcomes first and foremost and—and put our children's needs ahead of all of our own. Too often historically we have created educational systems that serve adults first, and that must change.
As we look to reauthorizing the federal education law sometime next year, there are a few core ideas that are central to our thinking.
First of all, instead of being loose on the goals and tight on the means, I want to flip it. Let's set clear goals but give people a lot more flexibility to meet them. Hold people accountable, but give them the room to innovate and put their best ideas into practice.
Second, we would like to create more competition for federal dollars and challenge states, districts, universities, and nonprofits to raise the bar and get better — faster. Race to the Top has demonstrated that a little competition goes a long way. Let's invest in what works and take it to scale.
Third, through the budgeting process and reauthorization, we want to work with Congress to focus federal investments more effectively. We have dozens of programs that have had minimal impact.
We are reviewing every line item with an eye toward effectiveness and innovation. We want to focus on core areas of reform that make the most difference for kids. And we'll get rid of programs that don't work. As we ask everyone else to challenge the status quo, we have to look in the mirror and lead by example.
Fourth, we want to build on Race to the Top and embed the four areas of reform into federal education law.
America must have high college and career-ready standards. Every business owner knows you set high expectations for employees. We must do the same for students.
Educators also must learn to use student achievement data—first to improve instruction by identifying the needs of our students — second to insure that teachers who need more help get it — and finally to identify teachers who can't measure up — even with help. Linking student data to teachers, and teachers to their schools of education, can be a powerful tool in driving improvement. Why are such basic systems so rare?
Great young teachers across the country tell me that no one taught them how to use data—to help target instruction towards the kids most in need. We must hold accountable our Colleges of Education and improve the teacher and principal pipeline.
We need to elevate the profession and restore the dignity and status of this critical field. In many other countries educators are valued as much as doctors and scientists. They are seen as community leaders and honored as such.
Sadly, in this country, some people mock teachers as people who can't do anything else. That's a terrible message for our young people. Instead we should invite the smartest, most committed young people to do this crucial work—and reward them appropriately.
The federal government spends $3 to $4 billion dollars each year on teacher training and development. States spend billions more to develop teachers and principals. That money is not being spent well and the results show it.
In the next five years or so, a million teachers will retire and a million new teachers will be hired.
If we hire the right people and do a better job of supporting them, we can shape public education for a generation and transform the profession. This will be a major area of reform. It is absolutely a historic opportunity.
We need to invest in the very best training, recruiting, and induction programs. We should look at teacher residencies and create incentives to work in hard-to-staff schools. And we need to reward excellence.
Conversely, we must be willing to acknowledge failure in our low-performing schools. Congress has provided billions of dollars for school turnarounds but it takes political courage and will to follow through and do the right thing for kids. That includes closing down chronically underperforming schools and reopening with new leadership and staff.
Of course, we should give the existing staff in a struggling school every opportunity to improve and we are working with states, districts, unions, and nonprofits to do that. But if the existing adults simply cannot change student outcomes despite everyone's best efforts, then we must find adults who can.
If that means closing the school and replacing the entire staff then we have a moral obligation to do that. Children have only one chance for an education. They can't wait 10 years for reforms to pay dividends.
Beyond that we have to get a lot smarter about how we evaluate our students—and how we measure success. Instead of setting arbitrary proficiency levels we need to look at growth—and the science of measuring growth has to continue to evolve.
We need to invest in the science of testing and measurement and find ways to do it better — without simply doing more of what we are currently doing. None of us like the overemphasis on testing, so we have to find a practical way to measure progress.
The testing industry must reform and develop college-ready assessments in an array of subjects. States must invest in new data systems. Local districts must retrain teachers and administrators. This won't happen overnight, but it must happen over time.
States and districts also need to look hard at their school calendars and ask why we send low-income children in disadvantaged communities home, or into the streets, after six hours—when so many middle class families fill those afternoon hours with sports, music lessons, tutoring and extra-curricular activities.
Extending the school day, the week and the school year is an obvious solution to under-performing schools. Our best charter schools already do that. To close the achievement gap, we have to raise expectations and work harder—and that means more time.
I'm a big believer in community schools—keeping school buildings open for 12 hours a day and opening up the computer lab, the library and the gym on weekends for our children and their families.
Give the community the key to the school and you give our children the key to so much more—exploration and enrichment, safety opportunity and hope. It becomes the center of their lives.
I admit up front it will cost more money—but if we believe it is necessary—then we should have the courage and the commitment to find the resources—both in Washington and at the state and local level.
The extreme inequity in the quality of public education is profoundly un-American. Education is the civil rights issue of our generation and equality of opportunity is at the heart of America's social compact. This is our most solemn obligation to our children and we all share the burden of meeting it.
Lastly, we must improve our system of accountability. One of the biggest complaints around No Child Left Behind is that the accountability system doesn't work.
It labels a dismally failing school in the same way as one that performs well in every subgroup but one. Both of those schools need to ensure all kids get what they need and deserve. But one-size-fits-all sanctions dictated by NCLB don't reflect the differences in those needs, and aren't practical for many districts. And the results are mixed at best.
I always give NCLB credit for exposing achievement gaps. That kind of extreme transparency has forced difficult but necessary conversations at every level. In the hands of committed educators, this information can change teaching practice.
But NCLB also has the perverse effect of narrowing the curriculum around subjects we test. All children need a well-rounded curriculum that both enables them to develop their unique talents and skills and prepares them for tomorrow's workplace.
So I end up where I began—talking about the link between education and the economy.
For much of the past year, I have spent a lot of time highlighting our challenges. I have been to 32 states and hundreds of schools in cities, suburbs and rural communities.
I have met with thousands of educators, parents and students. I have listened to them.
They know what the problems are. They know what's wrong. And they know what has to change. Now we need to come together around the solutions.
So today, I extend my hand in partnership to the Chamber and more broadly to the business community. I ask for your help, your input, your ideas and your support. I need your members across America to take a more active role in education reform.
According to a survey from the National School Boards Association, about 38 percent of school board members have a business background. That's a great start, but there's much more you can do.
You can send some of your employees and retired executives into the classroom where they can share real-life experiences.
And you can invest in education—because it's the best return on investment you will ever make—producing not only the employees you need but the customers as well.You can help train administrators to run schools efficiently. You can give young people work experience—both paid and unpaid.
Depending on your business, you can offer a summer job to a science teacher and a field trip for the science class.
STEM Education—which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math—is one particular area where greater business involvement is really needed for America to lead an innovation renaissance.
The President has called on us to encourage and engage students to become "inventors and builders of things, not just consumers."
With your help, we can build the partnerships among businesses, museums, non-profits and educators to develop better science curricula—devise inspiring engineering and design challenges, and create new technology around computational thinking and math.
I'm sure that there are many other ways you can help—and many other ways you are helping. Today's report is just one of those ways and on behalf of the administration and the school children of America, I thank you for your hard work, and your insights.
I look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead to build an education system that prepares our children for employment, for leadership and for life. Our children and our country deserve no less.


text: Rabbit Hole is a cinematic piece with a rock feel. It evokes a sense of mystery along with a lot of tension. Big drums and guitars are contrasted by strings, french horns, and percussion. This piece could be used as music for a trailer, promo open, web announcement, branding etc.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
tinyCam Monitor is one of the best app available for Android for remote surveillance, control and digital video recording for your private or public network or IP cameras, video encoders and DVRs.
Listed as featured app on Google TV in Google Play. View your IP cams right from the sofa!
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text:
Check in to any nice hotel, and the concierge will be more than happy to recommend or reserve a tour of the area. But in some cases, you don't even have to leave the property to take in the sights, because what's right there under your nose is worth further exploration.
Here are a handful of hotels around the globe that offer guided tours of some of their more unique and fascinating features.
This Caribbean gem isn't just home to five-star accommodations and amenities, it's also the site of the world's first resort-based hydroponic farm, which sources the vast majority of herbs, vegetables and edible flowers used in all five of the resort's restaurants, as well as its spa.
Tours of the farm are held three times each week and are led by Dr. Howard M. Resh, a noted hydroponics researcher and author, who educates guests about the unique process of cultivating plants in water rather than soil. So when you sign up for a treatment at the Venus Spa that utilizes ingredients like lavender or aloe, or when you munch on the fresh cherry tomatoes that show up in your room upon arrival, you'll know exactly where and how they were grown. Tours are free; open to all. www.cuisinartresort.com
Palm Desert, California
More than 25 species of exotic birds make their home of the grounds of this 450-acre resort 13 miles southeast of Palm Springs. On daily tours, Linda Whittington, the property's full-time animal care specialist and aviary expert, introduces visitors to the flock of feathered residents, like the African grey parrots and Australian black swans, while explaining about their origins and their eating habits and even letting tourgoers feed the flamingoes. Tours are free; open to all. www.desertspringsresort.com
Clearwater Beach, Florida
You may notice this plush beachfront property's award-winning environmental efforts when you take a lap in the chlorine-free pool or sleep on the sheets washed using an ozone process rather than harsh chemicals. But every Tuesday and Thursday morning, Brian Grant, the hotel's director of engineering, takes you behind the scenes to really delve into all of the green initiatives Sandpearl has undertaken to achieve its coveted silver LEED certification.
Tourgoers visit the mechanical plant, laundry facility, garage, back of the house and other areas as Grant explains their clean-air practices and recycling efforts, their use of compostable and biodegradable products and even how, through partnership with Clean the World, discarded guestroom amenities are reprocessed and distributed to other countries to help stop the spread of disease. Tours are free; open to all. www.sandpearl.com
Cottonwood, Idaho
This kitschy B&B may be slightly off the beaten path, but then, considering that it's in the shape of a 30-foot-tall beagle, it's also slightly out of the ordinary. The one-room creation, nicknamed Sweet Willy, is the brainchild of owners Frances Conklin and Dennis Sullivan, who are both chainsaw artists.
In fact, they have a studio on-site and give interested guests a tour of the space, as well as a peek at some of their works in progress and a demonstration of what goes into creating the folk-art-style canine carvings they've been crafting for the past 25 years. Tours are free; open to all. www.dogbarkparkinn.com
St. Michaels, Maryland
Joanne Effinger has been the head gardener at this Orient-Express lodging on Maryland's eastern shore for 16 years now, and she can name every flower, bulb and bush on the property. She does just that on the weekly horticultural tour of the lush grounds and gardens that are such an important part of the Inn at Perry Cabin's rich history, including a 210-year-old holly tree that clocks in as the state's oldest.
Just be sure to bring your camera along so you can capture all of the colorful hydrangeas, vitexes, hellebores, snowdrops and other seasonal and perennial blooms gracing the elegant estate. Tours are free; for guests only. www.perrycabin.com
The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia has a lot to show for its five stars, like the spacious rooms with spectacular views of either the Singapore skyline or Marina Bay, but the feature that really makes it stand out is its museum-quality art collection, numbering more than 300 pieces and valued at $4 million.
Guests are treated to a guided tour of the collection via a podcast showcasing works by artists such as David Hockney, Frank Stella, Dale Chihuly and Andy Warhol, 90% of which were commissioned specifically for the hotel. Don't have your own iPod to download the podcast onto? You can borrow one from the concierge. Tours are free; for guests only. www.ritzcarlton.com/singapore
Estes Park, Colorado
If you like things that go bump in the night, you'll love this legendary hotel's regularly scheduled ghost tours. Guests and non-guests alike have several options to choose from, each of them exploring the supposed paranormal activity that goes on at the century-old property, from the mysterious piano playing in the music room to the children who have long since checked out roaming the halls on the fourth floor.
Also noted is the fact that the Overlook, the haunted hotel in Stephen King's chilling novel "The Shining," was inspired by a stay at the Stanley. $10-$60, depending on tour; open to all. www.stanleyhotel.com
Hanoi, Vietnam
During a renovation at this 111-year-old hotel in August 2011, engineers chipped away at more than 6 feet of earth and concrete to discover an underground bunker dating to the Vietnam War.
The 130-square-foot shelter is now part of the Path of History tour, which retraces the Metropole's origins from one of Asia's most opulent accommodations, attracting a long list of celebrities such as Somerset Maugham and Charlie Chaplin, to a stint as a government-run wartime guesthouse to its current incarnation as a luxury retreat for business and leisure travelers alike.
The guides who lead the daily tours were instructed by none other than Andreas Augustin, who wrote a book on the history of the iconic property for his Most Famous Hotels in the World series. Tours are free; open to all (maximum 10 people per tour). www.sofitel.com


text:
Barclays sued over role in German "mini Madoff" fraud
Investors who lost money in a Ponzi scheme run by Helmut Kiener, convicted founder of the K1 hedge fund in Germany, are suing Barclays Plc for selling his products to them, their lawyers said on Friday.
The lawyers said they were seeking a total of around 100 million euros ($133.58 million) in damages and had lodged more than 100 suits against Barclays with regional courts in Frankfurt and Munich over warrants issued by the bank that were linked to Kiener portfolios.
Kiener, dubbed a German "mini Madoff" by the media in reference to the jailed U.S. fraudster, was sentenced in July 2011 to more than 10 years in prison for a scam that prosecutors said cost investors 345 million euros.
The lawyers, who said they represent more than 1,000 claimants, have also moved to bundle the claims into a class action suit.
"We are confident the Frankfurt court will initiate the class-action case within six months," said Andreas Tilp, one of the lawyers from the ProtectInvest Alliance (PIA), which respresents the plaintiffs.
The Munich and Frankfurt regional courts confirmed that the PIA had filed claims against Barclays in December.
"It was a large number of suits," a spokesman for the Frankfurt court said. He confirmed the request to start a class-action suit but declined to give further details.
A spokesman for Barclays said the bank would vigorously defend itself in the case.
"Barclays continues to believe the Kiener-related claims are wholly without merit," he said.
"German courts have found in Barclays' favour in all decisions to date and there has been recognition that Barclays is also a victim of the Kiener fraud," he said.
Kiener was arrested in October 2009 as authorities said Barclays and BNP Paribas may have lost millions of dollars in the case, which spanned the Atlantic and featured lavish personal spending on planes, a helicopter and luxury properties.
The court sentenced Kiener on 86 counts of falsification of documents, and 10 counts of fraud and tax evasion.
The judge in the case said at the time that the banks made it easy for Kiener to keep up his Ponzi scheme, which was seen as a mitigating circumstance in the trial.
($1 = 0.7486 euros)
(Reporting by Jonathan Gould; Editing by David Cowell)


text:
Patrilineal Jews Still Find Resistance
Rachel Brook, a 29-year-old vocalist living in Brooklyn, was born to a Jewish Israeli father and a non-Jewish mother. After her parents divorced when she was 3, Brook was raised by her father as a Jew in a Reform synagogue. Last year, she decided to apply to cantorial school at the Academy for Jewish Religion, but because AJR doesn't accept students with only a Jewish father, Brook was told she would have to convert.
"It was hard for me to accept on many levels," she said. "I felt I lived a recognizably Jewish life. I'm part Israeli. Never would it have occurred to me that others might not view me as legitimate."
The administrators at AJR, a non-denominational school in the Bronx, told Brook that it was nothing personal. In order for its graduates to be accepted at Orthodox and Conservative institutions, AJR had to follow the traditional standard of Jewish law, which maintains that Judaism is passed down through the mother. AJR allowed Brook to go before an all-female beit din, or Jewish court, for her conversion ceremony. While converting ultimately felt meaningful, Brook bristled at the idea of others like her being asked to undergo a similar process. "It's not worth losing Jews over," she said.
Accepted by the Reform and Reconstructionist movements, patrilineal Jews like Brook find themselves in limbo when they venture beyond their denominational walls. Nearly three decades after the Reform movement's landmark 1983 decision to accept patrilineal Jews, the standard has yet to catch on with Conservative or Orthodox Jewry.
Now, as the first children born since the decision are beginning to have families of their own, patrilineal descent remains one of the most controversial decrees in American Jewish history. As Jews today gravitate away from movement-based worship and toward pluralistic venues, the resolution appears to be taking on new urgency. In communal settings like Taglit-Birthright Israel, JDate and Hillel, patrilineal Jews find themselves intermingling with people who question their Jewishness. "Dissent over descent" has reached a fever pitch.
"The red line that was previously drawn between the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community is now drawn within the Jewish community itself," Rabbi Leonard Levin, assistant professor of Jewish philosophy at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog, Reblen, in March.
Depending on whom you ask, the Reform movement's acceptance of patrilineal Jews — predated by 15 years by the Reconstructionist movement — was either a boon to American Judaism or a harbinger of its demise. Officials in the Reform movement, now the largest denomination in America, say that their decision opened the door for mixed marrieds who were intent on raising their children as Jews. But critics from the Orthodox and Conservative movements, and even from within Reform Judaism itself, say that patrilineal acceptance has diluted the Jewish community beyond recognition, giving rise to a generation of half-Jews with tenuous religious ties.
Furthermore, they contend that patrilineal acceptance drove a wedge through the heart of the Jewish community, creating competing definitions of what it means to be a Jew. Whereas at one time, Orthodox parents might have allowed their child to marry a Reform Jew, the patrilineal decision caused traditional Jews, wary of Reform bloodlines, to question that acceptance.
"Jewish movements' attempts to tamper with the definition of Jewish status obviously carried the seeds of terrible disunity for Jews as a people," wrote Avi Shafran, spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox advocacy group Agudath Israel of America, in an email to the Forward. "This is why the first embrace of 'patrilineality' was strongly condemned by Jews who valued Jewish unity — that is to say, the maintenance of a single entity called 'the Jewish people.'"
Reflecting on nearly 30 years of patrilineal descent, Reform leaders say that individual cases like Brook's were the rationale for shifting the definition of Jewish identity, one based on blood lineage, to one based on Jewish commitment. "We had to get rid of a dissing approach that was inherent in Judaism," said Rabbi Daniel Freelander, senior vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism. "We had a lot of individuals who feel good about their Jewishness, and who even had agreements with their partners to have a Jewish lifestyle, and there was no mechanism in Judaism to deal with those families."
According to Leonard Saxe, a Jewish demographer at Brandeis University, the patrilineal descent decision succeeded in opening the doors to Jews of mixed lineage. "We moved from a situation where a person who married a non-Jew was seen as rejecting their religion and their heritage to a situation where everyone recognizes that marrying someone who is not Jewish — as much as we would like that non-Jewish person to convert — is not necessarily a rejection of Jewish identity."
Yet statistically speaking, cases like Brook's are uncommon. According to Steven M. Cohen, director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School, inmarried parents are more likely to raise their children as Jews than their intermarried counterparts by almost any standard imaginable, from keeping a kosher home to attending a Passover Seder. Cohen's 2006 study, called "A Tale of Two Jewries," details the "gap" between the Jewish lives of intermarrieds and inmarrieds, concluding that "intermarriage does indeed constitute the greatest single threat to Jewish continuity today…." According to the report, 76% of the children of intermarrieds go on to intermarry, raising their own children as Jews just 7% of the time.
When it comes to Jewish continuity, intermarried couples in which the wife is Jewish fare far better than intermarried couples in which the husband is Jewish. According to the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000–2001, Jewish women who marry non-Jewish men are more than twice as likely (47%) to raise their children as Jews than Jewish men who marry out of the faith (28%).
For critics of patrilineal descent within the Reform movement and beyond, these figures confirm their worst fears: that it has done nothing to buoy Jewish engagement while muddying the waters on who is and who is not a Jew.
"Most kids of mixed marriages are not embracing Jewish identity," said Rabbi Clifford Librach, who helms a Reform synagogue in Danbury, Conn. "We don't see most of them to start with, and those that we do see, the majority of them are simply not attaching." For Librach, the promise of retaining half-Jewish families that otherwise might have been excluded has fallen flat. "The effect has been a continuing revolving door," he said. "This has not generated an expansion of those who are committed to the long-term continuity of the Jewish people."
The patrilineal descent decision may not have brought intermarrieds into the fold en masse, but it didn't encourage intermarriage, either, as many of its early critics had warned would result. According to Cohen, the Reform movement's 1983 resolution had a negligible impact on the intermarriage rate, which had been rising steadily since the 1960s and then tapered off at around 47% in the early 2000s. "I believe it had a small impact upon group boundaries and the boundaries were melting and weakening anyway," he said. "The whole world of American religion has moved to nonexclusive identities, toward hybridity."
In Cohen's opinion, Reform Judaism's decision to accept patrilineals makes sense as a way to accommodate the children of intermarrieds. But he also applauds the Conservative and Orthodox movements' refusal to admit patrilineals without conversion. The approaches work together to send a potent mixed message to American Jewry — warning individuals against marrying outside the faith, but reassuring them that they'll be accepted in some circles if they do.
Even so, the varying definitions of what makes a Jew a Jew have riled the Jewish community at large. Patrilineals from the Reform and Reconstructionist movements say they feel excluded when they bump up against more traditional notions of Jewish heritage. On a Birthright trip last December, for instance, Dartmouth University sophomore Patton Lowenstein, whose mother is a non-Jew, was chagrined when a rabbi at the Western Wall refused to wrap tefillin with him.
"I can't say I wasn't disappointed a little bit," he said. "But having not really been raised Jewish and having been able to go on this trip for free by having some Jewish grandparents, I couldn't complain."
Conservative and Orthodox Jews, for their part, take umbrage with the notion that they are somehow being close-minded when they're upholding 2,000 years of Jewish standards, even as the Conservative movement has moved toward the Reform stance on topics like women at the pulpit and gay and lesbian rights.
"It put us in a situation because we care about matrilineality that we are obliged to ask painful questions and be pressed into painful situations when people who think of themselves as Jews and have been living as Jews may still have to go to a mikveh and be converted," said Rabbi Gerald Skolnik, incoming president of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly. "It is not a situation that we relish, especially as we are trying very hard to reach out to people."
Skolnik, for his part, is resigned to the fact that the competing definitions of Jewish status will lead to hurt feelings. He said that difficult interactions should be handled as sensitively as possible. Other rabbis are seeking solutions to the conundrum.
Levin recently suggested a plan for mass immersion at pluralistic Jewish summer camps and day schools, asking Jewish children of all parentage to take a dip in a stream or in the ocean — an improvised mikveh — in order to recommit en masse to Judaism. This way, the differences between patrilineal Jews and halachic Jews will be ironed out without anyone knowing who is who.
Levin presented his idea at a March conference on the status of patrilineal descent, held at AJR, which is currently reconsidering its policy of accepting only matrilineal Jews.
"Yes, lineage matters," Levin said at the conference, to mass applause, "but so does practice. Let us all go into the mikveh and not quibble about whom the water cleanses."
Brook was in attendance. When asked about her response to Levin's plan, she said she wasn't sure about the value of mass immersion, in particular because it seemed so impersonal in comparison with her own conversion. Brook said that she was unsure how to resolve the differing attitudes about who is a Jew.
"I don't know what the answer is," she said. "If we can begin a conversation about it, I think we are on a good path."
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected] or on Twitter @NaomiZeveloff


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PARKING NOTICE: The sidewalks and curbs around the Columbia Center will be under construction through June 2023. Traffic patterns may change and street parking will be limited during construction, so we encourage you to park in the garage attached to Columbia Center. The entrance to the Parking Garage is on Fifth Street, and you may park in any spot not marked Reserved. There is a parking garage elevator you can take down to the 1st floor where the BB&C offices are located. Please inform a BB&C staff member that you are parked in the garage, so we can validate your parking during your visit to the office. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding during the construction.


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UCS transformation format
(UTF) A set of standard character encodings in accordance with ISO 10646.
One of a set of standard character encodings, the most widely used of which are UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. The code tables in ISO 10646 and in the Unicode standard are identical, although the Unicode standard includes additional material.
UTF-8 is the most widely used encoding, at least on Unix systems. Since it does not include any bytes like '\0' or '/' which have a special meaning in filenames and other C library function parameters, and 7-bit ASCII characters have the same encoding under both ASCII and UTF-8, the required changes to existing software are minimised.
Other UTFs: UTF-1 and UTF-7 are not widely used.


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Photo courtesy teejaybee via FlickrIn his recent New York Times op-ed, "Math Lessons for Locavores" — discussed at length by several contributors in the first edition of our new "Food Fight" feature" — Stephen Budiansky writes:
The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most efficient technologies — and then pay the relatively tiny energy cost to get them to market, as we do with every other commodity in the economy.
Budiansky is essentially applying the doctrine of comparative advantage to food — the idea that every region should specialize in producing what (if any) crop it can grow more cheaply than other regions, export it widely, and import everything else its residents need to eat.
In doing so, he is defending the intellectual basis for America's and what is fast becoming the global food system: concentrate production of key commodities in certain regions, and let the magic of trade ensure that everyone gets plenty to eat.
The massive ongoing recall of salmonella-tainted eggs — which expanded this week to include another 170 million eggs, for a grand total of more than half a billion, with more possibly to come — got me to thinking about Budiansky's defense of regional consolidation of food production for maximum efficiency.
By this logic, there's much to love about the U.S. egg industry. According to Food & Water Watch, half of U.S. egg production is concentrated in just five states: Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California. And for decades, egg producers have been scaling up and implementing "the most efficient technologies" — forgoing the farmyard chicken run and moving their hens into massive, streamlined, highly mechanized factories. Iowa State University's Ag Marketing Resource Center (AG MRC) puts it like this:
In the table egg industry, specialized production replaced the general farm flock due to improvements in breeding, feeding, disease control, management, and marketing. Technological innovations in the 1950s and 1960s, including automated egg washers, blood spot detectors, and automated egg cartoners, encouraged large-scale production and mechanized handling and distribution of large numbers of eggs.
As the industry made huge investments in technology, fewer and fewer entities produced more and more of the eggs we eat. In 1987, AG MRC reports, there were 2,500 producers that kept at least 75,000 laying hens. Today, there are just 205, and these companies produce 95 percent of the eggs Americans eat. According to the USDA, there are 338 million laying hens in the United States. If 95 percent of them belong to just 205 egg producers, then the average egg producers keeps about 1.6 million hens. As someone who takes care of fewer than 20 laying hens, I can testify that just keeping 1.6 million of them alive would require breathtaking efficiency!
Of course, the very largest companies maintain many more birds than that. The largest of them all is Cal-Maine Foods. The company recently released an "Investor Report" that stands as one of the most revealing documents I've seen about the egg industry. To impress the investors, the report singles out a single $30 million facility in Texas with 1.67 million hens kept in nine laying houses, or 185,000 chickens in each house.
The report also offers a convenient list of the largest U.S. egg producers. Cal-Maine rules the roost, with its flock of 28 million hens. The two companies involved in the egg recall both crack Cal-Maine's list of the top ten producers — Hillandale Farms, with its 14 million hens, comes in third, while DeCoster Egg Farms and its 9 million layers place ninth. All in all, the ten largest producers have 135 million hens — about 40 percent of the nation's total flock of 338 million.
No one can say these mega-producers aren't adept at keeping prices rock bottom. According to its Investor Report, Cal-Maine sells fully a third of its eggs to Walmart. I just got off the phone with the Walmart in Boone, N.C., near where I live. A carton of 18 eggs sells for $1.86 there — about a dime an egg. Walmart, with its vast fleet of trucks, highly rationalized inventory/storage system, and nationwide web of stores, is surely a highly efficient conduit for getting eggs from gigantic facilities to consumers.
But the egg recall is now exposing, yet again, the underside of maximum efficiency and regional concentration of the food system. Those fleets of trucks don't just move millions of eggs from a handful of companies to hundreds of millions of consumers; they also, with stunning efficiency and breadth, move pathogens hatched in those very factory-scale facilities along with eggs.
It's worth noting that the two firms embroiled in the recall, DeCoster and Hillandale, have more in common than the Iowa locations of their salmonella-tainted operations. "Hillandale Farms of Iowa and [Decoster-owned'] Wright County Egg Farm share a number of common suppliers because they are in the same industry in the same state," Hillandale recently declared in a statement quoted by the New York Times. Indeed, "the company said that it bought young birds, called pullets, and feed from a company run by the DeCosters," the Times reports.
That's regional concentration in action: Budiansky's ideal. The upside, if you see it that way, is 10-cent eggs. One of the many downsides is the rapid, wide spread of pathogens. Another is leaving the food system in the paws of a handful of companies whose products are so cheap that they can only make money by relentlessly slashing costs. To understand the repercussions of that kind of economic arrangement, see my post from last week about the DeCoster operations.


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Further Readings
The simultaneous purchase in one market and sale in another of a security or commodity in hope of making a profit on price differences in the different markets.
In its simplest form, arbitrage is "buying low and selling high." In this sense, any trader who buys something in one market—whether it is a commodity like grain, financial SECURITIES such as stock in a company, or a currency such as the Japanese yen—and sells it in another market at a higher price is engaged in arbitrage. That trader is called an arbitrageur. In economic theory, arbitrage is a necessary activity in any market, helping to reduce price disparities between different markets and to increase a market's liquidity (ability to buy and sell).
Arbitrage can be divided into the categories of riskless and risk. As an example of riskless arbitrage, imagine that the price of Microsoft Corporation common stock on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange is less than the price of the same stock on the New York Stock Exchange. A trader who buys Microsoft stock at the lower price on the Pacific Coast exchange and simultaneously sells it for a higher price on the New York exchange is engaging in an essentially riskless transaction. Aided by the speed of modern communications, the buying and selling occur at virtually the same time. This type of exchange occurs daily in the currency market, where a trader may buy French francs at a lower price in London and sell them at a higher price in Singapore.
Much arbitrage falls into the risk category. This type of arbitrage is not always completed with a sale at a higher price; it involves a risk that the price of the item being traded will fall before the trader can sell it. RISK ARBITRAGE came into prominence during the 1980s, when investors began to take advantage of a business atmosphere encompassing a large number of company MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS. In a merger or acquisition, one company buys or takes over another company. When the management of the targeted company does not want to be acquired by a particular investor or group of investors, the merger is called a hostile takeover. Quite often, the aggressors in such takeovers are smaller in terms of assets than their targets. A hostile takeover is usually initiated when someone believes that the stock of a particular company is lower than its potential value, whether because of poor management or because of a lack of information about the true value of that company.
One way that hostile takeovers are initiated is through a device called the cash tender offer. The party attempting to initiate the takeover announces that it will pay cash for the target company's stock at a price well above the current market value. At this point, risk arbitrageurs become involved in the game. They buy stock from shareholders in the target company, then attempt to sell that stock at the higher price to the party attempting the takeover. If the takeover succeeds and the arbitrageurs receive a higher price for their stock, they profit; if the takeover fails or the arbitrageurs receive a lower price for their stock, they lose. Gauging the risk of a takeover's failure is therefore crucial to an arbitrageur's success.
An arbitrageur who purchases securities on the basis of inside information—that is, information about a pending takeover that is not available to the general public—violates the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (§ 10[b], as amended, 15 U.S.C.A. § 78j[b]). However, purchasing securities on the basis of rumors about an imminent takeover is not illegal.
Ivan F. Boesky was one example of a risk arbitrageur who was found guilty of engaging in insider trading. Boesky profited enormously from the many corporate takeovers of the mid-1980s. By 1985, he had become famous in financial circles and had published a book, Merger Mania: Arbitrage: Wall Street's Best Kept Money-Making Secret, that extolled the opportunities in risk arbitrage and the benefits the practice gave to the market. In 1986, only one year later, Boesky admitted that he had illegally traded on insider information obtained from Drexel Burnham Lambert, the securities firm that arranged the financing of many of the takeovers of the era. In return for a reduced sentence of three years in prison, Boesky agreed to pay a $100 million penalty and to cooperate with the government's continuing investigation. Boesky named Drexel employee Michael R. Milken as a member of the insider trading network. In 1990, Boesky was released from prison after serving two years.
Bonds "Michael R. Milken" (sidebar); Corporations; Securities; Securities and Exchange Commission.
Additional topics
Law Library - American Law and Legal InformationFree Legal Encyclopedia: Approximation of laws to Autopsy


text: With the theft of sensitive data about RSA's SecurID technology, large businesses should reassess the risks to the assets the two-factor authentication deployment is supposed to protect, a risk management expert advises."You have to ask yourself if you are a big enough shop that you could be a target," says John Pironti, president of IP Architects, a security consulting firm. That's because attackers who might make use of the stolen information will look for victims that have the richest cache of data to loot, he says.GET THE DETAILS: The RSA Hack FAQWhereas before the theft businesses might have had a high degree of confidence that SecurID was a strong authentication protection, now they should consider that it might be compromised, Pironti says.RSA hasn't detailed what was stolen, but the fact that the company made a public announcement -- including a filing with the Security and Exchange Commission -- indicates that some fundamental piece of the technology has fallen into attackers' hands, he says, and businesses need to take specific steps:1. Update their threat and vulnerability analysis to elevate SecurID as a potential vulnerability. Many businesses regarded the technology as solid and not representing a significant source of vulnerability, Pironti says.2. Pore over logs looking for failed login attempts using false user names.3. Monitor failed SecurID attempts, something that might not have been done because the technology was trusted. In general, security personnel should pay more attention to the activities of employees using SecurID.4. Consider alternatives to go to if it turns out SecurID has in fact been compromised. In that case businesses should start looking for a third factor for authentication such as smartcards, biometrics or digital certificates and perhaps consider migrating away from SecurID, he says.Worst case: Thieves stole the master key to RSA's pseudo-random number generator and can manufacture phony ones to break into corporate networks, Pironti says.So far there's no evidence that has happened, but if it does, businesses need to have a fallback plan for what they will do, Pironti says. "The system would still require a user name and password, but now you have reduced confidence that this is the person who they say it is," he says.Because of the capital and operational costs of deploying SecurID, it is almost always used to protect access to businesses' most valued assets and high-value transactions, Pironti says, so anything protected by it is a likely target.He leans toward believing the thieves stole something fundamental to how SecurID works, not something that could be used against particular customers or particular environments. Otherwise RSA would have kept the incident low-key, contacting only those customers affected. The general announcement indicates that any SecurID customer faces a new risk, he says.He says he hasn't heard about any increase in compromised networks that are protected by SecureID. "There haven't been spikes in public breach activity," he says.Pironti has been telling his clients that stealing core security technology is a prime target of attackers because that can undermine the security of vast amounts of data and transactions. "It's a great business opportunity from a hacker's standpoint," he says.Read more about wide area network in Network World's Wide Area Network section.