Dear Governor Cuomo, As parents, and therefore as our children’s primary lobbyists, we applaud your intention to put educational issues high on your priority list – and to join with us in fighting to improve our schools. The first goal we should pursue together is the repeal of No Child Left Behind. When waivers are necessary to make federal laws functional, it is time for the laws to go. This should be part of a larger effort to restore sanity to our nation’s education policy. Top-down education “reform” has failed. We must return control of school curricula to parents and teachers and give local school boards and principals the responsibility for determining performance assessment and hiring practices for teachers. New state-administered accountability measures, designed to accommodate yet another misguided federal law – Race to the Top – will further reinforce the worst aspects of NCLB. Real teacher assessment can only be accomplished by experienced professionals directly observing their work. The apparent objectivity of standardized tests is a mirage: the only useful result of these tests has been to show again and again that poverty hurts student performance. Charter schools don’t help (their test scores on average are the same as traditional public schools). Teachers’ unions don’t hurt (the most unionized states have the highest test scores). When you look only at schools with low poverty rates, our schools already perform with the best in the world. There is no crisis in American in education, and we ask you to speak out against that dominant misperception – the rationale for endless attacks on our public schools. There is a poverty crisis, and addressing that is the most important thing any leader can do to boost student performance. Yes, there is no higher priority for our nation than raising the intellectual level of our children. But right now our nation is hurtling down the path of ever more destructive testing and accountability measures, and your public statements to date seem to indicate you want to push us further in that direction. We ask you to change course. It is not a mystery how we should proceed. The world contains models of national education policies that that work – as seen in countries like Finland that reject false quantitative measures of educational quality and understand that poor children cannot raise their academic performance when they are hungry, sick or abused. We must pay teachers well as a profession and avoid pitting them against each other in the demoralizing pursuit of bonuses based on arbitrary performance measures. Too many politicians are fixated on accountability and merit pay – crude carrots and sticks they think will improve education. But what really motivates teachers (as shown not only by foreign example, but by the prevailing practices in our own private schools, the ones our political leaders send their children to) are responsibility and the flexibility to respond to the best of their abilities to the children in front of them, without incompetent bureaucrats dictating their teaching methods. For ten years, since the passage of NCLB, our nation’s education policy has been guided by the myth that teachers and schools are to blame for the educational deficits of the poor. We are wasting billions of dollars every year on standardized tests when we could be putting those resources directly into programs we know will help vulnerable students. Please join with us, with enlightened political leaders like Governor Brown of California, and with great educators like Diane Ravitch, in resetting this nation’s course in education policy. Celebrate our teachers and create working conditions for them that will draw ever more talented people into the field. Reject arbitrary school closings and support measures we know will boost the educational attainment of our most vulnerable citizens: prenatal care for poor women, high quality day care for young families in need, Head Start and similar pre-kindergarten programs, parenting classes and adult education. Above all, listen to us, the true lobbyists for our children and for the future that belongs to them.

"In order to further perfect our union, we the people of the United States do affirm that the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment apply only to human beings. Any rights previously granted to corporate persons under these provisions are thus abolished."

Bill O'Reilly's racist comments, misogynistic behavior, and consistent lying for the purpose of self-aggrandizement render him unfit for a self-styled news program. If it is true that Bayer tries to exercise good judgment in selecting networks on which to advertise, we cannot understand your sponsorship of the Fox Network and the mean-spirited serial liar that is Bill O'Reilly.

Re-instate FCC regulatory rules of broadcast media making it illegal to owmn more than one station in any major market and forbid foreign ownership of any US media company of any type.

President Obama, please issue an executive order protecting the independence of all government fact-finding agencies: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Energy Information

This is meant to reverse the trend of media consolidation by prohibiting individuals and corporations from having controlling interest in more than one (1) TV station, radio station, newspaper, magazine or any other news medium within a city or metropolitan area. This is designed to increase diversification in media ownership, giving more independent local ownership, and stopping consolidation.

Please stop the reduction of choice in health. Women want to make health decisions without government intrusion. This includes contraception, health decisions, family planning, and choice of organization. This includes choice of insurance by employers.

We, the parents/guardians and staff (only allowed to sign) demand the immediate removal of Principal Rosemary Larkin as the principal of the New Hingham Regional Elementary School, for failure of leadership.

Students at Rogers New Technology High School would like a library or reading area. The area should offer comfortable seating, lighting, and a good selection of novels and magazines.

Please take action to restore the Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel archives to the Google News Archive so they may be accessed free of charge by the public.