Evaluation

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday cautioned consumers against using quinine for leg cramps, warning that the drug could cause severe side effects, including death. Quinine, sold in this country under the brand name Qualaquin, is approved for treatment of uncomplicated malaria, but has a long history of use as a remedy for leg cramps, especially at night. In many countries, it is sold over the counter. Studies have shown that it can reduce the incidence of cramps by one-third to one-half but that as many as one in every 25 users can suffer serious side effects.

At probation camps and juvenile halls, where delinquent minors are often held, officials sometimes have no choice but to temporarily isolate disruptive juveniles for the safety of other youths and camp personnel. But as an hour turns into a day or more - and reports from some camps and halls suggest it can turn into a week or a month - temporary isolation turns into solitary confinement, a brutal practice when employed against anyone, and an especially cruel way to treat a juvenile who is still developing and does not yet have the emotional skills to bounce back from such treatment.

A new report from the state's legislative analyst castigates California's system for evaluating and improving schools. In particular the report, released Tuesday, cited confusion and conflict between state and federal reforms. According to the analysis, "the state and federal systems form a labyrinth of duplicative and disconnected program requirements that send mixed messages to teachers, parents, schools and districts." The authors also noted that since 1999, officials have invested $2.5 billion in school improvement programs, and yet "more schools in California are deemed in need of improvement today than a decade ago."

Hours after Ariel Castro was arraigned on rape and kidnapping counts in connection with three women held prisoner for years in his Cleveland house, Ohio prosecutors said they would seek new charges that he abused some of his victims and forced them to have miscarriages. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will present the case to a grand jury, said that if Castro, 52, were charged and convicted of aggravated murder as a result of the miscarriages, he could face the death penalty.

Thanks very much for Edwin Chen's excellent article on the re-evaluation of Big Science projects, which is currently going on across the country ("Big Science Faces Big Troubles," Column One, June 5). Such a re-evaluation is long overdue. Although scientific research is invariably portrayed and justified as serving the cause of mankind, bettering the human race or whatever, two facts are very much in evidence: a) the vast majority of the problems afflicting the human race and the planet are ones which can be solved by applying what we know right now, and b)

Re "Run the Race to the Top?: California must act to ensure it gets needed federal school funds," and "The initiative uses the wrong means to achieve education reform," Opinion, Sept. 15 In responding to Walt Gardner's Op-Ed article, I believe that test scores are one of the valid measures of a teacher's effectiveness. I just retired after 37 years as a teacher in the public schools. I taught in schools with students whose "bleak situation" was described by Gardner. The fact is, within those schools are good and bad teachers.

A 10-year-old boy accused of stabbing a 12-year-old friend to death will be evaluated to determine whether he is competent to stand trial on murder and felony assault charges, a judge said Thursday. The boy, whose name was not released by authorities, fidgeted and cracked his knuckles throughout the hearing, which was his first appearance in court since he allegedly killed Ryan Carter on Monday after the victim had tried to break up a fight. The younger boy, neighbors said, suffered from emotional issues and was prone to bouts of anger, but they expressed shock that he was capable of such violence.

U.S. military officials Wednesday damped expectations for quick results from offensives in Afghanistan and played down a year-end review that the Obama administration had portrayed as a major evaluation of the U.S.-led war. "I would not want to overplay the significance of this review," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversees U.S. forces in the Mideast and Afghanistan, told members of the House Armed Services Committee, referring to plans...

WASHINGTON -- Roxanne Brummell has thrived in what many consider the toughest new testing ground for teachers in the nation. The fifth-grade teacher in Washington, D.C., earned a "highly effective" rating under the district's controversial system that rewards -- and sometimes fires -- teachers based in part on their students' progress on standardized tests. In just seven months, she helped boost her students' reading scores by an average of 24%. Brummell's reward: a $20,000 bonus and recognition at district award ceremonies.

The whole point of establishing a new anti-gang program in Los Angeles two years ago was to finally be able to identify which strategies worked and which didn't. The longstanding L.A. Bridges and the newer Bridges II programs were jettisoned precisely because no one had any way to determine whether they, and the millions of dollars paid to their gang-diversion and intervention contractors, were doing any good. The centerpiece of the new Gang Reduction and Youth Development program was to be a commitment to rigorous, transparent, scientific and verifiable evaluation.

Los Angeles' two mayoral candidates said Tuesday that they support making teacher evaluations public, going well beyond a level of disclosure that is supported by top school district officials. City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilman Eric Garcetti said they backed the release of individual performance evaluations based on so-called "value-added" formulas, which are controversial both locally and nationwide. These measures use the past performance of students on state standardized tests to help gauge a teacher's success, taking into account such factors as race and income.

WASHINGTON - The White House said for the first time that there was evidence Syria had used chemical weapons in its civil war, but administration officials called for a broader United Nations investigation and edged away from declaring Damascus had crossed a "red line" that might trigger U.S. intervention. According to a White House letter to Congress, U.S. intelligence agencies assessed "with varying degrees of confidence" that President Bashar Assad's forces had used small amounts of sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent banned by international treaty.

Legislation that would have required more frequent evaluations of educators was killed by a state Senate committee Wednesday under strong opposition from teachers' unions. The bill, by Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), would have required permanent teachers with 10 years experience to undergo performance reviews every three years instead of five. It would also have required school districts to consider parent input in instructor evaluations and set up four rating levels for teachers.

State high-speed rail officials acknowledged Thursday that they changed their rules for selecting a builder for the bullet train's first phase in the Central Valley, a shift that subsequently made it possible for a consortium led by Sylmar-based Tutor Perini to be ranked as the top candidate despite receiving the lowest technical rating. The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced last week that the Tutor Perini-Zachry-Parsons joint venture was the top-rated contender among five bidders seeking to build the initial 29 miles of track between Madera and Fresno.

State high-speed rail officials acknowledged Thursday that they changed their rules for selecting a builder for the bullet train's first phase in the Central Valley, making it possible for a consortium led by Sylmar-based Tutor Perini to be ranked as the top candidate despite receiving the lowest technical rating. The California High Speed Rail Authority announced last week that the Tutor Perini-Zachary-Parsons joint venture was the top-rated contender among five bidders seeking to build the initial 29 miles of track between Madera and Fresno.

The debate -- and that's putting it nicely -- over the use of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations has always confused me, because the answer seemed so simple. One of the things we ask of teachers -- but just one thing -- is to raise those scores. So they have some place in the evaluation. But how much? Easy. Get some good evidence and base the decisions on that, not on guessing. The quality of education is at stake, as well as people's livelihoods. Much to my surprise, at a meeting with the editorial board this week, Michelle Rhee agreed, more or less.

The current spending battles in Washington reveal the deep fault lines between the political parties over the size and role of the federal government. That divide also emerges in the parties' rhetoric over the value of government regulation. Republicans attack regulations as overburdensome job killers, while President Obama and fellow Democrats defend them as common-sense rules that protect Americans. When it comes to regulation, though, there is something on which Democrats and Republicans agree.

A court-appointed psychiatrist Thursday added his name to the list of people who say Donna Jean Fleming, the young mother accused of throwing her two young sons and herself off a Long Beach bridge in February, is mentally ill and unfit to stand trial. Part of the letter from Dr. Kaushal Sharma was read at what was to be Fleming's arraignment in Long Beach Superior Court on charges of murder and attempted murder. Despite agreeing with the physician's conclusion that Fleming, 24, was psychotic, paranoid and prone to hallucinations, her attorney, Stephen Pace, requested a second mental evaluation.

Michelle Rhee, head of an influential education advocacy group that backs using student test scores to evaluate teachers, this week fended off accusations that she failed to pursue evidence of cheating when she ran the District of Columbia school system. In an internal memo, a district consultant warned that about 190 teachers at 70 schools - more than half the system's campuses - may have cheated in 2008 by erasing wrong answers on student testing sheets and filling in correct ones.

A recent op-ed article in the Washington Post warned against overusing students' standardized test scores in evaluating how well teachers are doing their jobs. There would be no surprise about that - if it had been penned by the leader of a teachers union. But it was written by Bill Gates, arguably the most influential voice over the last few years in pushing for the use of test scores to rate teachers. Gates' warning was based on a study released in January that his foundation funded.