The Daily Top Five

Here are some good posts and stories worth looking at:

1. Joanne Jacobs points us to a story out of Chicago where students in larger classes are scoring better on tests, giving lie to the propaganda that smaller class sizes is better than bigger classes. I had previously discussed similar ideas regarding classes sizes and teacher quality when dealing with class sizes. Be sure to check out the comments from Quincy.

2. Why didn't JFK make Atlantic Monthly's List of the 100 most influential Americans? Betsy Newmark talks about why. Having spent some time reading The Bystander by Nick Bryant, I tend to believe that JFK might not make the list for other reasons. Kennedy, a liberal icon, failed to grasp the importance of the civil rights movement at a time when some of the most significant civil rights events were happening on his watch. While in foriegn policy Kennedy was influential, I think his domestic policy missteps cost him his position.

3. Remember the Flying Imams who were kicked off a U.S.Air flight a few weeks back. Well Captain Ed has some things that were missed in the original reporting as well as this:

The imams did not intend on conducting a terrorist attack. Instead, they have conducted an attack on American security protocols, first by staging this ridiculous event to heighten their status as victims, and second to expose the kind of activities that airlines view as suspicious. In doing so, they have created an environment where the airlines will second-guess their own security procedures, becoming hypersensitive to political correctness instead of focusing on suspicious behaviors. The imams will have made us all less safe if their act becomes a hit.

Unfortunately, members of Congress seem more intent on pandering to the victimology rather than supporting the airlines for doing their job. Sheila Jackson-Lee and newly-elected Muslim Keith Ellison both took the time to acknowledge how humiliating it had to be for the six men ejected from the flight, rather than how stressful it must have been for the passengers and crew of the US Air flight that the imams used to gain their notoriety. I guess they figure that it's better to be sorry than safe.

I still don't know what the problem is. Any passenger who disrupts the flight operations or safety of an aircraft can be ejected from the aircraft. Airlines are still a private business who can serve or not serve any individual they want. Flying is not a government guaranteed right and if you act badly you should be thrown off the plane as a nuisance.

4. If you think using calculators to teach kids math is stupid, wait until you read about this story about technology and reading skills, courtesy of Ken DeRosa at D-Ed Reckoning.

5. I have seen a couple of different posts today on the topic of college admissions as it relates to "Asians." David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy had this post about a young math prodigy who may not get into MIT because one person thinks that the child may not be giving back to the community enough. Bernstein questions some of the criteria that are being used to judge admisssion, including teh child's "Asian" heritage. Joanne Jacobs discusses the large percentage of Asians in the University of California system making them the largest racial group on the state's campuses.