Published July 19, 2010

Last week, when Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester said Massachusetts would sign on to national education standards, many educators said, Wait — we have the best test scores in the country! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Or rather, if it ain’t as broke as everywhere else in the United States, don’t fix it.

The Boston-based nonprofit Pioneer Institute has just released Part 1 of a report finding deep flaws in those national standards, called Common Core. The report says Massachusetts should preserve its standards for English and the language arts — or risk lowering the bar for students. You might have read about it in the Herald this weekend:

On Wednesday, the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will vote on the standards, which could require schools to buy new books, teachers to learn new curriculum and MCAS tests to be rewritten — gutting the state’s multibillion-dollar 1990s education reform, critics say.

It’s the focus of today’s talker on Radio Boston. Chester was on the program earlier this month in the lead-up to his decision.

Indeed, Massachusetts is a state to watch. A Washington Post article two weeks ago called the Bay State’s standards “highly regarded.”

Here’s the study.

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Published July 16, 2010

WBUR’s managing editor, Dave Shaw, goes on the radio from time to time to talk about what stories are getting people jazzed on wbur.org. Here is his latest roundup of the week’s big stories. –AP

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The hubbub this week was over David Boeri’s story about proposed protections for the endangered piping plover on a barrier beach in Plymouth. The conversation got heated — fast. On one hand, there are folks who want to drive onto the beach to enjoy it. In the other hand, there are people who say the beach should be off-limits to cars order to protect the birds.

[pullquote author=”bobas77″]”The birds are thriving, we are complying with the restrictions and this talk of permanent closure is INSANE.”[/pullquote]

“The birds are thriving, we are complying with the restrictions and this talk of permanent closure is INSANE,” wrote a commenter with the handle bobas77.

But bobas77 was outnumbered by commenters such as Richer Earth, who said the beach is best enjoyed “without the use of an internal combustion engine.”

The back and forth turned personal — violating our Community Discussion Rules — and the comment thread was shut down. That’s pretty rare. Andrew, who considers himself the “mean old dad” of enforcing our rules, says that only happens about four times a year.

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Published July 16, 2010

The news of an eighth suicide this year in a Massachusetts correctional facility is troubling. That’s four times the national average, the Globe reports. It was enough to push the Patrick administration to hire a suicide prevention expert.

But consider another new and staggering statistic: On average, a U.S. service member committed suicide every day last month — 32 in all. Most of those who took their lives were on active duty —  and many of those in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has deployed a suicide prevention website and a video called “I Will Never Quit On Life.”

In January, 28 service members committed suicide. 145 this year — more than half of last year’s total, a record-breaking 245, CNN reports.

Published July 16, 2010

Bracing for widespread celebration and rioting after the Celtics’ inevitable victory in the NBA Finals, Boston Police spent nearly half a million dollars on overtime pay to put nearly 3,200 cops on the streets, the Herald reports. They wore face shields and wielded batons. It was quite a display.

But the Celts lost. Mass mourning ensued. (Seriously. I was at a bar downtown. It felt like a funeral.) Now the BPD says the team should foot at least part of the bill. No comment yet from the C’s.

An additional thought: It’s interesting timing on the PD’s plea, on the same day it’s reported that BPD supervisors will get a 14 percent pay raise to account for the fact that they don’t get overtime pay, as officers do.

Published July 16, 2010

Nieman Journalism Lab editor Megan Garber says we newsies can learn a lot from the Old Spice man (@OldSpice) — the ridiculously handsome spokesmodel whose charm caused even the most cynical anti-meme bloggers to perspire.

If you somehow missed it, the Old Spice ad agency holed up in a studio for hours and recorded short, personalized video clips in response to what was being said on the Web in real time. Even NPR got the love.

And the best part — he cut it off before people could tire of it. In his good-bye video, Old Spice man seemed to be talking directly to all of us:

I know a lot of you have written me and commented on my works, but I am just one ridiculously handsome man. I can’t write to everyone. But please know that I consider you my dearest and closest Internet friends. I’ll never forget this time we spent together.

Garber says the videos are an assault on the mass media’s broadcast sensibilities (emphasis hers):

There’s the obvious, of course: the fact that the ads are personalized. That their content is created for, and curated from, the conversational tumult of the web — “audience engagement,” personified. …  The real hook of the videos isn’t the OSM’s awesomely burly baritone, or the whimsy of his monologues (the scepter! the bubbles! the fish!), or the postfeminist irony of his Rugged Manliness, or any of that. It’s the fact that we’re seeing all those things play out dynamically, serially, in (semi-)real-time. And: in video.

We don’t always have to craft beautiful, highly produced media to engage our audience. We just have to go where they are.

• Nieman Lab: No, seriously: What the Old Spice ads can teach us about news’ future