Raising the standard Blog commentary

I agree and disagree with Maribel Perez's opinion stated in her Raise the Standards blog regarding remedial and developmental classes. In my opinion if the student has already passed their classes and their grade level TAKS test they obviously have been exposed to the knowledge necessary to avoid having to take remedial or developmental classes. The problem lies with with the students who took the easy route by cheating, or not putting in their full effort and barely passing. These are the students who are now stuck in remedial classes. I don't believe the TAKS test is the major issue, the issue is irresponisible students. If they want to be succesful in high school and college they need to apply themselves more to avoid academic consequences. I for one can relate to test anxiety, I suffer from it badly. But I cannot use that as my crutch as a student. Everyone has to take tests, that's just another necessary hurdle that student's have to try and do their best on so they can move on to what's next.

After reading this article it made me sad and but yet at the same time confused. If these detainees are already known to have a mental illness or mentally unstable, than why be so hard on them? It's not like they can comprehend what's right from wrong. And moving them around from place to place is only going to make them even more confused on what is going on. I don't understand why they wouldn't even have them on medication. If they have an illness, they deserve to have that illness treated or helped to be kept under control. It was also recorded that only 29% of all the detainees are held while they government tries to deport them. The study that was conducted showed that the detainees were infact being mistreated in every stage listed of the process, which is awful. This is just over my head. It breaks my heart to hear stories like this, where people get mistreated and disrespected for being mentally disabled. I used to do volunteer work at the round rock hospital, and I would see mentally ill or disabled patients get poorly treated from people all the time. How are they to know, they can only understand so much.“I’ve been a U.S. citizen for many, many years,” Ms. Jiminez added. “If we have a law system and the law system has declared that you are incompetent and should be taken to a mental hospital, why are you taken to Texas to be deported?” This quote just says what this whole article is about to me. If we do have a law system that states that, then why are they doing this? Their basically setting them up to be deported by taking them to Texas.














Disabled Immigration Detainees Face Deportation
For lawyers offering free legal information at large immigration detention centers in remote parts of Texas, the task is difficult enough: coaching hundreds of detainees on how to represent themselves at assembly-line deportation hearings. But the lawyers soon discover a more daunting problem: many detainees are too mentally ill or mentally disabled to understand anything.
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Immigration Report from Texas Appleseed and Akin Gump (pdf)
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Times Topic: Immigration and Emigration
The detainees, mostly apprehended in New York and other Northeastern cities, some right from mental hospitals, have often been moved to Texas without medication or medical records, far from relatives and mental health workers who know their histories. Their mental incompetence is routinely ignored by immigration judges and deportation officers, who are under pressure to handle rising caseloads and meet government quotas.
These are among the findings of a yearlong examination of the way the nation’s immigration detention system handles the mentally disabled in Texas, where 29 percent of all detainees are held while the government tries to deport them. The study, conducted by Texas Appleseed, a public interest law center, and Akin Gump, a corporate law firm, documents mistreatment at every stage of the process.
Among many examples in the 88-page report, to be released Tuesday, is that of a 50-year-old legal permanent resident with schizophrenia who had lived in New York City since 1974. In November, a New York criminal court declared him incompetent to stand trial on a trespassing charge and ordered him to serve 90 days in a mental institution. Instead, he was transferred to the Willacy County Regional Detention Facility in South Texas, to face a deportation proceeding without counsel — so abruptly, the report said, that his family and lawyer did not know what had happened.
At the detention center, he received no medication for weeks, and in March, he was deported to the Dominican Republic. “My mother is devastated,” his sister, Janet Jiminez, said on Sunday. “She says he will die out there on the streets.”
“I’ve been a U.S. citizen for many, many years,” Ms. Jiminez added. “If we have a law system and the law system has declared that you are incompetent and should be taken to a mental hospital, why are you taken to Texas to be deported?”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the report said, routinely ignores its discretionary authority to leave such detainees in community settings rather than lock them up, at great expense, in distant jails where they can rapidly deteriorate.
The agency is reviewing the report, a spokesman, Brian P. Hale, said Monday, adding that “in cases where ICE is required by law to detain certain aliens with serious medical and mental health issues, we work to ensure the person receives sound, appropriate and timely care.”
A recent government memorandum shows that agents are under intense pressure to increase detentions and deportations. In the memo, James M. Chaparro, the Obama administration’s chief of detention and removal operations, congratulated agents for reaching the agency’s goal of “150,000 criminal alien removals” for the year ending Sept. 30. But Mr. Chaparro urged them to overcome a shortfall in the goal of 400,000 deportations by making maximum use of detention slots, including an additional 3,000 this year.
Despite the administration’s vow to focus resources on detaining and deporting the most dangerous criminals, the Feb. 22 memorandum, posted online Saturday by The Washington Post, instructed agents to pick up the pace of deportations by detaining more noncitizens suspected only of unauthorized residence. Such illegal immigrants can typically be deported more quickly than legal immigrants with criminal convictions.
The publication of the memo clearly embarrassed the administration. A spokesman, Sean Smith, said that “our focus continues to be on the criminal side,” and that Mr. Chaparro was reprimanded Monday by John Morton, the chief of the immigration enforcement agency, at a meeting with immigrant advocates. The memo, Mr. Smith added, was sent without Mr. Morton’s approval and “is completely unrelated” to the findings of the study.
Ann Baddour, who directed the study, disagreed. “Setting these kinds of quotas only encourages the process of detaining people and taking them far from their infrastructure,” she said. “When you take a mentally ill person from New York to rural Texas, you’re basically setting them up for almost certain deportation.”
Another example in the report is that of a Haitian man found incompetent to stand trial in an assault case and sent to a state mental hospital in Boston. The day he arrived, however, immigration agents sent him in shackles and without medical records to the Port Isabel Detention Center near Los Fresnos, Tex.
In that case, the man was eventually returned to the Boston hospital, said Maunica Sthanki, a lawyer involved in the study. More typical, she said, is the mentally disabled refugee from Southeast Asia who was wrongly taken into custody in Providence, R.I., sent to Texas, then abruptly released without notice at a rural gas station at 11 p.m.
The report details several such releases: a schizophrenic woman who spoke only Russian, left in a dangerous area at 1 a.m.; a man lost for a week on his way back from Texas to his family in Maryland; a delusional man who was deported four days earlier than planned, though his parents had arranged for his voluntary departure to Mexico, where his mother was to pick him up.
Two years later, the man has not been found, but a body matching his description is in a morgue in Mexico.

Is Greg Abbott wasting out time and money?

Blog: burnt orange report

In this blog that Michael Hurta wrote he is talking about what his opinion is on how Greg Abbott is wasting Texas' money over a lawsuit on the New Health Care Reform. My question on this is really why Greg Abbott feels so strongly about handling this case, when even his own client isn't even interested in taking it any further? Doesn't really make sense to me. Another question I have is how he is expecting to pay for this lawsuit. He better figure out if there can be some kind of payment plan that he can manage to do. It's not like money grows from trees, so him actually wanting to go through with this case is just ridiculous and unrealistic. He obviously has no idea on how expensive it is. Our Texan legislative leaders find that Abbott's rejection of Texans Health Insurance as being a waste of our money. He's spending way too much time and money on the lawsuit, when we could spending more time and emphasis on education, medical care, employment, and clean air and water. Things that should and need to be focued more on. It's sad how much it isn't. After watching the video on Abbott's explanation to why he feels the need to carry on with this case against the new healthcare reform, everything that he had to say about it pretty much just went over my head. He didn't even have any legit or reasonable points to why. If your going to make an arguement over something you feel so strongly about, might as well come up with some valid points, rather then to leave people guessing on to how come you feel that way, and why so strongly. No wonder people are doubting if Texas is going to win. And how come he is spending our State's resources on something that won't even go in effect for another four years? To me Michael Hurta couldn't be more right, in that Greg Abbott is just wasting his time and, the lawsuit is pointless. There are so many other problems out there in our state that need to be taken care of well before this little situation. But i guess Greg Abbott is just living in a different state of mind for the time being.

Food stamps in Texas!

Why is Texas handling distributing food stamps so poorly? If the government is saying that one of their main key goals is to help their Texans, than how come their neglecting those who really need the extra help. It's not like those misfortunate people are driving around in fancy brand new cars saying life is good! No what their saying is I hope I can pay my rent or car payment on time this month. It's sad that people would even think that the have it easy and just ignore them. Sometimes it's not even their fault. Such as if the place they work at burns down, or if they get laid off, that is out of their control. It's not like they expected that to happen, unfortunately it did and that person has to do whatever they can to try to make a living, even if that means having to apply for food stamps. I personally know of some families and single mother's who have to use food stamps, and for them it was humiliating. They didn't enjoy walking up the counter with their groceries and when they go to pay they pay with food stamps. It's not something to feel any sense of dignity about. But their doing what they can to get by, and that's something to be proud of. But their are also those people who abuse food stamps, and just use them so that they don't have to spend their own money. Which is totally wrong but so many people do it. Just another greedy and selfish thing people tend to do. But that's what sparked this argument about food stamps in Texas. Kevin Concannon who is the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was stating that the state of Texas is failing to process applications within federal and state deadlines. The deadline for an application is 30 days for a regular application, and seven days for an emergency application. Sadly so many Texans have been waiting months for assistance. Kevin Cocannon also explained how Texas is one of the poorest-performing states on food stamps and that no other state has had such large or long-standing problems processing applications on time. The federal government pays for the food in the program, and the state and federal governments split administration costs. Stephanie Goodman of health and human services says he philosophy on it differs from how the federal governments is. She feels that our focus is not a participation rate. If their is a family that qualifies for assistance and they don't feel it's right to ask the government for help, we're not the ones to try to talk them out of it. It's up to them to make that decision. Kevin Cocannon on the other hand said that the participation rate is closely tied to the slow application process. Cocannon is urging the state to cease at finger-imaging applicants. "We fingerprint those who have committed crimes or have been accused or crimes, and that's an unfair attitude that may be reflected." Cocannon said. Maybe Texas just expects more out of their citizens than other states do. I still feel that if someone is qualified for food stamps they deserve the rights of the food stamps, if somebody else comes along and shows no evidence of deserving food stamps than he or she should not be qualified for them. Chances are if you grant someone who is undeserving of food stamps all their going to do is abuse them. I agree and then diagree with both Kevin Cocannon and Stephanie Goodman.

Who is more conservative?

I thought this article about Ben Bius stating that he doesn't feel Steve Ogden is conservative enough for our State because most people would think of Texas as being mainly republican, and encouraging republican to be spread throughout the state. Bius stated that, "We need a new brand of conservative leadership, not one that's just Republican, but conservative first." and that Steve Ogden can't earn up to that role because he is too republican. Both parties at the moment are facing voter unrest, because the voting record needs to be balanced for republican as well as conservative. Williamson County Chairman Bill Fairbrother says that it will be very tough to out-conservative Steve Ogden, and that he doesn't see conservative as being redefined here. There's not too much to the right of where conservatives are here. Steve Ogden seems to be arguing that he is indeed a conservative as well, and alot of this is being caused by people who think the road to the Texas senate is through the tea party movement, which is very conservative and made up of people who mostly voted for Ron Paul and Ross Perot. When the election is over, the strategy is going to look pretty silly. Ogden also claims that over the years as Chairman of the Senate Finance Comittee, "I've helped Texas balance the budget, cut taxes and save for a rainy day. Now with the recession and the spendthrift federal government, the next state budget will require experience, skill and judgement...if you send me back to Austin, I will do the job right."
As for Ben Bius he has always pushed "conservative first" message, criticizing Ogden for helping create the highly controversial Trans-Texas corridor Project, voting for liberals, against gun rights, for voting for a new business tax and for crafting a state budget in 2009, that spent too much. Ogden came back with an explanation that he voted his conscience on the issues as the appeared at the time. Ogden believes that he really has the experience to say yes, and the toughness to say no. Even now the campaign has just turned increasingly uglier. With the two candidates still butting heads. Their views seem too oposing to come to an agreement. In my opinion I believe both are entiltled to run, and that their views on eachother shouldn't get in the way of how they run.

http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/ogden-bius-spar-in-state-senate-race-239630.html

President Obama wanting to extend school hours

I recently read in an article online that President Barack Obama is considering to extend school hours in Public Schools. For me on this topic, I disagree but then at the same time agree. I just graduated from high school last year, so i can definitly see myself in their shoes not wanting to have to stay past four o'clock in the afternoon at school. But think about it, our taks scores and how well grade school kids are doing these days in school isn't so good. Apparently we are doing alot worse on grade scale than other countries. For example, "But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom. If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America." This quote was from President Obama comparing us to South Korea's school system. President Obama is proposing that longer class hours as a part of a broader effort to improve U.S. schools that he said are falling behind foreign competitors. My feeling on this is that President Obama is trying to have us in a competition with other countries that seem to be doing a whole lot better in education than us. I personally feel that it's great that he wants for the U.S. to do better in education, and to encourage our kids to try harder in school, but those kids in South Korea we're raised a whole lot differently than how kids in America are. To me I believe South Korea's culture is mainly focused on education. Basically all that those kids do is go to school, come home and go straight to the books. Here in America we have kids that go to school, have practice for either a sport or hobby, hang out with friends, and then do their homework on their own time. It's very different.

"It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones," he said in a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom."
I very much agree with this quote. Since I am working right now for my degree in early childhood education, I think increasing the pay for teachers would be AMAZING, because I am very well aware of how the pay is now, and I feel that it isn't fair. Being a teacher is not an easy job, and "good" teachers are well needed everywhere! "Teachers want to make a difference in kids' lives, and they appreciate a president who shares that goal and will spend his political capital to provide the resources to make it happen". I can really relate to this quote because for me when I do become a teacher I want to enrich my students knowledge and lives. And I am very supportive of President Obama's goals on trying to improve the school system, but then again i'm not so in full force of pushing back school hours. I do feel that it would be great for students to have more time in the classroom to learn, but then again you want those kids to have normal lives. Not to get home when the sun is pretty much going down, and have that be their whole day. But he is very right in that our students in America could be doing alot better.

This topic has so many different opposing and proposing viewpoints, so in that it makes it very difficult to come to a conclusion on what should be done in the school systems. But in my opinion I feel that are students do need more motivation and encouragement from their parents and teachers to try to their very best in school because education is so important. The only thing I don't understand is why we need to extend the school hours, because it probably won't make a difference on the grade performance.