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Charter Schools: Are They Needed? Looking at Both Sides of the Debate

Charter Schools: Are They Needed? Looking at Both Sides of the Debateby Michael Lorenzen(This is another rescued paper I put up at a now vanished website years ago. I think some web surfers may find it of interest.)Most reform concepts work by making changes within schools. However, a newer reform idea works by creating entirely new schools. The charter school movement seeks to improve public school by creating new, rival, and competing public schools. The hope is that competition for students will force public schools to improve. However, many do not believe the free market will actually bring this about and may actually harm public schools. Despite the relative newness of the charter concept, the ideas behind it are not new and an examination of education literature can shed a lot of light on the concept. Description of charter schools The pro-charter school group, the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (MAPSA), defines on their web page that, "Charter Schools are public schools-free and open to all. They are started by interested parents, educators, and business and community leaders. Each school is created with its own unique curricula and is licensed by a school district, community college or, most often, a state university." The mostly anti-charter National Education Association, (NEA) furthers the definition by writing on their web site, "These school are deregulated, autonomous and independent of the rules and regulations that govern traditional schools. The theory that underlies the charters is that such freeing of some public schools will hasten educational innovation, improve student achievement, create greater parental involvement, and promote improvement of public education in general. And the theory follows that if there's no educational improvement, the school will be held accountable and the school's charter won't be renewed." A description of the charter school concept can be constructed including both of the above descriptions and using other sources. Charter schools are public schools that are free from some, but not all, of the regulations that govern most public schools. Any person or group may start their own public school if they can get a charter from an approving educational institution, which is normally a state university. These schools, which are free from many regulations and teachers unions, can attempt to innovate curriculum and learning in ways that traditional public schools can not or will not try. In districts with charter schools, parents can choose to send their children to either the local public school system or to a charter school. Whichever school the parents chooses, that school gets all of the state funding for that student. It is hoped that making schools compete for students will make them better. If a school system loses a significant number of students and money to charter schools then it is likely going to try to compete with the charter schools by being more responsive to parents and more willing to try reforms that the school previously opposed. Those local school districts that refuse to innovate and improve to keep pace with charter schools will lose money and students. Those charter schools that do not deliver quality instruction will not keep their students and run the risk of going out of business or losing their charter.Praise and criticism for charter schools The greatest benefit of charter schools according to its proponents is that all public schools will get better if there is competition. The free market will drive quality instruction and innovation and those schools, which do not respond to market forces, will either get progressively weaker or be closed entirely. The pro-charter Charter Friends National Network writes on its web site, "The purpose of charter schools is not just to create schools. The evaluation (of charter schools) should ask whether districts do in fact act to improve their own programs in response to the appearance of charter laws and charters schools. Most evaluations so far have not looked for these second-order effects. To evaluate the 'ripple effect' requires looking simply at what districts do." Using this argument, if a school district improves after a charter is opened, the charter school idea has worked even if the local school district outperforms the charter school. Both the school district and the charter are needed to create the free market that drove the improvement in the school district. The United States is a capitalistic society and the free market drives most of what occurs in the economy. The Federal government promotes the free market as it tends to produce jobs and keep prices low. Although different sectors of the market may not always work as well as they should in the free market; the American free market system has created the strongest economy in the world. The only area that the government has historically interfered with the free market is to prevent or destroy monopolies. The free market can create monopolies but monopolies destroy the free market when they emerge. This reasoning is transferred to public schools with the charter school idea. The public school system as it previously stood was a monopoly. Except for paying for private schooling, the local public school was the only option a parent had for educating their child. Charter schools create competition. And if the free market works for education as it does in the economy, the public schools as a whole will become a better product. Opponents of charter schools have several counters to this reasoning. Much of it can be found at the NEA web site. Although the free market does a good job as a whole for the economy, there are losers in this system. As such, there will be losers in an educational free market. Do we want children to suffer if they are among the losers? Further, how can you make a school better if you take money away from it? Opponents argue that many of the problems with public schools to begin with are from a lack of funding. Taking money from a school will only make it worse. Another argument for charter schools is fairness. A form of school choice exists for those have the money. It does not for everyone else. Wrote Nathan (74), "We have a deeply inequitable public school system in which the wealthy already have school choice: middle and upper income families can always move to exclusive suburbs, where the price of admission to 'public' schools is the ability to buy a home and pay real estate taxes. Low and moderate income families do not have this ability. Thus those who defend the current public education system are in fact defending a massive, informal school choice system based on wealth and residence which is arguably the most inequitable system imaginable. As one innercity activist recently said to a charter school critic: 'How dare you insist we send our children to school you will do anything to avoid for your children?' Charter schools offer a much fairer approach to school choice." Since the traditional public school model relied so heavily on where a student lived, this tended to give the poor the worst public schools. However, an inordinate number of racial minority students live in poor neighborhoods. The traditional public school model then places a higher percentage of minorities in poor schools. This results in a racist system that perpetuates racial privilege. It is not surprising then that many members of these racial groups are supporters of charter schools. They provide parents with a choice of schools. This choice can create better schools for their children, which may help to break the poverty cycle. It is interesting to note that civil rights leader Rosa Parks applied to start a charter school in Detroit based on this reasoning. Another argument for charter schools is that they empower parents. Charter schools not only give parents the option of creating or attending schools more to their liking, but it also gives them the opportunity to bargain with teachers and administrators in school districts. One area that can be explored is cultural preference. Racial minorities may desire a school that promotes their culture. Religious parents may desire to send their children to schools that promote their moral values. Wrote Smith (56), "Many families with children in the public schools must contend with pressures of assimilation toward mainstream norms as they attempt to transmit their cultural or religious values. To escape these pressures, or to be ensured a certain quality of education, some families choose private education. But only those who can afford private school tuition can use this option. Thus, families whose values are not represented in the mainstream culture and families with low to middle incomes are at a disadvantage in the present structure of public education." Charter schools give choice to those who previously lacked it. It also assures a higher level of bargaining for a parent if they keep a child in the local school district. The Board of Education will think twice about approving teacher supported curriculum that is opposed by a vocal group of parents. Unpopular curriculum such as sex education and values clarification is less likely to be approved in a district if parents can and will pull their children from the school district. Critics of charter schools point to this as a bad thing. They prefer to allow these curricular decisions to be made by educational professionals. However, most parents believe that the ultimate arbiter of their children's education is themselves and not the state. And as such, this ability to have cultural preferences addressed seriously is popular with parents. Another criticism of charter schools is that for-profit companies operate many of them. The NEA web site calls them "fly-by-night" companies in derision. A recent article in Educational Leadership wrote about these for-profit schools in Michigan. Wrote Dykgraaf and Lewis (51), "Our conclusions proved troubling. First, cutting expenses is indeed part of the for-profit strategy, which results in consequences for transportation, special education, and the socioeconomic mix of students. Second, we concluded the public is not aware of how drastic for-profit management is in Michigan, for no easily accessible source of information is available on the activity of these management groups. Finally, de facto ownership of these schools rests more with the management companies and not the public." The NEA's, Dykgraaf, and Lewis's criticism of for-profit charter schools is very understandable. It touches on a fundamentally moral issue. Is it ok to run schools for money? Many would find this objectionable. Cost cutting in areas such as special education is also problematic. Finally, the fact that for-profit schools are truly owned by the corporation and not the state raises many concerns. Another criticism of charter schools is that they attract students with concerned parents. By their nature, parents have to take an active interest in their children's education to enroll in charter schools. Children who have parents actively involved in their education do better overall than students who do not. Hence, charter schools are going to attract the students who tend to do better in school. The local school system will be left with fewer children who have active parents. This will make it hard to compare the charter with the local school district. If the charter is getting better performing students, it should be doing better on comparable tests. A counter to this argument is that the parents who are concerned about education have a right to send their children to schools that are populated with students of other concerned parents. This is a better learning environment for the students. Another result of charter schools that this author has not seen considered yet is the concept of property values. Real estate values in areas with poor school systems tend to be low. This is often attributed to the quality of the local public school system. What happens when charter schools are present in a district? If parents can avoid the local public school system by sending a child to a charter school, does this make them more willing to live in the district? If this is the case, property values should rise in these districts. If this proves true, residents of a district will show even more support to charter schools. Although a few more years will need to pass before this kind of research can be done, it does like an interesting research idea.Analysis of the charter school issue Not surprisingly, the debate over charter has been informed by the development of education and educational reform in America. As such, looking at the writings of educational researchers and practitioners can help in understanding the charter school issue. Charter schools have not developed in a vacuum. Looking at the wider issues in education is very important. The belief that charter schools help further the goals of democracy and fairness is important. The notion of democratic equality is very important in the United States. The belief that schooling should serve all regardless of social background and give all an equal chance at an education that will lead to a potentially high social class is widespread. In brief, this belief envisions that all inhabitants of the United States (citizen and alien alike) will receive the same education. Those who are worthy, regardless of the backgrounds of the parents, will succeed and achieve great things and those that are less worthy will through their own efforts select their own less than spectacular destinies. This is a powerful idea that is held by those dedicated to the egalitarian ideal of The Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, by those who are in the working class who believe that providence has delivered what they deserve, and by those who are well off who believe the educational system has justified their own status. Several scholars have taken note of democratic equality. Cohen and Neufield (73) wrote, In addition to citizenship training and equal treatment, the goal of democratic equality has taken a third form, and that is the pursuit of equal access." Labaree (47) wrote, "Equal access has come to mean that every American should have an equal opportunity to acquire an education at any educational level." These same scholars convincingly trace the development of this vision of equality in America from the development of public elementary schools, the rise of public high schools, and finally the realization of nearly universal access to higher education. However, the traditional public school system has not delivered on the democratic equality promise. Not all schools are equal. Some are much worse than others are. Poor students in these schools have no choice but to attend them. This results in them not having a fair chance at succeeding. Charter schools give many the belief that democratic equality is still attainable.Paradoxically, this low public opinion of the local public school system developed because schools tried to deliver on this promise. However, universal school attendance created problems. Can a school be open to all and be excellent? The answer appears to be no too many. By attempting to serve everyone equally, the school serves no on excellently. Access for all creates a problem. Vast numbers of diverse students with various backgrounds have different educational needs. Further, many students do not desire to be in school. This creates a need to make school attractive to these students. This can result in a water downed curriculum that most students can succeed in. Further, as Willis showed in his book on working class students in England, even the students can deliberately choose not to be educated. Part of the desire for charter schools is the perceived lack of serious education in public schools. Wrote Sedlak at al (preface, x), "There appears to have developed an implicit 'bargain' between students in virtually all of our high schools, which results in a de-emphasis on academic learning and student disengagement from learning. The bargain is negotiated, albeit tacitly, between two parties, both of which have resources, but unequal power. This bargain determines the level of academic learning that takes place in the classroom. Although content and acquisition of knowledge ultimately suffer, the bargain struck in most classrooms furthers its primary goal of making the relationships between educators and students more comfortable and less troublesome." This idea creates a dual consideration for charter schools and the community. Charter schools can indeed create an alternative to public schools where bargains water down learning. Many want this bargain eliminated. The public does not want students taking easy classes and they want students being challenged academically. They want the students to be challenged and the teachers to push high standards. The hope is that charter schools will do this. However, what promise do we have that the charter schools will not make their own bargains with students? What assurance is there that the current bargaining system will simply not be reproduced in the charter schools? This should make charter school advocates take pause and consider what can occur in the charter schools. The desire of many to want charter schools is not surprising. People have a strong ownership and desire to participate in the education process. Wrote Cusick (1992), "Individual freedom runs all the way through the system. Parents may or may not support the school board; superintendents may support or oppose the state department; state department staff may alter the intent of federal policy makers. People make and exercise personal decisions, enter and take part on their own terms, and regards those as their rights. Students mix their classes, cultures, and friendships with school requirements; teachers adjust their curriculums to their predilections, create their student relations, and support and oppose principals as they choose. Reformers decide schools need accountability, or principals decide their teachers have too much or too little power. Teachers decide students need more freedom. Each member of the system is free to make his or her own decision and set out on a course of action." The charter school movement is the ultimate manifestation of Cusick's view of the education process. Charter schools allow unparalleled opportunities for input. Any teacher, administrator, parent, businessperson, or politician can literally start their own public school. The degree to which this can be used to influence the education process is enormous. The amount of educational freedom created is unprecedented. Charter schools are popular now and it is certain they will continue to expand in the near future. It will be interesting to see how well they perform in comparison to public school districts and if these districts change for the better in attempting to compete for students. Regardless, the conditions that created charter schools will remain and this reform is just one way to address them.Works CitedCharter Friends National Network. http://web.archive.org/web/20070405174929/http://www.charterfriends.org/. Cohen, David K. and Barbara Neufield (1981). "The failure of High Schools and the Progress of Education." Daedalus 110 (Summer): 69-89. Cusick, Philip (1992). The Educational System: Its Nature and Logic. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990. Dykgraaf, Christy Lancaster and Shirley Kane Lewis (1998). "For-Profit Charter Schools: What the Public Needs to Know." Educational Leadership 56(2): 51-53. Labaree, David (1997). "Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals." American Educational Research Journal 34 (Spring): 39-81. Michigan Association of Public School Academies. http://web.archive.org/web/20070405174929/http://www.charterschools.org/. Nathan, Joe (1998). "Charters and Choice." American Prospect (issue 41): 74-77. National Education Association. http://www.nea.org/issues/charter/ . Sedlak, Michael et al. (1986). Selling Students Short: Classroom Reform in the American High School. New York: Teachers College Press. Smith, Stacy (1998). "The Democratizing Potential of Charter Schools." Educational Leadership 56(2) : 55-58. Willis, Paul. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.

MindTouch Wiki Integrates Salesforce.com, LinkedIn

MindTouch hopes to replace MediaWiki as the premier collaboration platform by integrating with as many popular business applications and legacy systems as makes sense. Its target customer? The Microsoft systems integrator looking to enhance user value. - With a mind toward becoming the de facto standard for enterprise collaboration software, MindTouch released a new version of its open-source wiki platform that lets users interface with Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, LinkedIn and other applications. The Kilen Woods release of MindTouch Deki, launche...

IPS finds no nuggets in ID checking goldmine

Claims targets exceeded, but fee income tiny Government plans to position the Identity & Passport Service as the UK's de facto identity services broker seem not to have entirely caught the imagination of the private sector, figures in IPS' annual report and accounts suggest. Although IPS recruited 44 new customers for its Passport Validation Service (PVS), income from this for the year ending March 2008 was only £357,000.?

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

John McCain's "protective barrier" Nearly four months ago, I wrote that many journalists were going along with John McCain's apparent efforts to declare that, because of his military service, any criticism -- even if it doesn't have anything to do with his service -- is out of bounds. In one early example, McCain attacked Mitt Romney, claiming that Romney (who, McCain noted, "has never had any military experience") had criticized Bob Dole's "service and courage." In fact, Romney hadn't said anything about Dole's service, or his courage. Not even close. But that didn't stop the media from going along with McCain's false claims. A few weeks later, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer asked if Barack Obama was "taking aim at John McCain's age, an American war hero." Obama hadn't said anything that had anything to do with McCain's status as an "American war hero" -- indeed, he hadn't mentioned McCain at all. Still, Brewer felt compelled to invoke McCain's status as a war hero at the slightest hint (real or imagined) that McCain is being criticized -- even though that (real or imagined) criticism had nothing to do with McCain's military service. But incidents like that were apparently just trial runs for what has happened this week, as much of the media has abandoned any pretense of neutrality. In the most vivid example to date of media describing any criticism of McCain as criticism of his military service, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell described a television ad that made not a single mention of McCain's service as being a part of "an organized campaign against John McCain's military service." Here's the ad; watch for yourself. It's an ad about McCain's Iraq policies. It doesn't make any mention of McCain's military record. Doesn't even hint at anything having anything to do with McCain's service. Yet Mitchell suggested it was part of "an organized campaign against John McCain's military service." She may as well have said a giant purple unicorn had called McCain a traitor, for all the truth there was to her statement. Mitchell's description was deeply dishonest, but what's really remarkable is how well it fit in among the rest of the media's political coverage this week. On Sunday, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer suggested that the fact that Barack Obama has not "ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down" makes him less qualified to be president than John McCain. His guest, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, responded by saying that having done so is not a qualification to be president: SCHIEFFER: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean -- CLARK: Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president. SCHIEFFER: Really? Clark has made similar comments in the past, and various media figures said much the same thing about John Kerry in 2004. Morton Kondracke, for example: "It does not qualify you to be the commander in chief of all the Armed Forces because you were a Swift boat commander." And Kathleen Parker: "[M]ilitary service neither qualifies nor disqualifies one for political office." That same year, Bush campaign spokesperson Steve Schmidt -- now John McCain's de facto campaign manager -- dismissed the relevance of Kerry's military service, noting that it had occurred decades earlier. Nobody much cared when people said John Kerry's military service didn't qualify him to be president. But the media have different rules when it comes to John McCain. And so Clark's comments were met with a firestorm of media criticism. Never mind that Clark hadn't criticized McCain's service; that he hadn't said McCain served poorly or dishonorably -- in fact, Clark called McCain a "hero." Never mind all that; the media quickly, relentlessly -- and falsely -- jumped all over Clark. They falsely accused him of attacking McCain's military service. They falsely accused him of attacking McCain's patriotism. They went along with the McCain campaign's complaints that Clark -- who, again, called McCain a "hero" -- "didn't pay proper homage" to McCain. By the end of the week, one creative journalist went so far as to falsely claim that Clark's comments were part of a "pattern of attacks" on McCain as "psychologically unfit for presidential office." In short: they freaked out. A few journalists felt compelled to acknowledge the obvious: that what Clark said was actually right -- that McCain's military service, like John Kerry's, is not sufficient qualification for the presidency no matter how honorable and heroic it was. But they still insisted Clark shouldn't have said it. New York Times columnist Gail Collins, for example, wrote: "When Schieffer pointed out that Obama had neither run a squadron nor 'ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down,' the correct response was: 'No, and he honors Senator McCain's service.' ... Nevertheless, what Clark said was obviously true." Collins' Times colleague John Harwood agreed during an appearance on MSNBC: "[I]t was a misstep by Clark ... It was not a well-advised thing for Clark to do ... It actually was true." When did journalists decide that the "obviously true" answer to a question is not the "correct" answer? When did they decide that it was appropriate to spend days excoriating someone for saying something that is "true" but isn't "well-advised?" Columbia Journalism Review's Zachary Roth, writing about an ABCNews.com report, explained: This is the perfect embodiment of the press's unbelievably destructive habit of assessing every piece of campaign rhetoric for its political acuity, rather than for its validity and accuracy. Clark's comments may (or may not) have been impolitic. But that has no bearing on their validity or lack thereof -- which is how the news media should be evaluating them. Incredibly, many in the media compared Clark's "obviously true" comments to the vicious smear campaign waged by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry. The comparisons began almost immediately. Just hours after Clark's appearance on Face the Nation, CNN host Rick Sanchez asked, "[D]id Wesley Clark pull a swift boat on John McCain today?" He later described Clark's comments as "A respected military leader dissing, some might say, swift-boating John McCain's military record." The absurd comparison quickly gained traction, particularly on cable news. But wait: it gets worse. Not only did the media compare Clark to the noxious Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, many of them politely averted their eyes when McCain turned to a member of that group -- which McCain once called "dishonest and dishonorable" -- to respond to Clark's non-attack. The Washington Post, one of the media outlets that did note Bud Day's membership in the SBVT, quoted him rejecting the comparison between Clark and the anti-Kerry group -- because, he claimed, the comparison was unfair to the Swifties: "The Swift boat, quote, attacks were simply a revelation of the truth. The similarity doesn't exist. ... One was about laying out the truth. This one is about attempting to cast another shadow." The Post didn't bother to tell readers that, in fact, the Swift Boat attacks were deeply dishonest and nasty smears. In short: John McCain turned to a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group whose false and despicable attacks on John Kerry's war record McCain once denounced, to attack Wesley Clark for comments in which Clark did not criticize McCain's war record -- and in which he, in fact, called McCain a hero. And the media went along with it. But -- because the only limit to how absurd the media's pro-McCain coverage will become is time -- it gets even worse. While defending the Swift Boat Vets' lies about John Kerry and attacking Wes Clark for something he didn't say, Bud Day said of Clark: "General Clark spent a month in Vietnam, got badly wounded, evacuated, and that was his Vietnam experience. I'd say let's hold the two of them up and see who's most qualified to talk about their experience as a combat officer." That happens to be false. Clark served at least six months in Vietnam, not "a month." Day's comments about Clark constituted an actual falsehood about a distinguished veteran's military record, made on an official McCain campaign conference call by a hand-picked surrogate. Surely, after days of freaking out over something Wes Clark didn't say, the media quickly gave as much attention to SBVT member Bud Day's false claims about Clark's own war record? Of course not. Remember: the rules are different for John McCain. Then there's Bob Dole. Earlier this year, McCain falsely accused Mitt Romney of criticizing Dole's service. This week, Bob Dole returned the favor by releasing a statement calling Wes Clark's non-attack on McCain's service "Beyond comprehension" and a "further erosion of our nation's political discourse." CNN, MSNBC, Time and the Associated Press, among others, reported Bob Dole's comments about Clark. But nobody mentioned an inconvenient fact that completely undermines Dole's credibility on this topic: In 2004, in the midst of the Swift Boat controversy, Bob Dole went on national television to make false claims about John Kerry's war injuries, suggesting the Democratic presidential candidate didn't deserve his Purple Hearts. Dole said in 2004 that he will "always quarrel about" Kerry's Purple Hearts, because "he got two in one day" even though he "never bled" and only had "superficial wounds." In fact, Kerry's Purple Hearts were not awarded for the same day, and he did bleed, according to Kerry crewmate Del Sandusky, who -- unlike Dole -- was present when Kerry was injured. There has never been any evidence that John Kerry did not earn his medals, and there is considerable evidence he did. The false claims Bob Dole made to suggest John Kerry did not deserve his Purple Hearts are what it looks like when somebody actually smears a war hero. Yet the media who dutifully repeated Dole's criticism of Clark didn't bother to mention Dole's bogus and offensive comments about Kerry. After all, Dole was defending John McCain from (imaginary) attacks, and the rules are different for John McCain. Let's pause for a moment to review. According to the news media, if you call John McCain a "hero," but say that heroism doesn't qualify him to be president, you have dishonorably attacked his military service. (Feel free, however, to say the same thing about John Kerry.) And if you criticize McCain's Iraq policies, you are participating in "an organized campaign against John McCain's military service." But wait! There's more! The media's knee-jerk defense of McCain doesn't stop at their use of his military service to rule criticism of his Iraq policies out of bounds. It extends to (things having nothing to do with) his age, too. See, if you criticize John McCain for ignoring his own pledge to avoid negative campaigning, the media will quickly announce that you're really attacking his age. That was ridiculous, of course, but McCain aide Mark Salter told them to say it, so they did. You get the picture: the media is on the verge of declaring any criticism of John McCain off-limits -- even when it isn't really criticism. Even when you call him a "hero," but not quite enthusiastically enough. One of the hallmarks of the Karl Rove era of GOP politics is that the Republicans aren't particularly subtle about their tactics. They tend to clearly telegraph what they intend to do, though often with the slight wrinkle of accusing the opposition of doing what they plan to do themselves. That is certainly true of the McCain campaign. In the very memo in which Salter convinced the media to pretend that Obama's criticism of McCain's negative campaigning was an attack on the Arizona senator's age, Salter wrote: "Senator Obama is hopeful that the media will continue to form a protective barrier around him, declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race." Yes, that's John McCain's senior adviser complaining that the media has formed a "protective barrier" around Barack Obama. The American people, however, seem to see through this nonsense. Two months ago, The New York Times and CBS News conducted a poll in which they asked respondents whether the media has been harder or easier on John McCain than on other candidates. Only 8 percent thought the media had been harder on McCain than on other candidates; more than three times as many people thought the media had taken it easier on McCain than on other candidates. (Asked the same question about media coverage of Barack Obama, respondents split pretty much down the middle.) It probably could go without saying at this point, but in case you're wondering: No, neither the Times nor CBS reported those poll results.

More on Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP)

Posted by Prashanth Koppula, Product ManagerWeb publishers often ask us how they can maximize their visibility on the web. Much of this has to do with search engine optimization -- making sure a publisher's content shows up on all the search engines.However, there are some cases in which publishers need to communicate more information to search engines -- like the fact that they don't want certain content to appear in search results. And for that they use something called the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which lets publishers control how search engines access their site: whether it's controlling the visibility of their content across their site (via robots.txt) or down to a much more granular level for individual pages (via META tags).Since it was introduced in the early '90s, REP has become the de facto standard by which web publishers specify which parts of their site they want public and which parts they want to keep private. Today, millions of publishers use REP as an easy and efficient way to communicate with search engines. Its strength lies in its flexibility to evolve in parallel with the web, its universal implementation across major search engines and all major robots, and in the way it works for any publisher, no matter how large or small.While REP is observed by virtually all search engines, we've never come together to detail how we each interpret different tags. Over the last couple of years, we have worked with Microsoft and Yahoo! to bring forward standards such as Sitemaps and offer additional tools for webmasters. Since the original announcement, we have, and will continue to, deliver further improvements based on what we are hearing from the community.Today, in that same spirit of making the lives of webmasters simpler, we're releasing detailed documentation about how we implement REP. This will provide a common implementation for webmasters and make it easier for any publisher to know how their REP directives will be handled by three major search providers -- making REP more intuitive and friendly to even more publishers on the web.To see the major REP features currently implemented by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, please see our detailed post on the Webmaster Central blog.

$5.8m payout draws line under FBI's anthrax screw-up

Seven years and a bioterror defense industry later... When the US Department of Justice agreed to pay Steven J. Hatfill $5.82 million in damages for trashing his life and reputation late last week, it was another big low in the mess that's been the Amerithrax 2001 case. With the de facto exoneration of Hatfill, who had been dubbed a "person of interest" by the FBI, bystanders can conclude the agency has no evidence and no valid notion of who may have been responsible for the mailings of anthrax powder which resulted in five deaths seven years ago.?

Hollywood actors mull pay offer

Hollywood producers make a final offer to actors in their pay dispute, warning the industry is already on de facto strike.

So Long, Bill Gates, and Thanks for the Monopoly

He's a merciless competitor, a shameless "fan" of other people's ideas and an unapologetic monopolist. And because of all that, Bill Gates has done more to create the thriving computer industry than anybody else. As Gates prepares to retire from full-time work at Microsoft July 1, after 33 years of doing everything from writing code to defending his company's business practices in court, many people are saying 'good riddance' to the man most techies loved to hate. What the critics won't acknowledge is that it was Gates' most obnoxious qualities that made it possible for the tech industry to grow as large as it has. "In his prime, Gates combined the monomania of the compulsive software programmer with the competitiveness of Attila the Hun," said Nicholas Carr, author of Does IT Matter and The Big Switch. And that was a good thing. "A lot of people see Microsoft as the enemy of openness and innovation, but it's worth remembering that it was the open architecture of the Microsoft-based PC that spurred massive creativity in both hardware and software and sped the adoption of computers both at home and at work," Carr said. In fact, the monopoly that Microsoft once had on computer operating systems was essential to the development of the computer industry, enforcing a de facto standard that permitted thousands of software and hardware companies to blossom. The Microsoft monopoly was one part luck, one part business acumen. The lucky part: When IBM asked Microsoft to provide an operating system for its new personal computer in 1980, Gates got the contract, even though he didn't have an OS to sell. No problem. Gates immediately bought the rights to another operating system, QDOS, which he then recast as MS-DOS and sold to IBM. The savvy part: Gates' fledgling company was able to retain rights to the new operating system, securing Microsoft's place at the hub of the PC industry. Later, Gates leveraged that monopoly into such complete dominance of the PC industry that Microsoft was able to collect payments from PC manufacturers for every PC they sold -- even if those PCs didn't carry a Microsoft operating system. That monopoly was bad for competitors who had arguably superior operating systems -- including, later, IBM's OS/2. And it was built in large part on appropriating the best ideas of other companies, from Gary Kildall's CP/M to Apple's Macintosh. But the upside was enormous because the monopoly created a stable environment where entrepreneurs could develop new companies and new products around a common platform. Without that standard, the computer industry in the 1990s would have resembled the web today: diverse, vibrant and flowering with abundant innovation, but also frequently broken because of the inability of disparate products to make the most basic connections with one another. "Unlike oil, pharmaceutical or steel, monopolies are a necessary ingredient in the technology business," Forrester Research founder George Colony wrote in a recent blog post. "It's only when de facto standards like Windows or de jure standards like HTML become dominant that usefulness soars." Contrast that to the state of the internet today. While the web abounds in standards, a frequent problem is that companies don't hew to them (and since 1996, Microsoft has been guilty of this behavior too). Having trouble syncing your Google calendar with your Yahoo calendar? Wondering why your camcorder won't upload to your new Macbook, your iPod can't share files with your friends' MP3 players and your mobile phone can't display webpages properly? All of these problems are traceable to a lack of widely supported standards. Just imagine if the same chaos had reigned throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Hardware manufacturers like Dell, Hewlett Packard, Compaq and IBM would still be battling it out with incompatible systems. And software like Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and, yes, even Microsoft Office never would have achieved widespread success. "[Bill Gates] made an unbelievable contribution," said Netscape, Opsware and Ning founder Marc Andreessen, while speaking at a keynote with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this year. "It's hard to conceive what this industry would look like today if Microsoft hadn't standardized the OS ... I think the industry would be much smaller if that hadn't happened." Of course, success breeds resentment, and Gates' aggressive business practices -- and less-than-polished personal style -- made him many enemies. "The problem is when you're the biggest sequoia in the woods, everyone wants to cut you down," said Paul Santinelli, a general partner with North Bridge Venture Partners, a venture capital firm. Gates didn't help matters by overreaching once his company's monopoly was firmly established. "Gates became kind of a Godfather figure in the industry, demanding tributes from his partners and whacking those who threatened his power," Carr said. "So Microsoft deserves both praise for stimulating innovation and criticism for stifling it." And then there was the problem that many of Microsoft's products simply didn't work that well. Indeed, as the chorus of complaints about Windows Vista grows louder day by day, it could be said that Gates is leaving Microsoft at exactly the right time, before the company's long decline sullies his reputation. "If all that stuff worked right out of the box, we'd all be out of a job," said David Strom, an independent technology consultant and speaker in St. Louis. Strom has a speech praising Gates for, among other things, effectively guaranteeing full employment for IT people called in to make Microsoft products work properly. But while technologists may curse Gates' aggressiveness and the buggyness of Microsoft software, they should also raise a glass to toast him as he departs the computer business. "He didn't have the zest of a Philippe Kahn, or the elegance of a Steve Jobs, or the stage presence of a Larry Ellison. But the guy revolutionized the PC industry, and that's what people need to remember," said Santinelli.

Large master bedroom, big house--Come see! (richmond / seacliff) $1000

Come share a 3-bedroom, 1.5 bath, 2-story 1920Â’s Edwardian house in a quiet neighborhood. We have a large living room (15 x 15) with bay window, built-in bookshelves and working fireplace, formal dining room with built-in cabinets, washer & dryer, separate shower and a tub in the upstairs bathroom, garden out back and hardwood floors throughout, except for the kitchen (linoleum) and upstairs bathroom (tile). Close to express transit to downtown, beaches, parks, Golden Gate Park, The Presidio, 24 hour shopping, cafes, restaurants and bars. The room is large(15 x 14)with a separate dressing area (7x7-1/2) including built-in shelves, drawers & mirrors, a spacious 2nd closet and lots of afternoon sunshine. As they say...must see to appreciate! We are two mature, outgoing, single females who both work full-time; Sharon is a nursing administrator and I work for an educational research non-profit. We're friendly, but have separate lives. We keep busy exercising at the Y or swimming at the JCC, gardening, skiing, band rehearsal (not at home...home is quiet) or acting class and spending time with friends. Sharon is a vegetarian, but I eat meat so we typically cook separately. Neither one of us drinks alcohol, but donÂ’t care if you do so in moderation. We try to keep the house orderly and clean without being unreasonable about it. WeÂ’re looking for someone who is responsible and respectful, pays rent on time, is free of any substance abuse issues and avoids drama when possible. Non-smoker (or outside smoker only), please. Being messy in your own room is not a problem; keeping common/shared areas clean is appreciated. Out of town visitors or overnight guests are fine on occasion, but we donÂ’t want any de facto housemates. Rent is $1000, and we split all the utilities between us (water, gas, electricity, garbage). The landlord requires first, last and a credit check (you can either bring a recent credit report or pay the fee), so move in is $2,000 + credit check. Email or call me, Merle, at 415-668-9483 to set-up a time to see the place.