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In New York State at least, a prescription is required for an optometrist to provide you with eyeglasses.

However one is not required to purchase eyeglasses from the provider of the prescription; you can get your eye exam and then buy your eyeglasses online with the prescription that the optometrist is legally required to provide to you after the exam. (Of course you can buy online without a prescription if you fill in whatever numbers you want, but most people want to get a prescription first so they know what numbers to fill in.)

http://www.op.nysed.gov/prof/od/article144.htm

7126. Special provisions.

Eyeglasses or lenses for the correction of vision or non-corrective contact lenses may be sold by any person, firm or corporation at retail, only on prescription of a licensed physician or licensed optometrist and only if a licensed physician, optometrist or ophthalmic dispenser is in charge of and in personal attendance at the place of sale. This article shall not apply to binoculars, telescopes, or other lenses used for simple magnification; except, that a seller of non-prescription ready-to-wear magnifying spectacles or glasses shall have the following language attached to each pair of glasses or spectacles displayed or offered for sale and in at least ten point bold type permanently affixed in plain view to the top of any point of sale display or, if there is no display, in the area of sale: "ATTENTION; READY-TO-WEAR NON-PRESCRIPTION GLASSES ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPLACE PRESCRIBED CORRECTIVE LENSES OR EXAMINATIONS BY AN EYE CARE PROFESSIONAL. CONTINUOUS EYE CHECK-UPS ARE NECESSARY TO DETERMINE YOUR EYE HEALTH STATUS AND VISION NEEDS." As used in this subdivision, "non-prescription, ready to wear magnifying spectacles or glasses" means spherical convex lenses, uniform in each meridian, which are encased in eyeglass frames and intended to ameliorate the symptoms of presbyopia. The lenses in such glasses shall be of uniform focus power in each eye and shall not exceed 2.75 diopters.

Citation? Or just urban myth?

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I've taught at both union and non-union schools. Unions are better for students and teachers.

By the post secondary level you wouldn't have noticed as much, but in K-12 gifted students whose needs are not being met will frequently exhibit poor academic performance. If it's an urban myth, then it's one which the New York State Education Department has fallen for.

Human window washers must be cheaper than self-cleaning glass or robots. For now.

high rise architecture as sculpture
difficult to navigate, no longer a simple curtain wall.
demands cleaning, maintenance and repair of both windows and facades -- and tenants will settle for nothing less than perfection.
there are no robots who can do this work and that isn't going to change any time soon.
it's all there in the summary.

For comparison, the twin towers of the WTC had 43,600 windows --- over 600,000 square feet of glass. The World Trade Center - Facts and Figures

Are the standards reasonable, appropriate and developmentally sound—especially for our youngest learners? In order to answer that question, it is important to understand how the early primary standards were determined. If you read Commissioner John King’s Powerpoint slide 18, which can be found here, you see that the Common Core standards were “backmapped” from a description of 12th grade college-ready skills. There is no evidence that early childhood experts were consulted to ensure that the standards were appropriate for young learners. Every parent knows that their kids do not develop according to a “back map”—young children develop through a complex interaction of biology and experience that is unique to the child and which cannot be rushed.

It goes on to compare the US Core with the standards from other countries such as Finland and Singapore.

It then shows the very real and large problem that it was "Pearson Education" that made this poorly written test.

This Pearson first-grade unit test is the realization of the New York Common Core math standards. Pearson knows how the questions will be asked on the New York State tests, because they, of course, create them.

Children and schools are evaluated based on State tests. Do you want your job being evaluated by something like this?

In New York State it's masters or GTFO.

Just like most states, the prerequisites for getting a teaching certificate for math in grades 7-12, NYS requires a Bachelor's degree, 40 days as a student teacher, pass the generic teacher certification exam (LAST and ATS-W), and the State administered Content Specialty Test in Mathematics. You can check it out http://eservices.nysed.gov/teach/certhelp/CertRequirementHelp.do

Of course in parts of the state like NYC, you've got lots of competition for teaching spots, so you probably won't get a job if you don't have a Master's degree, but it's not required in NYS for the certificate, so there are probably some less desirable locations in the state (I'm thinking upstate), that a Bachelor's would be more than enough...

It most certainly is not a requirement to have a Master's Degree in Education to teach in New York.

There is no evidence that a 4-day school week makes education worse. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It would be an interesting task to figure out the optimal hours for children to be educated - it may be that less daily hours may be helpful or not, and it may be that cutting the long holidays may be beneficial or not. Perhaps a 7-day school week would be optimal. But this kind of research should be done as controlled experiments with the aim of figuring out the best way to educate children. Doing it in a haphazard way because of lack of funding is not useful.

Actually, with regard to shortened holidays, research indicates that continued academic effort (reading in the linked case) positively impacts academic performance in the subsequent semester. Granted in this case the study was performed on students who continued to read during summer vacation and checked their performance when they came back, which is different from concentrated classroom study. Furthermore, according to the wiki there is a measured "summer learning loss" attributed to summer holidays where students do not perform any notable academic tasks, suggesting that the inverse would hold true as well, that real academic tasks throughout the long summer holiday might help stave off the worst effects of this "learning loss".

When looking at a 4 day school week, I don't think the loss of one day would in itself negative impact education. Obviously cutting it much further would probably tend to have negative consequences. I think keeping the kids in class longer hours during those 4 days will actually have a more negative effect, especially among younger students who don't tend to have the mental stamina for longer sessions of concentrated focus. The problem is I think they added the hours into the remaining days in order to be able say they are still covering the entire curriculum, but the focus problem may come into play and the kids won't be able to pick up the material as readily as before. Tacking on extra weeks at the end of the year would simply bring the financial problem back into play. What kids need are a regular steady diet of learning time, not huge gobs with vast periods of time between.

Except you're missing an important point. Neither New York nor California passed laws telling history book writers what version of history they were allowed to include nor what religious or political slants were required by the state. [...] Textbook publishers were not required by law to have a bias prior to the Texan law. You can claim they did, but you need to support that hypothesis with real evidence. We know textbooks are being forced to have a slant now, because a law was passed requiring specific things determined by politicians, not historians.

I agree with you that what Texas is doing here is ridiculous, but... wow. If you don't think textbook publishers have yielded to state biases for decades, you're hopelessly naive. Each state generally has a state board of education, sometimes elected and sometimes appointed. Regardless, these people generally have a political slant of some sort. The way the curriculum for the state is accepted varies -- sometimes aspects of it are part of state law, sometimes they are just policies created by the board of education, but there are political fights on these boards over controversial issues in many states.

The curricula of small states doesn't really matter to textbook publishers, but the biggest markets (California, Texas, and New York) generally determine the major versions of textbooks that are created.

If you don't think these boards of education set rather specific standards for the exact materials to be covered in curricula, think again. Check out the detailed standards given for New York and California curricula:

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/standards.html

Take some time reading though the thousands of pages on these (and similar sites), and you'll quickly discover some of the "standards" that seem to have a political slant one way or another. Other standards seem to be completely arbitrary choices about what gets emphasized.

And when it comes time for textbook adoption, you can bet the states will check to see which textbooks line up most closely with their specified "standards."

You would be guessing wrong.

I'll think you'll find that this language is typical:

The department's supervisory activities include chartering all educational institutions in the State, including schools, libraries, and historical societies; developing and approving school curricula; accrediting college and university programs; allocating State and federal financial aid to schools; and providing and coordinating vocational rehabilitation services. About the New York State Education Department

There was a Department of Public Instruction in recognizably modern form in 1853 and in embryo as early as 1812.

It's useful to remember the basics:

Local government in the U.S. has only the independence and authority a state is willing to give it.

States possess sovereignty within the Federal union, while local governments are not sovereign in any way, shape, or form, even within their respective states; on the contrary, they are governmental corporations chartered by (and whose charters may be revoked by) the legislature of the State whose boundaries they are within. Local government

There were little red school house districts, of course - call them "townships," if you like or cities.

The geek is never strong on history.

New York state began funding public schools in 1795.

By the mid 1850s you have an easily recognizable system of state supervision. New York State Education Department

The red brick school was small because almost no one continued with school beyond the primary grades - assuming you made it that far.

The red brick school was pure college prep or vocational education. You were in the metal shop or taking courses in Latin.

The scholar and the mechanic strictly segregated.

My father was among the last to graduate from one of these schools - a senior class of twenty-five.

This is not realistic

1- Go to another town

May be far away. In an emergency this is not good

2- Petition a chain

Right. Emergency ?

3- Open your own pharmacy

Did you notice my mentionning of the work "emergency"?

Pharmacies are not like any old bread and butter business who sell what they want.

In the various countries where I've lived and worked, pharmacies have always been a regulated business. A pharmacist diploma is pretty much PhD level. You need to know your stuff, in particular the major and side effects of the drugs you sell, some of which are pretty dangerous. You need to be able to prepare on the spot some of them, to advise customers depending on their condition, age, etc. It's not something you can improvise.

It is expected they can fulfil a prescription and they can help in an emergency. If a pharmacist doesn't want to give away some kind of drugs for some kind of moral or religious reasons they are simply in the wrong business.

In many countries yes there is a right to a full-service pharmacy within convenient driving distance, mandated by law even. Perhaps not in the US, I don't know. And if you honestly think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

As for matters of conscience You can read these guidelines. Notice the obligations of the pharmacists.

Anybody who wants to check the watering down process in education, check out the old New York state regents math exams dating back in the 1950's. http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/regentsexams.htm

Also, answer the question. More important than politeness is what you respond to. Maybe our discussion here on Slashdot could even center around the actual issues they are considering. (And by the way, Point 1 probably means "we don't care about out of state, ill-informed public opinion, only about those who either have qualifications, or vested interests because they interact with this state government.")

(And the correct url is http://www.oft.state.ny.us/News/erecords-study.htm)

From the site:

With those caveats in mind, please respond to the following general questions:

      1. Contact Information: Please provide name, organizational affiliation if any, and means for contacting you (e.g. e-mail address, street address, phone number). Contact information collected in Question 1 will not be displayed on a public website.

      2. What mechanisms and processes should the State of New York establish for accessing and reading its electronic records in order to encourage public access to those records?

      3. What mechanisms and processes should the State of New York establish for accessing and reading its electronic records to encourage interoperability and data sharing with citizens, business partners and other jurisdictions?

      4. What mechanisms and processes should the State of New York implement to encourage appropriate government control of its electronic records?

      5. What mechanisms and processes should the State of New York consider for encouraging choice and vendor neutrality when creating, maintaining, exchanging and preserving its electronic records?

      6. Are there mechanisms and processes the State of New York should establish that are specific to the management of its electronic records in its various life cycle stages (creation, maintenance, exchange, preservation and disposal)?

      7. How should the State address the long term preservation of its electronic records? What should the State consider regarding public access to such archived content?

      8. What changes, if any, should be made to the government records management provisions in New York Statutes? (Please reference those laws which are cited here: http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/records/mr_laws.shtml).

      9. What constraints and benefits should the State of New York consider regarding the costs of implementing a comprehensive plan for managing its electronic records?

    10. What should the State of New York consider regarding the management of highly specialized data formats such as CAD, digital imaging, Geographic Information Systems and multimedia?

    11. What constraints and benefits should the State of New York consider regarding potential savings or additional costs associated with the management of defined electronic record formats?

    12. What existing policies and procedures in the private or public sector for the management of electronic records would be appropriate for the State of New York to examine? Please cite specific examples.

    13. Are New York State's existing standards, regulations and guidelines regarding records management adequate to meet the challenges of electronic records retention? How should these standards, regulations and guidelines be changed?

    14. What else should the State of New York consider about this subject?

(6) All students first entering grade nine in 1985 and thereafter shall earn four units of credit in social studies in accordance with the following:

(i) Such requirement shall include one unit of credit in American history;

(ii) Such requirement shall include one half unit of credit in participation in government and one half unit of credit in economics or their equivalent.

I'm not sure what case you are making. I went to http://usny.nysed.gov/topics/#D and downloaded the diploma requirements PDF and it turns out to be a pamphlet in which it turns out there is a "local diploma" that can be obtained in New York. Furthermore the pamphlet does not contain the word "civics".

Can you point out where in the Regents Exams civics is covered?

June 2003, the failure rate for the New York State Math 'A' regents exam reached all time highs. Apparently the test was no more difficult than it ever was in the past. It's trig and algebra, people. Apparently some 65% of high school students didn't get it. read the report

"I think we have to be really careful about grading, that we don't do things that really devastate children and don't give an accurate reflection of their work." -Chief Instructional Officer Sandy Johnson (Tennessee), supporting a proposal to change the grading guidelines so that the lowest grade you can receive for anything is a 50/100. That's right! Don't even show up for class and get a 50%!

Nashville was also contemplating dropping the Honor Roll program because of fears of slipping student morale: story

(Haven't followed up on that. Did they actually do it?)

What about that story about 1337 speak in schools? That kind of functional illiteracy is barely accepable online, but it's okay for english papers?

I also remember reading somewhere about parents complaining about a school hanging other student's aorks in the hallways. Apparently it made their kids feel bad to not get their stuff hung up too. I'll see if I can track down that source.

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. I haven't had breakfast yet...
=Smidge=

I was browsing around...and came upon a list of felonies...

List of Felonies

I guess filesharing is now right up there will violent crime...

I see a major problem with SCO's case that no is talking about. That is the equitable doctrine of laches, which prevents a party asserting a claim against another too long a time after he could have, i.e., long after the offended party knew about the damage it supposedly suffered.

The source of the Linux kernel has been open for public inspection from its very inception, and SCO has been free to look through it and discover instances of copyright violation. Even more damning against it, SCO's own people have worked with the source, distributing their "own" version of Linux. There's no way they can claim that they couldn't have known about the issue for all these years.

Here's a nice little quote from a N.Y. state court case that failed to find laches due to a short delay of two years:

• "Laches is an equitable doctrine which bars recovery where a party's inaction has prejudiced another party, making it inequitable to permit recovery" (Vickery v. Village of Saugerties, 106 AD2d 721)

Here are some other interesting cites:

• Understanding Basic Copyright Law Has some examples of where laches might be used.
• Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. v. Executive Dev., Inc. (Federal district court, laches defense successful).

P.S. - I am a registered patent agent, not an attorney. This means that I don't practice copyright law, and nothing above is legal advice or the opinion of any client etc. I'm also an open-source software author, which I suppose is a bit like a butcher being a vegetarian...

everybody is touting accessibility to the information on your site, i'm pretty sure you have to go one step further on government sites and make them universally accessible. this means making it so it works reasonably well for blind folks who are surfing through some sort of vocalizer or colorblind folks who can't see your spiffy multicolored buttons or whatnot. More info here:

http://seddmznt.nysed.gov/cio/access/statutoryrequ irements.html

This is a page for the New York State Goverment, but they mention federal regulations they're supposed to follow and have some good links on how to design with those who are handicapped in mind.

The article says she goes to Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School in Port Washington, N.Y which from information on the New York State Elementary, Middle, Secondary, and Continuing Education (EMSC) website is a public school. It is in the Port Washington Union Free School District which is listed Port Washington UFSD in the link provided.

The article says she goes to Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School in Port Washington, N.Y which from information on the New York State Elementary, Middle, Secondary, and Continuing Education (EMSC) website is a public school. It is in the Port Washington Union Free School District which is listed Port Washington UFSD in the link provided.

It's definitely a Public High School. See here. So much for those who think that public schools are necessarily trash. If you look at the record of past finalists you'll see that a very large percentage are from NY city and Long Island (Port Washington is on LI). Since I live in that area (pardon the local chauvinism) I can tell you that the majority of those finalists came from public schools.