One day, I was in the supermarket with my oldest son (who's been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and Anxiety Disorder). We saw another father/son pair walk by. The son was missing the lower portion of one of his arms (starting about halfway from the elbow to where the wrist would be). My son couldn't help but notice (thankfully, in a quiet fashion). I told him that everyone has their challenges in life, but some people's challenges are easier to see than other people's. If someone is a quadriplegic, you can see the wheelchair. If someone has a mental illness or something like Autism (which isn't actually a mental illness, despite a lot of people thinking it is), it's often invisible to others.
I totally agree with "Not being able to see things makes mental illness a target for abuse." I've suffered from panic attacks. In one really bad instance (exasperated by medication I was on post-surgery), The panic kept me up the entire night. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin and had to fight the urge to run around the house screaming. Even typing about it, I can feel a tinge of anxiety rising. Yet, when I tell people about it, I'll often get told that I should just "get over it." Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that? I'll just tell my skyrocketing anxiety that we're not doing this now and it'll disappear, right? However, people who don't suffer from things like this try to find their nearest equivalent and then figure that it must be as easy to get over as that. It's like hearing someone has cancer, mentally comparing it to a cold, and telling the person to just have some chicken soup and get over it.
Not even any evidence that they score their tests properly. They get the tests back, score them as they see fit, and then destroy the tests. There's no third party verification to make sure that Pearson isn't giving Billy a low grade on his test because low scores mean more money to Pearson for materials to raise Billy's grade. These companies have an INCENTIVE to show students having low scores, the power to produce those low scores, and no checks/balances to catch them in the act.
Because actual teachers don't give campaign donations. Multinational corporations do. Therefore their input is ranked higher by politicians than the input by actual teachers. It also doesn't help that the multinational corporations say "the teachers are the problem" while giving those donations so teachers are told that not falling in line means they're admitting that they are the problem.
My wife is a teacher by trade (though not currently in a classroom) and she's considered homeschooling our kids. Not because she hates the teaching profession/science (she loves both), but because politicians and corporations have decided their say on how a child is educated is more important than a teacher's. Teachers where we live are being pressured to read from the state provided script and prepare the kids for the test. They're being chided if they don't buy into the notion that all children learn in the same way at the same pace simply because some politician "knows teaching." (Imagine a Dilbert strip where the PHB is the politician and Dilbert is the knowledgeable teacher and you've pretty much got the teaching situation in New York.)
Existing policies should prohibit attaching new devices to the network or computer without permission from the IT department, which is the only policy you need. Anyone who installs these always-listening devices where sensitive information is communicated deserves exactly what they get.
That covers "I want to connect X to our company network." What about the situation where the user is using their private cell phone connection? Suppose I had a smartwatch that connected via my mobile hotspot, constantly recorded audio, and uploaded it to the cloud via my hotspot for transcribing/saving. How is an IT manager supposed to know that such a device exists in the building (it's not on the company network), much less stop the employee from using it?
Thinking that 75+ years for copyright is too much doesn't change the existing case, but if enough people believe this they might be able to get the law changed which would obviously impact future cases. (3) isn't about "well, I don't think it should be that long so I'll ignore it." It's about "I don't think it should be that long so let's push to get it changed."
I'm thinking of situations where people - already on edge because of the actions of bad cops - take half of the story of an otherwise perfectly understandable police response and blow it out of proportion. The good officers get swept up in the hysteria over the bad officers' actions. Body cameras will give the public the full story which should deflate outrage in cases of good cops and focus is on the bad cops where it belongs. Everyone wins (except for the bad cops).
Why not keep people on the site and grab the be associated revenue?
This is exactly what Twitter is doing. This is a direct assault on TwitLonger and other services that let you write long articles and tweet short links to them with a blurb of text. For all their API efforts, Twitter has shown time and again that they don't really like people using the API. It's there, but more so Twitter can see what people use it for and then implement those ideas, locking out the services that originated them, than for people to actually innovate with Twitter.
I don't think most places would run their affairs in the manner you have been describing, but you do claim to be in New York which is in the running to become one of several national centers of excellence in dysfunction and corruption.
On this, we can definitely agree. And the new Acting Secretary of Education is John King whose previous claim to fame infamy was Commissioner of Education in NY where he cancelled a tour promoting his new Common Core/high stakes testing curriculum because parents showed up to protest it. He called the parents a "disruptive special interest group" and refused to re-start the tour until he could ensure that only HIS tale would be heard (e.g. screening anyone asking questions to make sure they were the "right questions"). He was hated here in NY and now he's running the Department of Education.
I think of them as "practice lightsabers." Perfect your kids' combat skills without lopping off their limbs. (Child Protective Services is *SO* touchy about kids losing limbs due to parent-induced lightsaber injuries.)
The charter schools in my area get to pick and choose who they admit. They don't allow kids in if they require too many services or if they fail to meet other criteria. This way, they can keep their metrics up while also hurting public schools. (I'll admit that the charter schools in my area might not be like charter schools in every area, but we do have quite a few here and they all seem to operate the same way.)
It's not just to curtail abuses of power either, but to protect good cops who take the appropriate actions but afterwards are second-guessed and told they acted inappropriately. Instead of just having "they say this/the officer says that", we can have a video released showing the entire encounter. That video can either exonerate the officer (stopping huge protests or calls for his arrest) or provide evidence if he did do something wrong. Either way, more transparency is a good thing for everyone involved.
1) Buy inexpensive pool noodles. 2) Cut them in half. 3) Use Duct tape on one end to form the "handle." 4) Use electrical tape to add accents/buttons. 5) Hand them to children (*cough* Or grown men *cough*) and let the lightsaber battles begin.
Even with heavy use, these lasted about 2 years for my kids and only cost $1 per lightsaber. Plus, there were no injuries from being whacked over the head with a saber.
Also, thanks for noticing my attempts to be logical. I try not to let emotion sway me too much, but obviously there are some subjects that hit too close to home for emotion to be completely excluded. (Asperger's/Autism is the obvious example considering I deal with that every day.)
I think it all boils down to where is a "reasonable" line and who is it reasonable to? If one were pressed into drawing a line, one might (either due to not knowing about some conditions or due to malice) draw the line in such a fashion that kids who could be educated would be excluded. Those parents would have to battle uphill (and trust me, I know all about this - getting my son's supports in place was a battle that took years) just to get their child an education. Getting supports in place would go from difficult to nearly impossible. These parents would lobby to have their kids included, but if their kids are included, why not others like their kids? Eventually, the line is pushed so far over that it might as well not exist.
Going the other way, a "slippery slope" could form. Say we deem Group A unable to be educated and kick them out. What about Group B which is very similar to A? Might as well include them too. But now Group C is taking the most resources per kid and not showing grades as good as other kids - so kick them out. Before you know it, too many kids are kicked out.
I think drawing a line beyond which a child is declared to be unable to be educated, thus saving the school the money of attempting it, is one of those things that might sound good in theory but once you explore the details you realize it's a gigantic minefield. You might make it all the way across, but more likely you'll get blown up in the process. It's better to try to educate all children using the most normal atmosphere that is possible for each child. After all, every child is different. Even among groups of children with similar conditions, there would be too many variations to make any line drawing fair.
You've probably seen enough of my comments to know that my son has Autism. He's on the "high-functioning" end of the spectrum (Asperger's Syndrome although that's not the diagnosis nowadays). So while he needs extra assistance, he thrives with that help. (He had a 97.4 average on his last report card.) Remove those supports and he might be able to struggle and pull a low B - which seems good until he completely falls apart or has a class-disrupting outburst. (Before we had supports in place, kids learned just what set him off and would intentionally trigger his reactions so the teacher would need to deal with my son instead of teaching a lesson. The kids were using my son as a "get out of a lesson free" card.)
There are two problems with your "do we really need to educate special needs students" inquiry. The first is: Where do you draw the line? Does my son get kicked out of being educated because he has certain issues even though, with supports in place, he aces every class? Does a kid with slightly more issues get kicked out of school? Does a child with a reading disorder get kicked out instead of getting help learning how to read? What about a child with ADHD? Does a child confined to a wheelchair get told he can't go to school because his class is on the second floor and we're not going to make accommodations?
The second problem is: Who gets to draw the line? Would they have an agenda? Would they decide that kids from certain backgrounds just aren't able to be educated and thus should be kicked out? Or maybe kids whose parents tend to vote for the opposing political party aren't "good enough" for education? This education line could move from "keep out those who can't be educated" to "political tool used to suppress opposition."
As it stands now, the law is to teach kids in the most "normal" environment possible. You start with a normal classroom and, if that doesn't work, add a one-on-one aide (which my child has). If that still doesn't work, you might add social workers or therapists. As you go along the spectrum, you'll get into special classrooms. The goal, though, is to give everyone as close to the same educational opportunities as possible.
That's been the problem where I am. We had tons of charter schools without much of any oversight. They got to set their own goals and if they missed them, oh well. One charter school was finally closed when they missed their own goals for 10 years straight. Even then, they fought in the courts saying they should be allowed an 11th year to turn things around.
The standard response by politicians in my area to a school not doing well is "let's open a charter school." Usually these politicians have clear campaign donation links to the companies opening the charter schools. Those schools are allowed to kick out kids who aren't as profitable. (My child and a bunch of others were kicked out because they required occupational therapy services. Unfortunately, we were afraid to upset the wrong people by pursuing it so it never was pursued.) The charter schools drain money from the public schools and leave the public schools with the lowest performing students and the students who cost the most money. This means the public schools continue to do poorly and the call goes out to open another charter school. Businesses profit and kids who need the most help suffer.
Nope. I wrote what I meant to write. In NY (and many other parts of the country), companies like Pearson Education are contacting politicians and telling them that there's a huge education problem. The companies say that students are failing and that teachers are to blame. Don't worry, though, the companies have the solution. You just need to give them a few million dollars and they'll test and re-test and re-re-re-test the kids to show that they are failing. Then they'll sell you lesson plans, teacher education, books, etc to help "fix" this problem as well as more tests to make sure the problem is fixed. If the "problem" isn't fixed, some other companies will open for-profit charter schools to pull public funds away from those "failing" public schools.
I've been right in the thick of this whole mess in NY for years so I'm well aware of the situation. I'm under no illusion that teacher's unions are saints, but right now the big threat to education are private companies who look at students and get huge dollar signs in their eyes. They aren't interested in teaching the next generation, they're interested in making a quick buck while implementing cheap, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all "education."
Side Note: In NY, the teachers unions didn't support our governor during his re-election campaign so he's doubled down on his rhetoric against teachers, going to far as to tie high stakes test results to teacher jobs. A teacher can be fired if his/her kids don't pass the tests twice. Whether tests pass or fail is determined by the companies who have a profit motive on students failing (there's more to sell for failing students) and without independent oversight. Test scorers have come forward and said they were told that they had to "see" more passing tests as failing. As John Oliver put it, it's like telling umpires that they've got to see more doubles as strikeouts and more home runs as doubles.
>> She added round-the-clock care for children with crappy parents.
This isn't about parents who said "We could afford to do your laundry or take you to the doctor but we're too busy partying on our yacht to do that." This is about parents who are working two jobs (each in the case of 2 parent households) and even then barely able to afford the bare necessities of food, clothing, and housing. These are parents who have to make the serious budgetary decision of whether they feed their kids dinner tonight or pay the rent on their apartment because there's not enough money for both. These are the parents for whom having to pay an unexpected doctor's bill means possibly losing their apartment and living on the streets. These are parents who are doing the best they can do, but are barely keeping afloat (or, in some cases, not even keeping afloat).
When your life involves constant anxiety about whether you'll eat tomorrow, whether you'll have a place to sleep tonight, or whether you'll have clothing warm enough for the cold weather, you tend not to be able to pay attention to your teacher and won't do well on the tests.
And this isn't welfare. They opened a food pantry, had a shelter for homeless kids, and a clinic for kids whose parents couldn't afford to take them to a doctor. How are any of these actions bad? Considering how the scores improved, this sounds like money well spent. It's a much better use of funds than spending a million dollars to improve the high school football field so that the local sports team has state of the art equipment to play with.
Sadly, in my son's district, a school failing due to poverty is told they're failing because of "bad teachers" and the school is put into receivership. They then have 1 or 2 years to turn it around (how much is determined by State Ed who are the ones blaming teachers). If they don't turn it around enough, the school will be given to an outside agency who can turn it into a charter school and restrict student admittance to whomever they want. In other words, they'll kick out "under-performing" kids or kids with issues that require extra assistance - pushing them to other public schools - and then they'll show how they've "improved" scores and will push for more schools like theirs. (Using more taxpayer money, of course.) Meanwhile, the poor kids will still be worrying about whether they'll be able to eat or have a place to sleep tonight.
I'd go for a funny line like quoting Futurama's "Thus solving the problem once and for all.... ONCE AND FOR ALL" but, sadly, these politicians refuse to look at the studies that show poverty is the leading factor and instead want to channel public school funds to companies that donate to their campaigns.
I took the "retro" criticism to be "They're using models and locations? Don't they know they can just CGI up everything and have actors on green screens like I did in the prequels? Plus, where are the CGI beasts walking right in front of the camera obscuring the actors? And why isn't a main character completely CGI?!!" (Before anyone guesses wrong: BB-8 was a practical effect. Perhaps there was some CGI touchups and enhancements, but he's not 100% CGI the way Jar-Jar was.)
1. Also, let's not forget that Kylo was injured by Chewbacca's weapon just before this. A weapon which instantly killed a bunch of other guys. So you've got an injured Dark Force character battling an inexperienced ex-Stormtrooper - who Kylo likely underestimated initially. Finn does decently to begin with but then Kylo gets serious and takes him out. Kylo then takes on Rey who manages to overpower him - but it's clear that both of them need more training.
2. I think the consensus is that Rey is Luke's daughter. Obi Wan died about 35 years before this so unless Rey is in her mid-thirties, she's far to young to be Obi-Wan's daughter.
Slashdot Mirror
One day, I was in the supermarket with my oldest son (who's been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and Anxiety Disorder). We saw another father/son pair walk by. The son was missing the lower portion of one of his arms (starting about halfway from the elbow to where the wrist would be). My son couldn't help but notice (thankfully, in a quiet fashion). I told him that everyone has their challenges in life, but some people's challenges are easier to see than other people's. If someone is a quadriplegic, you can see the wheelchair. If someone has a mental illness or something like Autism (which isn't actually a mental illness, despite a lot of people thinking it is), it's often invisible to others.
I totally agree with "Not being able to see things makes mental illness a target for abuse." I've suffered from panic attacks. In one really bad instance (exasperated by medication I was on post-surgery), The panic kept me up the entire night. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin and had to fight the urge to run around the house screaming. Even typing about it, I can feel a tinge of anxiety rising. Yet, when I tell people about it, I'll often get told that I should just "get over it." Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that? I'll just tell my skyrocketing anxiety that we're not doing this now and it'll disappear, right? However, people who don't suffer from things like this try to find their nearest equivalent and then figure that it must be as easy to get over as that. It's like hearing someone has cancer, mentally comparing it to a cold, and telling the person to just have some chicken soup and get over it.
Not even any evidence that they score their tests properly. They get the tests back, score them as they see fit, and then destroy the tests. There's no third party verification to make sure that Pearson isn't giving Billy a low grade on his test because low scores mean more money to Pearson for materials to raise Billy's grade. These companies have an INCENTIVE to show students having low scores, the power to produce those low scores, and no checks/balances to catch them in the act.
Because actual teachers don't give campaign donations. Multinational corporations do. Therefore their input is ranked higher by politicians than the input by actual teachers. It also doesn't help that the multinational corporations say "the teachers are the problem" while giving those donations so teachers are told that not falling in line means they're admitting that they are the problem.
My wife is a teacher by trade (though not currently in a classroom) and she's considered homeschooling our kids. Not because she hates the teaching profession/science (she loves both), but because politicians and corporations have decided their say on how a child is educated is more important than a teacher's. Teachers where we live are being pressured to read from the state provided script and prepare the kids for the test. They're being chided if they don't buy into the notion that all children learn in the same way at the same pace simply because some politician "knows teaching." (Imagine a Dilbert strip where the PHB is the politician and Dilbert is the knowledgeable teacher and you've pretty much got the teaching situation in New York.)
That covers "I want to connect X to our company network." What about the situation where the user is using their private cell phone connection? Suppose I had a smartwatch that connected via my mobile hotspot, constantly recorded audio, and uploaded it to the cloud via my hotspot for transcribing/saving. How is an IT manager supposed to know that such a device exists in the building (it's not on the company network), much less stop the employee from using it?
Thinking that 75+ years for copyright is too much doesn't change the existing case, but if enough people believe this they might be able to get the law changed which would obviously impact future cases. (3) isn't about "well, I don't think it should be that long so I'll ignore it." It's about "I don't think it should be that long so let's push to get it changed."
I'm thinking of situations where people - already on edge because of the actions of bad cops - take half of the story of an otherwise perfectly understandable police response and blow it out of proportion. The good officers get swept up in the hysteria over the bad officers' actions. Body cameras will give the public the full story which should deflate outrage in cases of good cops and focus is on the bad cops where it belongs. Everyone wins (except for the bad cops).
This is exactly what Twitter is doing. This is a direct assault on TwitLonger and other services that let you write long articles and tweet short links to them with a blurb of text. For all their API efforts, Twitter has shown time and again that they don't really like people using the API. It's there, but more so Twitter can see what people use it for and then implement those ideas, locking out the services that originated them, than for people to actually innovate with Twitter.
They are a "thug" who likes instigating trouble to act badass but who would get trounced in an actual fight?
My god, North Korea is a real-life Internet Troll!
On this, we can definitely agree. And the new Acting Secretary of Education is John King whose previous claim to fame infamy was Commissioner of Education in NY where he cancelled a tour promoting his new Common Core/high stakes testing curriculum because parents showed up to protest it. He called the parents a "disruptive special interest group" and refused to re-start the tour until he could ensure that only HIS tale would be heard (e.g. screening anyone asking questions to make sure they were the "right questions"). He was hated here in NY and now he's running the Department of Education.
I think of them as "practice lightsabers." Perfect your kids' combat skills without lopping off their limbs. (Child Protective Services is *SO* touchy about kids losing limbs due to parent-induced lightsaber injuries.)
The charter schools in my area get to pick and choose who they admit. They don't allow kids in if they require too many services or if they fail to meet other criteria. This way, they can keep their metrics up while also hurting public schools. (I'll admit that the charter schools in my area might not be like charter schools in every area, but we do have quite a few here and they all seem to operate the same way.)
It's not just to curtail abuses of power either, but to protect good cops who take the appropriate actions but afterwards are second-guessed and told they acted inappropriately. Instead of just having "they say this/the officer says that", we can have a video released showing the entire encounter. That video can either exonerate the officer (stopping huge protests or calls for his arrest) or provide evidence if he did do something wrong. Either way, more transparency is a good thing for everyone involved.
And you can use it to make a lightsaber.
1) Buy inexpensive pool noodles.
2) Cut them in half.
3) Use Duct tape on one end to form the "handle."
4) Use electrical tape to add accents/buttons.
5) Hand them to children (*cough* Or grown men *cough*) and let the lightsaber battles begin.
Even with heavy use, these lasted about 2 years for my kids and only cost $1 per lightsaber. Plus, there were no injuries from being whacked over the head with a saber.
Also, thanks for noticing my attempts to be logical. I try not to let emotion sway me too much, but obviously there are some subjects that hit too close to home for emotion to be completely excluded. (Asperger's/Autism is the obvious example considering I deal with that every day.)
I think it all boils down to where is a "reasonable" line and who is it reasonable to? If one were pressed into drawing a line, one might (either due to not knowing about some conditions or due to malice) draw the line in such a fashion that kids who could be educated would be excluded. Those parents would have to battle uphill (and trust me, I know all about this - getting my son's supports in place was a battle that took years) just to get their child an education. Getting supports in place would go from difficult to nearly impossible. These parents would lobby to have their kids included, but if their kids are included, why not others like their kids? Eventually, the line is pushed so far over that it might as well not exist.
Going the other way, a "slippery slope" could form. Say we deem Group A unable to be educated and kick them out. What about Group B which is very similar to A? Might as well include them too. But now Group C is taking the most resources per kid and not showing grades as good as other kids - so kick them out. Before you know it, too many kids are kicked out.
I think drawing a line beyond which a child is declared to be unable to be educated, thus saving the school the money of attempting it, is one of those things that might sound good in theory but once you explore the details you realize it's a gigantic minefield. You might make it all the way across, but more likely you'll get blown up in the process. It's better to try to educate all children using the most normal atmosphere that is possible for each child. After all, every child is different. Even among groups of children with similar conditions, there would be too many variations to make any line drawing fair.
You've probably seen enough of my comments to know that my son has Autism. He's on the "high-functioning" end of the spectrum (Asperger's Syndrome although that's not the diagnosis nowadays). So while he needs extra assistance, he thrives with that help. (He had a 97.4 average on his last report card.) Remove those supports and he might be able to struggle and pull a low B - which seems good until he completely falls apart or has a class-disrupting outburst. (Before we had supports in place, kids learned just what set him off and would intentionally trigger his reactions so the teacher would need to deal with my son instead of teaching a lesson. The kids were using my son as a "get out of a lesson free" card.)
There are two problems with your "do we really need to educate special needs students" inquiry. The first is: Where do you draw the line? Does my son get kicked out of being educated because he has certain issues even though, with supports in place, he aces every class? Does a kid with slightly more issues get kicked out of school? Does a child with a reading disorder get kicked out instead of getting help learning how to read? What about a child with ADHD? Does a child confined to a wheelchair get told he can't go to school because his class is on the second floor and we're not going to make accommodations?
The second problem is: Who gets to draw the line? Would they have an agenda? Would they decide that kids from certain backgrounds just aren't able to be educated and thus should be kicked out? Or maybe kids whose parents tend to vote for the opposing political party aren't "good enough" for education? This education line could move from "keep out those who can't be educated" to "political tool used to suppress opposition."
As it stands now, the law is to teach kids in the most "normal" environment possible. You start with a normal classroom and, if that doesn't work, add a one-on-one aide (which my child has). If that still doesn't work, you might add social workers or therapists. As you go along the spectrum, you'll get into special classrooms. The goal, though, is to give everyone as close to the same educational opportunities as possible.
That's been the problem where I am. We had tons of charter schools without much of any oversight. They got to set their own goals and if they missed them, oh well. One charter school was finally closed when they missed their own goals for 10 years straight. Even then, they fought in the courts saying they should be allowed an 11th year to turn things around.
The standard response by politicians in my area to a school not doing well is "let's open a charter school." Usually these politicians have clear campaign donation links to the companies opening the charter schools. Those schools are allowed to kick out kids who aren't as profitable. (My child and a bunch of others were kicked out because they required occupational therapy services. Unfortunately, we were afraid to upset the wrong people by pursuing it so it never was pursued.) The charter schools drain money from the public schools and leave the public schools with the lowest performing students and the students who cost the most money. This means the public schools continue to do poorly and the call goes out to open another charter school. Businesses profit and kids who need the most help suffer.
Nope. I wrote what I meant to write. In NY (and many other parts of the country), companies like Pearson Education are contacting politicians and telling them that there's a huge education problem. The companies say that students are failing and that teachers are to blame. Don't worry, though, the companies have the solution. You just need to give them a few million dollars and they'll test and re-test and re-re-re-test the kids to show that they are failing. Then they'll sell you lesson plans, teacher education, books, etc to help "fix" this problem as well as more tests to make sure the problem is fixed. If the "problem" isn't fixed, some other companies will open for-profit charter schools to pull public funds away from those "failing" public schools.
I've been right in the thick of this whole mess in NY for years so I'm well aware of the situation. I'm under no illusion that teacher's unions are saints, but right now the big threat to education are private companies who look at students and get huge dollar signs in their eyes. They aren't interested in teaching the next generation, they're interested in making a quick buck while implementing cheap, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all "education."
Side Note: In NY, the teachers unions didn't support our governor during his re-election campaign so he's doubled down on his rhetoric against teachers, going to far as to tie high stakes test results to teacher jobs. A teacher can be fired if his/her kids don't pass the tests twice. Whether tests pass or fail is determined by the companies who have a profit motive on students failing (there's more to sell for failing students) and without independent oversight. Test scorers have come forward and said they were told that they had to "see" more passing tests as failing. As John Oliver put it, it's like telling umpires that they've got to see more doubles as strikeouts and more home runs as doubles.
This isn't about parents who said "We could afford to do your laundry or take you to the doctor but we're too busy partying on our yacht to do that." This is about parents who are working two jobs (each in the case of 2 parent households) and even then barely able to afford the bare necessities of food, clothing, and housing. These are parents who have to make the serious budgetary decision of whether they feed their kids dinner tonight or pay the rent on their apartment because there's not enough money for both. These are the parents for whom having to pay an unexpected doctor's bill means possibly losing their apartment and living on the streets. These are parents who are doing the best they can do, but are barely keeping afloat (or, in some cases, not even keeping afloat).
When your life involves constant anxiety about whether you'll eat tomorrow, whether you'll have a place to sleep tonight, or whether you'll have clothing warm enough for the cold weather, you tend not to be able to pay attention to your teacher and won't do well on the tests.
And this isn't welfare. They opened a food pantry, had a shelter for homeless kids, and a clinic for kids whose parents couldn't afford to take them to a doctor. How are any of these actions bad? Considering how the scores improved, this sounds like money well spent. It's a much better use of funds than spending a million dollars to improve the high school football field so that the local sports team has state of the art equipment to play with.
Sadly, in my son's district, a school failing due to poverty is told they're failing because of "bad teachers" and the school is put into receivership. They then have 1 or 2 years to turn it around (how much is determined by State Ed who are the ones blaming teachers). If they don't turn it around enough, the school will be given to an outside agency who can turn it into a charter school and restrict student admittance to whomever they want. In other words, they'll kick out "under-performing" kids or kids with issues that require extra assistance - pushing them to other public schools - and then they'll show how they've "improved" scores and will push for more schools like theirs. (Using more taxpayer money, of course.) Meanwhile, the poor kids will still be worrying about whether they'll be able to eat or have a place to sleep tonight.
I'd go for a funny line like quoting Futurama's "Thus solving the problem once and for all.... ONCE AND FOR ALL" but, sadly, these politicians refuse to look at the studies that show poverty is the leading factor and instead want to channel public school funds to companies that donate to their campaigns.
That would be the subset of Christians called Catholics. Protestants, Baptists, etc don't really care what the Pope says.
I took the "retro" criticism to be "They're using models and locations? Don't they know they can just CGI up everything and have actors on green screens like I did in the prequels? Plus, where are the CGI beasts walking right in front of the camera obscuring the actors? And why isn't a main character completely CGI?!!" (Before anyone guesses wrong: BB-8 was a practical effect. Perhaps there was some CGI touchups and enhancements, but he's not 100% CGI the way Jar-Jar was.)
1. Also, let's not forget that Kylo was injured by Chewbacca's weapon just before this. A weapon which instantly killed a bunch of other guys. So you've got an injured Dark Force character battling an inexperienced ex-Stormtrooper - who Kylo likely underestimated initially. Finn does decently to begin with but then Kylo gets serious and takes him out. Kylo then takes on Rey who manages to overpower him - but it's clear that both of them need more training.
2. I think the consensus is that Rey is Luke's daughter. Obi Wan died about 35 years before this so unless Rey is in her mid-thirties, she's far to young to be Obi-Wan's daughter.
Wait, we're being spying on by NBA Cheerleaders? I might have to re-evaluate my position on this issue.