Platinum Links

1. One of the better summaries I've ever seen of the affects and process that is teacher tenure. Aside from many of the stories recounted reminding me of my old co-teacher, who by the way is still teaching children as he has for the past 29 years, my main takeaway was: these are the worst of the worst. There's a large number of teachers who fall into the area of just being mediocre, but not doing anything flagrant like assaulting a student. It's more like the gym teacher in the story who can't control his class. To me, it demonstrates the absolute need for better measurement of student academic growth in education. Here's the follow up article in today's paper. Politicians really do behave according to fairly straightforward incentives. I don't usually say this, but good job reporters.

2.One of the smartest people I've ever met and had the chance to learn from just got a promotion.

3. This isn't a link. I may have to agree with Lincoln about the level of funniness of that video. I'm crying in my office right now.

4. I am definitely finding a way to go to this. I know, I'm a nerd.