Newscast for Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Support for health reform grows ahead of possible vote this week
President Obama’s health care reform just got one vote closer to passing.  Liberal Representative Dennis Kucinich announced his support for health care reform.  As FSRN’s Leigh Ann Caldwell reports, some progressive advocates are disappointed in Kucinich’s decision.

Officials cut funding for virtual border fence, citing failure
Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano says she will cut funding for the virtual border fence, a troubled pilot program on the US-Mexico border. The announcement came yesterday. The multi-billion dollar program has been under scrutiny from lawmakers, who have criticized the feasibility of its technology, under development by the Boeing Corporation. FSRN’s Matt Pearson reports.

Lawsuit questions legality of CIA drone program
Today, US drone attacks killed six people and injured three others in Pakistan. The attacks took place near a village in North Waziristan. According to a local resident quoted in Pakistani media, residents are now scared to help in recovery after an attack takes place because recent attacks have killed people engaged in rescue work. The US government has used the highly controversial drones attacks mostly in Pakistan, but also in Afghanistan and Yemen. And the number of attacks have increased under President Obama. The New America Foundation estimates that as many as 1,000 people have been killed in over 80 attacks since 2006. But very little is known about the program. This week the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit requesting that the government agencies - the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the Defense Department - outline the legal basis for the drone program and provide more details.

Here to discuss the suit is Jonathan Manes. He's a legal fellow with the ACLU.

To read a copy of the ACLU lawsuit: http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-v-doj-et-al-complaint

Secretary of Education outlines reform to nation’s school system
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified before congress today on President Obama's education budget for 2011.

Details of the plan, called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, were released last Saturday. The Act requires states to verify that all students are on a path toward "college and career readiness" by the year 2020. It also seeks to make a break from the No Child Left Behind Act, by adopting individualized, rather than broad, measures of student performance. But some teacher unions criticized the plan, saying that it placed too much of a burden on educators without giving them authority.

Today Duncan addressed teacher performance by saying that the plan includes an increase of money for training and incentives for educators. And that teachers would be evaluated on a variety of factors.

"I'm a big believer in peer review and having teachers look at other teachers and how they are doing. No teacher wants to work next door to a teacher that's not pulling their weight. And so there are multiple ways to get at it, through goals through leadership, again if a teacher is volunteering on the yearbook team or the debate team or academic decathlon and there are a series of districts who have put in place very robust, comprehensive evaluation systems that look at many many things beyond just a student's test score. And that's the way it should be. No one should be evaluated by one test, it doesn't make sense."

Duncan also said that the government has previously underinvested in principals and that the plan would recognize the administrators’ contributions to the quality of schools.

New York schools face closures and cuts in programs
Across the country, the recession is having an impact on students. Recently, we reported on Kansas City, where the district voted to close nearly half of the schools. Now Detroit officials have announced that one-quarter of schools will be shuttered in June. And in New York, many city schools are facing closures while those still open are being subjected to budget reductions and cuts in programs. Some schools are being forced to share space with privately–owned charter schools. In the latest installment of our series on the impact of the recession on Education, FSRN's Salim Rizvi files this report.