jayschool2013
jayschool2013's JournalRemember that time?
Do you remember that time when a snake-oil salesman and a Slovenian hooker moved into the White House?
I do too.
Damn.
ETS "offers" 27 percent pay cut to GRE raters (mostly adjuncts and grad students)
The Educational Testing Service — which administers the SAT, the GRE, Advanced Placement tests of various types and several state assessments — greeted some of its raters yesterday with an offer: take a 27 percent pay cut or quit your job effective Jan. 31, 2018.
Raters of the Graduate Record Exam were given a week to complete a "survey" that had only those two choices. The roster of GRE raters is made up primarily of the legion of already underpaid adjunct faculty (who often make less than $5,000 per class) and Ph.D. students (who scrape by on stipends of less than $20,000 per year).
The pay rate had been $20.60 per hour and had been that rate since 2008, when it was raised from $20 per hour. Of course, these are contract jobs with no benefits, and it is seasonal work, generally, as the heaviest GRE loads are in the autumn months as students around the world take the test in preparation for spring admissions decisions made by graduate faculty. Raters work shifts of either four or eight hours. In an eight-hour shift, a rater scores approximately 100 written responses.
In my busiest year, while I was adjunct teaching at Colorado State University, I logged close to 100 days of GRE scoring, which grossed about $16,000. Add that to teaching three courses per semester at $4,000 per course ($24,000), that's $40,000 working the equivalent of 1.5 jobs.
I'm lucky now that I have retired from the state of Colorado and collect my pension, and that I live in Iowa, where the cost of living is much less. But I imagine this came as quite a shock to those of us who need this money to get by. Given that we all have advanced degrees and untold experience in educational assessment, it could be demoralizing to see $15 per hour as the industry standard.
One last note: the ETS is a "nonprofit" corporation.
We found this email yesterday, sent at 11:49 a.m. CST, or 12:49 p.m. in Princeton, N.J., where ETS is located:
Dear GRE Rater,
We want to thank you for your commitment to the GRE program. It is through you that GREhas been able to achieve outstanding results and successfully support the academic advancement of so many students. Because you are a current Rater, we would like to make you aware of a change to Rater pay that will be implemented within our ETS Rater workforce.
Effective February 1, 2018 a new standardized pay rate of $15.00 an hour will be established for the GRE and TOEFL programs. This change is being made as part of an effort to bring Rater pay rates for ETS testing programs into closer alignment and to bring us into line with current industry standards.
GRE Raters have two options: you can elect to accept the new standard pay rate of $15.00 per hour and remain a GRE Rater, or you can elect to decline the pay reduction and resign your position as a GRE Rater.
We realize this adjustment will require some consideration on your part. However, we want you to know that we truly value the expertise you bring to scoring GRE responses and look forward to continuing to work with you in the future.
Please let us know which option you select by January 10, 2018 via the link below.
Masturbation, sharing beds lead to homosexuality, according to leaked Mormon teachings
Source: Kansas City Star
A newly leaked Mormon church document from 1981 warns church leaders that masturbation can turn a person gay.
The document also reveals that Mormon missionaries were banned from sharing beds and dressing and bathing in front of each other to discourage homosexual behavior.
The handbook was leaked this week by MormonLeaks, a Las Vegas-based transparency group. The document, called “Homosexuality,” was created to guide church leaders working with homosexual church members.
“As we have previously stated, homosexuality is a sin in the same degree as adultery and fornication,” the guidebook states. “Powerful forces are seeking to establish this sinful practice as an acceptable way of life.”
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/article190137759.html
Churches. Am I right?
The GOP doesnt care if you like their tax plan. Heres why
Source: The Conversation
Congressional Republicans’ collective sigh of relief after passing tax legislation may seem confusing. Won’t voters hold them accountable in 2018 for passing such an historically unpopular bill? The answer is “no,” for several reasons.
First, the bill’s unpopularity may be somewhat overstated. A lot of the disapproval expressed in surveys is more about the bill’s sponsors than about the bill itself. In these polarized times, almost anything carrying the president’s endorsement is going to be a non-starter for more than half the population. If Trump were to designate ice cream the official White House dessert tonight, at least a third of us would stop “screaming for it” tomorrow.
This is not to say that this legislation should be more popular. But let’s face it, efforts to win over Blue America with fewer corporate tax cuts, fewer cuts for wealthy individuals, or fewer changes to popular tax breaks would have probably fallen on deaf ears in this environment.
PLACATING THE BASE
More importantly, as University of Glasgow political scientist Christopher Jan Carman and I have found, Republicans in Congress simply don’t care as much about public opinion as Democrats do. The ideological convergence between voters and legislators is more than three times greater among Democratic legislators than among Republicans.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/the-gop-doesnt-care-if-you-like-their-tax-plan-heres-why-88467
Oy.
Wichita restaurant burns down in what owners believe was a hate crime
Source: Wichita Eagle
A 2:10 a.m. phone call was the alarm that woke up Ranya Taha and Bashar Mahanweh as their restaurant was overtaken by flames in a two-alarm fire — a fire that they believe may have been a hate crime.
“We were first asked if we had anyone who would want to hurt our business, and we said no,” Taha said. “There was a small incident on a window awhile ago with graffiti, but we just covered it up and moved on. It was three months ago, and we didn’t think bad of it.”
Now Taha is not so sure if the Nov. 1 fire was just an accident and if the graffiti was just a coincidence.
After the fire destroyed their Jordanian restaurant, Petra Mediterranean Restaurant, and left nothing but charred contents inside, they took a walk around their building.
Read more: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article182191451.html
Oy.
When is it not too soon to talk about
26 million people or more living in Florida within the next 13 years. Oy.
[link:http://www.flchamber.com/did-you-know-that-floridas-population-could-increase-to-nearly-26-million-by-2030/|
I'm registered to vote in two states; one of them is Kansas
I moved from Kansas to Colorado (hallelujah) in 2013 and promptly registered to vote again in Colorado. (I lived in Colorado from 1990 to 2013.) I just checked the Kansas Secretary of State's website, and, sure enough, I'm still registered to vote in Lawrence, Kansas.
Imagine my delight to send an email to Kris Kobach informing him that he had not removed me, a white person, from his state's voter roll, while at the same time trying to disenfranchise so many minority voters in Kansas City, Wichita and the state's other cities.
I also sent the email to the Douglas County Clerk because that's the office that will do the work.
Just thought I should let Kobach know.
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