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TEACHER ATTITUDES The Idaho Office of Performance Evaluations, which is run by the legislature, has completed a report on "Workforce Issues Affecting Public School Teachers." It's a topic highly relevant to legislators, but containing results not happily received among them, such as "a strong undercurrent of despair among teachers who seem to perceive a climate that disparages their efforts and belittles their contributions ... [Most] "express concern or dissatisfaction with specific aspects of their work or, more broadly, with conditions surrounding the public education environment in Idaho." Legislators have taken issue. Watch for blowback.
PROSTITUTION SHIFT A perspective piece in the Oregonian notes a significant change in the way Portland-area law enforcement is approaching prostitution: Increasingly, it is focusing on much longer jail and prison sentences for pimps, and direction of prostitutes toward health and social services, rather than behind bars. From the story: "J.R. Ujifusa, the Multnomah County deputy district attorney who prosecutes more pimps than anyone else in the state, doesn't use the word "prostitutes," but refers to "victims" or "women involved in prostitution." The old approach wasn't working."