Kinda Looks Funny Mistah Fenty

Former drug supplier to Barry now Fenty campaign contributor

By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
June 28, 2010

A restaurateur who testified 20 years ago that he supplied then-Mayor Marion Barry with cocaine, a Caribbean hotel room for his girlfriend, and money in return for political access is tied to $6,000 given to Mayor Adrian Fenty's re-election campaign.

Hassan Mohammadi, his wife, Yasaman Rowhani, and his Delaware-based restaurant each gave the Fenty campaign $2,000 on March 9, campaign records show.

So far, Fenty has declined to say whether he will give back the money.

Mohammadi testified in 1990 that he provided Barry with cocaine more than 30 times, according to published accounts of the former mayor's trial that followed an FBI sting operation at a D.C. hotel. Once, Mohammadi testified, he brought cocaine to Barry at the mayor's office in the District Building.

Mohammadi also testified that that he paid for a hotel room for Barry's girlfriend on a drug-fueled trip to the Bahamas and supplied the current Ward 8 councilman with thousands of dollars in chips for a casino. The value of the chips was not paid back.

"I covered wherever I could," Mohammadi testified in regards to Barry's drug use, according to published accounts. "I was a true friend for Mr. Mayor; I was always there for Mr. Mayor."

Mohammadi, an Iranian immigrant who used to own the Pardis Cafe in Georgetown, won a $195,000 city contract to do publicity work for the D.C. Lottery Board when Barry was mayor, accounts show.

His testimony against Barry was part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors to avoid deportation and a stiffer penalty over a drug charge.

The donations where first reported in April by the Washington City Paper, which also reported at the time that a Fenty campaign aide was unaware of Mohammadi's background.

Fenty's June 10 financial disclosure form showed only one refund, which was not related to Mohammadi's donations.

Fenty has been a prodigious fundraiser and reported in June he had more than $3 million on hand for his battle with D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray. The primary is less than three months away.

Mohammadi could not be reached for comment.

The Fenty campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Dorothy Brizill, founder of the local government watchdog D.C. Watch, said it's puzzling that the Fenty campaign wouldn't return Mohammadi's funds given his past reputation.

"You give money in essence for access and influence -- what access and influence is he seeking from the Fenty administration?" Brizill said, adding that Fenty is "not that desperate for $6,000 when he's got that much money in the bank."

asuderman@washingtonexaminer.com

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Former-drug-supplier-to-Barry-now-Fenty-campaign-contributor-97269139.html

Good Questions From William Jordan

Various people think William Jordan is goes on too much about too much on the various neighborhood list serves but in my opinion he asks good questions - a recent posting of his from the South Columbia Heights list serve:

Developer Accountability From the Mayor and City Council?

Posted by: "whj@melanet.com" whj@melanet.com whjmela

Fri Jun 11, 2010 4:32 pm (PDT)

Dear Mayor & Council,

According to accounts in the Washington Business Journal (June 11-17, 2010) reporting on finding recently released by the DC Auditor, Donatelli Development's failure to comply with DC First Source Laws has cost District Residents approximately $2,153,568 in wages. As well, may be out of compliance with city Storm Water Management regulations, Highland Park Project, yet during one of the toughest budget years in a decade, the Council & Mayor plan to reward this development company with over $8.0M in property tax relief, with zero strings attached. In fact, if the budget passes as is Donatelli Development will be issued a refund check for approximately $1.5M.

Are there any plans by the Mayor or Council to bring any accountability to this matter. Or does this development company fall under the AIG rule. Can someone explain this.

William Jordan, ANC1A 05



"FISCAL YEAR 2011 BUDGET SUPPORT ACT OF 2010" (page 217).

http://www.dccouncil.washington.dc.us/images/00001/20100413171523.pdf

9 SUBTITLE D. PARK PLACE AT PETWORTH, HIGHLAD PARK, AD
10 HIGHLAD PARK PHASE II ECOOMIC DEVELOPMET ACT OF 2010
11 Sec. 7041. Short title.
12 This subtitle may be cited as the “Park Place at Petworth, Highland Park, and Highland
13 Park Phase II Economic Development Amendment Act of 2010†.
14 Sec. 7042. Section 3 of the Park Place at Petworth, Highland Park, and Highland Park
15 Phase II Economic Development Act of 2010, signed by the Mayor on January 25, 2010 (D.C.
16 Act 18-290; 57 DCR 1186) is repealed.
17 Sec. 7043. Section 47-4624 of the District of Columbia Official Code is amended to read
18 as follows:
19 (a) Subsection (b) is amended to read as follows:
20 “(b) Starting on October 1, 2010, the Park Place at Petworth, Highland Park, and
21 Highland Park Phase II Properties shall be exempt from the real property tax imposed by Chapter
8 of this title for 20 years as follows: 10 years at 50% and a 5% increase in years 1 11 through 20
2 until the annual real property taxation equals 100%.†.
3 (b) A new subsection (b-1) is added to read as follows:
4 “(b-1) All interest and penalties associated with real property taxes that have been
5 assessed for the period beginning on October 1, 2008, and ending 45 days after the effective date
6 of the Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Support Act of 2010 against the Park Place at Petworth, Highland
7 Park, or Highland Park Phase II Properties, shall be forgiven, and any payments already made for
8 this period, as of the effective date of this act, shall be refunded or credited against real property
9 taxes owed on the properties.â€

Fiscal Impact Statement - Park Place at Petworth, Highland Park and Highland Park Phase II
Highland [http://app.cfo.dc.gov/services/fiscal_impact/pdf/spring09/B18-231_.pdf] http://app.cfo.dc.gov/services/fiscal_impact/pdf/spring09/B18-231_.pdf
Auditor’s Review of Environmental Standards Requirements Pursuant to the Compliance Unit Establishment Act of 2008
[http://dcauditor.org/DCA/Reports/DCA052010.pdf] http://dcauditor.org/DCA/Reports/DCA052010.pdf
Auditor's Review of Compliance With the Living Wage Act and First Source Act Requirements Pursuant to the Compliance Unit Establishment Act of 2008
http://dcauditor.org/DCA/Reports/Livg%20Wage%201st%20Srce%20Act_20100607162643.pdf

Disorderly Conduct

Disorderly conduct and resisting arrest have long been charges police use when nothing else is working. Both charges have definitely been overused and often used abusively by police as a harassing tactic. Not withstanding such abuses, the following case makes me wonder. What does it take to be legally disorderly?



D.C. police's search for drugs on D.C. teen is ruled illegal

By Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2010; B01

A few days before Christmas 2005 at nearly midnight, a uniformed District police officer patrolling the Sursum Corda neighborhood in Northwest heard a 16-year-old on a corner call out his name and ask, "What's up?"

That was before the yelling.

And it was the yelling -- not the $974 in cash or the 24 baggies of crack cocaine that police later found on the teenager -- that landed Officer Robert Elliott and the juvenile in a rare but important case before the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The appeals court said Thursday that the teen had been searched unreasonably after a flawed arrest for disorderly conduct. The decision angered the city's police union and overturned a lower court's decision that concluded that the youth had been disorderly and had crack that he intended to distribute.

If prosecutors wanted to retry the teenager, identified in court papers as T.L., for drug possession, they "theoretically" were free to do so, the appeals court said. But prosecutors cannot use the crack they found hidden in T.L.'s pants because they had searched him illegally.

As described in the appeals court opinion:

Elliott was driving in the 1100 block of First Place NW in the neighborhood near Union Station on Dec. 22, 2005, when he saw men on a corner "notorious" for drive-by shootings and drug dealing.

T.L. called out, "Hey, Elliott, what's up?" The group dispersed, but T.L. remained as Elliott asked him, "You got any drugs or guns on [you]?"

T.L. answered, "Yo, Officer Elliott, you know me. I ain't got no drugs or guns. . . . Go ahead and search me."

Elliott did. He found two "wads" of cash totaling $974 in the teen's coat and pants pockets. Elliott seized the cash, telling T.L. that he was taking it because they were in a high drug-trafficking area and it was "a large amount of currency to have on your person."

If T.L. could produce a pay stub, Elliott told him, he "possibly" could get the cash back after it was processed at the police station.

T.L. began calling for his mother and yelling: "They're taking my money. I work at McDonald's. I got that money working for McDonald's."

Between 10 and 15 people came out of their townhouses to see what was happening.

To the officer, the gathering crowd was a potential threat. He testified that the growing number of people could be incited and harm bystanders, officers and the teen. Elliott said he considered it "very dangerous" to draw a crowd, "especially in Sursum Corda." Elliott repeatedly told T.L. to quiet down, and when he didn't, he arrested him for disorderly conduct. A search followed, and police found the bags of crack cocaine in T.L.'s pants, according to court papers.

In explaining the reason for the arrest, the officer and prosecutors pointed to a part of the disorderly conduct statute that covers noise or shouts inside or outside a building during the night that annoy or disturb a "considerable number" of people.

The appeals court rejected that argument, saying T.L. did not urge the peaceful crowd to interfere. T.L. might have been annoying to his neighbors, but "there is no evidence they were hostile or likely to become violent," so the rationale for his arrest was wrong. Because police had no reason to arrest him, the search that followed was illegal, it said.

T.L. was adjudicated as involved -- the juvenile court equivalent of guilty -- on the disorderly conduct and drug charges.

The Public Defender Service appealed. Julie Leighton, spokeswoman for the service, said the office does not comment on appeals cases.

The appeals court's decision outraged the union representing D.C. officers.

"At some point, police have to be allowed to be the police," said Kristopher Baumann, head of the labor committee for the local Fraternal Order of Police. "The District of Columbia is never going to get a handle on crime if appellate judges keep substituting their view of what is safe or unsafe in high-drug areas."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304896.html

More on EPA Stormwater Permit For DC

Action letter about the EPA stormwater permit for DC from DC Greenworks and the DC Environmental Network.

Healthy Rivers Equals Healthy Communities

When I woke up this morning I could hear the rain falling outside my window. It made me
think about the 1.6 billion gallons of polluted stormwater and raw sewage that makes its way into our rivers each year. When it rains, DC's parking lots, streets and rooftops funnel polluted runoff laden with bacteria, trash and toxics into our waters, making them unsafe for fishing and swimming. This is important to me because my work as Executive Director of DC Greenworks involves building green roofs that capture and cleanse rainwater runoff, harvesting it as a resource and creating new, green jobs for our city.

You can join me in taking positive action for clean water and greener, healthier neighborhoods in DC. Let's work together to stem the flow of polluted runoff to the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers and Rock Creek. The opportunity we have for the next month - between now and June 4, 2010 - is to help establish a clean water program with accountability for the District of Columbia.

Tell the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) you want a strong, effective clean water permit for DC - one that promotes healthy rivers and green, healthy communities.

Like other cities and urban counties nationwide, the District of Columbia is required to address polluted runoff with a clean water act permit issued roughly every five years. The EPA has just issued a new "DRAFT" polluted runoff permit to the District, in April, 2010, for the public to review. This permit can help DC to stem the flow of polluted runoff and restore our waters to full health - if it contains specific pollution reduction requirements, with accountability for meeting cleanup targets and deadlines.

Join me in telling EPA you want a strong stormwater permit that promotes healthy rivers and healthy communities. Green roofs, and other green infrastructure projects, are economic drivers that can create new jobs for residents during these hard times.

I know this because my organization is part of a growing movement that is creating new jobs each day focused on restoring our rivers and creeks. Green infrastructure can also help build a vibrant waterfront that will promote livable, walkable, healthy neighborhoods on both sides of the Anacostia River. Green infrastructure can also help the District be a leading green city and help District of Columbia Mayor Fenty reach his stated goals of 40% green roof and tree canopy coverage.

New jobs and healthy communities make this a win-win situation.

Peter Ensign, Executive Director, DC Greenworks

Why I Buy Drinking Water In 5 Gallon Bottles

People have asked me why I do not always subscribe to the CDC's version of things - here is an example -



CDC misled District residents about lead levels in water, House probe finds

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 20, 2010; A01

The nation's premier public health agency knowingly used flawed data to claim that high lead levels in the District's drinking water did not pose a health risk to the public, a congressional investigation has found. And, investigators determined, the agency has not publicized more thorough internal research showing that the problem harmed children across the city and continues to endanger thousands of D.C. residents.

A House investigative subcommittee concludes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made "scientifically indefensible" claims in 2004 that high lead in the water was not causing noticeable harm to the health of city residents. As terrified District parents demanded explanations for the spike in lead in their water, the CDC hurriedly published its calming analysis, knowing that it relied on incomplete, misleading blood-test results that played down the potential health impact, the investigation found.

The city utility says lead levels have been in the safe range in D.C. water since 2006, after a chemical change to reduce lead leaching. But the House report raises concerns about children in 9,100 residences throughout the city with partial lead-pipe replacements. Their parents may not know CDC research has found that children in such homes are four times as likely to have elevated lead in their blood.

The House science and technology subcommittee investigation, scheduled to be released Thursday, was spurred last year by one scientist's research and Washington Post reporting suggesting that the 2004 CDC analysis was missing many test results for children who might have lead poisoning. With its final report, the committee reveals that the missing data showed clear harm to children from the water -- and that CDC authors knew the data was flawed. It finds that CDC officials "failed in their public health duty."

Pediatric lead experts advise concerned parents to monitor their children's behavior to determine whether they have noticed coordination, hearing or mental-focus problems or changes. Parents who witness such changes should have their children's blood tested for lead.

Late Wednesday, the CDC declined to directly rebut the House investigators' findings. Instead, it released a brief re-analysis based on the missing tests, which it said confirms the original 2004 findings that residents did not suffer significant harm.

The agency acknowledged, however, that its 2004 claim that no children had been found with lead poisoning was "misleading," because it referred to only one part of its study. Another part showed that children living in homes serviced by a lead pipes were more than twice as likely as other D.C. children to have unsafe lead in their blood.

Yanna Lambrinidou, head of a parents' activist group that formed in the lead crisis, said the CDC, the city water utility, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the D.C. Health Department knew that lead was spiking in the water but did little to fix it or warn the public.

"CDC gave the perpetrators of D.C.'s lead crisis a 'get out of jail free' card," Lambrinidou said. "They will finally have to answer for what they did."

When nearly 1 million residents throughout the District and in small parts of Falls Church and Arlington learned from a Post article in January 2004 that they had been exposed to unsafe lead in water for at least a year, the CDC analysis was largely used to quiet public anger. The study has since been cited as evidence that even astronomically high lead levels are not cause for concern.

Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the subcommittee chairman, said the CDC report "left the public health community with the dangerous and wrong impression that lead-contaminated water is safe for children to drink."

Lead is a toxic metal long known to cause brain damage and developmental delays in fetuses and children when they or their pregnant mothers ingest significant amounts.

Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech scientist who early on questioned the paper, said it's time for the CDC to retract its findings and for the senior author of the 2004 report, Mary Jean Brown, to resign.

The House subcommittee's investigation also chides the CDC for not alerting the public to its subsequent research that contradicted its earlier claims. This 2007 research determined a clear link between the water problem and lead poisoning in D.C. children. For example, it showed that city children with high levels of lead in their blood were significantly more likely to live in homes with lead pipes, and after the city fixed its water treatment problem, the CDC saw a "dramatic reduction" in lead poisoning.

The committee also urged release of this research to alert residents to a continuing, lurking threat in the estimated 9,100 D.C. homes where water utility crews replaced part of the lead service pipe bringing water to the house. The CDC study concluded that the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority's $93 million effort to reduce lead risks after the 2004 lead crisis had largely backfired: Children living in homes with partial lead pipe replacements were four times as likely to suffer from unsafe levels of lead as those in homes without lead pipes.

The House science subcommittee reserves its strongest criticisms for Brown, the CDC's director of lead poisoning prevention. She worked with D.C. health officials to review blood-test results and frame the CDC's response. Brown led a team in publishing the conclusion that the lead problem wasn't having a serious health impact.

But the committee said it found evidence that Brown knew that the D.C. Health Department data was missing thousands of blood-test results in a critical period of the lead crisis. She told investigators that she believed all the missing data was for low blood-lead levels, but she never tried to obtain the original results to check.

The committee did go back to the labs for the original test results for 2002-03 and learned that three times as many children had elevated lead levels as reported, 954 instead of 315. This means child lead poisoning was rising, not falling or staying the same, as the CDC had claimed.

In one part of the 2004 report, the CDC paper analyzed the blood of children and adults living with lead levels in their tap water 20 times the amount raising concern -- and said not one was suffering from elevated lead. Brown and her co-authors knew, however, that most of those tested had been drinking bottled or filtered water before their blood was analyzed.

A public health expert and co-author suggested to Brown in an e-mail that the report mention this factor because "this may help to explain why currently none of the persons have blood lead levels above the level of concern." It was never mentioned.

Brown acknowledged to investigators that she "didn't have a lot of confidence" in the results but didn't delay the report's release because many federal agencies were pushing the CDC to publish.

In internal e-mails at the time, Brown expressed pleasure that the drumbeat of media reports was easing. "Today has been the first day in over a month that there wasn't a story on lead in water in the Washington Post and also the first that I haven't been interviewed by at least one news outlet," Brown wrote to her boss. "I guess that means it worked!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051902599.html?hpid=moreheads

On The Horizon

D.C.'s medical marijuana law has problems but is a step in the right direction

By Robert McCartney
Thursday, May 13, 2010; B01

The risk with the District's new medical marijuana law isn't that the city will become another California with hundreds of pot shops and doctors who'll approve it for people feeling just jittery or blue. Instead, the worry is that the statute is so restrictive there won't be enough legal weed to meet demand.

Fearful that Congress might kill the law, the D.C. Council approved what cannabis advocates say is probably the least-permissive measure in the country.

No growing at home. Only five to eight "dispensaries" to sell it. Licensed cultivators are limited to 95 plants. They have to grow indoors, which means smaller plants.

The limits could mean that people with ailments such as cancer and multiple sclerosis would have to use the black market to get marijuana for relief from nausea, muscle spasms and other symptoms.

Other controversies are likely. Competition will be fierce among would-be pot entrepreneurs eager for lucrative licenses to operate dispensaries or grow plants. Unsettling r?sum?s will abound, such as from big operators outside the state and local people who've been in the business illegally for years.

"They're calling wondering, who do I need to grease? Who do I need to show our support to?" said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws.

None of this is to say the law was a mistake. Quite the opposite. Loyal readers know I support legalizing marijuana, including for recreational purposes. My goals for pot policy can be summarized in four words: good quality, reasonable prices.

Until that's achieved -- St. Pierre predicts it'll take a decade for public opinion to shift that far -- we must settle for small steps in the right direction.

Thus, I applaud the council, led by Health Committee Chairman David A. Catania (I-At Large) and Public Safety Chairman Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), for pushing through a carefully crafted bill. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) plans to sign it soon. It'll take effect this fall, if all goes well.

To the extent there's a problem, the culprits are overwrought antidrug moralists in Congress. They'll have 30 working days after Fenty's signature to try to block the bill. Nobody expects them to succeed, but their mere presence means the measure is too cautious.

The biggest shortcoming is the ban on patients growing their own pot. That blocks a sure way to get it cheaply and easily. It significantly increases the risk of shortages.

This gets complicated because of great uncertainty over how many users there'll be. Catania estimates the number to be between 300 and 1,000. However, the view was unanimous among marijuana advocates whom I interviewed that the figure will be much higher, based on experience elsewhere.

"The demand out there is huge," said Caren Woodson, director of government affairs of Americans for Safe Access. She said more than 15,000 District residents suffer from cancer, MS or HIV/AIDS, all of which are included on the law's list of conditions that potentially qualify people for medical marijuana.

That number doesn't include people with glaucoma, which is also on the list, or other chronic, debilitating illnesses that the D.C. Health Department could add to the roster.

Then there's the limit of 95 plants per licensed grower. Each plant can support one or at most two patients. Based on a conservative assumption of 1,000 users, that means at least five to 10 cultivators are needed. If there are 5,000 users, then the number of growers rises to 25 to 50.

Who will they be? The application rules are strict and prohibit felons or individuals with misdemeanor drug convictions. Presumably that means area dealers and growers who apply will be ones too smart or lucky to have been caught.

Finally, there's the issue of where to locate the growers and dispensaries. There should be some interesting community battles, as the law assigns "great weight" to views of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions on deciding the sites.

St. Pierre predicted the grow houses will be "in Northeast by the railroad tracks. It's going to be in the same places where we put other problematic adult commerce, like strip clubs."

At least there shouldn't be any problem finding people hoping to do the job. It's easy for a grower to make six figures a year after the initial start-up cost, according to activists and other experienced observers.

"The average person, if they were even somewhat competent, they'd be able to make something like a hundred grand a year," said Conor, 30, of Northwest, who plans to apply both to grow marijuana and operate a dispensary. He declined to give his last name for fear of angering his employer.

Conor said he grew marijuana until seven years ago, and the proceeds helped finance his college education. Although eager to resume, he is unhappy about the bureaucracy.

"I have a kind of an individualist, libertarian slant on it," Conor said. "Governments tend to put these barriers to entry up and hurt small business."

Maybe that's how the District should get conservatives in Congress to back off. Make it about excessive government regulation. Free markets, more weed.

If you're interested, my earlier column urging legalization of marijuana was published Sept. 13, 2009. I think pot should be treated much like alcohol -- regulated, taxed and prohibited for minors.

McCartney discusses local issues at 8:51 a.m. Friday on WAMU (88.5 FM).

Creating Teaching Momnerts

Learning is a big part of family life. The principal of Deal Middle School, Ms. Kim, sends a weekly "News From..." email. She always includes some sort of article about learning in the email. Below is a copy of what she copied in her April 11, 2010, News From Alice Deal / The Weekly Bulletin. I think it has some good points on conveying information to anyone.



Food for thought...

Twelve Ways To Make Information Stick In Students' Brains

"When information is presented to students, it goes into the working memory of their brain," says teacher/writer Bill Page in this Teachers.Net/Gazette article (featured in Education Digest). The information is likely to evaporate unless something moves it into long-term memory. How can teachers make that happen? Page shares 12 strategies:

· Make it personal. Pairing students, having them work in small groups, and orchestrating interactive activities all help to link new information to each student's prior knowledge and experiences.

· Make it interesting. "Teachers must find another way to teach those who did not learn the lesson the first time," says Page. The best way to do that is to hook students' interest.

· Help students construct meaning. "If new information does not connect or relate to existing knowledge, the brain will not accept it," says Page. Teachers need to listen carefully as students process new information and involve them in constructing their own meaning. "Students learn more by answering their own questions of 'why'," he says, "than by someone giving them reasons for 'why'."

· Make it meaningful. "The why is more important than the what in learning," says Page. New information has to make sense to students.

· Have students apply new knowledge. Students "use it or lose it," says Page. "Pairing and small-group discussions are crucial to learning."

· Engage emotions. "We learn in direct proportion to the strength of our feelings," says Page, "- especially our likes and dislikes... Emotions are why we remember the person who sat behind us in the 7^th grade, but can't remember the name of someone we met yesterday."

· Maximize the use of the senses. The brain's neurons take in information from hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching, says Page: "The more neurons that are affected by stimuli from different sources, the stronger and longer lasting the memory and recall ability will be."

· Make it social. "What we value in learning depends on what those around us are learning," says Page. "We learn from the company we keep."

· Apply the laws of learning. Teachers need to be savvy to predictable patterns of attention, memory, retrieval, and forgetting, says Page. One way is to make connections to children's interests, including sports and holidays.

· Use associations. "The brain works by linking things to other things," says Page. "Memory relies on patterns, concepts, meaningfulness, relevance, and associations." That's why using similes, metaphors, and well-chosen examples is so helpful.

· Teach concepts. Once students grasp a general concept, the facts related to it fall into place and are much easier to remember.

· Climb Bloom's ladder. About 95 percent of teaching and testing is at the lowest Bloom levels - knowledge and comprehension. Disconnected bits of knowledge are the easiest to "teach" (Memorize the 50 state capitals) but the hardest for students to commit to long-term memory. When teachers "put facts in meaningful groups or concepts," says Page, "they're more easily learned." And that means getting students applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating.

"12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning" by Bill Page in Teachers.Net/Gazette, February 2010, http://teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/bill-page/12-things-teachers-must-know/ (spotted in Education Digest, April 2010, Vol. 75, #8, p. 54-56)