Kristina Rizga spent 18 months reporting inside a school reputed to be among the most troubled in San Francisco, as measured by standardized test scores. She was surprised to discover that the instution seemed to be doing much better than its test scores suggested:

If you wonder why you haven’t read many accounts of how these questions are playing out in real life, there’s a reason: It’s easier for a journalist to embed with the Army or the Marines than to go behind the scenes at a public school. It took months to find one that would let me play fly on the wall. Once Guthertz opened the door at Mission, it took months more for some teachers, wary of distortion and stereotyping, to warm to me. In the end, I’d spend more than 18 months in Mission’s classrooms, cafeterias, and administrative offices, finally watching the Class of 2012—including a beaming Maria—show off their diplomas.

The surprises began almost right away. Judging from what I’d read about “troubled” schools, I’d expected noisy classrooms, hallway fights, and disgruntled staff. Instead I found a welcoming place that many students and staff called “family.” After a few weeks of talking to students, I failed to find a single one who didn’t like the school, and most of the parents I met were happy too. Mission’s student and parent satisfaction surveys rank among the highest in San Francisco.

Read the rest at Mother Jones.

[Photo credit: MrCharly, Creative Commons.]

Welcome to our weekly recap of the best of the week’s news. Submit your story by tweeting @SidneyHillman, #Sidney.

• Much of the tin solder that binds the components of the world’s tablets and smart phones originates in open pit mines in Indonesia where it is extracted at enormous human cost, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
• About a third of women impregnated by their rapists choose to keep their babies and, horrifyingly, some rapists come back to assert their paternal rights. Shauna Prewitt is a lawyer from Chicago who survived rape and her rapist’s attempt to get custody of her daughter, she is campaigning for legal reform to protect women in similar circumstances.
• Who watches the watchers? Republican-allied groups are training thousands of citizen “poll watchers” to document alleged voting irregularities in November, Brentin Mock reports for Colorlines. Is it civic engagement, or voter suppression?
• Here’s some good news: 80% of New York voters want the minimum wage raised from $7.25 to $8.50, according to a recent poll by Siena College. That’s an increase of 3 percentage points since June.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) opined that women don’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” because the female body has mysterious ways of shutting down rape-induced pregnancies. This claim is so far-fetched that most people assumed it was Akin’s pet theory, but it turns out other anti-choicers believe it too. It’s a surprisingly common myth used to explain why rape exceptions to abortion laws are unnecessary: If “legitimate rapes” don’t cause pregnancies, then a woman who says she was impregnanted by rape must be lying. The leading exponent of this view, Dr. John Willke, endorsed Mitt Romney in 2007.

Pam Belluck of the New York Times applies her science journalism chops to sort fact from fiction on rape and reproduction:

“There are no words for this — it is just nuts,” said Dr. Michael Greene, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. David Grimes, a clinical professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina, said, that “to suggest that there’s some biological reason why women couldn’t get pregnant during a rape is absurd.”

Laura Helmuth, the science editor for Slate, points out that the term “legitimate rape” is coded language used to separate supposedly deserving rape victims from other victims of sexual violence. She adds that Akin’s mythmaking betrays a stunning rejection of science in the service of misogynist ideology:

The sexism is outrageous, but it’s the stupidity that really burns. It takes a lot of work for a member of the House science committee to cultivate an ignorance of science as profound as Todd Akin’s. It’s not accidental and it’s not incidental to his worldview—his belief system requires a rejection of science.

The thing about science, as Neil DeGrasse-Tyson says, is that it’s true whether you believe it or not. And the truth is that biology does not give a goddamn how sperm meets egg, whether it’s within the bounds of a sanctified marriage, in a test tube, or after a rape.

Amazingly, Akin sits on the House science committee.

[Photo credit: Todd Akin, by DonkeyHote, Creative Commons.]

• Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan named Rage Against the Machine as his favorite band, eliciting this blistering op/ed by RATM guitarist and Hillman Award-winner Tom Morello. It begins, “Paul Ryan’s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.”
• Hospitals and nursing homes aren’t doing enough to stop the spread of the bacterium C. difficile, a deadly intestinal infection, reports Peter Eisler of USA Today.
• That used car may be even more used than you think. Ken Bensinger and Elizabeth Frank of the LA Times investigate “churn” in the used car market, where dealers sell, repossess, and resell the same vehicle over and over.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]