CMYK Nxxx,2015-11-22,A,001,Bs-4C,E2 Late Edition Today, a morning shower, clouds giving way to some sun, high 53. Tonight, mostly clear, colder, low 34. Tomorrow, chilly, partly sunny, high 44. Weather map, Page 32. VOL. CLXV . . . No. 57,058 NEW YORK, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2015 © 2015 The New York Times $6 beyond the greater New York metropolitan area. ASSAULT IN MALI REVERSES GAINS ON EXTREMISM Rejecting Test, Massachusetts Shifts Its Model About-Face by Leader of Education Reform BLOW TO TENUOUS PEACE Siege Targeted a Fragile Nation’s Lifeline to the World By KATE ZERNIKE BOSTON — It has been one of the most stubborn problems in education: With 50 states, 50 standards and 50 tests, how could anyone really know what American students were learning, or how well? At a dinner with colleagues in 2009, Mitchell Chester, Massachusetts’s commissioner of education, hatched what seemed like an obvious answer — a national test based on the Common Core standards that almost every state had recently adopted. Now Dr. Chester finds himself in the awkward position of walking away from the very test he helped create. On his recommendation, the State Board of Education decided last week that Massachusetts would go it alone and abandon the multistate test in favor of one to be developed for just this state. The move will cost an extra year and unknown millions of dollars. Across the country, what was once bipartisan consensus around national standards has collapsed into acrimony about the Common Core, with states dropping out of the two national tests tied to it that had been the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s education strategy. But no about-face has resonated more than the one in Massachusetts, for years a leader in education reform. This state embraced uniform standards and tests with consequences more than two decades before the Common Core, and by 2005, its children led all states in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the nation’s report card, and rose above all other countries, save Singapore, in science. The state’s participation was seen as validation of the Common Core and the multistate test; Dr. Chester became the chairman of Continued on Page 23 This article is by Dionne Searcey, Adam Nossiter, Carlotta Gall and Somini Sengupta. TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Aws, 25, was a member of the Islamic State’s morality police in Raqqa, Syria. She and two other women fled to Turkey this year. For ISIS Women, Fraught Choices Risky Path to Enforcing Morality Laws in Syria Ends in Exile By AZADEH MOAVENI SOUTHERN TURKEY — Dua had only been working for two months with the Khansaa Brigade, the all-female morality police of the Islamic State, when her friends were brought to the station to be whipped. The police had hauled in two women she had known since childhood, a mother and her teenage daughter, both distraught. Their abayas, flowing black robes, had been deemed too form-fitting. When the mother saw Dua, she rushed over and begged her to intercede. The room felt stuffy as Dua weighed what to do. “Their abayas really were very STATE OF TERROR The All-Female Force tight. I told her it was their own fault; they had come out wearing the wrong thing,” she said. “They were unhappy with that.” Dua sat back down and watched as the other officers took the women into a back room to be whipped. When they removed their face-concealing niqabs, her friends were also found to be wearing makeup. It was 20 lashes for the abaya offense, five for the makeup, and another five for not being meek enough when detained. Turn Off Phones? Not Onstage, as Plays Adapt By MICHAEL PAULSON Here’s a recipe for a terrible play: Characters are rarely in the same room as one another; conversations are typed rather than spoken; one side of a dispute can’t be heard by the audience. Not great drama but, in 2015 America, the stuff of real life, where the rapid spread of mobile technology has redefined the way people talk, the way they shop, the way they walk down the street. As a result, it is redefining how they interact onstage and, in the process, challenging playwrights, directors and set designers who are trying to figure out matters as technical as how to let theater audiences know what is being said on screens they cannot see, and as cosmic as what technological change means for human interconnectedness. “My most important and consequential arguments and fights and interactions happen on my phone every day,” said the playwright Kevin Armento, whose recent Off Broadway work, “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally,” told $5.00 Their cries began ringing out, and Dua stared hard at the ceiling, a lump building in her throat. In the short time since she had joined the Khansaa Brigade in her hometown, Raqqa, in northern Syria, the morality force had grown more harsh. Mandatory abayas and niqabs were still new for many women in the weeks after the jihadists of the Islamic State had purged the city of competing militants and taken over. At first, the brigade was told to give the community a chance to adapt, and clothing offenses brought small fines. After too many young women became repeat offenders, however, paying the fines without changing their behavior, the soft approach was out. Now it was whipping — and now it was her friends being punished. The mother and daughter came to Dua’s parents’ house afterward, furious with her and venting their anger at the Islamic State. “They said they hated it and wished it had never come to Raqqa,” Dua said. She pleaded with them, explaining that as a young and new member of the Khansaa Brigade, there was nothing she could have done. Continued on Page 20 Inquiry Grows Into Intelligence On ISIS Surge This article is by Matt Apuzzo, Mark Mazzetti and Michael S. Schmidt. WASHINGTON — When Islamic State fighters overran a string of Iraqi cities last year, analysts at United States Central Command wrote classified assessments for military intelligence officials and policy makers that documented the humiliating retreat of the Iraqi Army. But before the assessments were final, former intelligence officials said, the analysts’ superiors made significant changes. In the revised documents, the Iraqi Army had not retreated at all. The soldiers had simply “redeployed.” Such changes are at the heart of an expanding internal Pentagon investigation of Centcom, as Central Command is known, where analysts say that supervisors revised conclusions to mask some of the American military’s failures in training Iraqi troops and beating back the Islamic State. The analysts say supervisors were particularly eager to paint a more optimistic picture of America’s role in the conflict than Continued on Page 14 BAMAKO, Mali — The terrorists chose carefully: There are nearly always French, Russian and even a few American visitors to be found in the hotel restaurant, around the pool, in the health club or on the thin blackleather sofas of the glass-fronted lobby, now shattered by gunfire. With its marble floors, open atrium and lipstick-red lounge, the Radisson Blu Hotel served as a lifeline to the world, a gathering place where diplomats, contractors and others doing business in Mali, one of the poorest countries on earth, could all be found. Now, bullet holes pockmark the walls and blood is pooled on stairs. The hotel, once a symbol of the international presence in a country trying to emerge from years of upheaval, is the site of a massacre in which terrorists killed 19 people, storming in at breakfast on Friday as terrified diners sprinted into an elevator whose doors did not close in time to save them. “For those people who did this, they have no sense of the value of life,” President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta said at the foot of the ransacked hotel on Saturday afternoon. The brutal attacks in Paris this month were a strike against France’s joie de vivre. The siege of Kenya’s gleaming Westgate mall two years ago was an assault on that country’s rising prosperity, modernity and stability. The terrifying attack on the Radisson Blu here in Mali’s capital was a strike on this nation’s fragile efforts to restore peace afContinued on Page 10 JEROME DELAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS Soldiers stood guard outside the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, Mali, on Saturday. Clinton Battles Image of Being Soft on Wall St. By PATRICK HEALY SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES Jerry Dixon, left, and Malcolm Gets in “Steve” in New York. the story of a sexual relationship between a high school math teacher and her student entirely from the point of view of the boy’s smartphone. “How would you even tell this story if it weren’t through their text messages?” Mr. Armento asked. “It wouldn’t be believable in 2015.” Even as some playwrights embrace the integration of digital communication into stage scenes Continued on Page 4 INTERNATIONAL 6-21 NYTIMES.COM China’s Atomic Energy Vision Finding Hope in Paris China wants to build dozens of atomic reactors, but residents in villages near the sites worry about the risks. PAGE 6 Times video journalists used virtual reality to cover vigils in the Paris neighborhoods that were attacked. The film can be viewed with our new NYT VR app. Home delivery subscribers received a Google Cardboard viewer earlier this month. THE MAGAZINE NATIONAL 22-30 Democrat Wins in Louisiana A previously little-known Democrat, State Representative John Bel Edwards, above, defeated United States Senator David Vitter in a runoff to become the PAGE 29 next governor of Louisiana. Divide Over Conserving Water While Californians in Apple Valley have been fined for water use even after cutting back, some heavy consumers in wealthier areas go unpunished. PAGE 22 John Wittneben simmered as he listened to Hillary Rodham Clinton defend her ties to Wall Street during last weekend’s Democratic debate. He lost 40 percent of his savings in individual retirement accounts during the Great Recession, while Mrs. Clinton has received millions of dollars from the kinds of executives he believes should be in jail. “People knew what they were doing back then, because of The Women of Hollywood Women are ready to run studios and direct hits. What will it take to dismantle the sexism that holds them back? SPORTSSUNDAY Straining to Be Heard In their efforts to communicate with players in noisy environments, coaches are increasingly shouting, which can leave lasting damage. PAGE 1 METROPOLITAN Using the Power of Celebrity Michael Skolnik, political director for the media mogul Russell Simmons, is waging a new civil rights fight with the help of stellar iPhone contacts. PAGE 1 SUNDAY REVIEW SUNDAY BUSINESS The Fall of an Investor Darling LivingSocial was once valued at $4.5 billion. Its collapse offers a cautionary tale for a booming crop of start-ups. PAGE 1 Roger Cohen U(D547FD)v+[!_!/!#!, PAGE 1 greed, and it caused me harm,” said Mr. Wittneben, the Democratic chairman in Emmet County, Iowa. “We were raised a certain way here. Fairness is a big deal.” The next day he endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders in the presidential race. Mrs. Clinton’s windfalls from Wall Street banks and other financial services firms — $3 million in paid speeches and $17 million in campaign contributions over the years — have become a major vulnerability in states with early nomination contests. Some party officials who remain undecided in the 2016 presidential race see her as overly cozy with big banks and other special interests. At a time when liberals are ascendant in the party, many Democrats believe her merely having “represented Wall Street as a senator from New York,” as Mrs. Clinton reminded viewers in an October debate, is bad enough. It is an image problem that she cannot seem to shake. Though she criticizes the Continued on Page 26
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