In the business world, there are expense accounts for needed supplies and decorating issues are generally dealt with out of the company budget. Not so in education, where teachers are often given little or no assistance with material beyond the basics while they are held responsible for creating a stimulating environment to facilitate education.

So where does the money come from for the expected materials?

The posters were hung, the scissors and glue stashed in their proper places and the bulletin boards in Brenda Burlingame's classroom at Legacy Elementary School wrapped and trimmed in a cheery color.

The room simply screamed "Welcome to first grade." That feeling didn't come cheap.

"I probably spent $500 this year," Burlingame said as she shopped for a few last-minute adornments at Loudoun Learning, a teacher supplies store in Leesburg. "No matter if you've been a teacher for five minutes or five years, it has to be done."

Across the region, teachers are digging into their pockets to buy the supplies that turn four walls and a few tiny tables and chairs into the image of a child's classroom, complete with cubbyholes and attendance charts and a cozy reading corner with pillows and a rocking chair.

In a nationwide survey conducted last school year by the National School Supply and Equipment Association, 94 percent of teachers said they spent their own money on school supplies. On average, they estimated they would spend $552 of their own money on their classrooms before the school year was over.

I don't spend that much money on my materials -- because as a male high school teacher, a certain minimalism is not unheard of. I've got a lot of laminated posters hung high enough on the wall that they cannot be vandalized or destroyed, so I can reuse thm from year to year. But were I an elementary teacher, the expectations would be much higher -- and i woul be spending a lot more out of pocket. Instead of $100, I would probably be closer to the $1000 that the wife of a colleague spent last year making sure that second grade was a year of stickers, projects, and other educational activities that would have been denied if submitted on a purchase order.

A teacher expense account would be nice -- not for three-martini lunches, but for the sort of supplies and materials that contribute to student learning. Take it out of the budget for the new football stadium, athletic arena, or natatorium.

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Let's see -- your local univerity has fired its president and she has been indicted for stealing from the school to rehab her personal home. She has, in turn, sued the school for wrongful termination. What does the Univeristy do next?

A) Bar her from campus until the dispute has been resolved.

B) File suit to recover the cash from the homes's sale to the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft.

C) Return her to her previous duties as an accounting professor.

Priscilla Slade, the former Texas Southern University president fired for her spending of school money on personal expenses, is teaching accounting courses on campus this semester.

Her return to the classroom comes four weeks after a Harris Country grand jury indicted Slade and three aides for allegedly violating the university's policies and state laws in paying for household furnishings and landscaping, among other things.

* * *

Officials said the university could move to revoke her tenure, and Slade almost certainly would file a grievance. The grievance would be heard by a committee of faculty members, whose recommendation would go to the regents for the final decision.

Such a dispute would likely end up in court, officials said.

"Regardless of who it is, we have to make sure that due process is followed because faculty members nationwide have fought for the right of tenure," said Sanders Anderson, president of TSU's faculty council.

At most universities, professors with tenure have the implicit promise of a lifetime job. They cannot be dismissed, transferred or demoted, with the exception of extreme misconduct on their part or a financial emergency at the school.

And given that TSU operates like a poorly-run community college, with no admissions requirements to speak of and a sense that it can do what it wants because it is a "black thing", the odds of anybody doing anything about this travesty is pretty near zero. Heck, this is at least the third financial scandal at the place since I moved to Houston nine years ago. Maybe the alumni will create an endowed professorship in Slade's honor -- "The Priscilla Slade Endowed Chair of Crooked Accounting and Financial Fraud".

UPDATE -- 8/31/2006 -- A real newspaper would have published this editorial the same day as the original story. But then again, this is the Houston Chronicle, so a 36 hour delay isn't too bad.

Given the blizzard of bad press, the last thing TSU needs is to put its controversial former president at the head of a class while awaiting trial. Slade deserves and will get her day in court to prove her innocence of the two felony charges she faces for misapplication of fiduciary property. In the meantime, school officials should have assigned the tenured academic to non-teaching duties with a lower public profile.

Such a course would have been the prudent way to minimize damage to the school's image while the question of Slade's professional future is determined. It's not too late to assign another professor to handle her teaching duties while justice takes its course.

Might I suggest having her was dishes in one of the dining halls?

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One new study raises the possibility that my maleness harms the education of my female students -- and that the femininity of some of my colleagues impedes the education of their male students.

For all the differences between the sexes, here's one that might stir up debate in the teacher's lounge: Boys learn more from men and girls learn more from women.

That's the upshot of a provocative study by Thomas Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar at Stanford University. His study was to appear Monday in Education Next, a quarterly journal published by the Hoover Institution.

Vetted and approved by peer reviewers, Dee's research faces a fight for acceptance. Some leading education advocates dispute his conclusions and the way in which he reached them.

But Dee says his research supports his point, that gender matters when it comes to learning. Specifically, as he describes it, having a teacher of the opposite sex hurts a student's academic progress.

''We should be thinking more carefully about why,'' he said.

I don't have an answer to this one. Is it single-sex classes? Single-sex schools? Is it something else? And if the best education for the most students is found in one of the first two solutions, will that certain forces in our society allow for such a system to be implemented?

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We'll let illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country enroll in our public schools -- but woe to the American citizen kid whose parents try to sneak him/her across district lines in search of a better education!

SAD to say, but suburban schools also have a problem with illegal immigrants, only theirs are pint-size and most are American citizens.

Take Greenwich. Students from bordering communities like Port Chester, N.Y., and Stamford, Conn., keep striving to land seats in Greenwich classrooms. Who can blame them? Just as Mexicans sneak into California because thatÂ’s where the better jobs are, students sneak into Greenwich because thatÂ’s where the better schools are.

Greenwich, one of AmericaÂ’s wealthiest towns, has not yet surrounded itself with a chain-link fence and National Guard troops. But it has its own version of a border patrol. A private eye, the kind who might be expected to snoop around motels, has been hired to check out tips of juvenile border crossings. Tattletale parents will report that theyÂ’ve spied a student crossing the Mill Street bridge from Port Chester or spotted another being dropped off by a car with New York license plates. The gumshoe, camera in hand, might shadow the third grader to his home.

The school district would not identify its Sam Spade, except to say heÂ’s a former Greenwich police officer and that he is paid $15,000 a year. He also does the shoe-leather sleuthing of confirming whether students live where their leases and utility bills say they do. In the 2004-5 school year, Greenwich investigated 62 cases and found 20 intruders. Dr. John Curtin, assistant superintendent, told of one student whose address was a golf course and who, upon inquiry, turned out to be the child of a maintenance worker legitimately housed on the greens.

Most suspicious cases donÂ’t arise from border crossings, but from the turmoil of 21st-century life. Parents divorce, executives get posted overseas. ThatÂ’s one reason why Greenwich is thinking of going high-tech with software, already used by West Hartford, Conn., schools, that crosschecks people who file change-of-address forms with the post office against the districtÂ’s database.

Why does Greenwich work so hard at stopping illegals? Put simply, state and local laws require students to attend schools where they live. Pelham, N.Y., bordered by the Bronx and Mount Vernon, takes similar steps, budgeting $50,000 to track down alien students. In the past year, according to Dr. Charles Wilson, the superintendent, it expelled half the 60 students it investigated.

I guess some illegal aliens are just a little bit more equal than others -- and the inferior ones have American citizenship. Because after all, Greenwich and its ilk don't have to worry much about the OTHER illegal aliens. Those are paid for by the taxpayers of the less affluent community who would desperately like their children to have the same sort of facilities and education Greenwich students get.

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IÂ’m glad this school district backed down from a wooden, literal and absurd application of a particularly inane law.

A geography teacher put on paid leave for refusing to remove Mexican, Chinese and United Nations flags from his classroom will be allowed to return to school today after district officials backed down.

But Eric Hamlin, who teaches seventh-graders in Jefferson County, hopes his experience will inspire a backlash against a Colorado law that restricts display of other nations' flags.

"This hasn't been a teacher-versus-school- district issue," Hamlin said. "This has been a teacher taking on the state statute, with the school district stuck in the middle as the enforcer."

Carmody Middle School principal John Schalk put Hamlin on paid leave Wednesday after the teacher refused three orders to take the flags out of his classroom.

The school district cited a state law prohibiting the display of any flag but the American, Colorado or local flags on public buildings, including schools. Temporary displays for instructional or historical purposes are exempt, but the school principal did not consider Hamlin's display temporary enough.

District officials agreed Thursday that Hamlin could keep the flags up for six weeks, then exchange them with other flags from his collection of more than 50. The district said he could keep his next set of flags, 25 of them from Middle Eastern nations, up for 12 weeks.

See, the display is educational, part of a legitimate educational display in a classroom, which is clearly contemplated under the statute. Not that such logic satisfies the legislator who sponsored the current law.

Former state Rep. Carl Miller, who sponsored legislation in 2002 strengthening a 1971 law restricting foreign flag displays, said the school was right to put Hamlin on leave and should not have let him return so soon.

Miller, a Democrat from Leadville, disagreed with Jefferson County Superintendent Cindy Stevenson, who said the outcome was a "win-win situation."

"The only win-win I see is that Mr. Hamlin wins, China wins, Mexico wins and the United Nations wins," he said.

Miller said he and former Democratic Sen. Alice Nichol, co- sponsor of the legislation, intended for temporary displays to last a few days, not weeks.

First, the legislation has no time-limit. Second, the exception allowing for educational displays does exist, and using the flags during a period of time that it takes to cover a unit or set of units is quite appropriate.

What this really shows is that Colorado has a truly stupid law on the books, and that there needs to be a revision of that law by the Colorado legislature.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT: Stop the ACLU, Wizbang, Samantha Burns, Is It Just Me?, Adam's Blog, Bacon Bits, Bullwinkle Blog, Stuck on Stupid, Conservative Cat, Third World County

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One in four children evacuated in the wake of the hurricane failed to pass on to the next grade this year.

One in four Houston Independent School District students displaced by Hurricane Katrina failed to make enough academic progress to be promoted to the next grade this school year — a far higher rate than their classmates and an indicator of the massive challenges still facing area schools.

About 700 of the 2,900 Katrina students returning to HISD this year were held back, including 41 percent of high school sophomores and 52 percent of juniors. That 24 percent retention rate was among the highest in the area, according to retention rates released by some local school systems.

"These kids have worked hard, but many of them were not prepared for the rigorous Texas standards," HISD spokesman Terry Abbott said.

On the other hand, many of these kids didn't work hard at all, based upon my experience. They arrived woefully behind due to an inadequate system of education in New Orleans and the surrounding area, took the initial outpouring of generosity (our school bought every single evacuee kid over $200 in clothes and school supplies -- despite having many impoverished children in the neighborhood who didn't gt freebies from every social service agency) as a sign that the year was a free ride, and complained that what was expected of them was more than they would need back in Louisiana schools and therefore didn't do much work because they expected to be back there this fall. Add to that the isues raised in the article and you can understand why the numbers show what they show -- especially since HISD received so many of the children coming from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds.

I hate to say it, but looking back over the last year I'm just not surprised by the number of failing kids, especially in the upper grades.

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I’m a teacher, and I teach a course that includes a component on the Constitution. We talk about the Bill of Rights extensively, including freedom of speech. I often try something outrageous to provoke my students into thinking. But there are limits – and I believe this teacher crossed the line.

A Stuart Middle School teacher has been removed from the classroom after he burned two American flags in class during a lesson on freedom of speech, Jefferson County Public Schools officials said.
Dan Holden, who teaches seventh-grade social studies, burned small flags in two different classes Friday and asked students to write an opinion paper about it, district spokeswoman Lauren Roberts said.

Let’s look at the purpose of the assignment. The goal was to offer a provocative example of free speech to discuss the extent and the limits of the First Amendment. That is perfectly appropriate. The associated assignment is also perfectly appropriate.

But burning a flag – or anything else – in a classroom without proper precautions is reckless because of the possibility of fire. And engaging in such an inflammatory action risks causing a fire of a different sort, one which causes the point of the lesson to be lost.

And that is what happened.

Pat Summers, whose daughter was in Holden's class, said more than 20 parents showed up at the school Monday, upset over the incident.

I don’t blame them. This is the sort of lesson that you prepare for by contacting the parents in advance in order to have them aware for what you are going to do. Maybe the parents won’t buy-in to your lesson plan, but they will at least be aware of what is happening in the classroom. You also need to have administration support for such a lesson. It appears that olden failed to do either of these things. And one must ask whether a certain course of action will serve the intended purpose and reach the appropriate educational goal.

And that is where I feel that Holden failed. He chose an action which offends most Americans as an instructional tool in a middle school classroom. The kids are not (quite) old enough to deal with the issue in the way he wanted them to. And the parents are rightly offended that an action of this sort took place in their children’s classroom without their being made ready to deal with the fallout.

So what we have here is a critical-thinking assignment that went awry because a teacher failed to think through the implications of his lesson plan. This does not appear to have been an attempt to inspire anti-Americanism. I do not believe that disrespect was intended. And I do no believe that Holden should be fired – just cautioned to use better judgment – and not to play with fire in the future.

And as for the flag-burning issue itself, I’ve long stated my opposition to amending the Constitution to deal with that action. If it is your flag, feel free to burn it, trample it, or wipe your butt with it. But if you are a teacher, I would urge you to keep such actions out of the classroom.

Posted by: Greg at 12:06 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I’m a teacher, and I teach a course that includes a component on the Constitution. We talk about the Bill of Rights extensively, including freedom of speech. I often try something outrageous to provoke my students into thinking. But there are limits – and I believe this teacher crossed the line.

A Stuart Middle School teacher has been removed from the classroom after he burned two American flags in class during a lesson on freedom of speech, Jefferson County Public Schools officials said.
Dan Holden, who teaches seventh-grade social studies, burned small flags in two different classes Friday and asked students to write an opinion paper about it, district spokeswoman Lauren Roberts said.

LetÂ’s look at the purpose of the assignment. The goal was to offer a provocative example of free speech to discuss the extent and the limits of the First Amendment. That is perfectly appropriate. The associated assignment is also perfectly appropriate.

But burning a flag – or anything else – in a classroom without proper precautions is reckless because of the possibility of fire. And engaging in such an inflammatory action risks causing a fire of a different sort, one which causes the point of the lesson to be lost.

And that is what happened.

Pat Summers, whose daughter was in Holden's class, said more than 20 parents showed up at the school Monday, upset over the incident.

I donÂ’t blame them. This is the sort of lesson that you prepare for by contacting the parents in advance in order to have them aware for what you are going to do. Maybe the parents wonÂ’t buy-in to your lesson plan, but they will at least be aware of what is happening in the classroom. You also need to have administration support for such a lesson. It appears that olden failed to do either of these things. And one must ask whether a certain course of action will serve the intended purpose and reach the appropriate educational goal.

And that is where I feel that Holden failed. He chose an action which offends most Americans as an instructional tool in a middle school classroom. The kids are not (quite) old enough to deal with the issue in the way he wanted them to. And the parents are rightly offended that an action of this sort took place in their childrenÂ’s classroom without their being made ready to deal with the fallout.

So what we have here is a critical-thinking assignment that went awry because a teacher failed to think through the implications of his lesson plan. This does not appear to have been an attempt to inspire anti-Americanism. I do not believe that disrespect was intended. And I do no believe that Holden should be fired – just cautioned to use better judgment – and not to play with fire in the future.

And as for the flag-burning issue itself, IÂ’ve long stated my opposition to amending the Constitution to deal with that action. If it is your flag, feel free to burn it, trample it, or wipe your butt with it. But if you are a teacher, I would urge you to keep such actions out of the classroom.

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The first day of school is always interesting -- especially when you are a first year teacher. Philip Rucker catches some of th anxiety of the new teacher in this article in the Washington Post.

Munachiso Onuoha anxiously awaited her first day of fifth grade in Prince George's County yesterday afternoon.

"I am so nervous, just thinking of all the things that could not go right," she said. "I've been sleeping well. Tonight might be another story, though."

And trust me, there is always something "that could not go right" that you will not think of. Be prepared to role with it, whetehr it is being challenged by a kid over discipline matters or having a girl go into labor in your class (it actually happened to me on my first day at my current school). And yes, you can pretty well guarantee that your principal or department chair will walk in on something or other that does not constitute your finest moment.

But really, don't worry, even if they have this expectation of you.

Glenn Dale Principal Lia Thompson predicted that the two would energize returning faculty.

"They bring excitement and energy -- their enthusiasm, their love for the profession they've chosen, their eagerness to do the best that they can for the students they're working with," Thompson said.

Hopefully your colleagues still have that same drive -- even those of us who are a little bit cynical. I can guarantee you that we will do evrything we can for you new teachers, because we still remember that trrifying first day and agonizing first year -- the year when we went home utterly drained each day. We want you to make it, and we want you to stay.

And rest assured that the principal hasn't forgotten what it was like his or her first year -- and will probably be willing to concede, if pushed, that you are not making any more of a hash of it than they did during that first year.

Good luck, rookies!

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Posted by: Mvohdsdv at Wed Oct 7 14:49:33 2009 (glRo5)

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Hey, I'll admit that I took AP English when I was in high school -- though I opted out of the Calculus and Physics classes tht my school offered because I simply lacked the interest in the subjects to apply myself to them at age 17. At a Catholic school in the Chicago suburbs, we had around 55 students in the AP English program -- about 20% of the class of 1981. And we had a fair amount of success in the program, with about 10 students scoring a 4 or 5 on the test, and around 25 scoring at least a 3. In short, about 2/3 of us were in a position where we might be eligible for college credit.

Fast forward to the present. The class of 2006 saw 126 students take the AP English test -- roughly 40% of the class. Of those students, 19 scored a 4 or 5, and 43 scored a 3. That means only about 50% potentially received college credit.

Now does this mean that the program has declined in quality, and that today's teachers do not teach the material as well as my teacher did? Hardly -- it is indicative of the reality that explanding AP programs result in lower average scores because less able students are placed in the classes. That does not mean that these students are ill-served by being in the program -- indeed, the experience of being in the AP program may raise the level of their learning in a dramatic fashion. But the expansion will hurt the overall "snapshot" that most folks focus on -- the overal test scores.

Which leads me to an article in today's Washington Post.

Prince George's County schools chief John E. Deasy this week is rolling out a $33 million proposal to improve the school system's uneven academic performance, an initiative that includes a partnership with the College Board to expand Advanced Placement course offerings countywide.

* * *

Deasy proposed that by the 2007-08 school year each of the county's 22 major high schools should offer at least eight AP courses, which are meant to introduce students to college-level study. Currently, AP offerings in the county vary widely. Many high schools have only a few.

The College Board, which oversees the AP program, will help the school system train a new corps of 200 AP teachers over the next year. In addition, the school system plans to expand subsidies for AP test fees to help ensure that needy students take the tests.

"It's a monumental culture shift," Deasy said. "AP will be on the tongue of every kid around here before too long."

Michael Marchionda, a College Board official working on the project, called it "a multiyear effort" to widen student access to AP. "It's very comprehensive," he said.

The county school board will consider the plan Thursday and is expected to support it.

"People asked for rigor," said Chairman Beatrice P. Tignor (Upper Marlboro). "We've got rigor."

And i hope the district does have a rigorous program, one which holds to the very strict standards of teh College Board. But I hope tha the district recognizes that test scores -- on average -- will drop if there is an increase in the size and scope of the program.

I also hope that parents realize what they are getting themselves and their children into when thy sign up for the AP program. Such classes are -- and are supposed to be -- at or near the college level. In my own district, we struggled for years with parents who insisted upon putting their child into AP classes -- and then insisted upon taking them out when the student didn't continue to receive the same A he or she had gotten in regular level classes. But most importantly, I hope that teh Prince George District sticks to its guns -- because we have found that the presence of AP classes raises the level of instruction in all classes in the school as regular level teachers collaborate with and adopt strategies used by the AP teachers.

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We finally have students in our classrooms today.

It should be interesting, given we are going off the block schedule these kids have always known and going on a traditional schedule of 45-minute periods.

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