Stories like this worry me -- especially as I look out at my classroom and see one cheerleader with two knee braces (she had knee surgery last year) and a cervical collar following a landing on her neck that put her in the hospital.

For decades, they stood by safe and smiling, a fixture on AmericaÂ’s sporting sidelines. But todayÂ’s young cheerleaders, who perform tricks once reserved for trapeze artists, may be in more peril than any female athletes in the country.

Emergency room visits for cheerleading injuries nationwide have more than doubled since the early 1990s, far outpacing the growth in the number of cheerleaders, and the rate of life-threatening injuries has startled researchers. Of 104 catastrophic injuries sustained by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005 — head and spinal trauma that occasionally led to death — more than half resulted from cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. All sports combined did not surpass cheerleading.

New acrobatic maneuvers have turned cheerleaders into daredevils. And while the sport has retained its sense of glamour, at dozens of competitions around the country, knee braces and ice bags affixed to ankles and wrists have become accouterments as common as mascara.

With more than four million participants cheering at everything from local youth football games to the N.C.A.A. menÂ’s basketball tournament, female cheerleaders now commonly do tricks atop pyramids or are tossed 20 feet in the air to perform twists and flips. If all goes well, the airborne cheerleader, known as the flier, is caught by other cheerleaders. But not always.

Are there not some reasonable limits to be placed on some of these stunts -- especially for younger girls?

Posted by: Greg at 02:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If this House proposal goes through, we'll get $800 a year -- less than $70 a month -- next year. That is only a drop in the bucket compared to the $5000 that Texas teachers lag behind the national average teacher salary.

House lawmakers deserted their leadership Thursday, voting overwhelmingly to drain teacher incentive programs championed by GOP Gov. Rick Perry and funnel the money to an across-the-board $800 pay raise for educators before they backed a two-year, $150.1 billion state budget.

``Bottom line, members, do we want to give teachers a pay raise?'' asked Rep. Rick Noriega. He offered the proposal to shift $583 million in funding from the incentive programs to the raise for teachers and other school personnel.

The Houston Democrat's proposal passed 90-56 in the Republican-dominated House, which gave approval to the overall budget with a vote of 129-14 after 3 a.m. today. Now it goes to the Senate for consideration.

Defenders of the incentive programs — including top GOP budget-writers — worked hard to try to ward off the provision. They argued the switch could work against deserving teachers, provide a raise that's less than intended and cost deserving campuses money.

Perry earlier Thursday, before the incentives were cut, had singled them out for praise: ``I think the performance pay that is in this budget will put Texas at the top of the heap from the standpoint of a really strong, powerful message about competition in our public schools."

Those who supported the pay raise said money for the incentive programs could be restored later. But, said Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, "This is the only time this session you will be able to vote for a pay raise for your teachers back home."

I've got nothing against incentive pay programs -- once we get teacher pay up to something resembling the national standard. Until then, Texas teachers are simply being left behind.

Posted by: Greg at 10:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This may be among the dumber things I’ve heard of a school doing to “motivate” students for the TAKS test.

Parents at a Katy school were outraged after students were separated by race for TAKS test assemblies.

School officials confirmed that it did indeed happen, leaving parents and students alike wondering why.

At Mayde Creek High School right before spring break, African American students were singled out and called to a special assembly.

Later, an assembly was called just for Hispanic students.

Then, yet another was called for white students.

“To me, that’s segregation. I don’t feel that those kids are getting treated fairly,” concerned parent Deon Franklin, whose daughter is in the 9th grade at the school, said.

It really makes no sense – but the school and district still want to justify it.

The district said the students were brought together to be lectured on the upcoming TAKS test.

It was supposed to be a sort of rally – encouragement for the kids to do well on the test.

And race had what, exactly, to do with encouraging them to do well on the test?

“But why should they have to be separated to have this kind of meeting when they should’ve been having this meeting with all the kids,” Franklin said.

But the district insists the state is the one behind the multiple meetings, calling them “targeted interventions.”

“The state of Texas when they look at how our students perform, they break it down by ethnicity,” Katy ISD spokesman Steve Stanford said.

But the state also breaks the data down by factors like district and campus, among others.

“It’s not about color. It’s about how well they do on the test,” Franklin said.

Yeah, they do break results down along many lines. They do a racial breakdown – which means that Asians and Native Americans should also have had separate rallies. They also break it down by gender – will there be separate male and female rallies coming up? And what about some of the other targeted populations – like low-income, migrant, and special education – will they be having separate rallies, too, due to the various ways students are statistically broken down for reporting and evaluation purposes? Of course not – which makes the district’s argument ring quite hollow.

And it happens to be a test that many of the students were already nervous about taking.

The meetings were only held for students in the district labeled at risk for failing the exam.

HmmmmmmÂ…. If you are really only dealing with a much smaller subset of students, the ethnic breakdown makes even less sense. I suspect that only one meeting or rally could have been held.

And while Mayde Creek was the only school in the district to hold the meetings, Katy ISD officials say it will be up to the individual principals if the meetings will be held again next year.

I wonder what the Texas Education Agency, the US Department of Education, and the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice have to say about doing this next year?

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An over-indulgent mother who has taught her that nothing is her fault and anything that goes against her is the result of discrimination.

A teenager has been jailed for more than a year for shoving a teacher's aide at her high school, a case that has sparked anger and heightened racial tensions in rural East Texas.

Shaquandra Cotton, who is black, claims the teacher's aide pushed her first and would not let her enter school before the morning bell in 2005. A jury convicted the 15-year-old girl in March 2006 on a felony count of shoving a public servant, who was not seriously injured.

The girl is in the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex in Brownwood, about 300 miles from her home in Paris. The facility is part of an embattled juvenile system that is the subject of state and federal investigations into allegations that staff members physically and sexually abused inmates.

Under the sentence handed down by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, she will remain at the facility until she meets state rehabilitation standards or reaches her 21st birthday.

But her family and civil rights activists say they want her home now. They are condemning the sentence as unusually harsh and say it shows a justice system that punishes young offenders differently, depending on their race.

Personally, I don’t care what momma and the “civil rights activists” want. Momma rejected the misdemeanor plea bargain that would have kept her child out of jail and on probation, but found that too harsh and went to trial. She lost.

And besides – I think any kid who lays hands on a teacher or school staff member ought to be in a juvenile facility until age 21 – or charged with an adult and facing hard time in a state prison.

Posted by: Greg at 08:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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An over-indulgent mother who has taught her that nothing is her fault and anything that goes against her is the result of discrimination.

A teenager has been jailed for more than a year for shoving a teacher's aide at her high school, a case that has sparked anger and heightened racial tensions in rural East Texas.

Shaquandra Cotton, who is black, claims the teacher's aide pushed her first and would not let her enter school before the morning bell in 2005. A jury convicted the 15-year-old girl in March 2006 on a felony count of shoving a public servant, who was not seriously injured.

The girl is in the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex in Brownwood, about 300 miles from her home in Paris. The facility is part of an embattled juvenile system that is the subject of state and federal investigations into allegations that staff members physically and sexually abused inmates.

Under the sentence handed down by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, she will remain at the facility until she meets state rehabilitation standards or reaches her 21st birthday.

But her family and civil rights activists say they want her home now. They are condemning the sentence as unusually harsh and say it shows a justice system that punishes young offenders differently, depending on their race.

Personally, I don’t care what momma and the “civil rights activists” want. Momma rejected the misdemeanor plea bargain that would have kept her child out of jail and on probation, but found that too harsh and went to trial. She lost.

And besides – I think any kid who lays hands on a teacher or school staff member ought to be in a juvenile facility until age 21 – or charged with an adult and facing hard time in a state prison.

Posted by: Greg at 08:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It is good the school acted -- but it is much too late and much too weak.

Columbia University has warned or censured eight students who were involved in disrupting speakers from the Minuteman Project last October in a melee that cut short the program, a university spokesman said yesterday.

In the televised fracas, protesters stormed a stage at the university and were attacked by others, shutting down speeches by the group, which opposes illegal immigration and has mounted civilian border patrols. The event hurtled the university back into the debate over free speech. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chastised Columbia at the time.

The warnings and censures will be noted on the students’ transcripts for varying lengths of time, said Robert Hornsby, a Columbia spokesman. None will remain on the records after graduation. But if students face other disciplinary proceedings, they will face harsher penalties. “All of these punishments have a gravity to them and they should not be taken lightly,” Mr. Hornsby said.

Unfortunately, at least one disciplined student sees this as a victory for his side.

David Judd, a third-year student studying computer science who was one of the students who received a warning, said, “I view the fact that I got the lightest possible punishment as a small victory.”

And that's the problem -- the slap-on-the-wrist penalty says that nothing significant will happen to students who engage in attempts to shut down speech they disagree with.

I'm curious -- would the penalty have been so light if, instead of a speech by the Minutemen, a group of students had taken the stage and shut down a speech by Rev. Al Sharpton or Sen. Hillary Clinton? If instead of a program sponsored by the College Republicans, it had been a speech sponsored by a gay or Muslim group? I think we all know what would have happened in such cases.

Posted by: Greg at 10:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It canÂ’t even pay its debts.

A private developer shuttered Texas Southern University's two newly constructed parking garages and shuttle service today after the financially troubled school stopped paying its bills.

The move left thousands of students, faculty and staff members scrambling at the commuter campus, while the roughly $35 million project is at risk of default.
The Integrity Group made the decision less than three years into a 30-year lease with the university, which hired the Cleveland, Ohio-based company to construct and manage the parking garages and six-shuttle service.

The two garages, totaling 2,000 parking spaces, opened last year. But the university did not collect adequate fees or occupancy rates to pay the debt service on the project, and students recently voted down a proposed fee to pay for the shuttle service.

Campus leaders have asked the state Legislature for an emergency appropriation of $1.7 million to cover the shortfall. But lawmakers have balked because the expense is not directly related to education.

Time to merge the scandal-plagued, failing, third-rate educational institution with the University of Houston – only a few blocks away – and put an end to this embarrassing remnant of the Jim Crow era.

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Who knows – maybe he beat Tiger Woods to be the first Cablinasian.

Ward Churchill's claims of Indian ancestry were questioned in an extensive genealogy by the Rocky Mountain News in 2005, which identified 142 direct forebears of Churchill and found no evidence that any of them were American Indians. Now the controversial University of Colorado ethnic studies professor says he has black ancestry as well.

Churchill made that claim while answering questions at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair in San Francisco on March 17. In a video clip available at tinyurl.com/yvlr9b, Churchill criticized as racist the vote this month by the Cherokee Nation to oust freedmen - descendants of slaves once owned by Cherokees - from tribal rolls. After repeating the debunked claims of his Indian ancestry and membership in an established Indian tribe, Churchill said: "Actually, I do have black ancestry."

Contacted by the Rocky, Churchill declined to elaborate on his claim.

Ward Churchill – the truth is not in him.

Posted by: Greg at 10:56 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Who knows – maybe he beat Tiger Woods to be the first Cablinasian.

Ward Churchill's claims of Indian ancestry were questioned in an extensive genealogy by the Rocky Mountain News in 2005, which identified 142 direct forebears of Churchill and found no evidence that any of them were American Indians. Now the controversial University of Colorado ethnic studies professor says he has black ancestry as well.

Churchill made that claim while answering questions at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair in San Francisco on March 17. In a video clip available at tinyurl.com/yvlr9b, Churchill criticized as racist the vote this month by the Cherokee Nation to oust freedmen - descendants of slaves once owned by Cherokees - from tribal rolls. After repeating the debunked claims of his Indian ancestry and membership in an established Indian tribe, Churchill said: "Actually, I do have black ancestry."

Contacted by the Rocky, Churchill declined to elaborate on his claim.

Ward Churchill – the truth is not in him.

Posted by: Greg at 10:56 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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One of my colleagues told the most outrageous story over lunch today. The frightening thing is that it was true.

It isnÂ’t unusual to have pregnant girls in class at our school. One girl in my colleagueÂ’s class is getting very close to giving birth, and so has begun reading up on how to care for her baby. Today she said the following to this colleague.

“Mr. C., I keep reading that breast milk is better for babies than regular milk, but I can’t find out where to get it or how much it costs.”

I understand that my colleague handled the question with much more tact than I would have been able to.

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Well, yeah, it does -- but not as much as other factors.

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parentsÂ’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.

But the finding held up regardless of the childÂ’s sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than two million American preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors argue.

On the positive side, they also found that time spent in high-quality day care centers was correlated with higher vocabulary scores through elementary school.

Now there are already lots of folks out there trying to shoot down this study, to lay the effect off on high turn-over at day care centers or some other factor, but the reality is that the effect does exist. Indeed, it has a lot to do with the lack of clear, consistent supervision and discipline experienced by these young kids, in my opinion.

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Sorry, but over the years the content of AP classes has become watered-down as too many districts encouraged too-many students to enroll in AP classes -- and then gave in when parents demanded that the grades (and the failure rates) be the same as regular level classes.

Now the College Board is striking back.

While her students at Blake High School prepare for an Advanced Placement exam that measures whether they know college-level world history, Saroja Ringo is being asked to prove she knows how to teach it.

The College Board, publisher of college-preparatory exams, is auditing every Advanced Placement course in the nation, asking teachers of an estimated 130,000 AP courses to furnish written proof by June 1 that the courses they teach are worthy of the brand.

An explosion in AP study -- participation in the program has nearly doubled this decade -- has bred worry, particularly among college leaders, of a decline in the rigor for which the courses are known. Once the exclusive province of elite students at select high schools, AP study or its equivalent is now more or less expected of any student who aspires to attend even a marginally selective college.

In the haste to remain competitive in the AP arms race, schools sometimes award the designation to courses that barely resemble the college curriculum the program is meant to deliver, according to College Board officials and educators. Until now, there has been no large-scale effort to weed out such abuse.

"Anybody could just say, 'I'm teaching an AP course; I'm an AP teacher. There's no protocol,' " said Ringo, who teaches AP World History at the Silver Spring school and works as an official grader of the exams.

Beginning with the 2007-08 academic year, only teachers whose syllabuses have been approved by the College Board may call their courses AP. Each teacher must submit an audit form, along with a syllabus for the course he or she teaches. Depending on how well the teacher's syllabus -- assuming he or she has one -- reflects the rigor expected by the College Board, the process can be brief or time-consuming.

It is about time. And for all the grumbling that comes from the pseudo-AP teachers out there, let me suggest that they start to walk a mile in the shoes of regular education teachers who don't exclusively get "the best and the brightest" in our classes.

Posted by: Greg at 07:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The sooner the better, as far as this teacher is concerned.

The story has been the same for years in this small, poor, mostly black school district in northeast Houston: Financial problems, shoddy recordkeeping and low test scores prompt sanctions from the state.

Employees get indicted on criminal charges. The school board fires the superintendent. The district might improve some but then falls again.

In the past decade, enrollment in the North Forest Independent School District has dropped 35 percent to fewer than 9,000 students. Today, eight of its 11 schools are rated academically unacceptable, and its average SAT score — 748 out of 1600 — is nearly the worst in Texas.

History repeated itself three weeks ago when the school board voted 4-3 to oust the superintendent, James Simpson, and the Texas Education Agency again has sent in a conservator to oversee the district's finances.

While some in the North Forest community are rallying behind the state's largest predominantly black school system, others, including some Texas lawmakers, are beginning to ask: When is enough enough? Would students be better off if the district were abolished and annexed by neighboring systems?

State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, a longtime defender of North Forest, recently told the Houston Chronicle, "I'm at the breaking point."

Thompson, a Democrat, said the school board deserves time to search for a top-notch superintendent. But if the district doesn't shape up quickly — she's not certain on a timeline — she'd be ready to support shutting down North Forest ISD. Closure could happen only if the state education commissioner ordered it or if the school board chose it.

And the school board won't choose it, as its members have been operating the district as their own personal fiefdom for years, to the detriment of the students and the teachers in the district. The neighboring districts, Houston, Aldine, Sheldon and Humble, would end up absorbing the students -- though I know we would have a lot of the students attempt to enroll in my district as well, as I suspect some already do.

I think that the state superintendent of education, Dr. Shirley Neeley, really dodged the question of whether or not the district should be closed.

Neeley said she always asks herself the same question before abolishing a district: "Would I want my children or grandchildren attending that school or that school district?"

Asked whether she would send her children to the schools in North Forest, Neeley skirted the question.

"I'm partial to Galena Park," she said of the nearby district where she once served as superintendent.

Come on, Shirley, I know you better than that. For all your love of GPISD (where you not only were superintendent, but where you, your daughter, and your grandson all attended school and where you taught and worked as an administrator most of your career), you KNOW North Forest ISD was not measuring up. You knew that when kids from NFISD were playing residency games to enroll at GPISD schools. The time has come for you to ACT, not to avoid closing down a majority minority district in your own backyard. After all, you would not have let either your daughter or grandson go to NFISD schools -- why should you continue to force anyone else's child to do so?

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Posted by: Greg at 07:13 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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I’ve generally not commented on the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, in part because there are some very specific factual issues that make the lines rather blurry here – as well as one or two legal issues that people can disagree upon in good faith. However never, in any of my reading, have I encountered anyone proposing that the landmark decision in Tinker v. DesMoines should be overturned by the Supreme Court.

Until today.

Some history: Lawsuits over the free-speech rights of schoolchildren exist because the Supreme Court legitimized them in 1969. Several years earlier, a 13-year-old girl and 15-year old boy decided to wear black armbands to their schools in Des Moines, Iowa, to protest the Vietnam War. The schools had a policy against wearing symbolic armbands at school and warned they'd be suspended. They showed up with the anti-Vietnam armbands, were suspended and in what today is the landmark Tinker case for school "speech," Justice Abe Fortas famously wrote that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Two later cases, Fraser and Kuhlmeier, refined Tinker's scope, which we'll see shortly is the background to one of the most hilarious--and revealing--exchanges at oral argument ever in a school free-speech case.

In the years since, school officials and lower courts have struggled with Tinker. The Massachusetts Supreme Court said a T-shirt, "Coed Naked Band: Do It to the Rhythm," was protected speech. But schools in several states have banned a T-shirt with "Abortion is Homicide. You will not mock my God." (Religious groups filed amicus briefs for the Juneau "bong" banner because they want similar protections to wear anti-abortion shirts and the like.) A federal appeals court in California said schools could ban a T-shirt calling homosexuality shameful because it was "injurious to gay and lesbian students and interfered with their right to learn." But a federal court in Ohio conferred constitutional protection on a shirt with: "Homosexuality is a sin! Islam is a lie! Abortion is murder!" All these cases involve public schools.

* * *

Rather than just fiddle with the dials on the school-speech contraption, the solution would be to take Tinker and throw it out the window. But they won't. They'll tinker, telling us what to do, but unable to give coherent reasons why we should do it.

The pious extension of First Amendment speech rights amid Vietnam from adults to students prior to college was a mistake. The Bong case may be another nail in the coffin of public schools. Parents, including liberals who can afford it, will quicken the trend to sending their children to private schools whose principals can exercise real discretion and in loco parentis.

One argument for the say-it-loud status quo is that kids should be free in school to learn how "to deal" with different viewpoints. I'd bet all nine justices went to high schools with principals who put learning first and Tinkered "speech" in its place. It doesn't seem to have stopped them from growing up to drive people nuts with their opinions.

IÂ’m sorry, but Daniel Henninger has this one completely wrong here. If one fundamental mission of public education is to teach young people the importance of American political values and the freedoms that are part of our representative democracy, then it is essential that Tinker not be overturned, but instead be reinforced. If it is not, our public school would become no different from the old Soviet Union, which had a Constitution guaranteeing expansive individual liberties which were systematically denied to the inhabitants thereof.

Imagine the situation that would ensue were Tinker to fall. Schools would be free to establish an official orthodoxy that could not be contradicted or questioned by students. A school could, as in the example pointed to above by Henninger, establish a de facto policy that any speech opposing homosexuality would be subject to punishment. To avoid offending religious minorities, expressions of the Christian faith could be restricted or banned. And recalling the irritation I caused my teachers as a high school senior whose Reagan button was constitutionally protected under the Tinker doctrine, I would not see it as being far-fetched to have support for the “wrong” candidates or parties banned by those who see themselves as the guardian of “correct” speech and messages. Do we truly teach young people how to live in a free society by closing off such fundamental freedoms to them?

And let me correct one notion put forth by Henninger. Tinker presented no constitutionally novel doctrine, being based in large part upon the holding in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, which at the height of World War II held that the government could neither compel student speech nor punish refusal to speak a state endorsed message – the Pledge of Allegiance. Indeed, the words of that 1943 decision ring as true today as they did 64 years ago.

Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. [319 U.S. 624, 641] As governmental pressure toward unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be. Probably no deeper division of our people could proceed from any provocation than from finding it necessary to choose what doctrine and whose program public educational officials shall compel youth to unite in embracing. Ultimate futility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson of every such effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition, as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the fast failing efforts of our present totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.

The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism [319 U.S. 624, 642] and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

And indeed, if a student cannot be compelled to confess by word or action his or her assent to that which one does not believe, is there any legitimacy to forbidding the expression of views contrary to the officially established orthodoxy? Do we not betray our own constitutional heritage if such a regime of speech suppression is permitted? Can young people learn freedom by being taught lessons in oppression and suppression of their fundamental civil liberties?

That is not to say that there are not legitimate limits to student speech – as Tinker itself points out. Actual disruption or interference with the educational mission of the school caused by a student speaker can and must be prohibited, and on this point it is possible to argue that the school in Morse v. Fredericks may well be acting in a manner consistent with the relevant precedents. Similarly, it is possible to argue against strict financial liability on the part of educators in some First Amendment cases. However, nothing in this case merits overturning Tinker -- or its predecessor, the Barnette case – and proper application of the precedents lends itself to their reaffirmation.

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Could you ever imagine the right-wing counterparts of these teachers being permitted to teach in such a manner in a public school setting?

Among those scheduled to speak at the conference is Eric Gutstein, a mathematics education professor at the University of Illinois and a former Chicago public school math teacher. Gutstein’s book, Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social Justice, combines Marxist teaching methods with examples of math lessons for seventh-graders. One of these lessons is “The Cost of the B-2 Bomber—Where Do Our Tax Dollars Go?” Its purpose, Gutstein writes, “was to use U.S. Department of Defense data and find the cost for one B-2 bomber, then compare it to a four-year, full scholarship to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a prestigious out-of-state university. The students had to answer whether the whole graduating class of the neighborhood high school (about 250 students) could receive the full, four-year scholarships for the whole graduating class for (assuming constant size and costs) the next 79 years!”

Gutstein also recounts how, on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he was able to convince his seventh-grade math class that the U.S. was wrong to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. “I told students that none of the hijackers were thought to be Afghan,” Gutstein writes. He also told them that he would not “fight against Iraq or Afghanistan . . . because I did not believe in going to war for oil, power, and control.”

On the other hand, if I were to try to teach a class pointing out how privatization of Social Security or Individual Medical Savings Accounts would be better for the American people, how long would it be until I was removed from my classroom? Or how about convincing my students of the need to carpet bomb Iran as a means to ensuring world security?

Another of the math conference’s “experts“ is Cathy Wilkerson, an adjunct professor at the Bank Street College of Education. Wilkerson’s only other credential of note (as listed by the conference’s organizers) is that she was a “member of the Weather Underground of the 60s.” Some credential. On March 6, 1970, Wilkerson was in a Manhattan townhouse, helping to construct a powerful bomb to detonate at a dance attended by civilians on the Fort Dix, New Jersey army base. The bomb exploded prematurely, destroying the townhouse and instantly killing three of the bomb makers. Wilkerson escaped unharmed. After resurfacing years later and serving a brief prison term, she became a high school math teacher and, presumably, developed expertise on how to bring the revolution into the classroom.

I wonder -- will any known associates of Eric Rudolph, the abortion clinic bomber, be permitted to teach in mainstream academia, preparing the teachers of the future?

The meeting’s chairs were Edwin Mayorga, a twentysomething fourth-grade teacher at the highly acclaimed P.S. 87 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and NYU education professor Bree Pickower. Mayorga urged his fellow teachers to “be political inside the classroom, just as we are outside the classroom. The issues we are up against as we teach for social justice are the mandates of [Mayor] Bloomberg, Klein, and No Child Left Behind.”

Pickower then reminded attendees of the group’s “Katrina curriculum,” which teachers could use to convince elementary school students that the hurricane was, not a natural disaster, but an example of endemic American racism. And Mayorga, describing how he had piloted the Katrina curriculum with his fourth-graders, pronounced it a big success. The curriculum leaves nothing to chance, providing teachers with classroom prompts designed to illustrate the evils of American capitalism and imperialism. One section, called “Two Gulf Wars,” suggests posing such questions as: “Was the government unable to respond quickly to the crisis on the Gulf Coast because the money and personnel were all being used in Iraq?”

I'll say nothing here while I recover from the cerebral hemorrhage that occurred even considering this sort of political abuse of students in a public school classroom.

Frankly, it is time for those of us in education -- and taxpayers in general, to stand up and denounce this sort of inappropriate, unprofessional activity whenever we find it going on in the classrooms of our schools. It is time to take back our educational establishments for EDUCATION, not indoctrination.

Posted by: Greg at 11:49 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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This is an undeniable tragedy. Will we now start taking sex between female educators and male students as seriously as we take sex between male educators and their students of either sex?

In a tragic twist to a familiar story, a teenager who had sex with his married 30-year-old teacher was fatally shot outside the woman's home, and authorities have charged the woman's husband.

"You see all this stuff with teachers involved with their students. It just comes up time after time on the national news," said Norman McLean, father of suspect Eric McLean. But this time, he said, someone "actually died over it."

McLean's wife, Erin, had completed half of a one-year teaching internship at West High School, where she met the 18-year-old Sean Powell last fall.

Powell's mother, who gave him up for adoption a dozen years ago but re-established contact in 2005, said her son acknowledged having an affair with a teacher.

"He wouldn't let me answer my cell phone," Debra Flynn recalled. "I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Well, Mom, I'm going out with this girl.' I said, 'So what?' He said, 'She is a counselor at school.' I said, 'Oh, my God, Sean.'"

Flynn, whose son sometimes stayed at her home in Nashville, said she later found text messages on her phone. "Come home. Baby, I love you. You are beautiful," they said. She believes Erin McLean preyed on her son.

"These teachers are feasting on our children in school and something has to be done," Flynn said.

Maybe this tragedy will open up the eyes of some people who think that male students "getting some" from a female teacher are somehow receiving a great benefit. Good God, one talk radio host in town thinks the teachers shouldn't even be charged, because the kid has "bragging rights for life". But stuff like this is serious -- deadly serious -- and needs to be dealt with as such.

But I'm curious about one thing -- why didn't "mama" her call the cops when she found out?

Posted by: Greg at 08:14 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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All too often, college professors expect that they will be able to make the most outrageous comments in class free from any criticism or penalty. Indeed, because of their position of power, they presume that their students will sit back and shut up as they are indoctrinated in the left-wing views of a professor -- even if the class is not about politics.

It hasn't worked out that way for one professor in Idaho.

A woman is asking North Idaho College to refund the money she paid for an English class, saying her instructor spent more time bashing Republicans than teaching English composition.

Linda Cook, a former aide to the late Idaho Congressman Helen Chenoweth and a longtime GOP supporter, withdrew last week from an entry-level English class taught by part-time instructor Jessica Bryan. Cook sent a letter to NIC Vice President Barbara Hanson Monday asking that the college refund her $379 course fee.

On Monday, Bryan said Cook is "making a mountain out of a molehill" and that she's "surprised and disappointed" that Cook didn't tell her about her concerns before making a formal complaint.

Notice, Bryan isn't denying the comments -- she is blaming the offended student for complaining. What were the comments made? Oh, nothing much.

The letter claims Bryan said on the first day of class that "George Bush was elected president because people in this country can't read" and said Feb. 12 that "I believe in the death penalty Â… . First we line up everyone who can't think and right behind them, anyone who's ever voted Republican."

Bryan doesn't deny saying those things but said Cook missed her point entirely, which was to encourage debate and critical thinking among her students.

"Most (comments) were said facetiously in an attempt to get my students to think," she said. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that anyone would take it seriously Â… . They were always said with a smile."

Excuse me, Ms. Bryan -- I have a hard time imagining those comments were appropriate in an English class, even when "said with a smile." Would you have considered it appropriate to replace "anyone who's ever voted Republican" with "anyone with Jewish blood"? Or how about "anyone who is an illegal immigrant"? I don't think so -- instead you encourage the death penalty for over half the population of the United States because they have defied your political will. Frankly, I'm concerned that only one of your students offered an objection. But then again, you began the course by branding anyone who disagrees with you politically as ignorant and illiterate and then kept up the drumbeat of political partisanship every class, so I can understand that students who wanted a grade based upon the quality of their work would keep silent.

It seems that Ms. Bryan's employer agreed with the complaining student -- she got her refund.

But Bryan got more than she bargained for.

Coeur d'Alene Police are investigating death threats against a part-time North Idaho College English instructor who made disparaging remarks against Republicans, including a facetious suggestion that Republicans be put to death.

* * *

Bryan told police she began receiving threatening phone calls and harassing e-mails shortly after the column was published. Police began investigating Tuesday and released copies of 10 of the messages Friday. An account of the complaint also was posted earlier this week on a popular conservative news Web site under the headline "Execute Republicans,' says college prof."

The account in World Net Daily also linked to Bryan's e-mail address.

In the messages that were subsequently sent to Bryan, she was threatened numerous times with death and variously derided as a communist, a traitor, a parasite and a Leninist radical.

A writer from California referenced past South American dictators who executed liberal intellectuals: "Pray that there's never a right-wing coup d'etat in this beautiful nation you'll be one of the first ones floating in a river like your cronies did in Argentina and Chile."

NIC spokesman Kent Probst said Bryan's e-mail address and phone number have since been changed, and campus security has been placed on a higher level of alert. "It's a situation we take very seriously," Probst said. "The well-being of the instructor and the students in those classrooms is of paramount importance."

I guess it is acceptable at NIC to support the execution of political opponents while teaching a class, but to threaten a professor with death write nasty emails to a professor who urges the execution of political opponents during class is quite beyond the pale. Interestingly enough, there is no indication that Bryan considered these threats harsh emails to be an invitation to dialogue, a spur to critical thinking, or the possibility that they were written by smiling individuals who were merely being facetious. No, rather than tell the writers of her concerns, Bryan contacted the police. Seems somewhat hypocritical to me, as does the act of changing her phone number and email address. After all, how can debate and dialogue happen if you close down the avenues of communication in this manner?

Of course, I don't advocate death threats against political opponents, -- not even ones who have already called for my death. Indeed, I condemn the threats that have been made against Jessica Bryan, because they are immoral and counterproductive. But I refuse to consider Bryan to be a victim in this case, merely someone who has received back what she dished out -- in spades. Perhaps this affair will cause her to think before she issues death threats in her classroom in the future -- and, being a "good liberal" be more "sensitive" to boot.

UPDATE: WorldNetDaily covered this story, and included four of the "threatening" emails. By my lights, none of them actually qualifies as a threat -- unless, of course, Bryan's comments in class are to be labeled as equally threatening.

Among the offensive emails released by authorities are these:

"You contemptuous excuse for an instructor. If you are trying to start another civil war and it comes about, I hope your family will be targeted first. As a Republican, I take umbrage at your suggestion that I should be shot. You'll find that Republicans can shoot back."

"Screw you, communist (expletive deleted). Even though you are entitled to your opinion we all have freedom to vote anyway we please. You would do well teaching in Iran hating Jews. Bottom line I feel the same way about liberal (expletive deleted) such as you."

"I hope you lose your position and cease poisoning the flower of our future who enroll in your class with your leftist indoctrination."

"Pray that there's never a right-wing coup d'etat in this beautiful nation [because] you'll be one of the first ones floating in a river like your cronies did in Argentina and Chile."

There no actual threats there, only some hateful sentiments expressed to her. But tell me -- are they really any more hateful than the comments made by Jessica Bryan in her class? And can anyone argue that if her words in class are somehow protected by the First Amendment, these emails are entitled to any less protection?

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Posted by: Greg at 06:46 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This article makes it really clear why I work on the high school level, and why I'd prefer to go back to working with elementary school kids if high school were ever to stop being an option. Teaching middle school is just too much!

Faced with increasingly well-documented slumps in learning at a critical age, educators in New York and across the nation are struggling to rethink middle school, particularly in cities, where the challenges of adolescent volatility, spiking violence and lagging academic performance are more acute.

As they do so, they are running up against a key problem: a teaching corps marked by high turnover, and often lacking expertise in both subject matter and the topography of the adolescent mind.

The demands of teaching middle school show up in teacher retention rates. In New York City, the nationÂ’s largest school system, middle school teachers account for 22 percent of the 41,291 teachers who have left the school system since 1999 even though they make up only 17 percent of the overall teaching force, according to the United Federation of Teachers.

Frankly, I prefer working with the older kids because they tend to think and act in a more mature, adult fashion. I also prefer high school because I know all my colleagues will be trained in our subject matter, something you can't count on at the middle school level. Many teachers on th middle school level are just displaced elementary teachers -- generalists who took a content specific job when it became available. After all, my certificate runs grades 6-12 and is content are specific, but an elementary certificate runs from kindergarten to grade 8 or 9 in most states and carries with it no subject area limitations. That means a middle school history teacher might have no more than the minimum number of social science classes required to graduate from college -- generally meaning two. Thhey therefore often do a poor job of teaching the content because they don't know it.

Posted by: Greg at 01:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Could be -- because at least one facility is unable to protect inmates from other inmates.

A South Texas juvenile corrections facility run by the Texas Youth Commission is so "chaotic and dangerous" that it violates the constitutional rights of the youth incarcerated there, the U.S. Justice Department told state officials Thursday.

Youth-on-youth assaults at the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg are five times the national average, the report said, and in one instance last year a corrections officer tried to subdue an unruly youth by pushing his eyes "back into his face."

A 14-page letter from Justice officials to Gov. Rick Perry detailed repeated patterns of violence that injured both youths and corrections officers at Evins. The report said the facility is poorly designed, insufficiently staffed and has corrections officers who are poorly trained.

The letter said if the problems are not fixed within 49 days, the department's Civil Rights Division may file suit against Texas to bring the facility into compliance.

Sounds like a good thing to me -- the Perry Administration has let the TYC system run out of control. If it takes federal involvement to fix, so be it.

Posted by: Greg at 02:51 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Actions are being taken to clean up the Texas Youth Commission, but it is too little, too late in my book. And Governor Rick Perry still doesn't understand the magnitude of the problem -- or his culpability for it -- based upon his belief that he and his incompetent appointees, not the legislature, should take the lead in restructuring the troubled agency.

Under pressure from the Legislature, Gov. Rick Perry announced Wednesday that the Texas Youth Commission board will resign amid new criminal allegations involving TYC staff and revelations that the juvenile corrections health care system is in shambles.

Perry and the Legislature are battling over how to rebuild an agency with high staff turnover and accusations that corrections officers and administrators have physically and sexually abused youth in their custody.

On Wednesday, TYC officials were trying to figure out how a former adult-corrections-system guard managed to land a TYC corrections officer job while under investigation for sexually assaulting a male inmate on his former job.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice Inspector General John Moriarty told a special joint legislative committee that TYC would have found out about the investigation if the agency had contacted TDCJ on a background check.

So let's think about this -- TYC is hiring guards without conducting complete background checks. That means that sex offenders were put in positions of power over incarcerated kids, with the ability to prey upon them sexually. Not only that, but volunteers were let in with even less screening.

That Rick Perry, the failed governor of the state of Texas, thinks he has any role at all to play in the reorganization of the TYC is pretty disturbing -- but then again, he has been more interested in playing doctor with the sixth-grade girls of Texas than preventing the sexual abuse young people in state custody. When viewed in conjunction with the Gardasil Affair, I think we can say that Gov. Perry has rendered himself irrelevant for the remainder of his term -- and political poison for GOP candidates in 2008 and 2010.

Posted by: Greg at 03:28 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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The Texas House of Representatives made the right move in telling Governor Perry to keep his hands off the genitals of the eleven-year-old girls of Texas.

The Texas House sent a veto-proof message to Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday that schoolgirls will not be required to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer.

But Perry wasn't in town to witness the vote overturning his HPV-vaccine mandate, having embarked on an eight-day trip to the Middle East the same day the House took up the measure.

The House vote of 119-21 to tentatively approve the bill demonstrated a comfortable margin in case Perry should decide to veto it. Final passage on the measure is expected today.

"Let's continue to allow only parents and children and doctors to decide if this is right for you," said Rep. Dennis Bonnen, the Angleton Republican who sponsored the bill.

The sponsor of a similar bill in the Senate said he would begin lining up 21 votes needed to bring it up for floor debate. Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, said he expects a committee hearing before the end of March.

"The goal is to get the bill to the governor's desk by the middle or end of April," Hegar said.

Perry would then have 10 days to decide whether to sign the bill, let it become law without his signature or veto it. The bill has been on a fast track to give lawmakers time for a potential veto override — a rare event for a Texas Legislature.

Governor Perry wants to portray this as a vote in favor of cervical cancer. He should be ashamed of himself -- but his conduct in this matter shows he has no shame. This is a question of allowing medical decisions to be made by medical professionals, parents, and patients, not a single government official with questionable authority and even less competence to do so. Medical professionals have demolished his arguments from a scientific standpoint, and the Texas Attorney general has pointed out that Perry lacks the authority to make such a move under the Texas Constitution. Now the legislature is telling him that the move is politically wrong as well.

Hey, Governor Perry -- how about spending your time and energy to get the perverts out of the Texas Youth Commission, where they are sexually abusing young people under their authority on your watch, instead of playing doctor with little girls who just want to go to school!

Posted by: Greg at 02:36 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I like this proposal.

In all the uproar about preparing native Spanish speakers for an English-speaking culture, a different language question gets mostly the silent treatment. How can Houston's English speakers prepare for a world where Chinese and Arabic wield growing influence?

Chinese and Arabic both are notoriously hard to learn. But if knowing Chinese will open future economic doors, knowing Arabic may be crucial to make that future prosperous and peaceful both.

This year, New York took a decisive step to equip its students for the coming century. As Houston fights to convince students that school is relevant, it should follow New York's example by cultivating places for them to master Arabic.

Brooklyn's Khalil Gibran International Academy, for grades 6-12, will open its doors this September. The school will expose its sixth-graders, and ultimately all 600 pupils, to Middle Eastern culture, history and language.

Scrupulously, politics (apart from conflict resolution classes) will be excluded. Even so, by the time they graduate, the school's students will know enough Arabic to pursue training in diplomacy, international business and intelligence.

Americans, President Bush said last month, need such skills urgently. At the swearing-in of the new director of national intelligence, Bush charged the new spy chief with seeking more recruits with Arab language skills.

This proposal is dead on -- we should be teaching Arabic in our schools as a matter of national security. The Crusade Against Jihadi Terror is going to last a very long time, and we have few Arab speakers to translate needed intelligence material. This will enable us to "grow our own" Arabic speakers, and give us a leg-up in the national security area.

Posted by: Greg at 02:26 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I guess that a salary of $302,000 isn't enough to motivate Abe Saavedra -- he needs a bonus of $67,250 to motivate him to do his job well. At 22%, it is clear that bonuses are much more generous for HISD administrators than for HISD teachers.

Houston ISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra will be $67,250 richer today when the school district distributes its latest round of performance bonuses.

Saavedra's new contract, approved by the school board in January, made him eligible for $80,000 in bonus pay based in part on students' test scores.

As head of the state's largest school district, Saavedra earns a base salary of $302,000. His bonus — 22 percent of his base pay — is more than almost all his teachers take home in a year.

"That's not going to be a morale builder," Gayle Fallon, president of the largest teachers' union, said about the superintendent's bonus.

About half of the Houston Independent School District's teachers received incentive bonuses earlier this year, with the average check equaling $1,850. That represents less than 4 percent of the typical teacher's base pay of $48,000.

let's see -- over 20% for a paper-pushing administrator who has minimal contact with kids, but 4% for the teachers in the classroom. And even then, HISD screwed up its bonus calculations and is asking for $73,700 in cash to be returned by teachers -- enough to cover the Superintendent's bonus. Here's a better idea -- since he did such a crappy job of overseeing the bonus program this year, why not give him ZERO this year and let the teachers, who actually do the real work of the district, have that money?

Posted by: Greg at 02:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Well, besides those of us who actually have to teach.

One of the absurdities of No Child Left Behind is the absurd notion that 100% of children would meet grade level in math and reading by 2014. Such a mandate, while laudable, is completely out of the question. Getting EVERY SINGLE CHILD to grade level? It is a nice talking point, but just can't happen. Well, some in Congress are finally giving that reality some consideration.

No Child Left Behind, the landmark federal education law, sets a lofty standard: that all students tested in reading and math will reach grade level by 2014. Even when the law was enacted five years ago, almost no one believed that standard was realistic.

But now, as Congress begins to debate renewing the law, lawmakers and education officials are confronting the reality of the approaching deadline and the difficult political choice between sticking with the vision of universal proficiency or backing away from it.

"There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. "But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don't want to be accused of leaving some children behind."

Let's face a simple reality here -- we teachers are not stamping out widgets on a machine -- and even if we were, there would be a percentage that wouldn't pass inspection because of flaws in the material or the process. And when you consider that we are molding human beings, not hunks of metal or plastic, and that every human being has different abilities and interests, you can see where the goal becomes problematic.

When I taught English III (I now teach World History), I had students in my classes who were chronic attendance problems, who were ESL, and who were mainstreamed special education students (including one whose parents would not permit her to be in special classes, despite a 72 IQ). The reality is that I could have been super-teacher and not have gotten all those kids up to grade level.

After all, I cannot make the kid who isn't there learn. I cannot make a kid who doesn't know English read English at grade level. And I cannot make a kid who lacks the intellectual capacity to take in and retain the material learn how to read at grade level. And we won't get into the problem that the "snapshot" of how a kid is doing is taken with a test given on one day -- a day when the kid may be ill, tired, or still mourning the death of a close relative and therefore not performing up to ability level. Those are not excuses -- those are the realities you face when you deal with human beings!

And even with exemptions allowed for special ed kids (though often this translates to only the lowest of the low) and delayed accountability for ESL kids (except at exit level, where a kid who has been in the country for less than six months MUST test at grade level), you still cannot reach 100%.

Of course, the problem is that supporters of the law want to argue that any lowering of the standards constitutes "leaving children behind", despite the fact that there will always be children who do not meet the standard, no matter what teachers do. Is a goal of 100% admirable? You bet -- but it will never be achieved. I would prefer a goal of 90-95% -- one under which the standard is rigorous, but achievable when one takes into account the variations in ability, aptitude, and circumstances that impact student performance.

UPDATE: Here's an interesting piece by Kevin Drum from Washington Monthly.

1. Details aside (about which see below), I support the basic idea of NCLB. I'm fine with testing and I'm fine with holding schools accountable.

2. Different people had different reasons for supporting NCLB. I don't think Ted Kennedy supported the 100% goal because he wanted to label public schools as failures, but I think that a lot of movement conservatives and evangelicals did. These are not people who would ordinarily favor a multi-billion expansion of education funding and an enormous new intrusion of federal oversight into local schools, after all. Rather, they reluctantly supported NCLB because they were persuaded that it was a stealth measure that would eventually undermine support for public education.

Go ahead, call me paranoid. All I can say is that in the past, when I've given George Bush and his enablers the benefit of the doubt on things like this, I've turned out to be wrong.

3. Three years ago, when I asked about the 100% requirement, people told me that of course it would be relaxed. Just wait until NCLB comes up for renewal. 100% was nothing more than a nice-sounding goal that helped get the bill passed in the first place.

Well, it's renewal time and Republicans are still loudly insisting that we keep the 100% requirement. "Which child do Democrats want to leave behind?" they ask unctiously. So what happened?

4. The obvious solution to the 100% requirement, as Matt points out, is that school districts will simply reduce their standards to a point where even drooling idiots can pass. Not so. There are political limits to how absurdly low you can set standards, and in any case you're not likely to literally get a 100% pass rate even if all you have to do is randomly fill in bubbles. There's always going to be at least one kid in most schools who screws the thing up no matter how easy it is.

Besides, does this make any more sense than the 100% pass rate requirement? Why would anyone support a bill that motivates public schools to set comically low standards? Answer: see #2 above.

He's dead on in his analysis.

Posted by: Greg at 02:05 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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If you are going to give bonuses that you cannot explain, you ought to at least calculate them correctly.

Ninety-nine HISD teachers who received performance bonuses are being told this week they have to pay back an average of $745 because the district accidentally overpaid them.

HISD officials said a computer programming error led them to overpay about $73,700. The mistake caused the 99 part-time teachers and other instructional personnel to be paid as though they were full-time employees.

The affected teachers should receive a form from Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra this week giving them the option of having all the money deducted from a single paycheck or spread out over 10 pay periods.

The amounts range from $62.50 to $2,790.

"Although this affects less than 1 percent of HISD's 12,500 teachers, the error should not have been made," HISD spokesman Terry Abbott said in a written statement. "We regret it and apologize to those instructional staff members."

Just a typical day in HISD -- and a reason I'm glad I don't work there.

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No, not with the conclusion of this article that San Francisco State University should drop all action against the College Republicans – for they should, based upon Supreme Court precedent permitting flag desecration. On the whole, I agree with the analysis.

Rather, I disagree with this little element of the column.

The objection to the trampling of the name of Allah is reasonable. Done willfully, it would be an act of religious intolerance. The problem is, this wasnÂ’t willful, at least not as religious disrespect. The erasure of the name shows it.

First, any desecration of the name of Allah is committed by the terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, when they place the name of the allegedly peace-loving deity of the so-called “Religion of Peace” on flags for their decidedly non-peaceful organizations. Unless, of course, some Muslim wishes to argue that Islam and Allah are not so peaceful after all, and that the use of the name of Allah to represent terrorists is therefore an honest portrayal of the Muslim faith.

Secondly, any disrespect shown to Islam or its sacred words, books, or symbols, even if done intentionally, is constitutionally protected and beyond the disciplinary reach of a public university to punish. Indeed, colleges and universities regularly sponsor plays, display art, host programs and schedule classes in which insults to Christianity and Judaism are permitted and justified based upon the “academic freedom” and “First Amendment rights” of those who commit the offensive acts. Not only that, but Israeli flags have been desecrated more than once on the campus by pro-terrorist groups composed primarily of Muslims with no sanctions imposed – despite the fact that the Israel flag includes a universally recognizable Jewish symbol, the Star of David. Setting aside the question of a double standard and unequal protection of the law, the act of which the College Republicans are accused would be Constitutionally protected and beyond the reach of the university to punish EVEN IF IT WERE a willful act of disrespect for Islam. After all, no government official may compel respect for, or punish disrespect for, the religious beliefs or symbols of any creed.

IÂ’d also take issue with this concluding bit.

San Francisco State should just drop the case. The offense was unintentional and the underlying act is constitutionally protected. The whiff of the whole thing is just wrong.

The problem is not that the “underlying act” is Constitutionally protected – the problem is that the actual offense with which the College Republicans are charged is Constitutionally protected. And as it would in any other case, SFSU may not grant a “heckler’s veto” by claiming that an act protected by the First Amendment is an incitement of hostility – unless it is prepared to impose a regime of speech censorship incompatible with a free society and the Constitution of the United States.

However, if SFSU gets away with this, I hope the university is prepared to deal with many objections from Christian and Jewish students to activities on campus – and that they are prepared to ban an Islamic group that uses the Koran, a work in which Christians and Jews are insulted and called “pigs and monkeys”.

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Unless there is a compelling reason for doing so, such as public safety, there is not reasonable basis for requiring a public employee to live within the boundaries of the government entity for which they work. One can make an argument for such a requirement regarding police or firefighters, but certainly not for teachers – but some districts try to do so anyway.

It looks like the teachers in one district might be free at last from such an absurd requirement.

The Chicago Teachers Union scored a major victory Wednesday in its two-decade fight to dump a requirement that Chicago teachers live in the city.
A bill to prohibit the rule passed the Illinois House nearly unanimously, 105 to 4. It now moves to the Senate.

"If you want to recruit the best and brightest teachers, why would you put up a roadblock?" said CTU lobbyist Pam Massarsky.

CPS is the only district in Illinois with a residency rule, Massarsky said.

And if you want proof that this is not about the good of the schools, but is instead about something else, you need only look at these comments.

Mayor Daley has been a big proponent. He has argued that teachers will invest more in the schools if they live in the city.

"This increases the number of middle class living in the city," Massarsky said. "It has nothing to do with whether or not they know more about the community in which they teach."

Fifteen years ago, I chose not to even consider teaching in the city of Chicago because I didnÂ’t want to live within the city limits. Indeed, I could not have afforded to do so in a neighborhood I considered acceptable.

Today, I don’t live in my district, and commute 30 minutes each way in order to ensure that my wife and I have the personal privacy that we believe is important. At the same time, I work my butt off for my kids, and make a point of being at those events that fit in my schedule. No one questions my investment level – if anything, they know that I am more invested in these schools because I choose to make a commute from a district that pays more and has a more affluent, better educated population than this one. I’m here because I believe in these kids.

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Good grief -- how did they miss this? And how was it allowed to continue after it was discovered?

Law enforcement officers who earlier this week moved into Texas Youth Commission facilities to protect inmates from sex predators on Wednesday discovered a registered sex offender working as a correctional officer in a halfway house for juveniles.

The sex offender had been allowed to stay on the job despite an alert that had been sent months ago to TYC administrators in Austin.

David Andrew Lewis, 23, was discovered by investigators sent to TYC's 22 facilities after reports of sex abuse stunned lawmakers.

Gee, he only committed thirteen sex acts against a five-year-old -- how could he possibly be seen as a threat against juveniles?

There needs to be wholesale reform here -- beginning with massive changes in the top leadership at the TYC, and extending upward as well as downward. What did the governor know and when did he know it?

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I received an email from a friend yesterday and she included some information about proposed changes to the testing program down here in Texas -- and I like what I see.

• The bills are House Bill 2236 and Senate Bill 1031 (these bills are identical).

• There are 12 end-of-course tests: Algebra I, Algebra II, geometry, biology, chemistry, physics, English I, English II, English III, world geography, world history, and United States history.

• A cumulative score of 840, equivalent to a 70 average on the combined scores of the 12 end-of-course tests, is required.

• These tests will count 15% of the course grade.

• Each student who did not perform satisfactorily on any end-of-course assessment instrument when initially tested, shall be given multiple opportunities to retake that assessment instrument.

• Bill will take effect with the freshman class of 2009/2010

• Additional security controls.

• Eighth grade readiness test.

• State funded Pre-SAT test for all 10th graders.

Again, I find plenty to like in this -- not the least of which will be that my students will actually be tested on material from my 10th grade World History class, not their 8th grade American History class. That means there will be some real accountability on their part and mine.

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Just a quick link to a news story I ran across regarding the case I mentioned last week about university administrators banning members of a campus religious group from engaging in First Amendment protected religious activities. If any thing, the story gets worse, and implicates the campus fraternity system in the banning as well -- and shows that the university is taking the notion of in loco parentis further than any reasonable interpretation of those powers can be extended.

Frustrated by the futility of his efforts in the field of public opinion, Campbell used a patented move of the "diversity police" and sought to impose his will through the kangaroo courts of the university and reported the group to the campus police department. Following the filing of this complaint, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Irvin Clark, sent a summons to the C2L president charging the organization and its officers with two Level 1 Zero Tolerance Misconducts. One charge fell under the category of "assault, harassment and fighting" while the other fell under the hazing provision of the SSU Code of Student Ethics.

The summons also temporarily suspended all C2L activities until an investigation could be held and a hearing conducted. During this time, approximately 15 members of C2L attempted to gather and pray on campus; but the Vice President for Student Affairs Randy Gunter allegedly ordered campus police officers to stop the group from assembling and praying.

Soon thereafter, SSU faculty member Marilyn Suggs, who periodically serves as a hearing officer for the campus kangaroo court, laid down her judgment sanctioning C2L with punishments of a several month suspension, community service and probation. While under the suspension, the group was prohibited from conducting any activities, congregating, wearing C2L paraphernalia, soliciting membership or participating in "meetings, step shows or other 'underground activities' on campus or off campus."

Reportedly, Suggs' reasons for issuing the sanctions included a "verbal altercation" between the C2L president and Campbell, Campbell's petition, an incident where the C2L president told a former member "Shut [his] mouth" and the former member's voluntary acts of washing the feet of another C2L member and jumping into the Atlantic Ocean on the semester retreat.

The group's suspension ultimately led to expulsion when they refused to cancel an off-campus non-C2L-affiliated weekend trip to Walt Disney World for Disney's Night of Joy contemporary Christian music. Clark immediately expelled the group from campus for violating its terms of suspension. Left without any other options, C2L members are now suing to get their organization back on campus.

Excuse me -- what basis does a university have regulating a group of students going to Disney World? What basis does the university have threatening students with arrest for gathering together to pray -- either on or off campus?

Interestingly enough, it strikes me that the best statute on the books to deal with this official oppression under color of law by the staff of this historically black university would be one passed shortly after the Civil War to protect freed slaves whose rights under the Constitution were violated by former Confederates. It is known as the Ku Klux Klan Act.

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One more example of the fact that too many school administrators don't understand Tinker v. DesMoines -- and that too many non-Christians not only want "tolerance" for their beliefs, but are demanding that the rights fo Christians under the First Amendment be actively suppressed.

Wendy Cloyd, assistant editor, CitizenLink of Focus on the Family reports: "The non-profit legal group Liberty Counsel is asking Heritage High School officials to reverse their suspension of 12 Christian students for meeting in the cafeteria during non-instructional time to pray.

"After a Satanist student approached school administrators to complain about the prayer group, Vice Principal Alex Otoupal told the Christians they could no longer meet.

"Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, said the students might not have been punished if they had met for just about any other reason.

"’These are students who, if they wanted to gather together and talk about American Idol or talk about whatever subject they wanted to and [there would be] no problem,’ Staver said. ‘But in this case they were told not to gather anymore -- ever -- because they wanted to gather together and pray.

"What the school did is clearly and blatantly illegal, he said."

Students do not lose their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate -- what will it take to make administrators respect that four-decade-old holding of the Supreme Court?

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It is questionable whether this school had a legitimate basis to ban this Christian group from campus in the first place -- but to then impose further sanctions because the students engaged in legal First Amendment protected activity off campus reeks of an anti-Christian bias that must not be allowed to stand.

Today the National Litigation Foundation and the Alliance Defense Fund (representing a Christian student group called "Commissioned II Love") filed a lawsuit against Savannah State University in Georgia after the university expelled the group from campus. In one of the more bizarre cases of viewpoint discrimination that I've seen, the university first punished the group for "hazing" after the university discovered that group members voluntarily engaged in the ancient Christian practice of "foot washing." The practice sounds strange to some, but it is taken directly from one of Jesus' most famous acts and involves, well, literally washing (with soap and water) the feet of another member of the group as a symbolic act of humility, love, and service. The university construed this action as endangering the "physical health" of their students.

After suspending the group for "hazing" and "harassment" (yes, in the eyes of the university, students sharing their faith constitutes "harassment"), the university imposed the ultimate punishment — expulsion — when the group members had the audacity to go to an off-campus, weekend event together (a Christian music concert). In other words, the very act of collectively hanging out off campus was enough to impose the ultimate penalty on the group.

Excuse me -- college students going to a concert together is grounds for punishment? And I won't get into th foot-washing issue, which is absurd on its face. Will the campus Newman Center be the next group sanctioned, given that foot-washing is a part of the prescribed Catholic liturgy for Holy Thursday?

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What else can you say about this editorial.

It's hard to decide what's worse about the scandal enveloping the Texas Youth Commission: the chilling accounts of how corrupt state administrators turned an isolated West Texas reform school into their private sex club with adolescent inmates at their beck and call; or the unconscionable cover-up of reports of the abuse and the failure of law enforcement officials to prosecute the perpetrators.

The TYC maintains a system of state schools with the stated aim of educating and reforming hard-core juvenile offenders. The school where the abuses occurred — the West Texas State School at Pyote — houses 250 males between the ages of 10 and 21 in large dormitory facilities.

Despite a damning internal TYC report and an investigation in 2005 by the Texas Rangers, which concluded that two supervisors at the school forced young inmates to have sex with them numerous times, the pair were allowed to resign without criminal prosecution. One went on to head a charter school in San Antonio.

All true, as is the list of failures that follow -- but conspicuously excluded is the failure of the news media (including the Chronicle) to report on this story and keep it in the public eye. Where did I find out about it the day after bombshell testimony on the scandal? In the New York Times, not the Houston Chronicle or any other local media source. I therefore think we can safely add one more failure to the shameful list.

However, owning the printing press apparently means never having to say you're sorry.

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Am I the only one who has a problem with this entire situation.

When a few classmates razzed Rebekah Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, "Do you have 10 moms?" she shot back: "That's so gay."

Those three words landed the high school freshman in the principal's office and resulted in a lawsuit that raises this question: When do playground insults used every day all over America cross the line into hate speech that must be stamped out?

After Rice got a warning and a notation in her file, her parents sued, claiming officials at Santa Rosa's Maria Carillo High violated their daughter's First Amendment rights when they disciplined her for uttering a phrase "which enjoys widespread currency in youth culture," according to court documents.

Personally, I ban the phrase in my classroom as inappropriate, so I have no problem with the school attempting to drive a stake through its heart. But I think they missed the bigger issue.

Here we have a girl being harassed over her religion by classmates, who finally responds with a phrase that anyone who works with teens would know is relatively innocuous, yet it is the victim of the harassment who was punished. What action was taken against the religiously insensitive and intolerant classmates? Were they disciplined? It does not appear that way.

But then again, as we have seen in recent AP articles and among certain partisans out to trash a particular candidate for the GOP nomination, anti-Mormon prejudice and bigotry are still acceptable in some quarters.

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It looks like some high-power members of the Texas Legislature are listening to parents and teachers. They are proposing eliminating the dreaded TAKS test, replacing them with "end of course" tests instead.

Plano Sen. Florence Shapiro and Woodlands Rep. Rob Eissler are listening to parents as they prepare to file a bill today to expel the TAKS test from Texas schools.

* * *

Shapiro says, "A teacher can focus on the breadth of subject matter and expose students to a richer curriculum." She adds that, "This is a much better identifier of our students' progress, and it will also stop these high-stakes evaluations and one-time tests."

All this World History teacher can say on this subject is "GREAT IDEA!"

Want to know why?

My tenth grade students take the Social Studies TAKS in a few weeks. Other than those about maps and graphs that refer to places and data outside of the USA, there is not one question that actually has to do with world history on the test that these kids will take. The content questions (as opposed to the skills questions mentioned above) will all be about American history to the Civil War -- which thy learned in eighth grade! Yeah, you read that right -- the test to show if my kids are learning and whether I am effective covers content from two years ago in an entirely different course.

What's worse is that the kids know this. When I start the massive review of US history after Spring Break, the kids will pay attention, because they know they need it. But they also know that the only time that they will be held responsible for my material is in a few questions on the exit level test in eleventh grade, so they don't necessarily have a stake in my subject matter. End of course exams would change that, and hold them (and me) much more accountable.

Here's hoping this little bit of sanity and logic makes it through the legislature and is signed by the governor.

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