Proof that too many students at the University of Vermont are terribly ignorant.

Most of the women interviewed at the University of Vermont, as seen in this YouTube video, think women's suffrage is "women's suffering" and want to end it.

Hmmm. So much for the outdated notion that an educated young person should know a bit about the history of the struggle for civil liberties.

I suspect you would get similar responses at too many institutions of higher learning.

H/T Phi Beta Cons

Posted by: Greg at 06:16 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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Here is a change I can support on No Child Left Behind -- but one that probably won't make it into law.

The House education committee chairman called yesterday for "serious changes" to the No Child Left Behind law, including new ways to measure school progress, in a proposal some Republicans fear could jeopardize efforts to renew the law this year.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the chairman, said the five-year-old law, a cornerstone of President Bush's domestic policy, has put too much emphasis on standardized testing.

* * *

Miller said he expects that the House will vote in September on legislation to renew the law, which requires students to be tested in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress on those tests face possible sanctions.

But Miller said yesterday that schools should be able to include measures besides the reading and math tests in determining progress, such as graduation rates or the number of students passing Advanced Placement exams. "Many Americans do not believe that the success of our students or of our schools can be measured by one test administered on one day, and I agree with them," he said.

Some civil rights groups have expressed concern that such changes could weaken the law. "In our experience, institutions that are held accountable for too many things are, in the end, accountable for nothing," several groups that back the law, such as the Citizens' Commission for Civil Rights and the Education Trust, wrote in a recent letter to Miller.

Please understand -- I am a supporter of the notion that we need testing in order to hold schools and teachers -- and , most importantly, students -- accountable for learning, but I do not always believe that the current testing regimes in place do that. We here in Texas will be making a change in a few years because ours really does not do that -- and something NCLB needs to ensure that other states do so as well.

Posted by: Greg at 03:19 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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North Forest ISD would be a joke if the consequences for the students there were not so dire. And just when you think things can't get any worse, this happens.

As if North Forest School District didn't have enough to worry about, students from Forest Brook High School will have to begin classes at rival M.B. Smiley High School next month because of extensive damage caused by vandals earlier this week.

Fire hoses on the third floor of Forest Brook were turned on by intruders early Tuesday morning, resulting in extensive water damage throughout the school. School trustees approved emergency repairs, but those will not be completed by the start of school on Aug. 27.

"The kids have to be educated — we don't want kids to be out of school," said Mary McWhorter, president of the North Forest PTA Council. "If parents and the community come together, we can make this work. We have to. I would really rather have the kids go to school (together) than be out two or three months while the repairs are being made."

For those of you not familiar with the systemic problems with this failed school district, read the article and be prepared to be shocked.

However, let me commend district officials for actually trying to deal with this problem in the best way possible.

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How far does a school's authority go to regulate student speech?

We got a partial answer to that question a couple of weeks ago in Morse v. Frederick, which seems to allow a great deal of latitude during school-sponsored events in cases of drug-related speech. But even that case seems to be limited, for within days the Supreme Court refused to even hear a case in which a student was held to be within his First Amendment rights to wear a t-shirt mocking the President, even though it did contain depictions of illegal drug use. That would indicate that the Court will look askance at attempts to punish what is clearly political speech.

And, of course, the recent decision does not even get into the issue of the school's ability to punish student speech that happens entirely off-campus, even if it is somehow school related. We may, however, be seeing the genesis of such a case in Connecticut.

A Lewis S. Mills High School student who was barred from running for class office after she called administrators a derogatory term on an Internet blog is accusing top school officials of violating her free speech rights.

Avery Doninger, a senior at the school in Burlington this fall, was removed as class secretary in the controversy last May. She is asking a state judge to order the school superintendent and the principal to reinstate her as secretary of the Class of 2008 and allow her to run for re-election in September.

Lauren Doninger of Burlington, the 16-year-old student's mother, filed a lawsuit Monday on her daughter's behalf in Superior Court in New Britain.

At issue is a comment made on a blog about certain unnamed district officials, who Avery referred to as "douchbags". But the decision to punish her seems to be related to a much deeper issue that directly impinges upon the First Amendment in a rather pristine manner.

On April 24, according to the lawsuit, school officials told Doninger and the other student council officers that a "Jamfest" scheduled for April 28 could not be held in the school auditorium because there was not a staff member available to run new equipment. The event is an annual battle of the bands organized by the student council in which local musicians perform for the community, according to the complaint.

Another student council member sent an electronic mail message that day to high school parents and students, encouraging them to call the school board for Region 10, which covers Harwinton and Burlington, to express support for Jamfest. Doninger was among four students to sign that message, but it was drafted and sent by another student, according to the lawsuit.

When Doninger encountered Niehoff in the school hallway, the principal scolded her for the message and said the superintendent was angered by it and that Jamfest might be canceled, the lawsuit says.

Later that night, about 9:25 p.m., Doninger used her personal computer to post the entry on the blog.

"Jamfest is canceled due to the douchbags in central office. Here is an e-mail that we sent out to a ton of people and asked them to forward to everyone in their address book to help get support for Jamfest," she wrote. "Basically, because we sent it out, Paula Schwartz is getting a TON of phone calls and e-mails and such. We have so much support and we really appreciate it. However, she got pissed off and decided to just cancel the whole thing all [sic] together."

A few weeks later, on May 17, Doninger went to the school office to accept her nomination for class secretary. Niehoff handed a copy of the blog entry to Doninger and told her to apologize to Schwartz, tell her mother about the blog entry, resign as class secretary and withdraw her candidacy, according to the lawsuit.

Avery said she apologized and told her mother, but would not resign or withdraw. Niehoff then dismissed her from the post and barred her from running for the office, according to the lawsuit.

As you can see, part of the issue here is that the campus and district administration took offense at the fact that students would engage in speech to encourage others to petition public officials for a redress of grievances. I've no doubt that Principal Niehoff and Superintendent Schwartz were taken aback that mere students would challenge their authority, and that they were then looking for a way to get back at the student signatories to the email. The problem is that this constitutes the very sort of speech that the First Amendment is intended to protect -- the right of citizens to make their voices heard by public officials.

That Avery Doninger then proceeded to write a blog entry some six hours after the end of the school day, using her own computer in her own home appears significant here. While her subject was a decision by the school to cancel the event, she was again speaking out on a matter of public concern and urging others to engage in lawful conduct to petition school officials for a redress of grievances. Again, that is the use of the First Amendment in a pure and clearly protected fashion -- and even the use of the (misspelled, uncomplimentary, but non-obscene) term "douchbag" does not remove First Amendment protection from her writing (remember Cohens v. California -- even the use of an F-bomb in a political context is ordinarily protected speech).

School officials, in my eyes, have crossed two very bright lines here. First, given the fact that the speech in this case falls in the realm of political speech on a matter of public importance (the operation of a public school and the decisions of public school officials on scheduling/canceling an event), any punishment, including the revocation of what school officials label as a privilege, constitutes an abridgment of freedom of speech.

Second, the fact that the speech for which Avery Doninger is being punished occurred entirely off campus, there is really not a sufficient nexus between it and the school for the administration to even involve itself. If, for example, the student had referred to Hillary Clinton as a "douchbag", could the school have taken action? I think the answer is clearly negative -- and indeed the school would not have tied to do so. Indeed, I'm reasonably confident that no action would have been taken had the young lady "flipped the bird" at a teacher in the parking lot of a local grocery store on a Saturday afternoon. It therefore cannot be said that her lack of respect for school authorities was the basis for her punishment.

No, what you have here is a pair of administrators taking personal offense at being challenged by a student, and choosing to make an example of her. In doing so, they intruded not just upon the student's First Amendment rights, but also upon the right of her mother to to discipline (or not discipline) her for legal activities permitted (or not permitted) in the home. Just as the school cannot impose a 24-hour dress code without violating the rights of the students and the parents, they cannot impose a 24-hour speech code, either. If, as held by the much circumscribed decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, students do not shed their liberties upon entering the schoolyard, the school has an even less pressing interest in regulating those liberties outside of school hours and away from the school grounds. Furthermore, since there was not even a hint of unlawful activity suggested in the blog entry, even the recently approved limits on student rights found in Morse v. Frederick do not seem to be applicable here.

By the way, I'd like to point out that, if the facts are as presented here (and the district seems to confirm them with their response to the suit), I'd argue that Avery Doninger pegged Principal Karissa Niehoff and Superintendent Paula Schwartz just about right. While I would question her use of the term "douchebag", their later actions show that she correctly understands them as power-maddened little totalitarians who fail to understand the limits of their authority and the scope of the First Amendment. They need to remember that Avery Doninger and her peers are students on the cusp of adulthood, not prisoners in a maximum security institution. As such, I'll be following this case closely and hoping to see Niehoff and Schwartz righteously slapped-down by every court in which this case is heard.

Excellent coverage at the case can be found at The Cool Justice Report:
Douche Bag Case In Court
Douche Bag Reprise
Police State Tactics
Principal DB Ducks
Write-In Vote Buried
Who Took The Call
Bill of Rights
Failure To Educate

UPDATE -- 7/18/2007: If the decision discussed in this article provides any guidance, I think that Niehoff, Schwartz, and the district need to get out their checkbooks and prepare to make a substantial contribution to Avery Doninger's college fund. After all, the school sought to punish significantly more disrespectful speech on the internet and was held to violate the student's rights under the First Amendment.

In Layshock, Justin Layshock, a Hermitage, Pa., high school senior, created a profile ridiculing his principal on MySpace. LayshockÂ’s profile was one of four of the principal on the Web site and the least offensive. As word of the profiles spread, school officials tried to block school computersÂ’ access to MySpace and to learn who created the other three profiles. The officials failed in these efforts but ultimately persuaded MySpace to disable the profiles.

During the week before the profiles were disabled, a few students accessed them from school computers and shared them with other students. Officials therefore canceled computer programming classes for five days and otherwise limited student computer use. As a result, several teachers revised lesson plans to convert in-class assignments requiring Internet access to homework and changed Internet research lessons to class discussions. Those discussions did not address the profiles, however, and teachers, following administratorsÂ’ directions, sent about 20 students to the office for mentioning the profiles during class.

After Layshock admitted creating his profile, administrators suspended him for 10 days, placed him in an alternative curriculum, banned him from participating in and attending extracurricular events and prohibited him from participating in the graduation ceremony. His parents then sued, claiming, among other things, that the punishments violated their sonÂ’s First Amendment rights.

McVerry agreed. In ruling for the parents on most aspects of their constitutional claim, McVerry refused to read the decision in Morse as expanding the deference due school officials. Rather, he read Morse narrowly, noting that one of the few things the splintered justices agreed upon was that the banner was school-related speech. Because Layshock did not create his profile at school, McVerry held Morse was “not controlling” of the case.

Given that Avery Doninger was punished over a single word in a post urging members of her community to petition a public official for a redress of grievances, there is no way that applying a similar standard of review to the one in Layshock would permit any punishment to be meted out by the school.

MORE AT ProfsBlawg, Appellate Law & Practice

Posted by: Greg at 09:28 AM | Comments (112) | Add Comment
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The issue is not one of needing to mix races or socio-economic classes in schools -- the issue is instead the need to make those schools more effective.

Sen. John Edwards plans to warn later this week that the nationÂ’s schools have become segregated by race and income, and he will propose measures to diversify both inner-city and middle-class schools.

The plan calls for beefing up inner-city magnet schools to attract suburban kids, and providing extra money for schools in middle-class areas as a reward for enrolling more low-income students.

Edwards seems to be hung up on the Magic Caucasian fallacy -- the absurd notion that getting a minority student next to a white student will somehow enable that minority students to learn in ways that they never could with another minority student sitting next to them. So rather than offering help in actually improving facilities, materials, and teachers, Edwards wants to dump more cash into a social engineering scheme of the sort that really hasn't ever worked to improve education.

And let's look at this quote from the candidate.

“We still have two public school systems in this country,” Edwards said. “They're not segregated just based on race. They're segregated, to a large extent, based on economics, which has racial implications.”

“The result is,” Edwards continued, “if you live in a wealthy suburban area, the odds are very high that your child will get a very good public school education. If you live in the inner city or if you live in a poor rural area, the odds of that go down dramatically. And I think there are very specific things we can do to not only improve the quality of the education in those areas but also to improve the quality of our schools at large.”

However, let's look at his contentions. Two educational systems? Yes, we do -- but they are public and private, not majority/minority or rich/poor. Interestingly enough, we know which system does better in many parts of our country -- but certain groups have a vested interest in making sure that the more effective one is not open to the poorest Americans. Edwards doesn't want to address that gap -- maybe because he wants someone else's children to be a part of that experiment in achieving diversity of ethnicity and social class, but not his own. I'll be more willing to accept that he believes in that diversity when he commits to enrolling his kids in predominantly minority, low SES public school.

Let's consider this contention -- “The result is,” Edwards continued, “if you live in a wealthy suburban area, the odds are very high that your child will get a very good public school education.

Now Edwards has a point here -- but there are a number of factors involved there. Parental involvement tends to be higher, and that has a marked effect on student performance. So, too, does the parents in those areas are more likely to have at least a college degree, if not a graduate level education. There is an expectation of achievement, and parents have the ability to help students with their work. No amount of government money to mix races or economic levels can fix those things -- and the money spent on moving bodies would be better spent on tutoring programs and other academic support services.

And Edwards doesn't recognize that his plan can't solve some of the problems he points to -- If you live in the inner city or if you live in a poor rural area, the odds of that go down dramatically.

Well, maybe you can encourage some of that mixing in a bigger urban district, but doing so in a rural district is not so easy. Look, for example, at west Texas -- sometimes you have schools that are 50-75 miles apart. How are you going to mix anything when there is only one high school in the county? Again, the issue is one of improving what you have, not changing the racial mix.

And while I'm talking about improving programs and facilities, I am not necessarily saying that money is the end-all and be-all of educational reform. Good grief -- the public schools in Washington, DC spends almost as much money per pupil as any district in the country, but still doesn't have results that anyone would be proud of. More rich white kids aren't the answer.

Posted by: Greg at 01:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I guess that crime really does pay -- if you are an immigration criminal.

At least 10 undocumented students from Colorado will get to attend classes at the University of New Mexico this fall, with many not having to pay for tuition or books.

A new Colorado law prohibits state colleges from providing in- state tuition to undocumented immigrants.

In New Mexico, the state is barred from denying education benefits based on immigration status, said Terry Babbitt, director of admissions for the University of New Mexico.

While New Mexico's state financial aid is intended for residents, Poudre High School counselor Isabel Thacker in Colorado found a way for her students to receive in-state tuition, plus scholarships to cover it.

A full year of tuition at UNM, or 12 credit hours per semester, costs $4,570.80, said Alex Gonzalez, associate director of the scholarship office at UNM. An institutional scholarship available to undocumented students covers $5,000 of their tuition and book expenses.

Yeah, you read that right -- illegal immigrants getting a free ride to college. Though I do notice one little detail here -- thee is no provision made for housing. Are they going to work -- illegally, of course, like everything else they do in this country -- or are they going to somehow find another way of sucking more money from the taxpaying citizens? Or will there be some individual or organization (aside from the University of New Mexico, of course) aiding and abetting their continued violation of the laws of the United States?

And given that New Mexico law requires this outcome, why isn't the federal government cutting off all funds to post-secondary institutions in the state of New Mexico?

Posted by: Greg at 02:29 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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And so another educational opportunity goes down in flames in the name of political correctness.

Montgomery County educators are replacing a lesson that called for students to read about and discuss a racial epithet against African Americans as a precursor to reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in ninth-grade English classes.

The lesson, called "Questionable Words," focused on two reading selections, an essay and a poem, each dealing with the epithet and how the author was hurt by its use. Curriculum officials reexamined the lesson after an African American student told the school board in the fall that the class had upset her.

"What we heard from enough community members and some teachers is that it's sensitive, it's emotionally charged," said Betsy Brown, curriculum director for Montgomery schools. "And if we have a lesson that could be misused and cause real hurt to a few or to a whole classroom of kids, then maybe we need to change it."

When I still taught English (I escaped the English Department six years ago), I taught just such a lesson that contextualized the use of the word in To Kill a Mockingbird. We discussed why the word was used, how it helped define the social structure of Macomb, and why the word and the issue of race were important in terms of when the book itself was written. I even intentionally scheduled my annual appraisal, by an African-American assistant principal, on the day I first taught the lesson, and was later told that she appreciated my sensitivity in handling the issue and my courage (as a first year teacher in the school) for asking to have her in my room that day. Not once did I ever have a student complain about it -- because they recognized that harper Lee was trying to make her characters talk the way that real people would have talked in such a situation, and that her goal was to paint the ugliness of racism.

Sadly, it looks like the children in this district are about to lose such a lesson -- one that seems vitally important as we have a national discussion about the propriety of ever using that word in art, literature, and daily conversation.

Posted by: Greg at 01:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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After being faced with a five-month witch-hunt investigation, the College Republicans at San Francisco State University are suing to have the school's speech code struck down and the First Amendment upheld in its place.

San Francisco State University was sued for allegedly violating students' right to free speech when it investigated an incident during which students stomped on flags bearing the name of Allah.

The Alliance Defense Fund and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs — the College Republicans club and two of its members.

The case charges the university with having violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights by dragging them through a five-month investigation and campus tribunal after they stepped on Hamas and Hezbollah flags during an anti-terrorism rally. The flags bear the Muslim name for God, Allah.

"The Supreme Court ruled long ago that the First Amendment protects the right to burn even an American flag in political protest," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said in a statement. "There are no special protections for Hamas and Hezbollah flags. SFSU knew this, and there is no excuse for putting these students through a five-month ordeal."

remember -- this is a school that also regularly allows anti-Semitic rallies in support of the Terrorstinian cause, but which has punished Jewish students who have been assaulted while counter-protesting. And lest the religious favoritism of the school's policies and practices be lost, please remember that the school's spokesperson made it clear that the CRs who are suing now were investigated and prosecuted under the school's speech code for "the desecration of Allah" -- a sign that there is a grievous double-standard regarding religious speech and an establishment of the religion of Islam as uniquely protected by this state university.

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When making distinctions will get you sued, you have to treat a butterknife and a broadsword the same.

Or adolescent words of love the same as gang graffiti.

Shelby Sendelbach, a sixth-grader in the Katy Independent School District, was read her rights, ticketed and punished with a mandatory four-month assignment to an alternative school because she wrote "I love Alex" on a gymnasium wall with a baby blue Sharpie.

The graffiti offense is a Level 4 infraction in the district's discipline plan, along with making terroristic threats, possessing dangerous drugs, and assaulting with bodily injury. Only a Level 5 — for murder, possessing firearms, committing aggravated or sexual assault, arson or other felonies — is more severe.

Shelby's parents, Lisa and Stu Sendelbach, say they do not condone what their daughter did. Nevertheless, they are fighting to get her punishment reduced because they believe it is too harsh.

The Sendelbachs said they expected a lesser punishment such as an in-school suspension and community service. Shelby is assigned to alternative school from Aug. 27 through Dec. 21. A district-level appeal hearing is scheduled later this month.

"We are shocked that the school district rules as they are written make no distinction between what Shelby is accused of and what a gang member does with a can of black spray paint," Stu Sendelbach said.

The 12-year-old Mayde Creek Junior High student said she regrets the May 21 incident for which school police cited her for criminal mischief and the making of graffiti. The graffiti offense is punishable as a felony because the marking was made in permanent ink.

And the reality is that Katy ISD is know for its strict zero tolerance policies, so don't expect any mercy for this girl. After all, that would give the gang kid who tagged up the entire building or the kid who threatened to blow up the building a chance to claim that they were discriminated against.

Interestingly enough, state law does NOT require this outcome.

But Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, disagreed. Eissler co-authored House Bill 603 in 2005, which gives administrators more latitude to consider disciplinary history, intent, whether a student has a disability that would impair judgment or acted in self-defense in deciding punishment.

"They have all the leeway they want," he said. "They didn't have to hammer this young lady the way they did. That's why I wrote HB 603 — to give school districts authority to back off the black-and-white justice."

I won't take a position on what the appropriate punishment is in this case -- but I think we can all agree that an entire semester in the alternative school for the most severe disciplinary problems, including violent felons, is probably not it.

UPDATE -- 7/11/07: Common sense may prevail.

The Katy Independent School District is reconsidering a decision to send a sixth-grader to alternative school for four months after she confessed to writing "I love Alex" on a school gymnasium wall with a baby blue Sharpie.

Under a firestorm of criticism, the district is researching discipline options for Shelby Sendelbach, a 12-year-old Mayde Creek Junior High School pupil who was punished by the district with a Level 4 infraction after writing the message in permanent ink.

The graffiti offense — on par with making terroristic threats, drug possession and assault — is punishable as a felony under the district's discipline plan. Only a Level 5 is more severe — for murder, possessing firearms, aggravated or sexual assault and arson.

We'll know more next week.

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Posted by: Greg at 02:42 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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