School administrators have a problem when it comes to criminal conduct by students. They can be by-the-book and support the most severe possible charges against a kid who has broken the law. Or they can call it a school disciplinary matter and never call the cops. Or, as a middle ground, they can arrange with the cops for many offenses to be treated in a less serious manner that results in a ticket rather than an arrest.

Kenneth Trump, a national authority on school safety who testified before Congress on Monday, says the underreporting of disciplinary incidents in area schools is part of "a historical culture of downplay, deny, deflect and defend when it comes to publicly acknowledging and reporting school crimes." It's driven, experts say, by an overarching concern among school principals to protect their image and that of their school.

"If you're the administrator and you report what happened, you may get blamed," said Jean O'Neil, director of research and evaluation at the National Crime Prevention Council in Washington. "If you're the administrator and you don't report what happened, you may get blamed."

And more to the point, that blame does not just come from the general public. A lot of disciplinary decisions get questioned by vocal parents, whose first phone call is to the Superintendent. When it involves an arrest, you can bet that call is going to be made. Assuming, of course, that the parent doesn't call the press and start to cry racism. It is often easier to give the kids a break on lesser offenses and treat them as mere disciplinary matters -- which will have the double impact of keeping the crime statistics down

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What next – a memorial to Cho at Virginia Tech?

The father of a University of Oklahoma student who died after a homemade explosive he was carrying detonated near a packed football stadium said the placement of a memorial to the young man on campus wasn't his idea.

A football fan attending OU's Red-White game on April 7 spotted a stone paver outside the student union with Joel Henry Hinrichs III's name on it.

"I was just kind of horrified," Jenny Clemons told The Oklahoman. "I don't think he has any business being out here."

The school's student affairs division arranged to have the stone placed, an OU alumni affairs employee said. Families pay for such memorials, which cost about $150, officials said, but Hinrichs' father told the newspaper the school offered to place the stone and never billed him.

Hinrichs, an engineering student, died Oct. 1, 2005, when his bomb went off as he sat on a campus bench not far from Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, where a night game was being played.

The FBI investigated whether the 21-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., resident tried or intended to enter the stadium but reported finding no conclusive evidence.

Joel Hinrichs Jr., the student's father, said OU's dean of students, Clarke Stroud, offered to have the stone placed. In an e-mail, the father told The Oklahoman the dean "very kindly understood that Joel's act was one of loneliness, not of aggression, and offered to have the stone placed in the memorial courtyard; he also indicated that the wife of the university president might select a tree to be placed on campus, also in Joel III's memory."

Even if we presume (just for a minute) that Hinrichs didn’t intend to detonate the bomb at the game, the mere fact that he made it and detonated it in a public place is sufficient to make the memorial inappropriate and unseemly – and the appropriation of public funds for that purpose outrageous.

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For the second time this month, an attempt by liberal student governments to punish conservative speech they disliked has been beaten back – this time at the University of Rhode Island. Or has it been?

College Republicans at the University of Rhode Island won't have to apologize for sponsoring a satirical scholarship for white, heterosexual men.

Instead, URI's student Senate says it will ask the Republican group to write letters to the 40 people who applied explaining that the scholarship was fake and that a newspaper advertisement for it was intended purely as satire.

Applicants were asked to write about what it means to be a "white, heterosexual American male" and to describe any adversity they had dealt with and overcome.

A student Senate committee had demanded an apology and threatened to cut off funding and other perks. But the entire Senate instead decided to ask the group to send clarification letters to the applicants.

Frankly, I find even that much of a sanction unacceptable, but acknowledging in writing what has always been acknowledged (that the scholarship was an act of satire) is not worth fighting.

Unfortunately, there does appear to be another element that is more disturbing.

The senate also added an amendment requiring the College Republicans to notify the governing body about its activities and events. The bill only allows the senate to act as an adviser.

LaRocca originally opposed the bill when it was written in the committee, but changed her views after the amendments. "I still have my concerns that this may not happen the way we want it to, but I am going to try to look on the bright side and work on it in the best way that I can," she said.

Another amendment stated, "If the URI College Republicans fail to follow through with the actions outlined in this bill to the satisfaction of the senate, then their recognition status shall be revoked for one year."

Cavanaugh said not to worry about the College Republicans. "I guarantee that they are going to follow through with this," he said.

So the threat of derecognition remains over the head of the College Republicans because they engaged in a constitutionally protected activity. As such, I donÂ’t know that we can really say that freedom won.

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Do your homework, go to jail – if it troubles your teacher.

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

So let’s see – writing an essay assigned by a teacher has gotten this boy arrested and sent to a different school, despite the fact that he made no threats towards anyone. Why? An over-reaction to the Hokie Horror.

I’m curious. Are we going to start arresting Hollywood types – directors, producers, screenwriters, actors – for their creation of “violently disturbing” movies and television shows?

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As I reported yesterday -- a school burns down, and the biggest concern of the state of Texas is -- making sure the kids retake the TAKS test since the answer sheets from the original administration were destroyed in the fire.

State education officials have approved a plan to let high school students whose TAKS tests burned up in a deliberately set fire to retake the exams, possibly as early as next week, officials said.

The test results were destroyed when the fire heavily damaged Needville High School early Monday in rural Fort Bend County. The tests were administered last week.

"Once we determine a date when they are actually going to conduct the testing, then we will ship those materials out to them," Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman said Tuesday.

Marchman said the tests could be sent to Needville at the end of this week so that ninth-, 10th-, and 11th-grade students could take the state-mandated exams sometime next week.

The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills is an annual statewide standardized test used to measure student and school performance.

Classes for high schoolers will resume Monday with students going to school on a staggered schedule, said Needville Independent School District Superintendent Curtis Rhodes.

"With the classroom space that is available, we will just kind of double up and share the classrooms," Rhodes said.

Only 19 instructional days remain in the school year.

Like they don't have better things to do with those last four weeks of school.

Shameful -- just shameful!

Posted by: Greg at 10:41 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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A headline from today's Houston Chronicle.

Arson Hits Needville high School; TAKS Tests Destroyed

Excuse me? The first concern is the destruction of the testing material from last week? What about the impact on hundreds of students and the community as a whole.

Oh, maybe this explains the focus of the headline.

[School Board President Jim] Kocian said TAKS tests were in the building, but he did not think the destruction of the tests was the reason behind the fire. "Even if the TAKS tests are destroyed, they have to retake them. So they don't accomplish anything by that," he said.

Yeah, neve mind those science labs and administrative offices -- the kids need to retake those tests so that they can be "assessed". Never mind that there might be things that need a little bit of a higher priority right now.

Then again, is there a glimmer of hope for common sense here?.

No decision has been made about the TAKS tests taken last week by high school students. The answer sheets were still in the office, waiting to be sent Monday to TEA offices in Austin for scoring. Passage of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge Skills test is required for graduation.

Texas Education Commissioner Shirley J. Neeley, who was traveling Monday, will talk with Rhodes by telephone and probably decide today what to do about the TAKS test, said agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson.

Culbertson said experts at the state agency don't recall a whole district's test papers being lost in a fire before. "We have had boxes of tests come up missing, and there was one time when a box fell off an airplane," she said.

Here's hoping that Neeley exercises a little prudence and common sense and simply waives the requirement this year -- if she is able to do so under state law.

Because state testing should be the lowest priority for Needville ISD right about now.

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Some folks -- especially academics -- just have to be the center of attention.

Sheriff's investigators arrested and charged a Calhoun Community College instructor with making a terrorist threat against herself following the Virginia Tech massacre.

Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely said Penelope Blankenship, 43, of Decatur was arrested Friday on the felony charge and released on $5,000 bond.

Calhoun officials said Blankenship, a criminal justice and psychology instructor, has been placed on administrative leave.

She's accused of leaving threatening voice mail messages against herself. The messages made reference to Monday's Virginia Tech massacre, saying "you next," according to a campus police report.

Campus police also received a threatening phone call in connection with the same incident.

The caller was initially identified as a former student of Blankenship's, but further investigation indicated that the calls came from Blankenship herself, through Calhoun's switchboard to campus security and to her own voice mail, investigators said.

How can a woman who would appear to be so smart be so dumb?

H/T Michelle Malkin

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From the minute that the Texas State University for Negroes was established as a Jim Crow institution to prevent the desegregation of the state's white colleges and universities, it has been a failure. It took only a few years for the United States Supreme Court to declare it was a sub-standard institution that was unequal by any measure. Through decades of scandal and mismanagement at Texas Southern University, however, the black community has embraced this remnant of Jim Crow, a shining example of the inherent inequality of "separate but equal", which is little more than a four year community college with a graduate program and a law school.

The governor and legislature are looking for a fix for the school -- something I believe to be impossible, given the track record of "fixes" over the last decade. TSU is simply unable to stand as an independent institution.

But that does not keep certain black leaders from insisting that it must.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee vowed Saturday to stop Gov. Rick Perry's attempt to place Texas Southern University under conservatorship in the wake of the latest financial problems at the 11,000-student institution.

Jackson Lee said she wants the U.S. Department of Education to intervene, alleging that conservatorship would be a strict violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, imposing "undue burdens on black students."

The governor announced plans April 13 to appoint a conservator to control spending.

The individual selected would also have the ability to fire and hire any employee, and to change the administrative structure at the nation's second-largest historically black university.

Conservatorship has never occurred at any Texas university or college.

Sylvia Brooks, president of the Houston Area Urban League, said state funding to compensate for the university's "decades of neglect" and a "great board" would be able to solve the current financial problems.

But the problem is that TSU has had a "great board" in the past, made up of respected alumni and state African-American leaders. The last time a great president was brought in to make sure that the university was well-managed, she ripped off TSU so bad that she and a number of aides were indicted for their actions.

And then there is this propaganda piece.

Texas Southern continues its proud tradition of welcoming students the Texas public schools have failed. And while these nontraditional students tend not to graduate within the traditional four or even six years, there is a strong indication they eventually do graduate, have increased earning capacity and contribute largely to the Texas economy.

Texas Southern University is often compared with Prairie View A&M. Both are historically black universities. Prairie View's success is often attributed to being part of the Texas A&M system. Largely overlooked, Prairie View is not an open admissions university; it has specific academic criteria for the admission of students that closes its doors to the Cliffords and Thomases and Bettys.

TSU has always been here for Texas. We must ensure that it remains a viable institution so that it will continue to be.

And therein lies the biggest problem with TSU -- it has NO STANDARDS for admission! And while that may have been a great thing in the days before the state of Texas had a large system of community colleges, it does not make sense today and cannot be defended. the former president of TSU and local community leader who wrote this piece cannot even be troubled to cite statistics on graduation rates becauee they know TSU is a failure in that regard, too.

Community pride and an indefensible mission are not reason to keep the school open as an independent institution. And the difficulties TSU has had for decades places "undue burdens on black students" every bit as much as the conservatorship plan does.

There exist three options for dealing with TSU if conservatorship is not an option.

1) Close TSU. It is a failed experiment in racial segregation and standardless academics that wastes the money of the people of Texas. Or in the alternative, divest the state of TSU and let it become a private school that supports itself without the flood of public money that is going down a rathole.

2) Do nothing. Just continue to send the money down the rathole.

3) Merge TSU into the University of Houston system. Given that TSU is only a few blocks away from the main campus of the University of Houston, it seems to me that this is a viable Now this could take two forms -- either full incorporation of TSU into UH, or maintaining TSU as a separate institution that continues to operate with its own lax academic standards. While I view the latter possibility as less desirable, it at least has the advantage of providing much stronger oversight for the school, providing it the strength of leadership the school so desperately needs.

TSU is a mess. Will black leaders actually lead in fixing the problem, or will they obstruct any possible solution because the school is a "black thing" -- despite the fact that its budget comes out of the pockets of every taxpayer in the state of Texas. Will they allow TSU to become the sort of institution it ought to be in the twenty-first century -- or insist that it remain what it has been, a sub-standard Jim Crow institution?

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If you are going to permit students to express themselves about sexuality in schools, can you punish a kid for "coming out" as being the wrong one?

Oakridge High School in Muskegon, Michigan, is one of many schools across the U.S. that took part in Wednesday's "National Day of Silence" -- an event promoted heavily by homosexual activist groups, which view it as a day to protest alleged discrimination faced by students who identify as "gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT)." At Oakridge High, duct tape was passed out for students to wear over their lips as a way to show solidarity with homosexual students who are purportedly suffering in silence.

John Gardner is pastor of Holton Family Life Worship Center in Holton, a community of approximately 2,500 about 17 miles northeast of Muskegon. Pastor Gardner says his 15-year-old son David, a student at Oakridge High, was suspended for a day by the school because he wrote with a black marker "I'm straight" on a piece of duct tape and attached it to his shirt. He explains that David donned the message to voice his objection to the school's participation in the Day of Silence.

"They asked him, at that point, to take it off," Gardner says, "and David [asked] why do the rest of the kids in the class get to wear theirs and I can't wear something about what I believe?" According to the pastor, the teacher then instructed David to remove the message or he would be "kicked out" of class. "And he said, 'Well then, you'll have to kick me out' -- and that's what they did," says David's father.

There is absolutely no way that any school official could possibly argue that the sticker in question created a material disruption or the threat of one. There was no denigration of anyone -- merely the assertion of the student's sexual orientation as a heterosexual. Given that the school was sponsoring speech about sexuality that day, there can be no denying that the school had opened up itself up as a forum for the topic -- and I somehow doubt that a kid who had written "I'm Gay" on the duct tape and worn it would have bee silenced and suspended.

Don't these people know about Tinker v. Des Moines?

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Posted by: Greg at 11:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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But only the ones who engage in speech that is "crazy".

It's probably more effective, though, to find and remove these potential killers — and try to deny them the most lethal hardware. That means we must detain them for their words and deny them guns.

As we see time and again, the right to bear arms and be crazy is a deadly combination.

And given the Left's willingness to classify opposition to certain political agenda's as a form of mental illness (ie "homophobia" -- the moral belief that there is something wrong with homosexual behavior, as was the clear and consistent Christian teaching ofevery Christian denomination until until only few years ago; or "Islamophobia" -- the opposition to jihadi terrorism), this is rather frightening. But then again, we've already seen where such detentions of the "mentally ill" because of their exercise of the right to freedom of speech -- it was a favorite tactic in the Soviet Union to crack down on dissent.

But given Cragg Hines' Froma Harrop's opposition to the Second Amendment, it isn't surprising to see him willing to abandon the First Amendment as well. She's just a little bit more honest about it than the average left-winger.

UPDATE: I was notified about the error in identifying the author of the piece earlier today, and fixed it as soon as I came home.

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This from an article about the consequences of the state of Texas appointing a conservator to begin fixing the problems at Texas Southern University -- which could include the loss of accreditation by the school for not having a multi-member board of directors.

Beyond degrading the value of degrees earned at TSU....

Given the reputation of this corrupt open-enrollment school -- which is little more than a four-year community college with a graduate program and a law school -- I don't think that the loss of accreditation could do much harm to the value of a TSU degree.

UPDATE: Well, at least the Houston Chronicle is willing to call for the state to do something about this pathetic institution. But in typical fashion, TSU regents are unwilling to act in the best interests of the school.

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After all, why should the Constitution get in the way of imposing political correctness and silencing conservatives who dissent from the liberal orthodoxy?

Displaying a dramatic disregard for students’ constitutional rights, a committee of the University of Rhode Island (URI) Student Senate voted on Monday to derecognize the College Republicans student group. For months, the Student Senate has demanded that the group publicly apologize for advertising a satirical $100 “scholarship” for white, heterosexual, American males. The College Republicans refused to apologize and contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help. FIRE is now calling upon URI President Robert Carothers, who has already informed the Senate that it could not compel student speech, to reverse the decision to derecognize the group.

“Neither the Student Senate nor anyone else at URI has the power to force the College Republicans to say things against their will,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “As bad as it may be to tell people what they cannot say, it is still worse to tell them what they must say. The Supreme Court has long recognized that compelled speech is not compatible with free societies. It is stunning that URI’s student government would show such contempt for fundamental rights, especially after URI’s own president explained it to them.”

The College Republicans student organization first advertised the satirical “White, Heterosexual, American Male” “scholarship” in November, 2006. The scholarship consisted of a nominal $100 to be awarded to someone fitting those criteria who submitted an application and an essay on the adversities he has faced. College Republicans President Ryan Bilodeau explained that the point was to use satire to protest scholarships awarded on the basis of race, gender, or nationality. Over 40 URI students applied for the “scholarship,” many submitting equally satirical application essays.

In a meeting on February 19, the Student Senate’s Student Organizations Advisory and Review Committee (SOARC) prohibited the College Republicans from disbursing the money. The group agreed that it would not give out the $100, but SOARC decided that even advertising the satirical “scholarship” violated URI’s anti-discrimination bylaws and demanded that the group publish an apology in the campus newspaper. Unwilling to apologize, Bilodeau appealed SOARC’s decision. The Senate denied that appeal.

FIRE wrote to Senate President Neil Cavanaugh on March 13, stating that because the Student Senate derives its authority from a public university, it must comply with the First Amendment prohibition on compelled speech. The Student Senate, however, in a memo to the College Republicans on March 27, ruled again that the College Republicans must publish an apology and claimed authority to force them to do so. That sanction was later reduced to an “explanation” to be published in the campus newspaper and a mandatory apology to be sent to all of the students who applied for the scholarship.

The College Republicans agreed to publish an explanation of its intentions, but refused to write any apologies. FIRE wrote to URI President Robert Carothers the following day to urge him to intervene in the situation. FIRE wrote, “URI administrators have a legal duty to step in where the Student Senate has failed and to check its attempt to trample upon students’ most basic freedom of conscience.” And in a letter dated April 6, President Carothers did indeed instruct the Senate in no uncertain terms to drop its unconstitutional demand for an apology. Carothers wrote that the mandatory apology “does not meet constitutional standards as laid forth in the First Amendment and in subsequent court decisions interpreting the standard.”

But at a meeting on Monday night, SOARC nonetheless unanimously voted to ignore both its constitutional obligations and CarothersÂ’ directive and derecognize the College Republicans for refusing to issue an apology. SOARCÂ’s decision will be voted on by the entire Student Senate on Wednesday, April 25.

FIRE wrote another letter to Carothers yesterday calling upon him to immediately reverse SOARC’s decision to derecognize the group. FIRE wrote that “y fulfilling this responsibility as a public official, you can teach the Senate leadership that they must respect the rights of URI students and help to instill in them an understanding of the full repercussions for repeatedly and recklessly defying the Constitution.”

“URI’s student government thinks it is above the law—that it can take fees extracted from students by a state university and yet ignore the constitutional obligations that come with them. It is sadly mistaken,” Lukianoff said. “President Carothers must act now to stop this rogue organization from conducting these unlawful acts under the aegis of the university.”

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nationÂ’s colleges and universities. FIREÂ’s efforts to preserve liberty universities across America can be viewed at www.thefire.org.

It strikes me that only one course of action is open to President Carothers -- using his authority as the president of the University of Rhode Island to disband the Student SenateÂ’s Student Organizations Advisory and Review Committee and the entire Student Senate, replacing them with organizations that clearly and unambiguously are bound by the United States Constitution (which those two organizations legally are though they claim otherwise) and which accept the limitations that the Bill of Rights imposes upon them.

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On the morning after the Columbine massacre, one of my 11th graders asked me what I would do if a gunman were to enter our school -- an especially pressing issue given that the classroom was on an inside corridor with no windows and only one door.

My response?

"I would put myself between you guys and the guy with the gun -- and pray that you would get out even if I didn't."

On Monday, Professor Liviu Librescu did exactly that for his students.

As Jews worldwide honored on Monday the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust, a 76-year-old survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech College that left 33 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said Librescu's son, Joe.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

Librescu was respected in his field, his son said.

"His work was his life, in a sense," said Joe. "That was a good place for him to practice his research."

I honor the sacrifice and memory of Liviu Librescu, and hope that I will have the strength to emulate him if ever faced with his choice -- and pray I never have to do so.

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I spent my first couple of years of college in Lexington, VA, just up the road from Blacksburg. I've always had an affection for that school, as opposed to the snootier UVA. For that reason, today's horror cuts to the heart.

An outburst of gunfire at a Virginia Tech dormitory, followed two hours later by a ruthless string of attacks at a classroom building, killed 32 students, faculty and staff and wounded about 30 others yesterday in the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation's history.

The shooter, whose name was not released last night, carried two 9mm semiautomatic handguns and wore blue jeans, a blue jacket and a vest holding additional ammunition, law enforcement officials and witnesses said. Witnesses described the shooter as a young man of Asian descent -- a silent killer who was calm and showed no expression as he pursued and shot his victims. He killed himself as police closed in.

It will be interesting to learn why this evil happened, though it will not bring back the dead or heal the wounded and grieving.

But there is another point that has to be made.

Virginia Tech is a gun-free school. Students, employees, and visitors are not allowed to bring their guns to campus, even if they have a concealed carry permit and have met all of the stringent requirements to get one.

And so the law-abiding adults of Virginia Tech were disarmed by government policy.

As this murderer calmly executed his victims, not one had the means to actually engage in self-defense. As he massacred these innocents, not one of them could stop the evil-doer. All they could do was wait for help to arrive -- and die waiting.

Because you see, in the name of some sort of illusory security, these adult citizens were stripped of the essential liberty to defend one's own life -- while one man intent upon mayhem was unconcerned about the niceties of the campus gun ban.

Some will use this event to call for more gun control. That is not the solution. Rather, more guns in the hands of more trained and licensed individuals would have made Virginia Tech a safer place today -- and that is an equation that I would contend would be true at any college or university in the country.

Or in (almost) any workplace or any shopping mall.

Or any public place, for that matter.

How many more tragedies will it take, with disarmed citizens slaughtered like sheep, before America will wake up to the reality that more guns in more hands equals more safety?

Because, to use a trite cliche that happens to be true, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.

That is the lesson to draw from today's carnage.

UPDATE: Here's a thought from one of the disarmed concealed carry permit holders who attends Virginia Tech -- WRITTEN FOLLOWING LAST FALL'S INCIDENT.

Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness.

That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.

I would also like to point out that when I mentioned to a professor that I would feel safer with my gun, this is what she said to me, “I would feel safer if you had your gun.”

The policy that forbids students who are legally licensed to carry in Virginia needs to be changed.

I am qualified and capable of carrying a concealed handgun and urge you to work with me to allow my most basic right of self-defense, and eliminate my entrusting my safety and the safety of my classmates to the government.

This incident makes it clear that it is time that Virginia Tech and the commonwealth of Virginia let me take responsibility for my safety.

Doesn't that argument look quite reasonable in light of the unfolding horror at Virginia Tech?

H/T Gates of Vienna, Combs Spouts Off

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Personally, having sat through her seminars as part of school in-service trainings, I would say yes.

According to Ruby K. Payne, a consultant to school systems locally and nationwide, teachers should know a few things about poor people.

The Texas-based author says in her book "A Framework for Understanding Poverty": Parents in poverty typically discipline children by beating or verbally chastising them; poor mothers may turn to sex for money and favors; poor students laugh when they get in trouble at school; and low-income parents tend to "beat around the bush" during parent-teacher conferences, instead of getting to the point.

In the past several years, at least five school systems in the Washington area have turned to Payne's lessons, books and workshops.

But many academics say her works are riddled with unverifiable assertions. At the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in Chicago last week, professors from the University of Texas at Austin delivered a report on Payne that argued that more than 600 of her descriptions of poverty in "Framework" cannot be proved true.

"She claims there is a single culture of poverty that people live in. It's an idea that's been discredited since at least the 1960s," said report co-author Randy Bomer.

My biggest criticism of her is that she is as much about instilling stereotypes as she is about tearing them down -- and many of those stereotypes are not healthy.

"She seems to be always stereotyping," Natialy Walker, Prince William's professional development supervisor, said during a staff meeting about Payne last month. "If only we could get away from all the labels and move beyond that."

I teach kids who are poor and minority -- nearly 70% of our kids are on free and reduced lunch, and we are only 12.5% white. And I've found that many of these stereotypes are false -- and get in the way of communicating with students and parents. This is especially true when we deal with Hispanic kids, because they often come from a very different culture from that upon which Payne bases her stereotypes.

Posted by: Greg at 02:03 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Incompetence run amok at the school justifies this action.

Gov. Rick Perry asked Texas Southern University's regents to resign Friday in favor of a single conservator with extraordinary powers to make changes at the financially troubled school.

The governor did not announce who the conservator would be, but campus leaders have heard the name of Kerney Laday, a TXU Corp. board member and retired Xerox Corp. executive.

Pending Senate confirmation, Laday, 65, would be placed in charge of the university's spending, with the ability to fire any employee, hire new people and change the administrative structure. The conservator would likely be in place for a year, said Krista Moody, a spokeswoman for the governor.

The proposed move comes after a series of financial missteps and a spending scandal that led to criminal charges against the university's former president, Priscilla Slade, and three aides.

The state Senate and House leadership first must appoint a committee to authorize Perry's recommendation of conservatorship. Confirmation of his choice would come later.

"Conservatorship will bring a strong leader to the forefront of the university to reinstate accountability, take immediate and decisive action to correct mismanagement, and make the fiscal decisions necessary to get TSU back on track," the governor said in a statement.

I still have a better idea -- merge the school with the well-run, academically strong University of Houston, which is a matter of blocks away. That will strengthen the school and provide it with a much more stable source of leadership and funding. Keep it as a separate entity in the UH system, at a bare minimum, but provide such a step will provide it with the sort of support the institution really needs -- and keep it from continuing to be little more than a community college with a law school and a graduate program.

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Now here's an education conundrum that I don't have an answer to.

Tatyana McFadden has spent the last two years fighting for inclusion. The 17-year-old Paralympic wheelchair racer wants a chance, she said, to compete like anybody else: alongside able-bodied teammates, with results that count for Atholton High School's track and field team.

And now, after so much work, she feels more ostracized than ever before.

What began as a disabled athlete's hopeful journey to break down barriers has evolved into an unsentimental debate about whether all barriers need to be broken down. McFadden considers her equal participation a civil right; many track athletes and coaches consider it an unnecessary threat to the integrity of their sport.

In March, McFadden filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the state of Maryland treat her the same as all athletes at the state track and field championships -- her second lawsuit in a year. In doing so, she has forced Maryland to consider how to best combine wheelchair races and runners, a dilemma that thousands of road races face each year. McFadden's court date has yet to be determined, but Maryland's track community already has rendered its verdict.

Teammates worry about safety while running on the track while McFadden is racing, reaching speeds up to 20 mph. Competitors think Atholton, a public school in Columbia, will dominate meets because of the points the high school junior would earn by racing in a wheelchair division that consists of only herself. On Internet message boards and in private conversations, runners pose various forms of the same question: For McFadden, who won two medals at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens and continues to travel the world to compete, is a spot on the high school track team worth this much tumult?

And to be honest, I don't have an answer to these questions -- and I'm glad I don't have to be the one to answer them. I'm throwing this one out for you folks to discuss -- what do you think?

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A literary legend passes.

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and Â’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

My personal favorite among the works of Kurt Vonnegut -- which I commend to you as my form of tribute to the great author -- is Harrison Bergeron.

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When I attended Washington and Lee, one of the best courses I took was "The Bible as English Literature". As a pretty lukewarm Christian (searching for faith, but bordering on agnosticism), I came to see the beauty of the Good Book -- and found my faith. But I came to understand that text in a different way as well, as a literary and historical document that may be read on many different levels. And quite honestly, I'd love to teach such a course on the high school level.

But I do not believe that the state of Texas should mandate that such a course should be offered by every school district as an elective.

STATE Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, has proposed a bill that would require all Texas public school districts to offer high school students an elective course in the history and literature of the Old and New Testaments. Chisum, who heads the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, arguably the most powerful committee in either chamber, insists that the Bible would be used as "the basic textbook" for such courses, "not a worship document." The bill would require districts to make a Bible course available if at least 15 students signed up for it.

Terrific — on its face. The Bible has had a tremendous influence on Western civilization, and Texas students could benefit from studying its impact on all areas of American life, laws and culture. But given the record of most schools that already have such programs, the lack of resources available and the apparent motivation of the bill's author, the courses would wind up being oriented toward a particular branch of Christianity and therefore discriminatory, opening the way for court challenges.

The Chronicle then continues with a shameful attack on the religious beliefs of the bill's author -- but a cogent problem with the Bible-related courses taught in a handful of schools around the state. And it is those problems that lead me to object to this bill -- the lack of standards, materials, and safe-guards in place to keep these courses from becoming "religious education" classes.

But more important from my point of view is this -- the reality that many districts lack the resources to add this elective course, and too many of my colleagues around the state lack the training to teach this class as it should be taught -- an objective study of a beautiful text, not a devotional study of a work of faith. And as such, i think the bill must be defeated as well-intended but unwise.

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Good grief! The Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that a student cannot be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't the folks at Lewisville High School know that, since it is covered in every every school law class?

A student who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance has been given a two-day suspension from Lewisville High.

He says, saying the pledge violates his religious beliefs.

The school district says his behavior is a distraction to the rest of the classroom.

The problem is, his "distraction" was his refusal to say the words of the Pledge, nothing more. And since the kid is a Jehovah's Witness, just like the kids in the 193 case of West Virginia v. Barnette, there is not any basis for distinguishing between what this young man, Adrian Boykin, is doing today and what those students were doing 64 years ago.

"The only thing I pledge allegiance to is God, not a flag. It's cloth to me."

Boykin's family follows the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

They believe the pledge equates to worshiping an image or object above God.

"You're not supposed to put any idol before God," said Boykin's mother, Kolette.

Adrian Boykin says after several months in class, his teacher at Lewisville High finally noticed him not reciting the pledge.

The senior was sent to detention but refused to go, leading to a two-day suspension.

The district says a student has the right not to recite the pledge, but cannot cause distractions with their actions.

Now wait just a minute -- how can the district even begin to claim that there was a substantial disruption or distraction is it took the teacher several months to notice and take action against Adrian for not saying the Pledge. That is laughable on its face.

And as for his refusal to go to the detentions, the administration should have been backing him to the hilt, not suspending him. After all, the teacher's actions were no different than assigning him a detention because he is black. Surely the school would not allow suspend a student for refusing to accept sucha violation of fundamental rihts under the Constitution.

There is only one positive outcome I can see here -- we now know that young Mr. Boykin is likely to have a college fund large enough to attend the school of his choice. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the taxpayers, and not the teacher and administrators who displayed such utter incompetence concluded.

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I love "To Kill A Mockingbird" -- despite the fact that I had never read the book before I found myself expected to teach it when I began teaching. Yet having read it many times since, and having taught it nearly a dozen times (when you include summer school sessions), I really do believe it is a book that every adult ought to read -- both from the point of view of its moral message AND due to the fact it is a great read. So when I hear folks criticize the book for its flaws and question whether it should be read, I bristle just a bit.

If there's one book you should read before you die, it's To Kill a Mockingbird. That's not my opinion. Apparently I was sick back in ninth grade when every other American kid read Harper Lee's novel of racism, moral courage and coming of age in 1930s Alabama. I read it for the first time only this week and have my misgivings.

But according to the Guardian newspaper's Web site, a 2006 poll of librarians — British librarians — put To Kill a Mockingbird atop the list of books every adult should read before they shuffle off. Ahead of the Bible. Ahead of Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice and even Harry "the Franchise" Potter.

According to a 1989 study in this country, 69 percent of public schools, 67 percent of Catholic schools and 47 percent of other private schools teach the book, most often in the ninth grade. And it's still assigned regularly, three Houston-area educators say.

For many young people, To Kill a Mockingbird, more than 45 years after its publication, looms like that first tattoo as a milestone on the road to adulthood. It has become, as Slate's Stephen Metcalf writes,"an inescapable fact of America's civic religion."

So what's its appeal? Why a fixture on school reading lists? And what's its status in the canon of American literature? Is it really a book for grown-ups?

As I've said, I think it is a great book -- but that doesn't mean that TKAM is a perfect book. There are obvious flaws in Harper Lee's classic, some of which are mentioned later in the article.

In a New Yorker review of Charles J. Shields' new biography of Harper Lee, Thomas Mallon savages Mockingbird for its moral simplicity and implausible characters. He calls Atticus Finch a "plaster saint" with a way "of making forbearance itself insufferable."

Mallon calls Scout "a kind of highly constructed doll, feisty and cute on every subject from algebra to grown-ups," her voice a "forced mixture" of the child and the adult.

He wraps things up by describing the novel as "a kind of moral Ritalin, an ungainsayable endorser of the obvious." The movie, he writes, is "rather better."

This smackdown prompted Stephen Metcalf, Slate's critic at large, to read the book for the first time and weigh in with a qualified endorsement. He likes Scout, calling her a clever child whose "cleverness nonetheless never interferes with her innocence, and whose innocence is finally a near-flawless arbiter of right and wrong."

He acknowledges that Lee mixes child and adult perspectives but praises the book's voice as being "almost always fetching, often vivid, and the small-town manners it captures are keenly observed." He particularly admires how the book evokes and critiques Southern white-class snobbery.

I find myself leaning a little Mallon's way. I don't find either Atticus or Scout particularly plausible. The black characters are long-suffering and large-hearted in a way that, today, comes across as condescending. Scout too often sounds like no child I ever met — too smart, too spunky.

Of course, I lean towards Metcalf. I like to point out to folks that there is a reason that Scout sounds like a mixture of child and adult -- the Scout that narrates the story is not a little girl, but is instead an adult woman approaching thirty, telling a story about her childhood. Indeed, the voice we hear is that of Miss Jean Louise Finch (or maybe Mrs. Charles Baker Harris -- my kids one year debated whether or not she ended up married to Dill) telling a childhood story. And like most of us telling such stories in our adulthood, we make ourselves both a little bit more innocent and a little more wise than we probably were -- it is human nature. And while Atticus comes across as a "plaster saint", isn't that how we saw our parents when we were young? It is therefore reasonable for Harper Lee, through her narrator, to try to capture that child-like view of Atticus.

And then there was that criticism of the presentation of the black characters. let's be honest -- in 1930s Alabama, that was precisely the face that black community showed to whites, even those who showed them sympathy. After all, this was a society where the Klan still held the reins of power -- Kluxer Hugo Black was a US Senator from Alabama when the story begins, and by the time the story ends he would have been nominated as a Supreme Court Justice by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If you were black, you needed to hide that seething anger and discontent, and so Scout would likely never have seen it, even from Calpurnia.

Of course, my favorite point to make with my students is that TKAM is an example of one story framing another. After all, the adult Jean Louis Finch begins the book by telling us it is the story of how her brother Jem broke his arm! Well over 200 pages later, we finally find out how the arm was broken -- but only after learning about life in her small Alabama town, Boo Radley, and the horrible miscarriage of justice that is the Tom Robinson trial.

And perhaps the best thing about the story is that it does leave you wanting to know more about some of the characters. My favorite "untold story"? What experience did Atticus have (presumably during WWI) that led the "One Shot" Finch to permanently put down his rifle until the day he needed to kill a rabid dog? I've often hoped that Harper Lee has written that story, and that it awaits posthumous publication on a dusty bookshelf in her home.

Is To Kill A Mockingbird Shakespeare? No, it isn't -- and does not pretend to be. Still, I believe it to be an important book that ought to be read.

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Posted by: Greg at 01:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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They were ready to give us a $2000 raise last session -- and promised to revisit the issue this session. Why is there now no money for it in 2007, despite the huge state budget surplus? And why is a $800 (or $500) raise a budget buster this time around -- even as Texas teachers lag $4000 behind the national average in teacher pay?

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro said Tuesday a combination of an across-the-board teacher salary increase and incentive pay should be considered in the state budget.

"I think there's still room ... to look at both of them. I think they both need to be in the bill. I don't think there should be one or the other," said Shapiro, R-Plano. "As a pragmatist, I recognize that we need to review both and have some very serious conversations when it comes time."

Shapiro last week had suggested there might not be money for both after the House in its two-year state spending plan took $583 million from incentive-pay programs to fund an $800 across-the-board teacher pay raise. A strong incentive-pay advocate, Shapiro said then she'd fight for it and noted lawmakers approved a $2,000 across-the-board teacher raise last year.

This week, Shapiro and other Senate budget-writers put a smaller, across-the-board pay raise of about $500 on their unfunded "wish list." It would cost $300 million.

The Senate Finance Committee next week is scheduled to recommend a proposed budget to the Senate. After a vote, legislative negotiators will work out differences between the House and Senate proposals.

Shapiro said putting the raise on the "wish list" keeps it alive for negotiations.

We teachers keep being told we are important -- why don't you pay us like we are? And as far as merit pay goes, we are willing to give it a shot -- but only after you bring teacher pay in general up to national standards.

Posted by: Greg at 10:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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At least for the moment, as a judge rules that schools can't censor student speech merely because they are uncomfortable with its content.

A school district violated a fourth-grader's constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection by refusing to allow her to distribute "personal statement" fliers carrying a religious message, a federal judge has ruled.

The Liverpool Central School District in upstate New York based its restrictions on "fear or apprehension of disturbance, which is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression," Chief U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue wrote in a 46-page decision Friday.

"School officials had no right to silence Michaela's personal Christian testimony," attorney Mat Staver said Monday.

Staver is executive director of Liberty Counsel, the Orlando, Fla.-based conservative legal group that represented Michaela Bloodgood and her mother, Nicole.

Liverpool school district lawyer Frank Miller said the school district was studying the decision and "reviewing its options."

According to the family's 2004 lawsuit, Nicole Bloodgood tried three times to get permission for Michaela to pass out the homemade fliers to other students at Nate Perry Elementary School. The flier, about the size of a greeting card, started out: "Hi! My name is Michaela and I would like to tell you about my life and how Jesus Christ gave me a new one."

Bloodgood's requests to school officials said that her daughter, now a sixth-grader, would hand them out only during "non-instructional time," such as on the bus, before school, lunch, recess and after school.

The lawsuit noted that Michaela had received literature from other students at school, including materials for a YMCA basketball camp, a Syracuse Children's Theater promotion and Camp Fire USA's summer camps.

Clearly, the problem was the content of the speech.

And interestingly enough, this case shows that there is still serious division among the appellate circuits on how much freedom students have to speak in a school setting. Some circuits, notably the Ninth, have been willing to allow schools to ban Christian religious speech simply because it might make religious and sexual minorities feel uncomfortable. This issue will, sooner or later, need to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Posted by: Greg at 10:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This story from England is pretty scary -- if the radical wing of Islam can get a historical fact as well-documented as the Holocaust excluded from the curriculum because they are offended by the notion that there is something wrong with murdering innocent Jewish men, women and children, then there is somethign truly wrong.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.

It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

I'm terribly sorry, but you can take whatever immoral and hate-filled teachings about the Holocaust that are being spewed in your mosque and shove them up your collective arses -- the reality is that the Holocaust is well-documented and undeniable, just like the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. And as for the Crusades, they are simply one part of a larger clash of cultures that were taking place over hundreds of years -- beginning with the Muslim aggression against and conquest of Christian areas of the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe beginning within the lifetime of Mohammad himself.

Oh, and by the way -- I suspect the school that was challenged by Christian parents had presented a view that was overly sympathetic to the Palestinians rather than a balanced view of the conflict in the Middle East (considering recent events in british academia with regard to anti-Semitic boycotts of Israeli students and scholars). But even so, I have a problem with those who insist that history conform to their religious views -- and would make run out of my classroom any parent who attempted to impose their religious viewpoint of history on me and my students.

Posted by: Greg at 10:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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?

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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.

Posted by: Greg at 10:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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.

Posted by: Greg at 10:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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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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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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Posted by: Greg at 12:23 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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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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