All too often, college professors expect that they will be able to make the most outrageous comments in class free from any criticism or penalty. Indeed, because of their position of power, they presume that their students will sit back and shut up as they are indoctrinated in the left-wing views of a professor -- even if the class is not about politics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Bryan got more than she bargained for.

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Among the offensive emails released by authorities are these:

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

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

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

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

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

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This article makes it really clear why I work on the high school level, and why I'd prefer to go back to working with elementary school kids if high school were ever to stop being an option. Teaching middle school is just too much!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Texas House of Representatives made the right move in telling Governor Perry to keep his hands off the genitals of the eleven-year-old girls of Texas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He's dead on in his analysis.

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If you are going to give bonuses that you cannot explain, you ought to at least calculate them correctly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IÂ’d also take issue with this concluding bit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Additional security controls.

• Eighth grade readiness test.

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 11:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just a quick link to a news story I ran across regarding the case I mentioned last week about university administrators banning members of a campus religious group from engaging in First Amendment protected religious activities. If any thing, the story gets worse, and implicates the campus fraternity system in the banning as well -- and shows that the university is taking the notion of in loco parentis further than any reasonable interpretation of those powers can be extended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 11:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One more example of the fact that too many school administrators don't understand Tinker v. DesMoines -- and that too many non-Christians not only want "tolerance" for their beliefs, but are demanding that the rights fo Christians under the First Amendment be actively suppressed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 01:05 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It is questionable whether this school had a legitimate basis to ban this Christian group from campus in the first place -- but to then impose further sanctions because the students engaged in legal First Amendment protected activity off campus reeks of an anti-Christian bias that must not be allowed to stand.

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

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

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

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Posted by: Greg at 01:21 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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What else can you say about this editorial.

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 11:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Am I the only one who has a problem with this entire situation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 09:19 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It looks like some high-power members of the Texas Legislature are listening to parents and teachers. They are proposing eliminating the dreaded TAKS test, replacing them with "end of course" tests instead.

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

* * *

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

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

Want to know why?

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

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

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

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Posted by: Greg at 06:58 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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How this sort of criminality was allowed to run unchecked for so long is beyond me -- and how the individuals in question were allowed to retain the credentials necessary to continue to work in education is unfathomable.

A long-simmering scandal over sexual abuse of juveniles at schools for youthful offenders broke into the open on Tuesday with an outraged state senator calling for a takeover of the troubled Texas Youth Commission.

At a school in West Texas, a youth commission official acknowledged at a hearing of the State Senate Criminal Justice Committee, the schoolÂ’s superintendent was aware that two supervisors routinely awakened boys for late-night encounters behind closed doors in deserted offices.

The two supervisors — one of whom had been transferred from another state school after pornography was found on his work computer — were allowed to resign in 2005 without charges. One became the principal of a charter school in Midland, Tex., state officials said. The superintendent was promoted to director of juvenile corrections, a post he still holds, the youth commission confirmed.

“It’s outrageous,” said State Senator John Whitmire, chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, who accused the commission of a cover-up.

Whitmire asks a valid question -- does the agency need some much more intense supervision, like being placed under completely new leadership ? The answer would appear to be yes, given that the TYC director was allowed to stay in place until last Friday and one of the freaks in question is still working for the state in a policy position that gives him direct control over the lives of juveniles!

Frankly, it is looking like one more failure on th part of Rick Perry -- and one more reason for the legislature to consider whether or not Perry is fit to remain governor.

Oh, and interestingly enough, Houston's "paper of record" couldn't even be bothered to cover this story on the front page -- or link to their coverage from the paper's homepage.

Posted by: Greg at 11:26 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Especially when it is organized, ideological censorship of the nature engaged in by folks aligned with this Miami mother.

A Miami-Dade parents group has identified a third book that they say paints a false picture of life in Cuba. But this time, they're taking matters into their own hands.

Fed up with the long, bureaucratic process surrounding the removal of two other controversial books about Cuba from school libraries last year, parent Dalila Rodriguez simply checked out the book Discovering Cultures, Cuba from the library at her son's school earlier this month. She said she does not plan to return it.

''If you take it out and don't return it, no kid can read it,'' Rodriguez, who is a member of the Concerned Cuban Parents Committee, said Wednesday. ``It's not censoring; it's protecting our children from lies.''

Rodriguez discovered the book on Feb. 9 when she was browsing for books for her son in the library at Norma Butler Bossard Elementary, 15950 SW 144th St.
''I first read it and started seeing it had some educational facts, but it's still erroneous,'' she said.

The Cuban-born Rodriguez said she was offended by passages in the book that romanticize life on the island, such as the statement that many Cubans immigrated to Florida when Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

''We're not immigrants; we're exiles,'' Rodriguez said. ``We were persecuted, incarcerated and killed.''

Rodriguez also checked out the children's travel book Vamos a Cuba, which the Concerned Cuban Parents Committee led the charge to ban last year, saying the book paints a rosy and inaccurate picture of life under Castro. Both books were due back Feb. 16, records show. Neither has been returned.
''We're going to take the books and lock them in a box,'' she said.

There is a very simple remedy for this, given her admission that she has no intent to return the books. Arrest her for theft of public property, jail her accordingly, and as part of her sentence require that she replace the missing books with new copies.

And I say this as an individual who probably agrees with Mrs. Rodriguez on her criticism of the books in question. However, the answer is not censorship (whether official or vigilante), it is making more accurate and more complete information available to make it clear what the truth is.

Posted by: Greg at 12:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And even if it isn’t, is it appropriate for a children’s book?

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.

On electronic mailing lists like Librarian.net, dozens of literary blogs and pages on the social-networking site LiveJournal, teachers, authors and school librarians took sides over the book. Librarians from all over the country, including Missoula, Mont.; upstate New York; Central Pennsylvania; and Portland, Ore., weighed in, questioning the role of the librarian when selecting — or censoring, some argued — literature for children.

Ah, what a furor over a single word that describes a part of the human body! And the debate is pretty intense, with some going so far as to raise it to the level of a Serious First Amendment Question. But is it? Or is it simply a case of librarians exercising good judgment about what should or should not be on the shelves of their school libraries, based upon questions of age-appropriateness and community values?

And let’s be clear – age-appropriateness is a major factor with this book, targeted at kids from 9-12. Personally, I don’t see the word as being problematic for the older kids in that age range (sixth and seventh graders, generally), but can understand where there would be those troubled by having to explain what a scrotum is to a third grader, even in this decidedly non-prurient context. It creates serious problems for educational professionals, who must then face the ire of parents and school boards over how much “sex talk” is acceptable with students, and at what ages.

And yet, this is definitely a work of quality – Newbery Awards are not given out lightly and are not particularly political in nature. Should a single, non-obscene word be sufficient to keep a Newbery Award winner out of school libraries? I would hope not, but I understand the problem faced by librarians. Look at the problems faced by teachers who have shown Schindler’s List, Amistad, or other movies to classes – non-prurient nudity has been a source of controversy in these great historical movies.

Personally, I think that librarians should order the book – but I won’t condemn those who don’t. And I certainly won’t cry “censorship” over the decision by these professionals to exercise their best professional judgment over what will be acceptable in their schools and communities.

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Posted by: Greg at 06:18 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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And even if it isnÂ’t, is it appropriate for a childrenÂ’s book?

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in childrenÂ’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.

On electronic mailing lists like Librarian.net, dozens of literary blogs and pages on the social-networking site LiveJournal, teachers, authors and school librarians took sides over the book. Librarians from all over the country, including Missoula, Mont.; upstate New York; Central Pennsylvania; and Portland, Ore., weighed in, questioning the role of the librarian when selecting — or censoring, some argued — literature for children.

Ah, what a furor over a single word that describes a part of the human body! And the debate is pretty intense, with some going so far as to raise it to the level of a Serious First Amendment Question. But is it? Or is it simply a case of librarians exercising good judgment about what should or should not be on the shelves of their school libraries, based upon questions of age-appropriateness and community values?

And let’s be clear – age-appropriateness is a major factor with this book, targeted at kids from 9-12. Personally, I don’t see the word as being problematic for the older kids in that age range (sixth and seventh graders, generally), but can understand where there would be those troubled by having to explain what a scrotum is to a third grader, even in this decidedly non-prurient context. It creates serious problems for educational professionals, who must then face the ire of parents and school boards over how much “sex talk” is acceptable with students, and at what ages.

And yet, this is definitely a work of quality – Newbery Awards are not given out lightly and are not particularly political in nature. Should a single, non-obscene word be sufficient to keep a Newbery Award winner out of school libraries? I would hope not, but I understand the problem faced by librarians. Look at the problems faced by teachers who have shown Schindler’s List, Amistad, or other movies to classes – non-prurient nudity has been a source of controversy in these great historical movies.

Personally, I think that librarians should order the book – but I won’t condemn those who don’t. And I certainly won’t cry “censorship” over the decision by these professionals to exercise their best professional judgment over what will be acceptable in their schools and communities.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, Maggie's Notebook, Big Dog's Weblog, basil's blog, Shadowscope, Cao's Blog, Jo's Cafe, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, Sujet- Celebrities, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, Wake Up America, stikNstein... has no mercy, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 06:18 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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Given that Carter refuses to debate or discuss a book that he claims is all about promoting dialogue, I think that the letter of nine distinguished faculty members from Emory University can only be seen as a measured and reasonable response to his anti-Semitic attack on Israel and promotion of Palestinian terrorism.

"Despite having written a book whose purpose he claims was to promote dialogue and discussion, he has consistently dodged appearing with anyone who could challenge him on the numerous factual errors which fill the pages of his slim book," the letter states.

"We are happy that Jimmy Carter wants to come to Emory," said Deborah E. Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, and a signer of the letter. "But we think it should be an exchange of ideas, not a one-sided presentation. We felt that this is not up to the standards of Emory in terms of creative inquiry."

I applaud the professors for raising this important issue – and for daring to try to challenge the worst president – and ex-president – of my lifetime.

Posted by: Greg at 01:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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After all, this is a female teacher/coach.

A former Fort Bend Independent School District high school teacher has been arrested after being indicted on a charge of an improper relationship between an educator and a student, school district police said.

Kimberly Dawn Hollis, 30, a teacher at Hightower High School, resigned Jan. 12 and surrendered at the county jail Thursday. Her bond was set at $20,000.

The charge is a second-degree felony, and if convicted, Hollis could face up to 20 years in prison.

I know it says 20 years, but we've seen the trends. Female abusers in the classroom get probation or short sentences, while male perps get long terms in prison doing hard time as everybody's bi-yotch. Here's hoping that Texas courts apply the law equitably in this case, and give Hollis the full 20 years.

Posted by: Greg at 11:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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School kids often do fundraisers and service projects for good causes, but I think this is one of the most beautiful ones I’ve heard of in a while – and one that brought these kids into contact with real history and real people.

Appreciation comes full circle as George Reinwand, Pearl Harbor survivor, recently thanked Rapid River Elementary School students for their support in helping to send him to the recent Pearl Harbor Survivors’ National Meeting in Hawaii.

Almost a year ago, through the leadership of the fourth grade, students created a service learning project to raise money for a special community member. Students decorated cans to collect money in, which were then placed in classrooms and school offices. Together, students in kindergarten through the fifth grade raised over $400. This money was presented to Reinwand and his wife, Shirley, in March 2006.

Since returning from their trip to Hawaii this past December, the Reinwands came back to thank the students of Rapid River and presented a plaque of appreciation honoring the students’ hard work, which reads as follows:

“Presented in grateful appreciation to Rapid River Schools Kindergarten-5th grade of 2006 for your unselfish contribution in helping Shirley and me attend the Pearl Harbor Survivors’ National Meeting at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Thank you, George Reinwand”

After the presentation, students took turns looking at photos from the Reinwands’ trip.

This is the sort of stuff we ought to see more of – projects in which students both show their appreciation to others and learn something that is rightly a part of the curriculum. And in this case, we have youngsters getting the opportunity to interact with one of those who was a part of one of the most important events in American history. And as we lose this particular generation of Americans, it is important that we make sure that our children know of them, and about them – and actually know them while they still can. My generation knew the WWII generation – they were our parents and grandparents and neighbors. My first real knowledge of D-Day came from Glenn Landbloom, an older neighbor, who was there in 1944. I remember once meeting Adm. Arleigh “31-Knot” Burke as a kid at Bethesda Naval Hospital, an event which helped make the War in the Pacific just a little more real to an 11-year-old fifth-grader. We need to ensure that such opportunities are taken while they still can be.

I salute Mr. Reinwand for his service – and the teachers and children of Rapid River Elementary School for this act of service and kindness.

Posted by: Greg at 12:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 441 words, total size 3 kb.

School kids often do fundraisers and service projects for good causes, but I think this is one of the most beautiful ones I’ve heard of in a while – and one that brought these kids into contact with real history and real people.

Appreciation comes full circle as George Reinwand, Pearl Harbor survivor, recently thanked Rapid River Elementary School students for their support in helping to send him to the recent Pearl Harbor SurvivorsÂ’ National Meeting in Hawaii.

Almost a year ago, through the leadership of the fourth grade, students created a service learning project to raise money for a special community member. Students decorated cans to collect money in, which were then placed in classrooms and school offices. Together, students in kindergarten through the fifth grade raised over $400. This money was presented to Reinwand and his wife, Shirley, in March 2006.

Since returning from their trip to Hawaii this past December, the Reinwands came back to thank the students of Rapid River and presented a plaque of appreciation honoring the studentsÂ’ hard work, which reads as follows:

“Presented in grateful appreciation to Rapid River Schools Kindergarten-5th grade of 2006 for your unselfish contribution in helping Shirley and me attend the Pearl Harbor Survivors’ National Meeting at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Thank you, George Reinwand”

After the presentation, students took turns looking at photos from the ReinwandsÂ’ trip.

This is the sort of stuff we ought to see more of – projects in which students both show their appreciation to others and learn something that is rightly a part of the curriculum. And in this case, we have youngsters getting the opportunity to interact with one of those who was a part of one of the most important events in American history. And as we lose this particular generation of Americans, it is important that we make sure that our children know of them, and about them – and actually know them while they still can. My generation knew the WWII generation – they were our parents and grandparents and neighbors. My first real knowledge of D-Day came from Glenn Landbloom, an older neighbor, who was there in 1944. I remember once meeting Adm. Arleigh “31-Knot” Burke as a kid at Bethesda Naval Hospital, an event which helped make the War in the Pacific just a little more real to an 11-year-old fifth-grader. We need to ensure that such opportunities are taken while they still can be.

I salute Mr. Reinwand for his service – and the teachers and children of Rapid River Elementary School for this act of service and kindness.

Posted by: Greg at 12:25 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 450 words, total size 3 kb.

I don't know anyone -- certainly not in education -- who doesn't believe that we should strive to ensure that every student leaves schools with a set of basic skills . One of the many problems with No Child left behind, however, is that its mandates are almost exclusively set at the bottom end of the achievement spectrum, with little actual incentive to MAXIMIZE student achievement among those who are capable of doing more than the minimum. The result is funding cuts for programs for our best and brightest students.

But across the country, programs like this can be hard to sustain. The federal No Child Left Behind law requires that virtually all children become proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014, and this demand is forcing many school districts to focus attention — and money — on students who are not proficient in reading or math. Many families of exceptionally bright children like to say that it is the gifted who are being left behind.

In the years after the lawÂ’s signing in January 2002, Illinois jettisoned its $19 million allocation for gifted programs and Michigan cut spending to $250,000 from $4 million. Here in Connecticut, 22 percent of the stateÂ’s districts eliminated or shrank gifted programs in 2002, and others have since scaled back. It doesnÂ’t take a gifted person to figure out that the law is siphoning off the money.

“N.C.L.B. swallows up resources,” said Jeanne H. Purcell, Connecticut’s consultant for gifted education.

The federal government provides less than $10 million for gifted programs, and only half the states offer additional money. But districts needing to pay for after-school tutoring or other score-raising remedies needed under No Child Left Behind inevitably poach dollars from programs for students who already score high.

“Our education reform is so focused on making sure everybody is mediocre that we haven’t thought about meeting the needs of those students already exceeding those goals,” said Susan Rhodes, principal of Iles Elementary School in Springfield, Ill. “Everybody assumes those children are going to continue to grow. But it’s like an athlete with potential. If they don’t have a coach, that skill is not going to be drawn out.”

But what is worse, is that the kids KNOW they are getting screwed. I might not have blogged about this article at all, but for the fact that it dovetails so nicely with a conversation I had yesterday with one of my students, who is frustrated by the many district-mandated activities and strategies designed to drag the lowest performing students up to standard.

"Mr. RWR," she said to me, "it is the same in every one of my classes! We've got so many special activities to boost our test scores on the TAKS test, but not any to take us deeper into what we are learning about. It's like everything is focused on the bottom 20%. When do the top 20% get something special to keep us from being bored out of our minds by the constant pressure to pass a test that we could have passed before the school year started?"

And she is right. When will we stop shortchanging the kids with the sharpest minds in order to ensure that the weakest links are not left behind?

Posted by: Greg at 11:33 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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You remember the Affirmative Action Bake Sales used at various colleges a couple years ago to highlight the absurdity and utterly racist nature of affirmative action programs, don't you? You know, the ones that caused all sorts of hate and discontent among leftists, some of whom engaged in acts of violence against the conservative sponsors -- and some of which even got their universities to take action against the non-PC offenders?

Well, what do you have to say about this event?

Students were treated to free pizza in the Student Union on Thursday afternoon, courtesy of the UB NAACP. Where they were allowed to sit, however, was based on race and ethnicity.

The NAACP hosted an event called the "Segregated Café," a simulation of past eras in which segregation existed in the United States. The mock-up featured a restaurant setting with separate dining tables and serving areas for minority and white students.

Patrons were directed to their correct places according to their race, separating many lunching companions. Reactions started off confused and quickly turned to nervous and upset. However, there was a general understanding of the experiment.

"I think something like this is good to do because we get to experience what it was like in the past," said Clyde Strokes, a sophomore business major who was forced to sit in the minority section. "But I'm still pissed."

Strokes' was referring to the rude treatment and unsightly décor encountered by those at the minority section, including ripped paper plates on the tables and pepperoni on the floor. Minority students were served half a slice of Franco's pizza and a trickle of soda in plastic cup, while white students were allowed a whole, or even multiple slices of pizza and soda served in champagne glasses.

First, this does not even begin to simulate conditions DECADES IN THE PAST. Second, why no actions against the NAACP chapter for daring to provide unequal treatment based upon race? Could it be that since their motives were pure as the PC snow and intended to promote liberal victimology, there was a conscious decision to allow the event to proceed without intervention by the university? And this is the second year the event has been held, so the school knew what it w3as about and the severe violation of campus non-discrimination rules it constituted.

Oh, and I'll point out another obvious difference -- conservative students didn't engage in a single act of violence against the NAACP -- and probably supported the goal of reminding the campus community about the evils of Democrat-imposed and supported Jim Crow laws and practices.

Hey -- free speech is free speech, even if it is repulsive and designed to keep hate alive. And unfortunately, that seems to have been the goal of the NAACP.

Posted by: Greg at 12:32 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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I hope that tonight there are a number of Texas legislators looking into the procedures for impeaching a governor after Rick Perry did this.

Gov. Rick Perry signed an order today making Texas the first state to require that schoolgirls be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

By issuing an executive order, Perry apparently sidesteps opposition in the Legislature from conservatives and parents' rights groups who fear such a requirement would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way parents raise their children.

Beginning in September 2008, girls entering the sixth grade will have to get Gardasil, Merck & Co.'s new vaccine against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV.

Excuse me -- I've got a real problem with our governor adopting the "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool." philosophy of the Clinton years. After all, he knew that he would never get this proposal through the legislature, so he simply has implemented the requirement -- including ordering the spending of money to provide the vaccine -- without legislative authority. Did I miss the line for "dictator" on last fall's ballot?

And please understand -- this is not an objection to the vaccine or to the "message" that giving it sends to young girls. If I had a daughter, she would get this vaccine as a matter of course, without hesitation on my part. As I've said before, my issue is the libertarian issue of how far the state can and should go in placing conditions upon the exercise of the right (under the state constitution) of the right to a public education. Is it appropriate for the state to mandate a vaccine for a condition which is exceedingly unlikely to be passed in the course of normal day-to-day school interaction? No, it isn't, because there is no reasonable nexus between the two.

Also disturbing is Perry's connection to Merck, the company marketing the drug.

Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass state laws across the country mandating Gardasil for girls as young as 11 or 12. It doubled its lobbying budget in Texas and has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.

Perry has several ties to Merck and Women in Government. One of the drug company's three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, Perry's former chief of staff. His current chief of staff's mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for Women in Government.

Perry also received $6,000 from Merck's political action committee during his re-election campaign.

This stinks, and gives at least the appearance of impropriety.

Here's hoping the Texas Legislature will look into blocking this executive order legislatively -- and removing Perry from office for his corrupt, overreaching action today.

UPDATE: And lest you think my statement about Perry engaging in dictatorial action is an overstatement, here are the position taken by his own spokesperson on the matter.

The order is effective until Perry or a successor changes it, and the Legislature has no authority to repeal it, said Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody. Moody said the Texas Constitution permits the governor, as head of the executive branch, to order other members of the executive branch to adopt rules like this one.

Hardly the actions of a leader in a democratic republic. Sounds more like he thinks he is Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro.

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Posted by: Greg at 03:04 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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And that is precisely what this bill would give me and other teachers in the state of Texas. I therefore consider it to be a bad idea.

Parents beware: Miss a meeting with your child's teacher and it could cost you a $500 fine and a criminal record.

A Republican state lawmaker from Baytown has filed a bill that would charge parents of public school students with a misdemeanor and fine them for playing hooky from a scheduled parent-teacher conference.

Rep. Wayne Smith said Wednesday he wants to get parents involved in their child's education.

"I think it helps the kids for the parents and teachers to communicate. That's all the intent was," Smith said.

Do I have parents who won’t show up if I try to schedule a conference with them? You bet. Have I rearranged my schedule to accommodate a parent who wanted to meet, only to have them not show up when I’ve stayed until 4:00 just to talk to them? Sure – which is especially irritating when they have initiated the contact. But I don’t think that being an inconsiderate jackass is grounds for an encounter with the legal system. And I also do not believe it is appropriate for me to be able to summon a parent on pain of criminal sanction. After all, parent-teacher meetings are all too often an adversarial event – let’s not write that into law.

Posted by: Greg at 02:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And that is precisely what this bill would give me and other teachers in the state of Texas. I therefore consider it to be a bad idea.

Parents beware: Miss a meeting with your child's teacher and it could cost you a $500 fine and a criminal record.

A Republican state lawmaker from Baytown has filed a bill that would charge parents of public school students with a misdemeanor and fine them for playing hooky from a scheduled parent-teacher conference.

Rep. Wayne Smith said Wednesday he wants to get parents involved in their child's education.

"I think it helps the kids for the parents and teachers to communicate. That's all the intent was," Smith said.

Do I have parents who won’t show up if I try to schedule a conference with them? You bet. Have I rearranged my schedule to accommodate a parent who wanted to meet, only to have them not show up when I’ve stayed until 4:00 just to talk to them? Sure – which is especially irritating when they have initiated the contact. But I don’t think that being an inconsiderate jackass is grounds for an encounter with the legal system. And I also do not believe it is appropriate for me to be able to summon a parent on pain of criminal sanction. After all, parent-teacher meetings are all too often an adversarial event – let’s not write that into law.

Posted by: Greg at 02:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Houston Chronicle has a great piece on blogging teachers -- ones that are much more education-oriented in their blogging than I am. It was interesting to see what some of the folks I read regularly have to say.

After long days of grading papers and disciplining rowdy children, a growing number of tech-savvy teachers are creating online journals to vent about the stresses of the profession.

Educators who have already embraced the technology — called blogs (short for web logs) — find themselves walking a fine, virtual line of conduct. They strive to entertain and inform, but can't violate their school districts' ethics policies or federal laws designed to protect students' confidentiality.

Most teachers who blog have opted to do so underground — refusing to cite their names, workplaces or other identifying details — to avoid potential professional pitfalls.

"School administrators tend to be pretty vindictive and they don't like people with different ideas from them. People who speak out are not regarded very highly," said Mike in Texas, an elementary school science teacher from East Texas, who started an online diary two years ago as a way of defending public education.

Though he often waxes about the value of the system, Mike in Texas has been known to rant about the "Mother of All Idiot Parents" or his boss, the "Clueless Principal."

"Some days I think I would like to have her job because I know how I would do things, and some days I wouldn't want that job for anything," he wrote in a recent entry. "Or as we say, some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue."

I don't blog about school very often, and I follow the trend above of not identifying anything about students. Indeed, other than talking about how I really do teach the best kids in the world, I say very little about them or my colleagues (about half-a-dozen of whom read my blog from time to time). I have had a couple of posts which indirectly identify my school and/or district (one noting the shooting death of one of our students, another commenting on a former student making good in professional sports, and a couple when the district has been in the news), but I agree with the comment about ethics -- I cannot be releasing confidential information, so I avoid the temptation of doing so by NUT writing about that part of my life.

Posted by: Greg at 11:21 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I've written more than once about the pathetic excuse for an educational institution that is Texas Southern University. It isn't that there are not good people there -- I acknowledge that there are -- but rather that the powers that be have run the place without any regard to principles of sound management or ethics. That is how the school finds itself in constant financial difficulty.

But for some reason -- I suspect a desire not to give offense to the African-American community by closing the historically black institution (it began some six decades ago as the Texas State University for Negroes, in an attempt to stave off desegregation at UT & Texas A&M) -- Gov. Rick Perry has ordered the Regents (who have shown themselves incompetent to oversee the operation of the school) to develop a plan to get the school on sound financial footing.

Startled by the depth of Texas Southern University's multimillion-dollar financial woes, Gov. Rick Perry has ordered its board of regents to start making "tough decisions" to fix the problems or resign.

"It can't be a Mickey Mouse deal," Perry spokesman Robert Black told the Houston Chronicle on Thursday. "It can't be a Band-Aid."

In private meetings last week, Perry demanded that TSU's regents come up with a concrete plan within 30-45 days to start fixing problems plaguing the university's finances this year.

Next week, the terms of three of TSU's nine regents expire, giving Perry the opportunity to name new members.

Perry also plans to announce a blue-ribbon panel that will develop a long-term plan for TSU, including defining its academic mission.

One fear, which the governor's office said it hopes to avoid, is that TSU would be merged into another university.

Houston Democrats Sen. Rodney Ellis and Rep. Garnet Coleman underscored the importance of protecting the historically black university and keeping it independent. They noted its long history in shaping Houston's black middle class.

"TSU is in the neighborhood where I grew up. It isn't just an institution I represent," Coleman said. "It's more than that. TSU represents some of the best of black Texas and black Houston."

Ellis said he is a graduate of the university, along with political notables including the late U.S. Reps. Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland and lawyer and former U.S. Congressman Craig Washington.

I know it would be nice to keep the school open, but we can do better by the students of this institution. It is walking distance to the University of Houston, and so I again suggest that the time has come to merge the two schools and place TSU in the University of Houston system. Just as Prairie View was merged into the Texas A&M system and saw great strides made in the years that followed, the same would be true of TSU -- and wasted duplication of services and positions could be eliminated, as I noted a few days ago.

The time has come to deal with the myriad problems at TSU by recognizing that this relic of the Jim Crow era is no longer viable. End it, don't mend it.

UPDATE: Tom Kirkendall over at Houston's Clear Thinkers offers a deeper analysis, reaching the same conclusion.

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Posted by: Greg at 11:38 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Texas Southern University has a checkered past, to say the least. Created to keep black students out of the University of Texas and its law school, it has never achieved the level of excellence folks might have hoped for it. Furthermore, it has been mired in scandal for well over a decade. Yet some – especially member of the black community, want to keep it going. Now, J. Timothy Boddie Jr.,the school’s interim president, is seeking to improve the school.

As we prepare to commemorate the 60-year anniversary of TSU, know that our commitment to provide quality educational opportunities as the second-largest historically black university in the nation is unwavering. We recognize that repairing our image and regaining the trust of our diverse constituency will not be a quick fix, but we are focused on achieving these goals. Let there be no doubt that accountability is the order of the day.

As we meet with members of the Texas Legislature during the 80th session, we will be presenting measurable plans to improve graduation and retention rates, repair dilapidated structures and create an environment where our globally renowned faculty and dedicated staff can provide our students with the tools and information they need to be leaders.

Moving the ship from dry dock to calm waters will require a collaborative partnership that includes the greater Houston community, alumni, business leaders and legislators. Join with us to take TSU to the next level of excellence. The time has come to right this ship and make accountability the order of the day. At the end of the day, our students, and our community, deserve this and more.

I’m sorry, sir, but your article is long on generalities and short on specifics. And more to the point, you and your supporters fail to note that TSU is walking distance from the University of Houston, a school with a sterling reputation and record of accomplishments. What clearly needs to happen is that TSU simply needs to be merged into the UH system, as part of the main UH campus. The results would be beneficial to students of both schools, and the elimination of service duplication would be much more efficient.

In short, TSU, rooted in racism and mired in corruption, is a bad experiment and one that has clearly failed.

End it, don’t mend it.

Posted by: Greg at 06:42 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Texas Southern University has a checkered past, to say the least. Created to keep black students out of the University of Texas and its law school, it has never achieved the level of excellence folks might have hoped for it. Furthermore, it has been mired in scandal for well over a decade. Yet some – especially member of the black community, want to keep it going. Now, J. Timothy Boddie Jr.,the school’s interim president, is seeking to improve the school.

As we prepare to commemorate the 60-year anniversary of TSU, know that our commitment to provide quality educational opportunities as the second-largest historically black university in the nation is unwavering. We recognize that repairing our image and regaining the trust of our diverse constituency will not be a quick fix, but we are focused on achieving these goals. Let there be no doubt that accountability is the order of the day.

As we meet with members of the Texas Legislature during the 80th session, we will be presenting measurable plans to improve graduation and retention rates, repair dilapidated structures and create an environment where our globally renowned faculty and dedicated staff can provide our students with the tools and information they need to be leaders.

Moving the ship from dry dock to calm waters will require a collaborative partnership that includes the greater Houston community, alumni, business leaders and legislators. Join with us to take TSU to the next level of excellence. The time has come to right this ship and make accountability the order of the day. At the end of the day, our students, and our community, deserve this and more.

IÂ’m sorry, sir, but your article is long on generalities and short on specifics. And more to the point, you and your supporters fail to note that TSU is walking distance from the University of Houston, a school with a sterling reputation and record of accomplishments. What clearly needs to happen is that TSU simply needs to be merged into the UH system, as part of the main UH campus. The results would be beneficial to students of both schools, and the elimination of service duplication would be much more efficient.

In short, TSU, rooted in racism and mired in corruption, is a bad experiment and one that has clearly failed.

End it, donÂ’t mend it.

Posted by: Greg at 06:42 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I cannot believe that the principal of St Francis High School (a public, not private, school in Minnesota) decided he just had to keep this picture from a school play out of the school paper.

I'm sorry -- it just is not that offensive. More to the point, it is a fictional depiction of speech that would, according to the Supreme Court, be protected by the First Amendment.

A northern Anoka County school-district superintendent this afternoon is defending the censorship of a student newspaper on the grounds that photo depicts the destruction of the American flag.

Several First Amendment experts say the school officials are overstepping the law, and at least one civil liberties group said it might be interested in taking up the studentsÂ’ cause.

A blue box, big and bold on the front-page of the St. Francis High School student newspaper, stands in for a photo that student editors say was unjustly banned by the school principal.

Inside the box on the front-page of the new edition of The Crier: “Originally a photo was to be placed here, but was censored by the administration.”

The caption below hints to the sensitive issue that is framing the free-speech feud in the northern Anoka County school: “During the Fall Play Lead Actress Becca Bennett held up a prop, made from table cloth bunting, representing how a country could be torn apart by affecting the youth. The picture was removed off the wall in the PAC hallway.” (PAC stands for Performing Arts Center.)

Prop or not, the jarring photo — which the Pioneer Press will publish in its Friday editions — resembles the tattered remains of an American flag. The image is hardly unknown to the students and staff, since the scene was performed on stage and the photo itself hung in the school’s hall.

And I'll agree -- it is a jarring photo. However, clearly captioned there should be no problem with it.

But the principal and superintendent of the district view matters differently.

Neubauer did not immediately return a phone message left for him Ed Saxton, superintendent of Independent School Dist. 15, defended the St. Francis decision on the grounds that flag destruction can be offensive.

“It’s like a quote being taken out of context,” Saxton, a former principal of the high school, said. “That particular picture, although it’s a snapshot of what was in the fall play, standing in isolation, it could be taken in many different ways. It could be pretty offensive to veterans or people who serviced in the military. It’s kind of a community standards thing.”

Unfotunately for the two of them, the district has a policy that makes the paper an open forum, and has not exercised such editorial control in the past. As such, it is difficult to believe they can legally prevail on the issue, based upon past Supreme Court precedent.

However PrincipalChief Censor Neubauer is ready to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. He plans on filing a frivolous lawsuit against the paper for reporting and editorializing on his act of censorship, despite the information being accurate and he being a public figure in the context of the school.

One of the purposes of public schools is to instill respect for American values and governing principles. It appears, however, that Neubauer does not understand them himself -- and therefore needs to be removed from his position as the instructional leader of the school due to his obvious professional incompetence.

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Posted by: Greg at 02:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In New York, teachers will get the chance to evaluate their principals as part of a school reform package introduced by Mayor Bloomberg.

Allowing teachers to help evaluate principals has been a longstanding request of the teachersÂ’ union, and Mr. Klein seemed to be going out of his way to praise teachers a day after the mayor announced that tenure after a three-year probationary period would no longer be nearly automatic. Instead teachers will be rigorously evaluated.

“Because of our deep respect for our teachers, we’re looking for other ways to make sure that their wisdom becomes yet a more important part of each school’s culture,” Mr. Klein said. “Their views on how a school is being run are critically important, and we need to formalize the process by which those views are expressed and properly considered.”

Let's be honest -- as a teacher, I know which members of the administrative team at my school are getting the job done, which are dead weight, and which are actively destructive of the school's mission. The same is true of my colleagues. And while w should not have the overwhelming say in hiring and firing decisions, our input ought to be considered..

By the way, this article also points out one reason I am glad that I teach in Texas -- reading the whiny comments of the union official makes me glad that here in Texas we can choose from a variety of teacher organizations, or refuse to join any of them.

Posted by: Greg at 11:24 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Professor Thomas Klocek was fired by DePaul University, without so much as a hearing, for creating a hostile campus environment. How? By daring to debate with some Muslim students about terrorism outside of class in a common area. It seems that free inquiry and pursuit of the truth is trumped at DePaul by the notion that minorities must be protected from hurt feelings under all circumstances.

Well, Klocek is returning to DePaul on January 24, as a speaker on the issue of free speech at Catholic universities.

CHICAGOÂ…DePaul University suspended adjunct professor Thomas Klocek without a hearing for disagreeing with Muslim students over the Arab-Israeli conflict in an out-of-classroom debate. Since then, his case has brought scrutiny on DePaul from international media and academic community while causing division among the UniversityÂ’s own faculty and students. For the first time since his suspension, Klocek will return to the school that silenced him to discuss the role of free speech at Catholic Universities. The forum will also include DePaul professor and Klocek supporter Jonathan Cohen, as well as highly controversial free speech activist David Horowitz. The event will take place in DePaulÂ’s Cortelyou Commons at 2324 North Fremont Street in Chicago on Wednesday, January 24th at 7:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public. ...
The event is sponsored by the Young America's Foundation and the DePaul Conservative Alliance. Event organizer Nicholas Hahn, of the DePaul Conservative Alliance, says, “We have heard of a leftist protest campaign hell-bent on preventing the event from happening. However, we will press forward with the forum. Now, more than ever, DePaul needs to enter the free speech discourse.”

If you are in the Chicago area, pleas try to attend – we have seen how vile and violent leftists will go to any extreme to prevent the airing of views with which they disagree. Supporters of free speech need to be in attendance to support the right of Klocek and Horowitz to speak.

Posted by: Greg at 11:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Charles Murray is right on the mark on this point – one I’ve argued for years, and even offered to my students.

A reality about the job market must eventually begin to affect the valuation of a college education: The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason--the list goes on and on--is difficult, and it is a seller's market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman's job provides wonderful intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results. How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?

In other words, what is needed is more focus on vocational, not collegiate, education for some some students for whom the college prep curriculum is not appropriate or by whom it is not desired.

And it isn't like these kids are not going to have a good life when the get out into the world just because they lack a college degree.

I cannot help but think of one of my former students, a kid I’ll call Juan (mainly because his name was, in fact, Juan). Juan took a summer job at a local window place. His job? Fetch and carry for the window installer, the basic work that used to be the lot of an apprentice in an earlier age. Back in the shop, Juan began watching one of the guys doing stained glass projects for some of the up-scale houses in the area. He would stand a few feet away, and ask questions during lunches and breaks. After a couple weeks, the craftsman offered him a chance to try his hand at cutting and piecing some scraps of glass. Juan had a talent for it, and soon was assigned to help wit the art glass. As summer came to a close, he was offered the chance to stay on as after school help – as an apprentice glazier. Juan drops by school every now and again, if he needs to pick up his younger brother. At 25, Juan makes more than I do, working in a field he loves. And he doesn’t have a college degree – just a couple of art classes to help him learn more about design.

Most importantly, Juan loves what he does. What more could I hope for him – and all my other students?

Posted by: Greg at 01:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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