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

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

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 So much for the outdated notion that an educated young person should know a bit about the history of the struggle for civil liberties.

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

H/T Phi Beta Cons

Posted by: Greg at 06:16 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
Post contains 89 words, total size 1 kb.

Here is a change I can support on No Child Left Behind -- but one that probably won't make it into law.

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 03:19 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 352 words, total size 2 kb.

North Forest ISD would be a joke if the consequences for the students there were not so dire. And just when you think things can't get any worse, this happens.

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 02:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 239 words, total size 1 kb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE AT ProfsBlawg, Appellate Law & Practice

Posted by: Greg at 09:28 AM | Comments (111) | Add Comment
Post contains 1886 words, total size 13 kb.

The issue is not one of needing to mix races or socio-economic classes in schools -- the issue is instead the need to make those schools more effective.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 01:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 746 words, total size 4 kb.

I guess that crime really does pay -- if you are an immigration criminal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 02:29 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 300 words, total size 2 kb.

And so another educational opportunity goes down in flames in the name of political correctness.

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 01:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 379 words, total size 2 kb.

After being faced with a five-month witch-hunt investigation, the College Republicans at San Francisco State University are suing to have the school's speech code struck down and the First Amendment upheld in its place.

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by: Greg at 02:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 312 words, total size 2 kb.

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

Or adolescent words of love the same as gang graffiti.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interestingly enough, state law does NOT require this outcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll know more next week.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, 123beta, Right Truth, Adam's Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Cao's Blog, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, , third world county, Faultline USA, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Church and State, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 02:42 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 676 words, total size 6 kb.

Sad and shocking -- and not surprising, given the number of teen pregnancies in this country.

A middle school janitor doing end-of-school cleaning Thursday found what appeared to him to be a human fetus in a trash bag inside a locker, police said.

Police are unsure what was in the trash bag, and its contents were turned over to the Dallas County Medical Examiner, Dallas police spokeswoman Sr. Cpl. Janice Crowther said.

"It is hard to determine what is in the bag,'' Crowther said. "If it is a fetus, it has been there quite a while.''

A janitor was cleaning out Ben Franklin Middle School on Thursday when he came across the trash bag inside a locker in the girls locker room.

It could be several weeks before the medical examiner makes a determination, Crowther said.

Did someone bring her abortion for show-and-tell? And will the school's solution be to stop allowing students to use lockers rather than encourage abstinence?

UPDATE: No fetus -- just rotten oranges.

Posted by: Greg at 01:39 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 177 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm so pleased to see a leader in the field of education saying what those of us in the classroom know and say among ourselves -- NCLB has resulted in lower standards.

Thanks, Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said yesterday that the federal No Child Left Behind law has created a culture that has education leaders nationwide "shooting way too low" and that it has spawned a generation of statewide tests that are too easy to pass.

In a meeting with Washington Post editors and reporters, Weast said the federal mandate, with its push for 100 percent proficiency on state tests, has driven states toward lower standards that don't prepare most students for college or careers.

"I think we've got to adjust up," he said. "Or at least give some flexibility for those who would like to adjust up."

Now you do get the obligatory state flunky intoning that the test is a floor, not a ceiling", but that is nothing but a pious lie. When the expectation is that 100% of the students pass a test, you lower the floor -- which puts the ceiling even further out of reach for everyone.

Posted by: Greg at 04:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 211 words, total size 1 kb.

In 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that public schools cannot determine campus placement based upon a student's race. Today, over five decades later, in a 5-4 decision, the same rule was applied by the United States Supreme Court -- but four "liberal" justices effectively sought to overrule Brown v. Board of Education in order to permit districts to assign students to a school other than the one closest to their home based upon the student's race.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected school assignment plans that take account of students' race in two major public school districts. The decisions could imperil similar plans nationwide.

The rulings in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle leave public school systems with a limited arsenal to maintain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by the court's other three liberals.

Perhaps the single best part of the opinion authored by the Chief Justice is this little bit of common-sense wisdom that was lost on the minority but should be carved on granite in every town square in America.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Justice Thomas was eloquent, powerful, and a bit more scholarly with this observation, but not nearly as pithy.

"What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today," Thomas said. "The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students' race. Because 'our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,' such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional."

It is important here to remember something about these two school desegregation/integration plans. These were not campus assignments pursuant to a court order to remedy past segregation -- in one case there was never a desegregation order and in the other the order had been lifted by the supervising court. But in each case the district decided that the race of a student should be the basis for the assignment of children to a campus other than the one that their place of residence would ordinarily dictate. A majority today rejected that concept -- although one Justice in the majority seems to be prepared to go wobbly on this bedrock principle of civil rights in education and join the minority in repudiating Brown v. Board of Education in some instances.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in which he said race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity.

He agreed with Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle went too far. He said, however, that to the extent that Roberts' opinion could be interpreted as foreclosing the use of race in any circumstance, ''I disagree with that reasoning.''

Particularly frightening is that the dissenters dared to claim that the majority's position upholding Brown's core principle -- that school assignments based on race violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment -- constituted an assault on Brown and that their repudiation of that principle constituted the ultimate fulfillment of it!

Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent joined by the other liberals on the court, said Roberts' opinion undermined the promise of integrated schools that the court laid out 53 years ago in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

"To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown," Breyer said.

The problem is that Brown does not call for integration -- it calls an end to legally-mandated segregation. Indeed, "integration" of schools is not required by the Constitution and would, in most places, require an unconstitutional distribution of benefits and burdens based upon race of the sort banned under Brown to accomplish.

The other day I asked if the precedent in Tinker v. Des Moines was dead? Based upon the willingness of a substantial minority of the court to abandon the fundamental principles of Brown v. Board of Education and the lack of firm resolution to uphold that seminal decision on behalf of equality of all students based upon race on the part of a fifth, I am left fearing for the future of race-neutral treatment in public education, even as I celebrate the decision in today's cases.

UPDATE: The New York Times, of course, comes out firmly in favor of violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in an editorial that ought to be called "Civil Rights: They're A Black Thing".

I wonder -- would they have been equally supportive of a plan designed to make sure that predominantly white schools didn't become "too black" and denied transfers for that reason?

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Perri Nelson's Website, DeMediacratic Nation, stikNstein... has no mercy, Pirate's Cove, Webloggin, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, High Desert Wanderer, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 03:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 829 words, total size 7 kb.

I'll be honest -- I've had colleagues who have married former students.. It has always made me uncomfortable, though not necessarily acutely so. After all, when Mike and Jeannie got married, he was 30 and she was 22 -- and they had not started dating until she came to back to the school as a student teacher. I'll admit to being a little more uncomfortable with Dan and Melissa -- we all wondered how many hours after graduation he waited to ask her out, since they were openly dating within weeks of her receiving her diploma and were married about 18 months later -- and have an age gap of around 20 years. I was pleased, though, when the school I used to teach at fired our counselor when he married the class valedictorian in Vegas two days after graduation (four weeks after his divorce became final) and announced that they would be having a baby sometime around Halloween.

This situation, though, positively makes my skin crawl.

A 40-year-old high school science teacher and cross country coach who once worked in Guilford County has resigned his position and married a 16-year-old student.

Brenton Wuchae coached Windy Hager at South Brunswick High School, where she recently completed her sophomore year as one of the school's top runners. He also lives less than two miles away from the Hagers' home on Oak Island.

Wuchae married Hager in Brunswick County on Monday, according to a marriage license.

Hager's parents, Dennis and Betty Hager, said they did all they could to keep the couple apart after noticing a deeper-than-usual friendship forming between them. The parents said they tried to intervene by talking to the coach, going to school officials, pleading with police and sheriff's office detectives, even other teachers and students at South Brunswick.

But the Hagers say they reluctantly signed a consent form allowing their daughter to marry her coach.

Clearly, this relationship blew right through any and all student-teacher relationship boundaries, and he had to go. I know that this would have been a firing offense in my district, which has a strict "no dating the students" policy in place -- even if the student is 18 and the employee does not have any sort of authority over the student. We had a 22-year-old teacher from an elementary school let go a couple of years ago for dating an 18-year-old girl he knew from church, because she was still a student two months from graduation at one of our high schools. I don't want to even think about the sh!t-storm we would have if one of our teachers actually married a current student.

H/T Interested Participant

Posted by: Greg at 02:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 450 words, total size 3 kb.

Oh, that's right -- it only applies if something Christian is brought into a public school setting. Non-Christian practices and indoctrination may be done in public schools with taxpayer dollars without any challenge at all.

With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground.

“I was losing at baseball and I was about to throw a bat,” Alex Menton, 11, reported to his classmates the next day. “The mindfulness really helped.”

As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests.

Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept — as they did yoga five years ago — and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects.

Now would the New York Times be writing an article like this if we were talking about a program that brought the meditative techniques of Trappist monks into the public schools as a way of helping students focus, concentrate, and learn? No, we wouldn't -- we would instead get a blistering editorial denouncing the use of public schools for proselytizing. Left-wing groups would be up in arms, issuing blistering press releases about impending theocracy. And the ACLU would have a lawsuit in the works, complete with a gay, transgendered, atheist, illegal immigrant girl in a wheelchair who claims to feel oppressed as the lead plaintiff.

But since this is Buddhism, those same separationist folks are more than willing to pronounce it secular and let the program continue. After all, the Left likes Buddhism -- you know, the Dalai Lama is sort of cool,Richard Gere is a Buddhist, and Paris Hilton even took some Buddhist books with her to jail. it is only those awful Christians we have to watch out for.

Posted by: Greg at 06:05 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 404 words, total size 3 kb.

I think the teachers are really setting themselves up for trouble, defying a court order to end the strike. But IÂ’m always shocked by the level of ignorance shown by some folks in responding to calls for better salaries and benefits for teachers.

An ongoing strike pitting Quincy teachers against town officials escalated yesterday, as parents complained their family summer plans are being thrown into turmoil.

Teachers vowed to ignore a court order forcing them back to work today. School officials canceled another day of school as talks with the teachersÂ’ union stalled again last night.

“This is splitting the city in two. People have a lot of opinions about this,” said parent Kelly Tinney, who said she backs the teachers even though she had to switch shifts at work to care for her 9-year-old daughter.

Other parents arenÂ’t as forgiving.

“They only work 180 days a year and they get 90 percent of their health insurance paid,” said Saori Caruso, whose daughter attends Bernazzani Elementary. “My husband works a lot more and he has to pay nearly all of his health insurance.”

I always find it interesting when I hear arguments like Caruso’s – parents who are willing to spend inordinate amounts of money to get their child the latest luxury item, but think that they should pay their child’s teachers on the cheap.

I also find this comment a bit silly as well.

Outside City Hall, parent Roberta Lee said of the teachers, “If they want to do this, why can’t they do it during the off season so the parents don’t have to find day care and the kids can finish the year? It’s not right.”

Let’s think here for a minute – strike during summer vacation would have what impact, exactly? No one would notice, because the kids would be out of school. You wouldn’t care or have to think about the issues because you wouldn’t be inconvenienced in any way. A strike during the school year, however, sort of makes you think about how much value you place on what these teachers do for you and your children, doesn’t it? Do you think that might just be the reason why the strike is occurring now and not in July?

Of course, I’m not a big fan of strikes by public employees or of unions in general. And personally, I’m pretty impressed by the pay and benefits offered by the schools up there in Massachusetts, compared to what we get down here in Texas. Since I’m off school for the summer, I’d be glad to come up and teach for you for a couple of weeks – and would even be open to staying on permanently. So if there is anyone from the Quincy school district personnel department reading this, feel free to send me an email with an offer of employment.

Posted by: Greg at 03:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 486 words, total size 3 kb.

Before transferring to be closer to home, I spent my first two years of college at a school with a strong honor code that forbade cheating. I thought that was great -- but every year we had students expelled for violating the honor code. I really wonder how much impact this new proposal from the TEA will have on the problem of TAKS cheating.

Students will be asked to sign honor pledges next year that they will not cheat on the state's high-stakes test, and school districts could suffer lower ratings if cheating is found, education officials said Monday.

Frankly, I don't know that having the kids sign honor pledges imposed from outside will have any impact on a kid bound and determined to cheat. But i do like this idea.

They'll also use several test versions in the same classroom, making it harder for a student to look over someone's shoulder and make cheating easier to spot if they do, because all seats will be assigned.

Having multiple versions in the same classroom only makes sense, in my book -- and my school has already implemented the assigned seats model and had encouraged it even before it was a mandate.

But for all the talk of "widespread cheating" on the test, the statistics do not really bear that out.

The education agency has been battling allegations of widespread cheating on standardized tests for the past 2 1/2 years. In 2006, Utah-based Caveon Test Security was hired to conduct a study of test scores, and flagged about 700 Texas schools for irregularities.

State investigations cleared most of the schools of cheating allegations. But 16, including four Houston charter schools, remain on the list of campuses with testing irregularities.

In a state the size of Texas, 16 schools is not that significant. And as is pointed out by one school administrator, the initial group of 700 schools got flagged for doing the thing that the tests were supposed to encourage -- improve student performance.

However, Gonzalez said he hopes TEA has a better independent audit than the one done by Caveon. Those flagged schools were publicly named before local officials had a chance to review and contest the data even though the vast majority were cleared.

"They dinged you if your scores were too good even if it was from all the tutorials and steps we took to help kids do better," he said.

In other words, finding a program that works was initially deemed evidence of cheating by the company hired to do the reviews. If such a standard is applied this year, I can only imagine how my school's leap in math scores will be interpreted -- even though it can be accounted for by changes in scheduling, class size, methodology and resources allotted to the math department.

Of course, I personally believe the TAKS test to be a joke. I don't believe it shows what it claims to show, and doesn't measure what it claims to measure. maybe, just maybe, the impending change to end-of-course tests will fix that problem.

Posted by: Greg at 01:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 520 words, total size 3 kb.

The Hokie Horror this past spring, with the murder of so many Virginia Tech students and faculty members, may yet claim another victim -- the functionality of the building where most of the murders took place.

Norris Hall is known for its Gothic architecture, its central location on Virginia Tech's huge campus and, more than anything, its role as the primary site of the nation's deadliest individual shooting rampage.

The two-story building that witnessed so much carnage in April when a gunman killed 31 people there, including himself, will reopen in about two weeks and will be used for offices and laboratories, university officials announced yesterday.

Formerly used by several academic departments, Norris will house only two departments -- engineering science and mechanics, and civil and environmental engineering -- when it reopens June 18.

The decision comes nearly two months after student Seung Hui Cho of Fairfax County shot and killed 30 students and faculty members on Norris's second floor before shooting himself. Cho fatally shot two other students in a campus dormitory earlier that day.

Since the April 16 attack, Norris Hall has been empty, but debate has surfaced among university officials, parents, students and faculty members about what should be done with it. Some wanted to raze the building and replace with it a memorial. Others said it should be left alone.

Speaking as an outsider, I think that it is a good thing that Norris Hall is being returned to some use -- and think that it quickly needs to be returned to full use rather than limited functionality. The demands that it be torn down are nothing more than the cries of those who believe that emotion should overcome reason -- the wussification of the American spirit and the over-indulgence of grief.

Come here to Texas. Visit the University of Texas in Austin. There stands the bell tower, site of the infamous sniper attack in the 1960s. It stands unchanged, as does (for the most part) the plaza where the victims were killed and wounded. Thousands pass through that plaza daily, as they go about their lives. Thus has it been for four decades -- the greatest memorial to the dead. For you see, it is the prime example of how life goes on in the face of tragedy, and how the paroxysms of grief that follow death cannot be allowed to forever paralyze the mourners.

So should it be at Virginia Tech -- the ultimate honoring of those who have died by those who continue to live in their footsteps and in the pursuit of the same lofty academic goals. Bravo to those who have moved to reopen the building -- and may they bring the building back to full use soon.

Posted by: Greg at 03:00 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 471 words, total size 3 kb.

Here's one of those times when I would love to be a plaintiff's lawyer -- I imagine that one could really take this school district to the cleaners.

A high school that had warned against undignified behavior at its graduation ceremony denied diplomas to five students after enthusiastic friends or family members cheered for them during the commencement program.

On May 27, Galesburg High School students and their parents were asked to sign a contract promising to act in dignified way. Violators were warned they could be denied their diplomas and barred from an after-graduation party.

Many schools ask spectators to hold applause and cheers until the ceremonies end but few rigidly enforce the policy.

“It was like one of the worst days of my life,” said Caisha Gayles, one of the five students, who officially graduated, but does not have her diploma to frame and hang on her wall. “You walk across the stage and then you can’t get your diploma because of other people cheering for you. It was devastating.”

The school said the five students can still get their diplomas by completing eight hours of public service, answering phones, sorting books or doing other work for the district.

Uhhhh -- wrong. These kids have already earned their diplomas. They met all requirements established by the state and by the district. Indeed, you even announced as much at graduation that day when some district official announced that the graduates had met all those requirements and you called them across the stage. To impose an additional requirement after the fact -- especially based upon the behavior of other individuals rather than the students themselves -- is hardly reasonable. The actions of other school districts in removing the actual disruptive parties is much more reasonable and defenable.

And there is an additional question -- how far can a district go in denying diplomas? My district had to face that issue eight or nine years ago when a young man decided to moon the graduation crowd. Now he didn't drop trou -- he just raised his gown and shook his butt around at the crowd -- but the district tried to withhold his diploma, only to find itself open to some serious legal issues (especially since that action would have cost the young idiot an full-ride athletic scholarship). And that was for actions committed by the graduate himself, not some family member, friend, or (as one student suggested) enemy looking to cause trouble.

Posted by: Greg at 12:30 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 424 words, total size 3 kb.

I just love the budget priorities this year when it comes to pay raises.

This year, it includes money for a teacher pay raise of up to $450 and a $35,000 raise for Gov. Rick Perry.

Fortunately, though, they decided to go back to fully funding the pension system this year.

And according to the wrong-wing BayAreaHouston blog, those are not the only two pay raise obsecenities.

Pay raise for our Texas school teachers: $430.

Pay raise for Governor Rick Perry: $32,000.

Pay raise for Attorney General Abbott: $25,000

Pay raise for the Commissioner of the Teacher Retirement System: $151,000.

Here's hoping the governor line-item vetoes the last three -- or better yet, vetoes the whole bill and brings them back to try again.

I'm curious, though, about whether or not the legislature gave itself a huge increase in pay this year. I wonder if John's leaving that out is because there isn't one -- or because it might make his Democrat cronies look bad for voting in favor of a budget that lines their own pockets, like they did last time around.

Oh, and for those of you who are curious -- if we average the two figures mentioned above, it works out to a raise of $2.35 per contract day for each teacher in the state. It's great to know how I am valued by my state legislature -- less than the cost of my lunch in the school cafeteria.

Posted by: Greg at 05:15 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 250 words, total size 2 kb.

As a conservative, I hate to see anything run out of Washington. As a teacher, I particularly despise federal mandates in the realm of education, because all too often they are based upon pie-in-the-sky theories that bear little relationship to what actually goes on in the classroom.

However, might it not be a good idea to set a clear standard for what students should learn in high school, so that a diploma actually means something? Right now, it really does not, for core classes are not necessarily rigorous.

It's no secret to most high school students that taking the required courses, getting good grades and receiving a diploma don't take much work. The average U.S. high school senior donning a cap and gown this spring will have spent an hour a day on homework and at least three hours a day watching TV, playing video games and pursuing other diversions.

This is sometimes a surprise to adults, particularly state legislators and school board members who thought that by requiring a number of courses in English, math, science and social studies they had ensured that students would dig in and learn what they need to succeed in college.

Guess again, says a new study, "Rigor at Risk: Reaffirming Quality in the High School Core Curriculum," by the Iowa City-based testing company ACT Inc. "Students today do not have a reasonable chance of becoming ready for college unless they take a number of additional higher-level" courses beyond the minimum, the report said. Even those who do, it concluded, "are not always likely to be ready for college either."

Using research on the college success of students who took the ACT college entrance test, and comparing their test scores to their high school records, ACT researchers found that many core courses were not carefully constructed or monitored and that students often received good grades in the core courses even if they didn't learn much.

State requirements also leave something to be desired, the report said. More than half of states do not require students to take specific core courses in math or science to graduate. Many students pick up diplomas having taken "business arithmetic" rather than geometry or "concepts of physics" rather than a physics course with labs and tough exams.

let's set a rigorous standard nationally for education -- with course expectations that actually teach the important concepts that prepare a student for college or the work world. Furthermore, let's mandate a sequence that makes sense, and that will allow a student to move from district to district, and from state to state, without having their academic credits become a complete hash that delays graduation.

Posted by: Greg at 03:28 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 457 words, total size 3 kb.

If the goal of affirmative action programs is to help the disadvantaged, let's make sure that the disadvantaged -- regardless of race and ethnicity -- are the beneficiaries. That is the goal of this program.

Concerned that the barriers to elite institutions are being increasingly drawn along class lines, and wanting to maintain some role as engines of social mobility, about two dozen schools — Amherst, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Virginia, Williams and the University of North Carolina, among them — have pushed in the past few years to diversify economically.

They are trying tactics like replacing loans with grants and curtailing early admission, which favors the well-to-do and savvy. But most important, Amherst, for instance, is doing more than giving money to low-income students; it is recruiting them and taking their socioeconomic background — defined by family income, parents’ education and occupation level — into account when making admissions decisions.

AmherstÂ’s president, Anthony Marx, turns to stark numbers in a 2004 study by the Century Foundation, a policy institute in New York, to explain the effort: Three-quarters of students at top colleges come from the top socioeconomic quartile, with only one-tenth from the poorer half and 3 percent from the bottom quartile.

Race-based preferences are inherently immoral and contradictory to the spirit of US Civil Rights law and the Fourteenth Amendment -- in addition to often "helping" the most advantaged members of ethnic communities instead of those most in need. By focusing on actual evidence of need rather that blithely making the racist assumption that skin color is a surrogate for being disadvantaged, it may be that affirmative action programs may accomplish an important goal -- helping qualified individuals who truly need the assistance.

Posted by: Greg at 01:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 295 words, total size 2 kb.

If you havenÂ’t met the requirements to graduate, why should you be permitted to walk across the stage at the graduation ceremony?

Students who had been planning to walk across the stage at graduation ceremonies this weekend were instead walking a picket line Thursday morning.

The Trimble Tech High School seniors marched in front of Fort Worth Independent School District headquarters to protest Wednesday's decision by trustees to bar students who failed the TAKS test from commencement exercises.

About a dozen young people, carrying signs and chanting, began picketing at 8:30 a.m. Thursday. They represent the 613 Fort Worth seniors who did not pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam.

Take these young ladies.

Crystal Martinez complained that while she finished at the top of her class with a 3.5 grade point average, she is now blocked from graduation by failing the TAKS test.

"We know we're not going to get our diplomas, but we just want to walk across the stage," Martinez said. "That's all we ask for right now."
Classmate Chloe Walker agreed. "I believe that I have at least the right to walk the stage with all my friends," she said. "I made it this far, and I have all my credits I need. I deserve to get my certificate of completion."

Oh, the humanity! They haven’t met the legal requirements for graduation, but they want to get the perks that go with graduation – including a piece of paper that effectively says “Yeah, she showed up.”

And it isnÂ’t like they donÂ’t have a chance to actually get the diploma and graduate.

School officials said non-graduating seniors will have a chance to take the TAKS test again in July. If they pass, they can participate in a separate commencement exercise in August.

You know – whenever they have actually met the standard and accomplished the goal for which the accolade is being offered. Otherwise it is the equivalent of giving holding a wedding reception for a couple just shacking up together. What they do not recognize is that participating in the graduation ceremony is an honor for accomplishment, not a right.

Sadly, there are too many districts that have forgotten the true significance of the ceremony and let those who haven’t met the graduation standards put in a cameo appearance and "walk the stage." I’m glad my district does not. I wonder – is it time for the Texas Legislature to pass legislation to put a stop to this absurd practice?

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, A Blog For All, DeMediacratic Nation, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Webloggin, Phastidio.net, Leaning Straight Up, Pursuing Holiness, Here's looking at . . . me!, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Blue Collar Muse, third world county, Allie Is Wired, Right Celebrity, stikNstein... has no mercy, , The Right Nation, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 12:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 506 words, total size 5 kb.

You know, when you start applying objective academic standards and not racial preferences, that is what happens.

However, some folks are not happy about the University being forced to follow the Fourteenth Amendment.

Cordelia Martin, a senior at Farmington Hills' Mercy High School, believes Proposal 2 is the leading culprit for her denial.

"If affirmative action would have still been allowed in the admissions process, I think U of M would have considered the odds that I strived to overcome more and taken my racial ethnicity into account," said Martin, who will attend Michigan State University in the fall. She's also a plaintiff in a lawsuit to repeal Proposal 2.

So you see, she’s upset that she was not admitted to the University of Michigan despite her failure to meet the color-blind admissions requirements. As far as she is concerned, she should be judged by the color of her skin and not the content of her character – or the quality of her intellect. Not that she is particularly harmed by this outcome, given her admission to Michigan State University.

Interestingly enough, U-M officials acknowledge that Prop. 2 has resulted in an increase in academic ability.

U-M officials did not comment Wednesday on the diversity of the class. However, they said it should be one of the "most highly qualified and intellectually dynamic ever admitted."

Now if one presumes that the purpose of a university is to educate, and that a top-tier university is supposed to be taking the top-tier intellects, then Prop 2 has done exactly what it is supposed to do.

And if those who donÂ’t measure up lose out to those who do, then what we have is justice, not racism.

Posted by: Greg at 12:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 300 words, total size 2 kb.

I'm glad to see that some folks in a position of power are starting to speak out about the problem of field testing for state exams.

Place a group of school superintendents in a room, and the conversation inevitably turns to testing students.

At a recent meeting in Houston, the topic drawing the most wrath was state-mandated field testing. These are tests that don't count for anything but instead allow the testing company to try out questions for future exams to ensure fairness and reliability.

About 80 percent of schools in Texas had to give students at least one field test this year. In coming years, high school students could face more of these tryout tests because state lawmakers appear intent on replacing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills at some grade levels with a dozen new end-of-course exams.

"With field testing, you're just testing kids to death," said David Anthony, superintendent of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District. "The field testing's about to go out the roof if they pass the end-of-course exams. It will be worse."

Students could get some relief under pending legislation. The House has passed a bill that would limit field tests at a school to once every four years. The Senate's version would keep field testing to an every-other-year practice statewide — but only after the end-of-course exams are developed.

My school has lost at least one day a year to field testing every year in the last five -- and some of our most academically challenged kids have lost more due to their being pulled out of class for additional field testing of the specialized tests for special education and ESL students. Everyone knows these tests don't matter, so the kids simply do not try.

And then you get the objection that came from one of my students, who just failed her math TAKS by one question -- after taking a test with several embedded field test questions. Since those questions didn't count towards her score, isn't it possible that she actually met the standard on the test she took -- only to have enough correct answers excluded from her score to keep her from passing? Isn't it possible that she spent extra time on questions that didn't count, causing her to miss questions that did? I wish I had a good answer for her.

Posted by: Greg at 10:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 400 words, total size 2 kb.

Seems to me that Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich makes a really valid point here – while it is great that we celebrate student-athletes for their accomplishments, we really need to be much more serious about honoring the kids who are doing the heavy lifting of education. You know, the valedictorians and other kids who are excelling at the curricular activities of a school, not the extracurricular ones.

Michael Dotson wanted to be his high school valedictorian because he hates to see his mother sad.

He hated how sad she seemed when he was in 7th grade and started making C's and D's instead of A's. So when he entered Julian High School, he vowed to shape up.

"If I didn't have my mother and I was valedictorian, it would be like, so what?" he said Thursday, sitting in an office at the school. He's a heavyset young man with a soft voice who wears baggy jeans and braids his hair.

"When I found out I was valedictorian, I thought: My mother's going to be the happiest person in the world."

And this young man has succeeded in more ways than one.

By junior year, he realized he had a real shot at graduating first in his class. He studied a little harder. He wound up as one of only 17 boys among this year's 86 Chicago public school valedictorians.

The principal at Julian had hoped Dotson would go to Tuskegee, a revered African-American university in Alabama. Dotson, who hopes to be a video game programmer, chose the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Ariz., a school he discovered at a Navy Pier college fair.

He was sold by the brochure about "geeks at birth" that showed a fetus working at the computer.

Nudged by school officials, he applied to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a scholarship. The day the letter arrived, his mother ripped it open. He hadn't even wanted to apply, knowing the odds were against him.

She shouted for joy.

"I was my calm self," he said. "Then I went into my room and called a friend and started screaming."

I know how hard it is to get one of those scholarships. We’ve had kids at my schools win National Merit Scholarships and other prestigious awards but not make the cut for the Gates awards. This young man has shown his ability, and also his individuality – he could have given in to the pressure to pick a college other folks wanted him to attend, but he instead followed his own heart in making that choice.

Yet into Michael Dotson’s life there has come tragedy – his mother recently suffered a stroke. But the good news is that she will be there to see her son graduate from high school at the top of his class, a tribute to his effort and her parenting skills.

Its great to see one of these kids get recognition for this ort of success, but it also makes me stop and think about the out-of-whack priorities we set. Last week, one of our alums (a former student of mine) was brought back to campus to give a motivational speech to a group of kids who might charitably be labeled as “troubled”. He is a starter in the NFL (tagged as his team’s franchise player) and making millions – and is someone of whom we are all quite justifiably proud due to his success and his high moral character. And yet no one would ever think of bringing back one of his classmates, the valedictorian who got accepted at MIT and who is now finishing medical school here in town, or his sister who went to Harvard and is now a microbiologist, or his other sister who followed them to academic excellence and who is finishing her final year at Harvard with a degree in science. These young people grew up in the same neighborhood and faced many of the same challenges as that much-admired football player, but for some reason we seem unwilling or unable to hold them up with the same sort of pride and respect for their accomplishments. Why not – and what can we do to change that?

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, DeMediacratic Nation, Adam's Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, Webloggin, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, Cao's Blog, Colloquium, Jo's Cafe, Right Celebrity, Wake Up America, Stageleft, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein... has no mercy, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, Nuke's news and views, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 12:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 782 words, total size 7 kb.

Seems to me that Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich makes a really valid point here – while it is great that we celebrate student-athletes for their accomplishments, we really need to be much more serious about honoring the kids who are doing the heavy lifting of education. You know, the valedictorians and other kids who are excelling at the curricular activities of a school, not the extracurricular ones.

Michael Dotson wanted to be his high school valedictorian because he hates to see his mother sad.

He hated how sad she seemed when he was in 7th grade and started making C's and D's instead of A's. So when he entered Julian High School, he vowed to shape up.

"If I didn't have my mother and I was valedictorian, it would be like, so what?" he said Thursday, sitting in an office at the school. He's a heavyset young man with a soft voice who wears baggy jeans and braids his hair.

"When I found out I was valedictorian, I thought: My mother's going to be the happiest person in the world."

And this young man has succeeded in more ways than one.

By junior year, he realized he had a real shot at graduating first in his class. He studied a little harder. He wound up as one of only 17 boys among this year's 86 Chicago public school valedictorians.

The principal at Julian had hoped Dotson would go to Tuskegee, a revered African-American university in Alabama. Dotson, who hopes to be a video game programmer, chose the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Ariz., a school he discovered at a Navy Pier college fair.

He was sold by the brochure about "geeks at birth" that showed a fetus working at the computer.

Nudged by school officials, he applied to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a scholarship. The day the letter arrived, his mother ripped it open. He hadn't even wanted to apply, knowing the odds were against him.

She shouted for joy.

"I was my calm self," he said. "Then I went into my room and called a friend and started screaming."

I know how hard it is to get one of those scholarships. We’ve had kids at my schools win National Merit Scholarships and other prestigious awards but not make the cut for the Gates awards. This young man has shown his ability, and also his individuality – he could have given in to the pressure to pick a college other folks wanted him to attend, but he instead followed his own heart in making that choice.

Yet into Michael Dotson’s life there has come tragedy – his mother recently suffered a stroke. But the good news is that she will be there to see her son graduate from high school at the top of his class, a tribute to his effort and her parenting skills.

Its great to see one of these kids get recognition for this ort of success, but it also makes me stop and think about the out-of-whack priorities we set. Last week, one of our alums (a former student of mine) was brought back to campus to give a motivational speech to a group of kids who might charitably be labeled as “troubled”. He is a starter in the NFL (tagged as his team’s franchise player) and making millions – and is someone of whom we are all quite justifiably proud due to his success and his high moral character. And yet no one would ever think of bringing back one of his classmates, the valedictorian who got accepted at MIT and who is now finishing medical school here in town, or his sister who went to Harvard and is now a microbiologist, or his other sister who followed them to academic excellence and who is finishing her final year at Harvard with a degree in science. These young people grew up in the same neighborhood and faced many of the same challenges as that much-admired football player, but for some reason we seem unwilling or unable to hold them up with the same sort of pride and respect for their accomplishments. Why not – and what can we do to change that?

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, The Virtuous Republic, DeMediacratic Nation, Adam's Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, Webloggin, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, Cao's Blog, Colloquium, Jo's Cafe, Right Celebrity, Wake Up America, Stageleft, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein... has no mercy, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, Nuke's news and views, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 12:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 788 words, total size 7 kb.

No, not the stuff about suspending the teacher for threatening to shoot students. That is a proper move.

No, I mean this little tidbit at the end of the article.

In February he was reprimanded for including a biblical account of creation in an assignment on myths.

Excuse me, but the creation stories found in Genesis meet all the criteria for being included in the literary category of “myth”. Why should there be any discipline meted out for making use of those stories to illustrate the concept?

Now I've heard on the radio that this guy is a pretty outspoken atheist, and that makes some students uncomfortable -- but really, his method is not all that outrageous. In fact, an old colleague from my days as an English teacher and I talked about this thing this afternoon and laughed -- because the two of us, both active Christians, have taught precisely the same sort of assignment with 11th graders.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, The Random Yak, AZAMATTEROFACT, 123beta, guerrilla radio, Right Truth, Webloggin, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Allie Is Wired, Right Celebrity, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 12:39 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 236 words, total size 3 kb.

Let’s be honest – the aide should not have said this, even though the truth of the statement is well-documented.

The father of a middle school student in Spring is upset about comments a teacher's aide made in class. They had to do with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

David Glasker is used to answering questions from his 12-year-old son. But there was one question last week about civil rights leader Martin Luther King that he wasn't prepared for.

Glasker recalled, "'Dad, what is a womanizer?' I looked to him, 'Son, where did you hear this term?'"

His son claimed that's how his teacher's aide described King during a discussion last Thursday. The students were in math class talking about the civil rights leader when he claims the teacher's aide injected her opinion. It's an opinion Glasker is not only offended by, but feels had no place in a math class.

"This is math, this is not American history," he said. "If you're going to talk about a subject, let's keep it to what the class is about."

So, is he objecting to a discussion of MLK in class? Or to the characterization of the civil rights leader?

Well, it quickly becomes clear what the problem is. The parent just doesn’t like having the truth told about King – and doesn’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion. Not that King’s apparent human weakness in any way diminishes his greatness or his accomplishments.

While Glasker isn't against the aide for having her opinions -- in fact, others have written similar statements about King in the past -- he feels based on what his son told him, the aide didn't provide context to the class nor verifiable documentation. Other parents agree.

"I would want the kids to find out the truth, and not something that somebody's assuming," said parent McCoy Brown.

So rather than deal with the facts, parents want the aide sanctioned – which may be an appropriate course of action in this case. After all, is the sex life of a long-deceased American hero a particularly appropriate topic for discussion with young children? However, the basis should be educational appropriateness, not some sort of politically correct sanitizing of history.

Posted by: Greg at 01:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 380 words, total size 2 kb.

I cannot fathom what possible valid educational objective there could be in this incident? How can scaring the crap out of a bunch of children like this possibly be justified?

Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.

But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

Some parents said they were upset by the staff's poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.

"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " she said. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out."

Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation "involved poor judgment."

Yes, you read that right -- an assistant principal was a full participant in this "learning experience". And administrator was involved in putting children in fear for their lives.

I hope Tennessee has some process for revoking the certification of educators who abuse children in this manner -- and I hope it is immediately used. And at a minimum, I hope the district involved uses every available legal remedy to fire each and every teacher involved in this disgusting abuse of authority -- which is, in the end, nothing less than the psychological abuse of each and every one of the children in their care.

UPDATE: Looks like there may be real penalties after all. One teacher and one AP have been suspended -- and I hope that this is done with a view towards termination. What will happen to the rest of those involved? And will there actually be serious sanctions?

Posted by: Greg at 10:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 463 words, total size 3 kb.

That possibility seems to be getting closer.

The Texas House on Monday gave tentative approval to a bill that would replace the high-stakes, highly unpopular TAKS test with a series of end-of-year exams that could make graduation easier for high school students who excel in class but do poorly on tests.

The House bill would eliminate the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS, in stages beginning in 2011 for grades six through 12. High school students in grades nine through 11 would be required to take standardized end-of-year exams in four core courses — English language arts, math, science and social studies.

But in a dramatic change to the state's 20-year-old testing requirements, those students, under one amendment, could conceivably graduate from high school without passing the exams — if they excel in their courses.

The exams would constitute 25 percent of a student's grade in each course. The TAKS is not part of a course grade, but students must pass it to graduate.

The bill's author, Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, was quick to dispel any suggestion that his proposal would weaken academic standards.

"We're intensifying standards," said Eissler, by encouraging teachers to focus on their subject areas and "teach to content, not teach to the test."

"Teachers can go into greater depth and rigor," he added.

I'm for the change -- after all, the test my kids currently have to pass includes absolutely no content from my course, but my teaching is evaluated based upon how they do! An end of course test will actually measure what goes on in my class.

Now I'm not sure about the amendments that are discussed in the article, but I somehow doubt that the Senate will accept them -- especially given teh requirements of NCLB.

Posted by: Greg at 10:31 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 302 words, total size 2 kb.

Here's one school board member who clearly feels that obtaining the consent of the governed is simply too inconvenient.

But some elected school board members bristle at that suggestion and resent having to ask voters to increase their own tax rates.

"I've already been elected to make that decision," said Rhonda Lowe, president of the Deer Park board.

No, Rhonda, that isn't the case at all. Sorry that the requirements of state law are too much of a burden for you to follow. I'm sure that the voters of Deer Park will be more than willing to replace you with someone who has more respect for them and the requirements of state law.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Azamatterofact, Adam's Blog, Right Truth, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Rightlinx, Right Celebrity, third world county, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, Planck's Constant, The Pink Flamingo, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 10:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 177 words, total size 3 kb.

This doesn't look good -- but the university seems to be handling it well.

The senior class president at the Rutgers University campus in Piscataway, N.J., will not be graduating with her classmates next week, university officials said yesterday, after being charged with burglary in the dormitory where she was a resident adviser.

The student, Christa Olandria, 23, a biology major, was arrested along with another Rutgers senior, George Calhoun, 23, on Monday after they were discovered breaking into a room on the seventh floor of Lynton Towers, which houses about 700 undergraduate students, university officials said.

In addition, the university police are investigating whether Ms. Olandria and Mr. Calhoun may have been involved in seven other burglaries in the dormitory that have been reported since September, according to Rhonda Harris, the chief of the Rutgers University Police Department on the schoolÂ’s main campus in New Brunswick, N.J.

Campus crime is covered up in too many instances. I applaud Rutgers for not sweeping this one under the ruig -- and for not trying to keep this case out of the legal system.

Posted by: Greg at 10:25 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 196 words, total size 1 kb.

ItÂ’s a good thing Jonathan Swift isnÂ’t a student at Tufts University.

A judicial panel at Tufts University on Thursday ruled that a conservative campus journal "harassed" blacks by publishing a Christmas carol parody called "O Come All Ye Black Folk" that many found racist.

The decision by the Committee on Student Life, a board of professors and students that hears complaints against campus groups, ruled that The Primary Source was guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment in violation of the school's nondiscrimination policy.

The body ruled that an editor now must sign all of the magazine's work. The panel also recommended that Tufts' student government "consider the behavior" of the magazine when allocating money -- a statement that Primary Source editors say could lead to de-recognition.

Hundreds of students, including the president of the student body, have signed a petition against the magazine, said Douglas Kingman, an editor.

At Tufts, criticism of affirmative action is now deemed to be racial harassment and the creation of a hostile environment. Apparently the only diversity that will be tolerated there is diversity of skin-tone and sexual orientation – diversity of thought and opinion will be ruthlessly rooted out and punished.

But I am curious about this statement from one of the deans.

Bruce Reitman, the school's dean of students, said the school is opposed to censoring The Primary Source. Still, he said he was pleased that the committee found a way to reprimand the magazine for writings he said left many students feeling "unwelcome" and "wounded."

"I'm proud of the committee," he said. "I was pleased to see them balance both values of freedom of speech and freedom from harassment, without letting one dominate the other."

Doesn’t this decision leave students who dissent from the politically correct orthodoxy of liberalism feeling “wounded” and “unwelcome”? Or is that irrelevant, given that those are only rights for those who the school views as worthy of inclusion? After all, the panel has essentially recommended the defunding and derecognition of the campus publication in question.

UPDATE: Captain Ed reproduces the text of the ad about Islam. I don't know about you, but I certainly find it frightening that quoting the less flattering verses of the Quran or talking abut documented historical facts about Islam is now considered harassment of Muslims.

Islam Arabic Translation: Submission In the Spirit of Islamic Awareness Week, the SOURCE presents an itinerary to supplement the educational experience.

MONDAY: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.” – The Koran, Sura 8:12 Author Salman Rushdie needed to go into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni declared a fatwa calling for his death for writing The Satanic Verses, which was declared “blasphemous against Islam.”

TUESDAY: Slavery was an integral part of Islamic culture. Since the 7th century, 14 million African slaves were sold to Muslims compared to 10 or 11 million sold to the entire Western Hemisphere. As recently as 1878, 25,000 slaves were sold annually in Mecca and Medina. (National Review 2002) The seven nations in the world that punish homosexuality with death all have fundamentalist Muslim governments.

WEDNESDAY: In Saudi Arabia, women make up 5% of the workforce, the smallest percentage of any nation worldwide. They are not allowed to operate a motor vehicle or go outside without proper covering of their body. (Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2001) Most historians agree that MuhammedÂ’s second wife Aisha was 9 years old when their marriage was consummated.

THURSDAY: “Not equal are those believers who sit and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit. Unto all Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit by a special reward.” – The Koran, Sura 4:95 The Islamist guerrillas in Iraq are not only killing American soldiers fighting for freedom. They are also responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties.

FRIDAY: Ibn Al-Ghazzali, the famous Islamic theologian, said, “The most satisfying and final word on the matter is that marriage is form of slavery. The woman is man’s slave and her duty therefore is absolute obedience to the husband in all that he asks of her person.” Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari’s eyes in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 following a heated argument about her refusal to have sex with him. (Herald Sun)

If you are a peaceful Muslim who can explain or justify this astonishingly intolerant and inhuman behavior, weÂ’d really like to hear from you! Please send all letters to tuftsprimarysource@gmail.com.

I've also tracked down the other "offensive" satire, which is held to harass African-Americans.

O Come All Ye Black Folk
Boisterous, yet desirable
O come ye, O come ye to our university
Come and we will admit you,
Born in to oppression;
O come, let us accept them,
O come, let us accept them,
O come, let us accept them,
Fifty-Two black freshmen.

O sing, gospel choirs,
We will accept your children,
No matter what your grades are FÂ’s DÂ’s or GÂ’s
Give them privileged status; We will welcome all.
O come, let us accept them,
O come, let us accept them,
O come, let us accept them,
Fifty-Two black freshmen.

All come! Blacks, we need you,
Born into the ghetto.
O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas.
Decendents of Africa, with brown skin arriving:
O come, let us accept them,
O come, let us accept them,
O come, let us accept them,
Fifty-two black freshmen.

Frankly, I think it does a lousy job of satirizing affirmative action -- but it neither qualifies as harassment nor merits the sort of response the university has had to it.

UPDATE II: Interesting analysis from Volokh.

Lovely: Harsh criticism of Islam doesn't -- in the Committee's view -- "promot[e] political or social discourse." Rather, it is an "unreasonable attack[]" (and it's up to the Committee to decide which attacks on religions are reasonable and which aren't).

What's more, this "unreasonable" speech violates the "rights of other members of the community." What are those rights? Apparently the right "to exist on campus without being subjected to unreasonable attacks based on their race or religion" (including attacks on the religion generally, even those that don't give any student names in particular). And apparently the right to be free of "attitudes or opinions that are expressed verbally or in writing" that "create[] a hostile environment" for students "on the basis of race, religion, gender identity/expression, ethnic or national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, or genetics."

In this case, the punishment for the speech is a ban on one newspaper's ability to publish anonymous speech -- while other newspapers that express favored views remain free to shield their contributors from social ostracism and other retaliation through anonymity. It requests "that student governance consider the behavior of student groups," which is to say the viewpoints those groups express, "in future decisions concerning recognition and funding."

But more importantly, the ruling finds that the speech violated general campus rules that make such speech "unacceptable at Tufts" and require "prompt and decisive action." Though it looks like no individual students are being disciplined in this instance, if the Tufts Administration accepts the ruling, it will send a clear message that students who express "attitudes or opinions" like this will be seen as violating campus anti-harassment rules, and will be subjected to "prompt and decisive action," which campus rules say may involve "the disciplinary process," against individual students as well as against organizations. After this decision, what should Tufts students feel free to say in criticizing religions, or in criticizing affirmative action?

H/T Wizbang

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, A Blog For All, 123beta, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, Cao's Blog, Jo's Cafe, , The HILL Chronicles, Stageleft, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Walls of the City, The Right Nation, Blue Star Chronicles, and The Pink Flamingo, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 02:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1392 words, total size 11 kb.

Don’t dare question the policies of Hamline University. It can get you tossed out and declared a threat to the university – and required to submit to psychological examination and forced counseling.

ThatÂ’s what happened to Tony Scheffler after he raised the issue of allowing guns on campus following the Virginia Tech massacre and HamlineÂ’s offer of counseling to all students.

Scheffler had a different opinion of how the university should react. Using the email handle "Tough Guy Scheffler," Troy fired off his response: Counseling wouldn't make students feel safer, he argued. They needed protection. And the best way to provide it would be for the university to lift its recently implemented prohibition against concealed weapons.

"Ironically, according to a few VA Tech forums, there are plenty of students complaining that this wouldn't have happened if the school wouldn't have banned their permits a few months ago," Scheffler wrote. "I just don't understand why leftists don't understand that criminals don't care about laws; that is why they're criminals. Maybe this school will reconsider its repression of law-abiding citizens' rights."

After stewing over the issue for two days, Scheffler sent a second email to University President Linda Hanson, reiterating his condemnation of the concealed carry ban and launching into a flood of complaints about campus diversity initiatives, which he considered reverse discrimination.

The result was Scheffler being suspended without a hearing, banned from campus, and ordered to submit to a psychological evaluation and any recommended treatment plan. Furthermore, an armed guard was stationed outside his classes to prevent him from entering – and an administrator made a presentation in one class that made it clear that he was to be considered a threat. Furthermore, university officials refuse to communicate with him, even by telephone.

Captain Ed makes a great observation.

Hamline is a private university and can set its own standards for admission and retention. However, it should be made clear to its students and its potential students that Hamline has no room for intellectual dissent from its attendees. Students have to accept the victimology dogma of the administration in silence, and in return Hamline will help them cope with their powerlessness. If by chance one of the students challenges the university directly on its philosophy, they will treat him or her like a psychotic and hire the guards they should have hired when they decided to keep their students disarmed.

I agree completely – and would like to offer the suggestion that Hamline University change its name to Ham-Handed University.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, A Blog For All, 123beta, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, Cao's Blog, Jo's Cafe, , The HILL Chronicles, Stageleft, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Walls of the City, The Right Nation, Blue Star Chronicles, and The Pink Flamingo, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 12:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 492 words, total size 5 kb.

Newspaper thefts on college campuses are usually based upon ideology, and are very serious affairs.

This one is a bit different.

Two female college students who bared their bellies at a lacrosse game couldn't stomach a front-page newspaper photo of their stunt and now are in trouble for swiping copies, campus officials said.

They apparently felt the photo made them look fat, the paper's faculty adviser said.

The photo in the April 27 edition of The Gatepost at Framingham State College shows seven fans at a women's lacrosse game with “I (heart) N-O-O-N-A-N,” the name of a team member, spelled out on their stomachs. They are wearing hip-hugger shorts and abbreviated tank tops.

Campus police won't pursue criminal charges, but two students face possible disciplinary action, college spokesman Peter Chisholm said.

English professor Desmond McCarthy, the faculty adviser, said he was told by other students the women who took the papers thought they looked fat.

I'll agree with the paper's adviser -- this is the most stupid reason for stealing a newspaper ever.

Posted by: Greg at 10:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 181 words, total size 1 kb.

This sad situation has torn up a community -- and i suspect the people will not be happy unless this young perp is charged as an adult.

A 16-year-old Needville High School student admitted to starting the blaze that destroyed part of his school and caused students to retake the state-mandated TAKS tests, his attorney said Monday.

The 10th-grader arrived at the Fort Bend County courthouse with his attorney Steven Rocket Rosen on Monday and spent a couple of hours giving investigators a statement. He could be taken into custody today.

"He has admitted the wrongdoing. He is the one who started the fire," Rosen said. The teen's name is not being released because he is a juvenile. School officials said he was serving an in-school suspension when the fire occurred.

Rosen declined to discuss the motive for the April 23 fire but did say it had nothing to do with TAKS tests administered the week before the blaze. The test booklets were destroyed by the fire, which razed a large portion of the high school in the rural community.

"This was the best thing for Needville, for him, for the family, for the community and for law enforcement," Rosen said about the teen's admission. Rosen said he expects the teen to be placed in the juvenile detention center soon.

There's a lot more to come out in this case, but given that the kid set the fire in two locations and caused millions of dollars in damage to the facility I am unable to see how this will be treated as merely a juvenile case. the political pressure will be too great -- and the reality is that the act merits such serious prosecution.

Posted by: Greg at 10:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 297 words, total size 2 kb.

As a teacher, I am all for strong measures to ensure school security. But must we really reach this point?

Like some others in the Washington area, Loudoun County schools soon will greet all visitors with something new: a locked front door, a video camera and a button-activated intercom to request entrance. Inside, office staff will screen the visitors and decide whom to buzz in.

The video intercom, common in apartment buildings around the world, is turning up increasingly in public schools. After the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and subsequent school tragedies, limiting access is a top concern for every school administrator.

Loudoun's $550,000 video intercom solution, to be installed beginning this summer, was proposed after the Amish schoolhouse shootings in Nickel Mines, Pa., in October, in which a gunman killed five students and himself. The proposal, included in the school budget, won overwhelming approval days after the Virginia Tech shooting rampage last month that left 33 dead, including the gunman.

"I realize that schools cannot provide fortification against the crazy events that occur in society," Loudoun School Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III said. But he said school officials can at least take steps to secure buildings.

"By using the intercom video system, we can control who actually comes in the front door," he said.

I'm all for uniforms and IDs for students, but can does putting schools on a perpetual lockdown effectively deal with security issues, or does it really constitute an illusion of safety? And what is the cost to the psyches of our children?

Posted by: Greg at 10:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 268 words, total size 2 kb.

Well, maybe.

the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not.

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

I'm curious -- is it really that "the box gets in the way"? Or is the problem (as at one school included in the article) an unwillingness or inability of teachers from to work with the technology? We had one teacher nursed along by the rest of us because he couldn't figure out how to use the online gradebook -- or his email. I can't imagine how Bob would have survived in a world where the text and assignments were electronic rather than paper. Could it be that we need to wait another 10-15 years before teachers are ready for the technology their students take as second nature?

Posted by: Greg at 10:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 270 words, total size 2 kb.

A case of “free speech for me, but not for thee” at a prestigious East Coast university.

On Monday evening at Tufts University, I attended a long, grueling show trial -- the kind of show trial that doubtless will be repeated at campuses across the United States. This show trial was convened with the sole purpose of punishing The Primary Source, Tufts' lone conservative periodical.

What was The Source's sin? On December 6, 2006, The Source printed a tasteless parody carol entitled "O Come, All Ye Black Folk." The carol was written from the perspective of an admissions officer, admitting students solely based on racially discriminatory stereotypes: "All come! Blacks, we need you, / Born into the ghetto. / O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas." The point of the carol, the editors later said, was that affirmative action is inherently degrading to racial minorities. After the carol was misinterpreted, the editors repeatedly apologized for printing it.

In the April 11, 2007, issue, The Source printed a page entitled "Islam: Arabic Translation: Submission." The page carried quotes from the Koran juxtaposed with facts about certain adherents of Islam -- their involvement with terrorism, discrimination against women, and the slave trade, among others.

This material is clearly political speech. Though Tufts is a private university, the student handbook explains that "the university is committed to free and open discussion of ideas and opinions."

Well, not that committed. "Harassment involves attitudes or opinions that are expressed verbally or in writing, or through behavior that constitutes a threat, intimidation, psychological attack, or physical assault," says the handbook. "Harassment is prohibited at Tufts and may result in disciplinary consequences." And being offended, according to the Committee on Student Life (CSL), constitutes harassment.

Read the rest of the column – it sounds like the trial scene from A Tale of Two Cities, or maybe something that goes on in Castro’s Cuba or amongst the head-chopping terrorists of al-Qaeda.

And as FIRE points out, this whole thing violates TuftsÂ’ explicitly stated policies.

In seeking to punish political satire—the type of speech that lies at the absolute core of the First Amendment—Tufts University is displaying the most despicable hypocrisy. Although Tufts is a private university, and thus is not bound by the First Amendment, Tufts has chosen to promise its students and faculty the right to unfettered free speech. In Tufts’ student handbook, The Pachyderm, students are greeted by a welcome letter from the Dean of Student Affairs that states:

You should anticipate stimulating and sometimes controversial dialogue about issues important to you. You should also anticipate that you may be shocked when another student voices an opinion radically different from yours. We should cherish the opportunity to be learning in a place where controversial expression is embraced. (Emphasis added).

Moreover, the “Speakers and Programs” policy in The Pachyderm provides that:

Tufts is an open campus committed to the free expression of ideas. It is inevitable that some programs and speakers will be offensive to some members of the communityÂ…That offensiveness will not be seen as a reason to prevent the program. In fact, the university will strive to uphold the right of a campus organization to invite speakers or hold programs, even controversial ones, and to hold them without interruption. (Emphasis added).

I guess that only means if you happen to be a non-diverse (white, Christian, heterosexual) student of non-diverse (conservative, Republican) political, social, or economic ideology.

Posted by: Greg at 10:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 583 words, total size 4 kb.

Here we have a student denied a degree in her field of studies and her teaching credentials because of a photo on MySpace.

Take a look at the photo.

Seems pretty tame to me – especially given that the young woman in question was at least 25 at the time, and the mother of two.

LetÂ’s look at the story.

A 27-year-old Millersville University graduate filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the college for denying her an education degree and teaching certificate after a controversial Internet photograph surfaced last year shortly before graduation.

The picture shows Stacy Snyder of Strasburg wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic "Mr. Goodbar" cup. The photograph taken during a 2005 Halloween party was posted on Snyder's MySpace Web page with the caption "Drunken Pirate."

"The day before graduation, the college confronted me about the picture," Snyder said Thursday. "I was told I wouldn't be receiving my education degree or teaching certificate because the photo was 'unprofessional.' "

Snyder said she apologized for the photograph, but Jane S. Bray, dean of the School of Education, and Provost Vilas A. Prabhu refused to issue the bachelor of science degree in education and teaching certificate Snyder earned.

Instead, the college issued Snyder a bachelor of arts degree in English.

Snyder is asking for the modest sum of $75,000 and the awarding of her proper degree and teaching credentials. That seems pretty reasonable to me – I mean there are some serious freedom of speech issues here that apply, since Millersville University is a public entity and they are punishing her for engaging in legal and, one could argue, constitutionally protected activities.

And I’ll say it flat out – if Stacy Snyder is held to have engaged in unprofessional conduct that merits her being barred from the classroom, I’m not sure that any teacher who blogs – or drinks – can stand up to scrutiny. And given that I have already beaten off one attempt to suppress my First Amendment rights and interfere with my employment by a gang of illiberal Democrat thugs who don’t like my politics, I find this case to be particularly troubling.

H/T FIREÂ’s Torch

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Mark My Words, The Random Yak, DragonLady's World, Shadowscope, The Pet Haven Blog, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, Pet's Garden Blog, third world county, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Wake Up America, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 09:43 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 461 words, total size 5 kb.