Predictions: Will This Work, Or Not?

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, New York State Education Commissioner John King, and New York State United Teachers President Richard C. Iannuzzi today announced a groundbreaking agreement on a new statewide evaluation system that will make New York State a national leader in holding teachers accountable for student achievement.

The agreement gives significant guidance to local school districts for the implementation of a teacher evaluation system that is based on multiple measures of performance including student achievement and rigorous classroom observations. The agreement follows through on the state's commitment to put in place a real and effective teacher evaluation system as a condition of the $700 million granted through the federal Race to the Top program. link

I'm betting "not".

Education Regulations Under Fire

I don't have enough understanding of the situation to know whether the regulations are good or typical bureaucratic molasses, can anyone illuminate this issue for me?

House Republicans are looking to move legislation as early as next week that would repeal two Education Department regulations that the GOP say intrude on the authority of states to set education policy.

The Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education act, H.R. 2117, was placed on the Rules Committee agenda late last week, a signal that the committee will soon meet to write a rule for floor consideration of the bill.

Overreaction, or Abuse?

I'm inclined towards the former, but you make your own call:

Valerie Borders, an Arkansas mom, made her 10-year-old son Nequavion walk to school after being suspended (for the fifth time) from riding the school bus. Was she congratulated? Nope. As per ABC News, Mom was charged with child endangerment and faces one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Let's unwrap the child abuse charges. KAIT says walk to school was longish (4.5 miles). A compassionate, public-spirited (or nosy, bored) bank security guard spotted the lad trudging to school and called the police. The tween boy implored the officer, "Please sir, don't take me home or my mother will beat me." So very Dickensian...

Admittedly, Nequavion's walk was long, but that's what made it consequentially perfect.

I got kicked off the school bus in 8th grade. That particular time it was unjust, but I recognized that I'd done enough on other occasions to deserve it and didn't raise a stink about it. My mother didn't punish me, I just walked to school (maybe 2 miles) for a week. Natural consequences.

Congressman Does Good

Almost two weeks ago I contacted my Congressman and asked him to request, through the White House Greeting Office, a letter for my grandfather, who turns 100 years old in about 2 weeks. I just heard from a cousin that grandpa received the letter today.

I'm still waiting to hear back from my senators on my request. Perhaps they know of my party affiliation....

Off School For A Week

Rather than having a day off for Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, my district takes an entire week off for "Presidents Week"--or, as I like to call it, Ski Week. Before you get all bent out of shape, though, we just go longer in June when everyone else is already enjoying the summer vacation.

My school is so spread out that we have 3 different staff lounges, and yesterday in the lounge I frequent we had a potluck--in our parlance, a "Try Mine"--during lunch. No organizing took place other than the person who suggested we have one; everyone brought what they wanted to bring, and we had a great mix of entrees, side dishes, and desserts. Having my prep period immediately before lunch (and failing to bring anything), I nuked what needed to be nuked and set up the "buffet" so that everything was ready to go when lunch started. A few minutes before lunch was over, a couple people started grabbing plates and washing them in the sink.

Such is the caliber of people I'm privileged to work with.

By the by, did you catch that I said people were washing the plates? That's right, we keep a (donated) set of very nice dishes in our staff lounge, along with more coffee cups than you can shake a stick at! And at the beginning of the year each of us brings in plastic cups or flatware or napkins or something so that the lounge is fully stocked.

With only 2 classes after lunch between us and a week off, you might expect that there were movies a-plenty being shown in our classrooms--but not in mine! Good thing, too, because in the middle of my instruction on Linear Equations In Polar Form, in walked all three of our school administrators. In 6th period. The day before a week off. And my class was knee-deep in instruction.

I'm sure they saw some good things and they might very well have seen some things on which I can improve. I hope to get some feedback from at least one of them, as it's always nice to have another set of eyes in the classroom.

How Can School Officials Possibly Think This Is Acceptable or Appropriate Behavior?

I just shake my head in sadness, disgust, and amazement when I read stories like this:

A Georgia middle school student claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday he was humiliated and traumatized when he was brought to a vice principal's office and forced to strip in front of classmates who said he had marijuana...

While the three classmates watched, D.H.'s pockets and book bag were searched but didn't find anything, the lawsuit said. One of the students told school officials he had lied about D.H. having drugs, but administrators continued the search as D.H. begged to be taken to the bathroom for more privacy, according to the lawsuit.

D.H. was ordered to strip and again, no drugs were found...

The student's attorney, Gerry Weber, said a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found school officials can't perform even a partial strip search of a student, even if they have probable cause.

Here's an appropriate section of California education code:

49050. No school employee shall conduct a search that involves:
(a) Conducting a body cavity search of a pupil manually or with an instrument.
(b) Removing or arranging any or all of the clothing of a pupil to permit a visual inspection of the underclothing, breast, buttocks, or genitalia of the pupil.

As I wrote in a recent post:

It's probably a bad idea, but sometimes I think that school and university administrators should be held personally liable when they so blatantly disregard the rights of students. Might that put a damper on these little martinets?

Student Quits Choir Over Song Praising Allah

If schools are to be microcosms of their communities, and are to reflect community standards, then this student is probably right to quit in protest (since he's not living in Dearborn, MI):

A Colorado high school student says he quit the school choir after an Islamic song containing the lyric "there is no truth except Allah" made it into the repertoire.

James Harper, a senior at Grand Junction High School in Grand Junction, put his objection to singing "Zikr," a song written by Indian composer A.R. Rahman, in an email to Mesa County School District 51 officials. When the school stood by choir director Marcia Wieland's selection, Harper said, he quit.

"I don’t want to come across as a bigot or a racist, but I really don’t feel it is appropriate for students in a public high school to be singing an Islamic worship song,” Harper told KREX-TV. "This is worshipping another God, and even worshipping another prophet ... I think there would be a lot of outrage if we made a Muslim choir say Jesus Christ is the only truth."

Nothing the kid says is wrong. On the other hand, though:

At an upcoming concert, the choir is scheduled to sing an Irish folk song and an Christian song titled "Prayer of the Children," in addition to the song by Rahman.

"The teacher consulted with students and asked each of them to review an online performance of the selection with their parents before making the decision to perform the piece," Kirtland said, and members who object to the religious content of musical selections aren't required to sing them.

Membership in the choir is voluntary.

Update, 2/18/12: Does he really deserve death threats over this?

Had A White Guy Said This, They'd Say He Was A Racist

He'd be right, though:

Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Wednesday evening praised the Republican Party for consistently fighting for individual freedom over the last 150 years, and criticized Democrats for pursuing "handouts" to the less fortunate that he said are a modern form of slavery.

"Our party firmly believes in the safety net," West said in a late Wednesday floor speech. "We reject the idea of the safety net becoming a hammock.

"For this reason, the Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us," he continued. "Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever-increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact the most insidious form of slavery remaining in the world today, and it does not promote economic freedom."

They didn't like it when Bill Cosby said such things, either. And do you remember the firestorm when a Cal Poly student posted fliers about a talk by the author of this book?

The Fiery Sword Is Visible In The Distance

About a week and a half ago I posted on the rumors that are leaking out of the district office:

Next year, though, will be a bloodbath. There will be smiting with fiery swords. Ten furlough days is what I've heard is being discussed, and who knows what other cuts are in the offing.

Our district has now released the list of potential job cuts for next year, and you can almost feel the heat from the sword's flame. Only 9.4 jobs in the Central Office, but 432 teaching positions. We don't even have 2000 teachers anymore, so that gives you an idea of the cuts we're facing for next year. We have 9 regular high schools and a similar number of middle schools, and they're envisioning 15.2 math jobs (some are less than full time, hence the .2) gone. Combining that with this being my 10th year in the district, I'm probably safe from a pink slip.

In prior years the layoff notices fell most heavily on the 7-12 teachers because K-3 classes were capped at some low (20? 25?) number. That's gone away recently, and now the cuts are falling more heavily on K-6--165 of the cuts are listed as "multiple subject/self-contained". Still, I have to believe the K-6 teachers outnumber the 7-12 teachers, and yet they get fewer than half of the cuts.

Brutal.

And the CTA will continue to exhort teachers to vote for the Democrats that have brought this upon us, and they will celebrate themselves and congratulate themselves on their wisdom and righteousness.

Why I'm Not A "Progressive" or a "Liberal"

I believe in evidence:

Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted:

• A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors.
• A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average.
• A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members.
• Other government employee unions that do the same for their members.
• A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the poor and to government bureaucracies.

Would this be a shining city on a hill, exciting the admiration of all? We don't have to guess, because there is such a city right here in our state: Detroit.

Why Is This A Big Deal?

I'm not a Mormon but I could never understand the brouhaha about this, uh, interesting aspect of Mormon belief:

Mormon church leaders apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were posthumously baptized, a controversial ritual that Mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the afterlife but offends members of many other religions.

If you think the Mormons are wrong about God, then what they do has no impact on you at all. So they "baptized" your ancestors. So what? If they're wrong, the worst that's happened is they wasted their time. If they're wrong, then your ancestor isn't a baptized Mormon, which should make the complainers happy.

If the Mormons are right about God, then they saved your ancestor. You may not believe in Hell, but if the Mormons are right, there is one and your ancestor was going there--but isn't now, thanks to the Mormons. And if the Mormons are right, Hell isn't going to be a place of fun and partying, so no one truly wants to go there. They did your ancestor a solid, why are you complaining?

If you're offended because you don't like it that the Mormons think your ancestor (and perhaps you) are going to Hell--you don't like the Mormons anyway, why do you care if they think you're going to Hell? You probably think their religion is kookie.

This (to my mind) strange belief of the Mormons harms no one at all and it makes Mormons feel good for doing something to help the unfortunate. In all seriousness I ask, where is the harm? I don't believe in perpetuating a medieval superstition by saying "bless you" when someone sneezes, but I don't get all bent out of shape is someone says it to me when I sneeze.

Snow In The Sierra

Last year there was so much snow that there was skiing in the Sierra on the 4th of July weekend--usually April/May is as late as you get. This year is like "the year without a winter" here in the Sacramento Valley, with lighter than normal snowfall in the Sierra. Climate change, you say?

Have you noticed lately how many stories that are reaching the “mainstream” media debunking the whole global warming/climate change scam? A sure sign this hoax is headed toward history’s dustbin is the virtual irrelevance of chief scammer Al Gore and the growing evidence of data refuting the wild-eyed claims of Gore and his leftwing accomplices.

Well, there’s another breakthrough today as the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting snowfall in the Sierras has remained consistent over a 130-year span despite the hysterical claims of those who’ve perpetrated this massive fraud on a gullible public.

The picture of Saint Al at the link is pretty good.

Downloaded From Facebook

Do We Really Want Government Going This Far, Especially With Children?

I don't want a "lunch police":

A mother in Hoke County complains her daughter was forced to eat a school lunch because a government inspector determined her home-made lunch did not meet nutrition requirements. In fact, all of the students in the NC Pre-K program classroom at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford had to accept a school lunch in addition to their lunches brought from home.

NC Pre-K (before this year known as More at Four) is a state-funded education program designed to “enhance school readiness” for four year-olds.

The mother, who doesn’t wish to be identified at this time, says she made her daughter a lunch that contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips. A state inspector assessing the pre-K program at the school said the girl also needed a vegetable, so the inspector ordered a full school lunch tray for her. While the four-year-old was still allowed to eat her home lunch, the girl was forced to take a helping of chicken nuggets, milk, a fruit and a vegetable to supplement her sack lunch.

The mother says the girl was so intimidated by the inspection process that she was too scared to eat all of her homemade lunch. The girl ate only the chicken nuggets provided to her by the school, so she still didn’t eat a vegetable.

Get your nose out of my kid's lunch. Sheesh.

Cheerleading Coach Fired

One rant, probably not the first, got her fired:

As first reported by Houston TV network KPRC (and brought to Prep Rally's attention by the folks at Larry Brown Sports), the Cypress Woods (Texas) High cheerleading coach is no longer in charge of the program after a recording emerged on which she called her team "highfalutin heifers."

"Who do you think you all are?" the coach said in the recording. "Highfalutin heifers. You can just come and go as you please. Fire me!"

The "heifers" line was part of a much longer screed the coach made against her team, with the cheerleader who recorded the rant claiming it was just one of a number of aggressive rants the coach had launched against the team. Her name has not been released because she is not facing any criminal charges in the rant, even if it might be concerning that she would deem it appropriate to compare impressionable young women to female cattle.

Name-calling isn't the best approach to take when dealing with students, but I have a hard time getting upset over "highfalutin heifers". I've heard much worse!

And, "I'm sorry, dumplings, but your behavior just isn't meeting standards" is too silly to contemplate. Some middling ground?

Not Paulo Freire Again

This author wants high school students to have read Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in high school, presumably so she can continue with the Marxism at the university. I've written about Freire a few times, and challenge Freire's thesis with a single statement attributed to Bertrand Russell: The first task of education is to destroy the tyranny of the local and immediate over the child's imagination.

If you want to read more about the Tucson situation--with a viewpoing that doesn't quite jibe with the first link above--I've written about it here. Notice that it was a judge who said the program was illegal, not the schools superintendent, as the author above stated.

Why iBooks Might Not Be Such A Great Deal Regarding Textbooks

Here's why, according to one person:

Apple recently unveiled its digital book-authoring program, iBooks Author, and I’m scared.

The last three years that I have dedicated to pursuing my Ph.D. in instructional design & technology, which centers on interactive digital text, have given me a new perspective on the delicate balance that is necessary for classroom technologies to be productive and fruitful rather than novel and superficial. The seemingly endless hours that I have spent reading journal articles, writing papers, reading book chapters, taking in lectures, reading conference proceedings, and reading some more, have left me feeling as though I have earned some sort of badge that licenses me to make qualified observations about new educational technologies.

But that’s just the problem; you don’t need to be qualified. iBooks Author allows any Apple user to design and develop an interactive, multitouch textbook. No design experience necessary.

I should be ecstatic that a layperson is able to design instructional products with applications that, until recently, required a personal computer programmer to develop. The digital revolution is finally upon us!

Not exactly. I’m concerned that the act of creating a digital book for students will impede the learning benchmarks that are expected of them. Let me put it this way: When was the last time you saw a well-designed, engaging PowerPoint presentation, where the speaker did not read the words directly off of the slide, verbatim? This is my point. We have allowed everyone to become an instructional designer.

Could he have stumbled upon a better example? I think not.

There are plenty of people who are capable of writing textbooks--in fact, a physics teacher at my school has done much work in this arena. And he's even an Apple fanboy, so iBooks should be right up his alley! The concern, though, is that he would be the exception, not the rule, if every Joe with a computer were to start writing textbooks. It should be incumbent on the the author-to-be to demonstrate competence, not on others to demonstrate why the author might not be competent.

Why He Chose The Tea Party Over "Occupy"

This kid has his head screwed on straight:

The Occupy Wall Street movement touts itself as a movement powered by youth, particularly youth frustrated with the higher education bubble and high unemployment. As a 22 year-old that finds himself between schools (hopefully for just a short time) and between jobs, I fit that niche. Why, then, do I find myself far more at home with the Tea Party movement than the Occupy movement? It’s about the future...

The Occupy movement focuses on short-term issues and believes in antiquated ideas of the 1960s and 1970s...

Occupy is all rage and no vision...

A true youth movement embraces the rebellion in the human spirit. What personifies this better, a movement based on “Don’t tread on me” or one based on asking the government to bail out their lives...

I choose the Tea Party movement because it ultimately asks me to do more for myself, my (future) family and my country. The Occupy movement asks me to admit I can’t face this world, as past generations faced and conquered their world. I am too optimistic to give in.

I Teach A Lot Of Truants

If this is how we define truancy, then I teach plenty of truants:

In California, truancy is defined as missing three days unexcused or being tardy more than three times during a school year.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/12/4257106/school-districts-launch-efforts.html#storylink=cpy

I have students who meet that standard in a week.

So Cold, They're Burning Money In Hungary

OK, they're not burning "money", they're burning "former money". Still, it's a pretty cool report.

It's cold in Hungary; spring-like conditions reign here in the Sacramento Valley.

Just Because You Go To A University, You're Not Automatically God's Gift To The World

Lots of education, even more hubris, not a lot of common sense?

As summer analyst recruiting season continues and superdays near, Wall Street has been having a laugh with one New York University applicant who, to say the least, took a surprisingly dogged approach with his cover letter.

He wrote:

"I am unequivocally the most unflaggingly hard worker I know, and I love self-improvement. I have always felt that my time should be spent wisely, so I continuously challenge myself ... I decided to redouble my effort by placing out of two classes, taking two honors classes, and holding two part-time jobs. That semester I achieved a 3.93, and in the same time I managed to bench double my bodyweight and do 35 pull-ups."

Since Thursday, February 2, when a Bank of America Merrill Lynch director forwarded the cover letter out to his entire team, offering drinks "to the first analyst to concisely summarize everything that is wrong with" the note, it has passed through more than a dozen firms.

"You'd be lucky to get me" isn't usually the best sales pitch, especially in this economy.

Off-Campus Speech

If I've said it once I've said it a million times--schools have no business trying to regulate the off-campus speech of their students. Universities have even less business trying to regulate the speech of their students, who are mostly adults, but some still try:

Hard cases, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes cautioned in a 1904 Supreme Court opinion, make bad law. What ­Holmes meant is that cases with distasteful facts and unlikeable parties tempt judges to back into the desired outcome without regard for the broader legal principles at stake. When that happens, future parties with more sympathetic cases become collateral damage.

Tatro v. University of Minnesota is one of those hard cases. If the justices of the Minnesota Supreme Court lose sight of the larger constitutional issues, the outcome in the case could give colleges virtually limitless authority to silence speech critical of their programs, no matter where it is uttered...

What is important about the Tatro case is not what Amanda said, but why the University of Minnesota believes it may regulate what students say on social-networking pages on their personal time...A speaker on school premises is talking exclusively to a school audience. On Facebook, the audience may include hundreds of outsiders. Enabling a college to dictate what is acceptable on Facebook means that it may interfere with messages that no student ever sees. What's more, speech on a social-networking page—unlike in a classroom—is entirely avoidable. Offended audience members may easily avert their eyes...

The ruling that colleges seek—that they may punish speech, on campus or off, that they deem likely to undermine donor support—should alarm all of us...

While colleges clearly may discipline students for off-campus criminal behavior, the idea that colleges have free-floating good-citizenship authority to punish lawful behavior that administrators subjectively deem "disruptive" is breathtaking in its potential for abuse...

If colleges genuinely believe that students' writing indicates violent intent, then the proper response is, of course, to investigate. But once the investigation is complete and the speech is found to be an unthreatening joke, discipline not only is unjustified, but self-defeating.

It's probably a bad idea, but sometimes I think that school and university administrators should be held personally liable when they so blatantly disregard the rights of students. Might that put a damper on these little martinets?

So You Didn't Like No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

Yes, Ted Kennedy's NCLB law (voted for by this list of luminaries in the Senate) had some flaws, but claiming it harmed students is wrong. How does it harm students to have a standard that they be able to read and calculate, and to determine if they're actually making progress towards those goals? This president has figured out how:

President Barack Obama on Thursday will free 10 states from the strict and sweeping requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, giving leeway to states that promise to improve how they prepare and evaluate students, The Associated Press has learned...

A total of 28 other states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have signaled that they, too, plan to seek waivers — a sign of just how vast the law's burdens have become as a big deadline nears...

No Child Left Behind requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Obama's action strips away that fundamental requirement for those approved for flexibility, provided they offer a viable plan instead. Under the deal, the states must show they will prepare children for college and careers, set new targets for improving achievement among all students, develop meaningful teacher and principal evaluation systems, reward the best performing schools and focus help on the ones doing the worst.

In September, Obama called President George W. Bush's most hyped domestic accomplishment an admirable but flawed effort that hurt students instead of helping them (boldface mine--Darren)...

What will really hurt students is forcing states to accept Obama's favored Common Core Standards, which aren't as rigorous as the state standards in many states, and then not really making an effort to see if students are meeting even those lesser goals. But hey, maybe the kids will have better self-esteem?

Here's a post I wrote on the topic last summer. Here's one from two years ago. Both identify good parts of the law--determined by the not-quite-right-leaning New York Times and Los Angeles Times--parts that will be thrown out along with the baby and and the bath water. As I scroll through my 90+ NCLB posts, I see many wherein I link to stories about how the law is having a positive impact. Yes, there are parts I'd tinker with, but wholesale rewriting (a la RttT) is the wrong course of action.

Are our schools doing better 3 years into an Obama presidency? After all, that's what we were promised in the union rags--I know, I quoted them on this blog! Here's one of them, which ends with this Cassandra-like statement: "I don't see a Golden Age of Public Education occurring under the next president, despite the choirs of angels at California Educator."

Amen.

On A School Day?

A union of professionals, indeed:

(Monday) March 05, 2012

Occupy the Capitol

Location: Sacramento

Thousands of students, parents, teachers, and workers will flood into Sacramento. How long we stay will be up to you.
Join us to demand that Wall St. and the 1% pay to refund education, jobs, and essential services!

10 am - Mass March * Location TBA
11 am - Rally at the Capitol Building
12:30 pm - Lunch at the Capitol Building
1:30 pm - March on Wall St. lobbyists from the Capitol building
4 pm to ? - General Assembly and Speakout! at the Capitol Building

It's bad enough they're a day late and a dollar short, trying to "me too" a movement that's already died out, but to do this on a day when school is in session and teachers will have to take a day off? Such great role models. Disgusting.

CTA is an embarrassment. I couldn't be more proud not to be a member of that union.

Update, 2/13/12: Turns out ACORN is involved:

A re-branded ACORN branch in California is raising money to help fund an upcoming "Occupy" protest in Sacramento, FoxNews.com has learned.

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment sent out letters this month pleading for contributions of up to $20,000 for buses, food, printing, sound and other supplies for an upcoming event dubbed "Occupy the Capitol."

Didn't The Soviets Used To Lock Dissidents Up In Psychiatric Hospitals?

This is just creepy:

A study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry has concluded that distrust of the government is a treatable mental disorder. Known as "AGP" or "anti-government phobia," the study claims: "...that unfounded fear of government is a recognizable mental illness, closely related to paranoid schizophrenia. Anti-Government Phobia (AGP) differs from most mental illnesses, however, in that it is highly infectious and has an acute onset. Symptoms include extreme suspiciousness, conspiracy-mongering, delusional thought patterns, staunch 'us against them' mentality, withdrawal from reality, and often religious fanaticism..."

I'll believe this "disorder" exists when there's no outcry upon its acceptance by a Republican president.

Update: a parody, and I bought it. The best parodies are the ones that could be true, but I still don't like being suckered. Details are in the comments.

Guess Who's Checking Out My Blog?

click to enlarge

I'm not paranoid, they are watching me!

Father Teaches Daughter Lesson About Facebook

Teenage girl smarts off about her parents on Facebook, thinking they won't find out.

Wrong answer.

Of course I think it's hilarious, but at least one commenter at that link is correct:

So, your daughter gets over rebellious and says some mean things about you to her friends. Be angry? Sure. Punish her? I expect. But then what? You take it 10 steps further and try to humiliate her over the internet. Now, how the (expletive deleted) is that any different than what she did to you? Hell, that's worse if you ask me!

As I said to another teacher today, some people need a butt-kicking, and it's hard to feel sorry for them when they get it. Same with this situation; I'm conflicted.

But it's still pretty funny!