A Shrewdness of Apes

Professional courtesy during Educator Appreciation Week-- an impossibility?

2009-11-17T17:00:00.000-06:00

I emailed a question to a support staff person in my favorite support department three weeks ago. This person still has not deigned to reply.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

CE and BCE: An evil plot or a non-issue?

2009-11-16T05:17:00.000-06:00

A school district in the St. Louis metro area in undergoing a bit of a kerfuffle over the use of the disgnations of CE and BCE in lieu of BC and AD in social studies classes. From Tim Townsend, religion writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Dean Mandis, insurance executive and father of two students in the Rockwood School District, stood before the district's superintendent and seven School Board members Thursday night at Crestview Middle School. He had three minutes to broach an issue that had been bothering him for a month or so.

Wearing a navy, pinstripe suit with a patterned purple tie and black leather loafers, Mandis adjusted his rimless glasses, took a breath and began.

Mandis' daughter, an eighth-grader, had come home from school recently with evidence that she was being taught something other than the traditional calendar dates of B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin for "in the year of the Lord.")

Instead, her teacher was quizzing social studies students on alternative calendar designations that are increasingly common in higher education — C.E., for Common Era and B.C.E., for Before the Common Era.

"Introducing B.C.E./C.E. in conjunction with B.C./A.D. in the classroom is to deny the historical basis of the dating system and ultimately leads to confusion," Mandis told the board. Mandis said this teacher's decision was "irresponsible" and possibly "a dangerous and slippery slope."

In the hallway outside the meeting, Mandis initially said he was uninterested in the religious issues at stake. But he eventually admitted he wasn't bent out of shape because of an affront to the Gregorian calendar.

"This is a movement that's occurring nationally," Mandis said of the adoption of the B.C.E./C.E. system. "The intention is to secularize our schools and our country."

Thomas Madden, a history professor at St. Louis University and director of the school's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, said the movement to use C.E. and B.C.E. in western academia began in the 1980s and is "much more prevalent" now.

"B.C. and A.D. are references directly to Christ, so B.C.E. is supposed to be more sensitive to non-Christians," Madden said. The idea is that when B.C. and A.D. are not used, "non-Christians don't have to be confronted with numbers that reference Christ's birth."

A similar debate surfaced in Kentucky in 2006 when a staff member at the Kentucky Department of Education proposed substituting the newer designations for B.C. and A.D. in middle and high school social studies classes across the state.

But Christians fought the proposal, and it died before it could be implemented.

"Since our inception, Christianity has played a key role in the formation of our nation, and there's no reason to back away from that reality simply because some bureaucrat authorized a shift," said Kent Ostrander, executive director of the Kentucky Family Foundation, which led the charge against the change.

Last year, former state Sen. John Loudon, R-Chesterfield, filed legislation to make B.C. and A.D. Missouri's "official dating standard," so the state could not "use any other designation."

"It was met with a jaundiced eye," Loudon said. "People said, 'No one's deliberately trying to scrub the calendar of any mention of Jesus Christ.' But, in fact, there is an effort, as evidenced by what's happening in Rockwood."

Craig Larson, Rockwood School District superintendent, scoffed at the suggestion that his teachers are attempting to secularize their students.

"There's no agenda here," he said. "We're just teaching kids how to understand dates."

Last week, Larson reacted to the debate on his blog.

"Within the last 10-15 years, CE/BCE has started to appear in student textbooks, usually along with AD/BC and sometimes with just one or the other mentioned," he wrote. "Teachers make sure that students are aware of both designations so they are literate when they encounter either notation."

Madden said the hypercompetitive textbook market has meant that more publishers are using C.E. and B.C.E. as a way to distinguish themselves as more religiously sensitive alternatives to traditional texts.

Both Larson and Bill Gerling, social studies consultant for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said there was no official policy on dates.

Gerling said the issue had not come up before, and that curriculum decisions are left up to district officials.

But, he said, "there are all kinds of calendars out there — Jewish, Muslim, Chinese — and if you're going to teach world history, you need to introduce kids to different cultures."

But such reassurances have not calmed some of the district's parents. More than 600 people have signed a petition demanding the continued use of B.C. and A.D., and declaring that the B.C.E./C.E. system "is inconsistent with the traditions and principles upon which our country was founded."

As it happens, foundings and births have been standard pegs for calendar measurements through history. A sixth-century Roman monk is credited with calculating the date of Christ's birth, and a century later, the English monk Bede began tying history to that date. The designations B.C. and A.D. were widely used by the 14th century.

"We have to have some way of measuring the year, and that measurement has to be pegged to something," said Madden. "Most cultures peg that measurement to something important to them."

Ancient Romans used the formation of the city of Rome. Muslims use the hijra, Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D.

Despite the increased use of B.C.E. and C.E., many scholars feel the designation is more cumbersome than traditional dating and is understood by fewer readers. The Chicago Manual of Style, used by many academics, has no preference for B.C.E. or C.E. The Associated Press Stylebook prefers B.C. and A.D.

But the most fundamental problem with the B.C.E./C.E. system is that at its root, the newer system is still a measurement of time based on the birth of Christ. The definition of "the common era" is the 2009 years since.

"Usually it's used to make the person using it feel better about themselves — that they're more sensitive and aware of other people," said Madden. "But it doesn't change what the numbers measure."

On Thursday night, School Board members sat behind a dais decorated with the slogan, "We do whatever it takes for students to realize their potential."

They had listened silently as Dean Mandis expressed his concerns. Then, as someone informed Mandis his three minutes were up, he came to the crux of his argument.

"Our students in the Rockwood School District," he said, "deserve to know what 2009 refers to."

Ever since the sixth century after the birth of Christ, when the monk Dennis the Short (Dionysius Exiguus) appended the abbreviations of "AD" and "BC" to dates in the Julian calendar (and miscounted, I might add), there has been controversy over how dates are calculated, much less designated, in the Western calendar.

Changing the abbreviations after dates doesn't change the fact that they are calculated-- incorrectly, I might remind you-- from the birth of Jesus Christ. This is a tempest in a teapot by those who see conspiracies in every change. And as a teacher, I would like to know that our students know what the details and the significance of historical events are over what the number may or may not mean.

No matter what letters come after the date, the fact that the date is supposed to be calculated from the birth of the Christian messiah is not changed. So really, the use of "CE" over "AD" doesn't matter that much, in my opinion. Christian beliefs are still driving the calculations, and obscuring that really doesn't make it any more or less of an imposition upon those who are not Christian.

Professional! Abso-friggin'-lutely!

2009-11-14T09:48:00.009-06:00

Given that the muckity-mucks in my district think that we should mimic Australia in all things (no offense to Australia-- I would love to visit, and I think Nicole Kidman, Olivia Newton-John, the young and sane Mel Gibson, and Cate Blanchett are just fabulous, although I have a hard time forgiving you for the Wiggles) I thought this was interesting, From Australia:

A "HOON" (definition here) teacher banned for tailgating a school bus, swearing at children and allowing students to stand on tables says he deserves another chance to front a classroom.

Alf Hickey, 36, hopes to overturn a Victorian Institute of Teaching ban through the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Tuesday.

Mr Hickey, a woodwork teacher, was deregistered in February over a long list of bizarre behaviour during a six-month stint at Vermont Secondary College in 2007, the Sunday Herald Sun reports.

A VIT hearing found Mr Hickey turned up 90 minutes late on his first day, left classes unsupervised and said "f---" when yelling at students.

It also found Mr Hickey let students stand on tables in class, did not call in sick when he failed to arrive and tailgated a school bus on a year 9 camp to Phillip Island. Mr Hickey admitted to the Sunday Herald Sun doing "wheelies" in a school car park and that a colleague had called him a "hoon" over his driving on the school camp.

But Mr Hickey said he did not do anything wrong, despite saying at the time there was "so much dust the bus driver could not have seen us".

"If I'm a hoon, they are a bunch of goons," he said.

Mr Hickey said he was "abso-friggin-lutely" a good teacher.

"If you outshine people when you come to a school, people will try to knock you down," he said.

The VIT panel has allowed Mr Hickey to reapply for his registration at any time.

But Mr Hickey said the VCAT action was a separate matter to clear his reputation.

VIT would not comment.

Mr. Hickey thinks his current situation is the result of professional jealousy and backbiting. Okay, uh-huh.

Here in the US, we are so desperate for shop teachers, I imagine that a lot would be overlooked if Mr. Hickey were to come on over. I personally have been stunned by some of the language used by coaches around here toward their players, so I'm not sure that cursing on the job is looked at seriously unless one is unsuccessful in what one does. Not that I'm okay with that, but it's simply a statement of fact.

Here is a man who can't control a classroom. A classroom filled with dangerous equipment. Why is it not obvious that he should be doing something else?

Deep breath... and let the whinging begin!

2009-11-11T18:14:00.004-06:00

Okay, so I haven't been the best blogger in the world, and I most sincerely want you to know I am still among the living. I will try to be better, but my family has been diverting my attention-- which is a euphemism for "they've been driving me stark raving mad and I've barely been keeping it together." I'm sure many others can relate to the madness which overcomes one when one is the parent of teenagers.

So I wonder if anyone can also relate to this?

I am being punished by the district IT people. I am being kicked to the curb like a truculent ten year old... and my students are the ones who suffer, as well as my own frustration which of course is no consequence in the calculus of the modern school, as many of those who teach can attest.

I have a computer which is admittedly gimpy. It is about three years old, but has a rotten brain, as they say in Young Frankenstein. And I can't give this benighted piece of crap a "sedagive" to make it all better. But here's the best part, neither WILL the district IT people.

The district has hoops through which one must jump in order to receive the latest technology. These hoops require attending hours upon hours of classes on software that is either A) not necessary for my subject or grade level, or B) requires the use of ancillary items that are practically nonexistent in my building, thereby also rendering these programs useless. For instance, imagine taking a class in GarageBand with no access to microphones, or on iMovie with no access to a digital camera or a decent processor speed or updated hardware.

Imagine being expected to create a website on the district server (which goes down every time it rains, and we've had record rainfall) with software which is four years old and requires a "mere" fifteen to twenty hours to create a cartoony, clunky webpage which has all the charm of a watercolor done by an elephant. A blind elephant. With a broken trunk.

So I began this process, a while ago, but found that I resented the time away from my family to test out on software that would never either be willing or able to use. So I stopped. And anyone who knows me knows that "Never ever ever give up," is not just a quote from Winston Churchill to me, but is actually more of a creed.

So, now, even though the machine upon which I work has been recalled, the IT people refuse to replace it with one that actually is dependable and reliable. Unless I agree to twist my fat, middle-aged, and exhausted Great Dane body through poodle-sized hoops.

Then let us describe the firewall software that allegedly protects us and our students from dastardly images and video clips. F'r instance: type in the terms "Panama canal" or "analysis" or "breastworks" and you will run up against the firewall and its dire warnings that "this attempt to access inappropriate content has been recorded." Extra credit for those who can guess why the firewall is triggered by these terms. It's like smacking a fly with a dead and much-decayed mackerel, and then being surprised by the repugnant and yet completely ineffective results.

This is an IT department that is a confederacy of dunces. This is an IT department that lives and dies by the following sentiment: "Above all, we must abolish hope in the heart of man. A calm despair, without angry convulsions, without reproaches to Heaven, is the essence of wisdom."

So here's the deal: this computer will eventually die. You know it, evil IT bonobos.

And when it dies, I will sadly be unable to do all of the techy things, the mundane, annoying techy things like taking attendance, posting grades, answering parental emails, and the like that have been ladled onto me like two day old gravy by administrators and tech people who think that all I have to do in the world is dance to their evil, tinny, little organ grinding away like a scratchy rewound cassette recording of Justin Timberlake from back when he was a Mousketeer in lieu of this thing which is actually quite difficult called "teaching." I'm sure you've heard of it-- since...

it makes your insipid little job possible at all.

I thought I might remind you of this tiny fact, since if there were no teachers, there would be no students. And no students would equal no taxpayers who pay for you to waste countless hours listening to the Coverville podcast or whatever else you do in your ridiculous TRON T-shirts and anime tattoos.

And if you still don't get it, IT chimps, come on down and take a turn in front of thirty ennui-saturated teenagers and try to penetrate the fog of their existence with skills and curriculum. I dare you. And I'll spend a day in YOUR jobs, imagining that technology will some day replace actual teaching and human interaction.

Tips for parent-teacher conferences

2009-10-04T14:37:00.003-05:00

Who doesn't want to make parent teacher conference time go more smoothly?

Let's remember: you've probably worked all day and barely had time to grab a bite to eat, and then you sit and meet with parents rapid-fire in ten or fifteen minute increments.

So here's some tips:
1. Dress professionally in welcoming colors that flatter your skin tone. I like blue or green due to my coloring. Avoid red or black. Think about matadors and bulls, here.

If you can, don't wear your dressy clothes all day-- they will be wrinkled and possibly sweaty if your schools HVAC works as well as mine does. Wear comfortable clothes during the day, and then change after the kids leave.

Brush your teeth before the parents come, too.

2. Some fresh flowers are lovely to brighten up the room, and they smell nice, too, while not being as overpowering as other options to freshen the air.

3. I also like to keep a dish of hard candy (sugar free as well as fully leaded). It's a welcoming gesture.

4. Keep some blank paper or coloring books and crayons or markers for little brothers or sisters who may accompany mom and dad to the conference. This helps everyone concentrate on the conference at hand. Plus I then post those pictures(signed by the artiste) that kids leave me in my room, and you'd be surprised how much my big kids love this.

5.Start out positively. Name problems as challenges. If a kid doesn't turn in work, it's always effective to present a parent with signed "I didn't do my work" forms from the week. I recommend that every students give you either their assignment or one of these forms, so that you have something tangible so that parents can see the extent of the problem.

6. Do not allow one parent to monopolize an hour of your time. Stand up when the time is over, smile warmly, and say, "It's been lovely to speak to you, Mr. Pjhtwy; I hope you have a wonderful evening." And then, if you have to, walk to the door and possibly even out into the hallway.

7. Keep It Simple.

8. Don't argue. Realize that sometimes you and parents will never agree. Nonetheless, it is your classroom, and you have the right to expect reasonable behavior from your students. Do not agree to an intervention that puts the onus on you with all the other tasks you have to do unless there is a component built in for the student and the parents to buy in as well. For example, if the parents have access to grades online, and they actually HAVE that access, hold parents to that rather than agreeing to run a daily or weekly report. If you do that, you're still the only person who appears to care, and chances are the report won't get home anyway.

9. Parents who don't show up at conferences should be contacted via phone or even better email.

10. Prepare yourself to see parents wearing pajamas, parents wearing A-shirts, parents wearing clothing that would make a Vegas stripper blush, parents wearing slept-in sweats and no underwear (don't ask me how I knew this, just believe that I still have nightmares), parents who smell of alcohol and/or marijuana, as well as parents who dress and act professionally. Learn to school your expression so that you maintain outward calm.
Oh, and just because parents are dressed nice doesn't mean that the family is functional.

11. Do not assume that you're looking at Mom and Dad, or that names are the same. It's best to introduce yourself to each person. We have had people who were assumed to be one gender who turned out to be another, so don't make THAT mistake, either.

Oh, and make sure you get lots of rest afterward. You're gonna need it.

Brutality on the bus

2009-09-22T19:09:00.005-05:00

I imagine you've probably heard about this by now:

The [Belleville, Illinois] School Board on Monday handed out the harshest punishment allowed to two students accused of violent attacks on another boy on a school bus last week, saying it was sending a message by expelling the two boys for the rest of this year and all of next.

Board President Curt Highsmith said the kind of violence caught on the school bus' surveillance camera and shown widely on TV and the Internet has "never been tolerated and never will be tolerated" in the Belleville Township High School District.

The video taken a week earlier by a camera on the bus showed a 17-year-old Belleville West High School student get on the bus and look for an open seat. He took a seat next to another teen, who after a few moments attacked the victim, punching him in the head several times. At one point, the attacker held the victim by the neck with one hand while he punched his face with the other.

A few minutes after that beating ended, another student argued with the victim and then punched him in the face several times. Each time, other students intervened in an effort to stop the attacks.

The victim was treated by a school nurse after the beatings and later was released to his mother.

Police initially said the attacks may have been motivated by race but later backtracked, saying it appeared to be a case of bullying, not racial animosity. The victim is white, his two attackers are black.

Most of the 50 people attending Monday's School Board meeting appeared to support the expulsions, which school officials said were the harshest penalties allowed by law.

Parent Angie Brown said she backed the board's decision but wanted to make sure the expelled boys still attend school somewhere.

"Everybody deserves an education," she said.

But Tami Graham said she was more concerned about the safety of students who follow the rules than about the schooling of boys expelled for the attacks.

"I don't care about their education," she said.

Some were unhappy about the way video footage of the attack thrust Belleville briefly into the national spotlight. Parent Alicia Bradley said she was angry that the video had been released and that so many people had made hateful posts on blogs and websites. She said it was a poor representation of Belleville and the school.

Some speakers said the incident made them more concerned about bus overcrowding and gang issues at the school.

Several students have been suspended for cheering on the attacks or laughing as they took place. Tabasha Holloman, the mother of one of those students, said her son was in the wrong but questioned whether the district was imposing punishments fairly.

"That's the way teenagers react to fights," she said.

She said her son had been the victim of an attack at a football game on Sept. 4 and that school authorities had not done anything about it. She said problems at the school go beyond what was seen on the school bus video.

Six Belleville police officers were stationed at the meeting but were not needed to keep order.

Both of the accused attackers were charged with felony aggravated battery on Friday. Illinois law shields the names of juveniles charged with crimes because they are minors.

The first boy, a 14-year-old, pleaded not guilty Monday at a detention hearing before St. Clair County Judge Walter Brandon.

"This is shocking in its violence and its brutality," said William Clay, an assistant state's attorney.

Clay said the victim didn't provoke the attack and had simply been looking for a place to sit on the bus. He said the first attacker "clearly lost control that day."

Prosecutors argued for holding the teen until trial, but Brandon released him to his father, a pastor. The teen will be under 24-hour curfew and must get a court order if he wants to leave his father's home for anything other than attending school.

John Hipskind, the teenager's public defender, said he has no prior juvenile delinquency cases, attended school regularly and made good grades before the attack.

The other teen, a 15-year-old who is accused of beating the victim later in the bus ride, turned himself in to authorities on Monday. He did not appear before a judge.

Clay said that teen flashed apparent gang signs after the beating.

Here is an edited version of the video from the school bus from the CBS Morning News:

The 15-year-old was placed under 24 hour house arrest after a hearing before a juvenile judge today. He will not be allowed out of his house without a court order, and is being held in custody until his father, who is a minister, gets a land line so that his monitor will work.

The bus driver, after an investigation, has been removed from that route.

There are links to related stories here, and here.

The full, unedited video, which lasted 13 minutes, is here.

I am disgusted with kids who think this is funny. I am disgusted that the second attack was not prevented, much less the first. It seems these kids had no fear of consequences. I am disgusted with the parent who said that her child was wrong for laughing but excused that behavior at the same time, because the laughter helped prolong the first attack and provoke the second attack. I am disgusted with the parent (who is a minister) of the fourteen-year-old attacker who talked about how his family's life was harmed by the publicity and reaction, when he should be wondering why his child felt free to attack someone in such a vicious manner.

God help us.

Avast, scurvy dogs!

2009-09-17T06:01:00.001-05:00

And today? Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!!!!

You Are 80% Pirate

Shiver me timbers! You be a tried an' true buccanneer.

Yer likely the captain - shoutin' orders to scrub the deck or walk the plank.

If anyone questions yer shipmate skills, ye'll jus' crush the'r barnacles!

Ye have been flying the Jolly Roger fer a long time. So long that you likely be havin' a bad case o' scurvy.

Would You Make a Good Pirate?

Now, who be surprised?

President Obama's "Liberal" Agenda for Education

2009-09-09T15:04:00.001-05:00

Well, now that the speech has been made, we see that President Obama's evil, socialist, partisan agenda to indoctrinate our nation's schoolchildren is this, summarized from the text of the president's speech:

1) It's not just the job of teachers and parents to make sure students learn. You, the students, have responsibility in this process, too.

2) Education provides the opportunity to discover your talents, but you have to develop those talents.

3) You not only have a responsibility to yourself to make the most of your education, you have a responsibility to your community and your country to become educated.

4) No matter what difficulties you have to overcome, there are no excuses for not making sure you make the most of your education.

5) Being successful is hard work no matter what impression you may get from tv or music, and you will have to overcome setbacks and failures in order to become successful. The key is to persevere.

6) Ask questions.

7) Ask for help.

8) Never give up on yourself.

9) Do your part to improve this country.

Wow. How dare he???????? What exactly in this message is not prudent and conservative, in the best sense of the word?

And please note that, unlike so many who get their news from the Colbert Report without getting the irony, I refrained from announcing my opinion until AFTER I heard the speech and read the text. Would that all supposedly responsible citizens would do the same.

I will confess that I am ashamed of the initial response my school district chose when this speech was announced. Letters were sent home to parents, which announced a set of limitations which made it nigh impossible for a teacher to have his or her students watch the speech. Parents were basically assured that their children would be protected from being forced to listen to a speech about the importance of education by the president of the United States. The fact that bitter, immature, uncivil, partisan sniping was in any way given credence at the central office was one thing. But then days later, we got a grudging admission pointing out that, well, we need to respect the office of the president, and Barack Obama IS our president. Oh, thanks.

Here's what I resent: when President Bush was still in office, any letter similar to the ones sent home last week would have been decried as unpatriotic and the worst sort of injection of political-- and in particular liberal-- bias into the classroom. But the second that a Democrat is in the White House, it is suddenly fine and dandy to use fear-mongering and smear tactics against the office of the president. We did not see such a response when Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush gave similar speeches to students, either.

It is my policy to never criticize the current president-- no matter who he is-- to my students. (Yes, that's one reason why I have a blog.) I can and do control myself and act like an adult. Furthermore, just because you vote for or against someone doesn't mean you should not continually re-evaluate and judge how well they have represented your beliefs and values. There have certainly been things I have disagreed with done by every president in my lifetime, including this one.

I would hope that our district administration would also follow this policy, and show the same restraint and respect we expect our students to demonstrate to us, whether they like us or not. I was hoping that this letter was just a reaction to a bitter but vocal handful of district residents who were stirred up by their blind obedience to the Limbaugh Lobby to hate any and all things Obama, and by their vociferousness often scared the bejebus out of petty bureaucrats. But by catering to this element, administrators, you appear to agree with them, and that is the injection of political bias into the classroom that should not be tolerated no matter who is president.

However implicit and subtle our district administrators think their very political response was to a non-political speech, our students are no dummies. Many of them realized that a reactionary fringe opposed to civil discourse was allowed to control the day on Tuesday. And that IS un-American.

Health Insurance for Dummies, Old-School Style

2009-09-05T17:01:00.009-05:00

This year our insurance plan was "tweaked." At our last faculty meeting we bad lazy no-goodniks were chastised by the District Numbers Dude (henceforth known as DND) for the incredibly high coinage our insurance company has had to pay out in ratio to premiums paid. It is obvious that our refusal to drag our lazy butts in to school is the reason for this slacking when we should certainly just choose to do otherwise.

Apparently the gambit of offering people a hundred bucks for perfect attendance isn't working so well. (Show of hands-- how many of you out there have gotten to the point that you would PAY a hundred bucks to have a day off?)

So yes, we have to be "incentivized" ("I do not think that word means what you think it means....") by having a "doughnut hole" built into our coverage. This means that after a certain point, call it "x", we have to pay 100% of our medical expenditures, basically, until the insurance kicks in again at another certain point, call it "y." And of course, DND and friends don't call it a "doughnut hole" because that would mean that people would actually understand what this little tactic actually is.

Now let me just point out that it has never occurred to DND or any of the other Powers That Be that there are a few simple steps that could help alleviate ever-escalating health care pay-outs, and I bet it would be far cheaper than ever-increasing premiums, substitute pay, days of work lost, and cheap tricks. I mean, really, who wants to spend three hours writing lesson plans when they are sick so they can stay home and be miserable-- besides knowing all the work that is piling up while they're home sick?

Here they are, and these could be done on rotation:
1) Clean the ductwork in the buildings at least every other year. Our ceiling tiles are coated in a black gunk near the air vents which is disgusting. I know one building in our district in which several people have had to have polyps removed from their sinuses. See point number 4 below.

2) Patch the holes in the roof of every building.

3) Replace the ceiling tiles. They are over thirty years old and are coated with mold, mildew, and black gunk.

4) Realize that since we have an industrial site next door to our school, we cannot open the windows, which would help freshen the air. Most of our illnesses are respiratory in nature.

5) Hire a contractor who will provide healthy, fresh, recognizable food in the cafeterias.

6) Create a wellness program which actually interests people-- volleyball leagues, kickball leagues, 5K run/walks.

7) Redo the molding along the floors, which currently has gaps and loose edges granting entree to all kinds of critters.

Look, I know there are other school districts in far worse shape than we are, but that is still no excuse, given the waste and inefficiency that permeates budget decisions throughout the process.

And I'll tell you something: the first time one of my skinflint colleagues drags his sorry behind in to work while he is sick with H1N1 just so he won't lose that hundred bucks, I'm coming over to THEIR house so they can nurse me back to health.

Bring out your dead!

2009-09-02T06:38:00.001-05:00

Critics of American public schools keep wanting to declare the death of public education, no matter how much we protest that we are still breathing:

Yes, it's that time again, when the test results mandated by NCLB come rolling over schools like a tsumani. And here's the shocker: about half the schools in our state did not make AYP.

The language of NCLB is laden with the pithiest of platitudes:

All children can learn.
Standards must be kept high.
No student should drop out of school.

All children CAN learn. The question is, WILL they when society tells them it is useless and that they are passive recipients rather than active participants in the process? When society tells them that people who like to learn are nerds or dweebs or geeks, socially inept twitchy wallflowers?

Unfortunately, the standards usually are not kept high in service to the third statement. Or am I just grumpy?

All I've got to say is, I'm fine, really!

I before E except after "team"

2009-08-31T19:24:00.005-05:00

Yes, we got the good news that our staff development will include "team-building" exercises.

Does that mean that the administration will finally join our team? Or let the teachers join theirs?

And who here, besides me, is now thinking about that scene in Mean Girls?

You know, there is no "I" in team. But "ME" is in there if you rearrange the letters. And if you really rearrange the letters, you get "meat."

Sad news for all Tulsa baby boomers....

2009-08-18T15:51:00.003-05:00

Uncle Zeb has died.

Carl Bartholomew, better known in the area as "Uncle Zeb," the host of a popular childrens' show from Tulsa, has died. He was 78.

Bartholomew is recognizable to two generations of Tulsans for his enduring role on the Unlce Zeb's show, famous for its "Cartoon Camp" had two runs on the airwaves — the first on KTUL, channel 8, from 1969 to '79, and then on cable from 1990 through '97.

Bartholomew also executive-produced, directed, co-scripted and starred in a 1988 vigilante movie called "Cole Justice," whose popularity in the home video market got him an improbable gig as the grand marshal of a holiday parade in Florala, Ala., sharing the spotlight "with a guy who could pick up 20 chickens," he recalled.

"Cole Justice" also played on Showtime and the Movie Channel and is still available from the Tulsa-based VCI Home Entertainment.

Bartholomew spent many years as the promotions manager for channel 8, where he created the well-remembered "Eight's the Place" campaign. In those brief spots — Bartholomew called them "micro-mini-movies" — he put the station's news team on horseback, into a '30s convertible, and even in Hower's biplane.

"That's kind of where I got bitten by the movie bug," he said. "Now, everything I write, I see in my mind as a film. This book is no different." Bartholomew was also an accomplished childrens' author. In 1998, his debut book, "Granmax: The Saving of a Steam Train," came out. He also released "Plane Phenomenon: The Pawnshop Mysteries," which mixed "Twilight Zone"-style thrills with
a plot line about a boy whose passion is remote-control planes, especially a Stearman biplane.

For those of you who don't understand, let me try to explain. Your boy scout/girl scout/ bluebird group would book a visit to the Cartoon Camp. You would then ride up a twisty road in the back of a station wagon to the top of Turkey Mountain in west Tulsa to the studios of Channel 8. You would walk onto the set, and there was Uncle Zeb. He'd tell jokes. He made squirrels out of handkerchiefs and made them jump at you with his fingers. You'd watch classic cartoons. At the end, you all got to line up and say your name into the microphone and get your 2 seconds of fame. Then you'd all jump around during the closing credits.

It was a blast. He was the nicest man.He was just so fun, and it never felt like he was talking down to you, even if you were six years old.

A while back I actually found some website about Tulsa TV personalities, and actually found a way to email him. Here I was, definitely middle aged, and I was thrilled that I got an email from Uncle Zeb. He was a true gem, and a gentleman. Now I just wish I'd asked him how to make those squirrels out of a handkerchief.

God bless you, Carl. You gave thousands of kids the gift of laughter.

Texas Fight Club case sentence comes in

2009-08-11T08:03:00.001-05:00

One of the workers at the Corpus Christi (Texas) State School for the disabled has pleaded guilty to running a "Fight Club" among the students (and if that wasn't bad enough, the kids were often forced to fight). Here is the link to the news article.

In exchange for pleading guilty to a reduced charge, Vincent Johnson received a suspended two year sentence, 150 hours of community service, a $2000 fine, and five years of probation. He will testify against other employees implicated in this shameful episode.

Disgusting. And you know, plea bargains are one of the reasons I didn't go to law school.

Should parents get to pick their kids' teachers?

2009-08-10T06:52:00.000-05:00

Here's the link to an interesting article about whether parents should pick their kids' teachers. Click over and read it while I muse on the fact that the Associated Press has decided to start charging bloggers for blockquoting their articles, and although I am NOT Arianna Huffington I also do not have access to her wealth, so I'm hoping that my tiny corner of the blogosphere escapes notice if I just provide the link from now on. Annoying, yes?

Okay, so hoping that you skimmed the article, let me just say: I have made sure that my children have had or avoided certain teachers, but I have done this sparingly. To be honest, usually my kids are moved into classes by counselors that know me as a former colleague and already know my preferences, so sometimes I get to coast and find out that the work has already been done. I used to believe in NOT doing this, but I (and one of my kids) got seriously burned by my laissez-faire attitude. Now I know better.

BUT....

As a teacher, I must say that I do get tired of having gi-normous classes due to parent/student requests, so I see the other side of that coin, as I try to wedge thirty desks in a classroom made for twenty-two.

What do YOU think, as both a parent and/or a teacher?

Getting back into the thick of it

2009-08-08T07:16:00.006-05:00

I've enjoyed my little vacation-- and little is the mot juste, as our school district calendar keeps sliding staff development days in near holidays so that now there's basically only two months off, which no doubt is based on some half-baked study from probably Iceland (No offense to any Icelanders out there. Hvernig gengur? Mer likur vio Sigur Ros!) that this lack of down time as a bloc will somehow double our test scores or at least our sports teams.

Yesterday, it was announced that John Hughes had passed away. I am spending the weekend watching his films again. Yesterday was Sixteen Candles. Today, I think I'll do Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and of course Ferris Buhler. God bless that man.

My students' AP scores arrived. I must say, they exceeded my expectations! Yay, kids! You really WERE studying! And the kid who told me the Gettysburg Address was 1511 Gettysburg Avenue- you are forgiven. Almost.

The homework controversy rages on. Homework in kindergarten? Yeah, that's a bit much. However, I shudder to think what happens to high school kids who don't do homework when they get to college. Wait. I know what happens, because I had a dorm-mate for one semester who had never done homework in her life after she graduated from some hippy-dippy private school. Note that I said, "one semester," too. She got to spend two thousand bucks to learn that she wasn't prepared for college. Tough lesson. You get that for which you work (see how homework taught me not to end my sentences with a preposition? Thank you Mrs. B Smith, my 9th grade English teacher....).

Oh, and on July 28, A Shrewdness of Apes turned four! Thanks for hanging out with me during this time, and I will be a better blogger than I have been lately, I promise.

So. How are YOU doing?

Federal support for education: Watch those strings

2009-07-29T09:56:00.003-05:00

It's always good to remind people that the federal government actually contributes very little financial support to public school districts throughout the country.

Here is the link to an Associated Press article that explains the details. Basically, federal monies provide only about 8 percent of a school district's budget. School districts need to consider whether this is a good bargain for them, since that 8 percent leads to all kinds of requirements and regulations that actually may not be value for the money.

Traditionally, schools have been funded by local taxes-- usually property taxes as the bulk of the sourcing. Even with the proposed increase in funding that has been recently promised, that may not make up for all the other requirements that will inevitably be tied to those dollars.

An apology for supporting segregation in Virginia

2009-07-23T06:38:00.004-05:00

Well, I guess this is "better late than never."

A Virginia newspaper expressed regret Thursday for supporting a systematic campaign by the state's white political leaders to maintain separate public schools for blacks and whites in the 1950s.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch acknowledged in an editorial that it and its now-defunct sister newspaper, The News Leader, played a central role in the "dreadful doctrine" of Massive Resistance. "The record fills us with regret," the newspaper said.

The newspaper took the unusual step of promoting the editorial on its front page. The editorial was published on the eve of a conference in Richmond marking the 50th anniversary of the end of Massive Resistance, which was dismantled by a 1959 court ruling.

Massive Resistance was Virginia's answer to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed school segregation. Endorsed at the highest levels of state government and promoted by U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd, the policy cut funds to any school that dared to integrate.

"The hour was ignoble," the editorial says. "Editorials in The News Leader relentlessly championed Massive Resistance and the dubious constitutional arguments justifying its unworthy cause. Although not so intimately engaged, The Times-Dispatch was complicit."

Words are indeed powerful. Although, these words of apology would certainly have been more powerful if they hadn't waited fifty years to utter them.

You know, I've heard apologists for segregation repeatedly act as if the problems of the civil rights movement were purely a "Deep South" phenomenon, all a part of the "it's just a part of the Southern culture" mumbo-jumbo-- that it was in places like Mississippi and Alabama and South Carolina, especially areas where blacks outnumbered whites, that the worst kinds of race relations took place. That kind of thinking flies in the face of facts, such as that Linda Brown lived in Topeka, KANSAS. They also ignore the fact that the Brown case was actually five cases combined together: besides the Topeka action, lawsuits from Prince Edward County, Virginia; Summerton, South Carolina; Claymont, Delaware; and Washington, D.C were part of the Brown decision. Although Delaware was technically a Northern state, as was Kansas, our nation's capital was (and is) a Southern city. The evils of segregation and discrimination remain a legacy ALL Americans must acknowledge.

And I thought summer would never begin for me...

2009-07-11T13:24:00.004-05:00

but this is worse!

Summer break will finally start at two Southern California schools after the state rejected a district's plan to use summer sessions to make up for a potentially costly administrative error.

Officials at Chino Valley Unified School District said Friday they have ended the sparsely attended classes and are now depending on a state bill that could waive a $5 million penalty for not meeting the state requirement for school day hours.

Students had been attending extra classes since June 15 at Dickson Elementary in Chino and Rolling Ridge Elementary in Chino Hills. With grades already final, attendance dipped as low as 8 percent at Rolling Ridge.

The error occurred when administrators shortened bell schedules on 34 Fridays below the requirement of 180 minutes a day.

Well, it wasn't much of a program if attendance was voluntary, although it must have just stunk for the staff. I wonder what the people who made the error have learned?

Cheating and Chutzpah, part 7: Oh. Good. Golly.

2009-06-28T13:29:00.003-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen! I think we have winner in the category of Absolute Gall in Cheating. Big props to commenter Exurban Mom for bringing this to my attention.

Brace yourselves:

A high school secretary illegally changed grades in a school computer system to improve her daughter's class standing, according to criminal charges filed Thursday.

Caroline Maria McNeal of Huntingdon is accused of using the passwords of three co-workers without their knowledge to tamper with dozens of grades and test scores between May 2006 and July 2007 at Huntingdon Area High School in central Pennsylvania, the state attorney general's office said.

McNeal, 39, is alleged to have improved her daughter Brittany's grades and reduced those of two classmates to enhance Brittany's standing in the 2008 graduating class.

School officials corrected the grades before the students graduated, prosecutors said.

Attorney General Tom Corbett said the case involves "a serious violation of the public trust."

"Our citizens depend on people in public positions, including school employees, to protect the safety and security of these records and not use confidential information for their own benefit," Corbett said.

McNeal was charged with 29 counts of unlawful use of a computer and 29 counts of tampering with public records. Each count is a third-degree felony punishable by a maximum of seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine, said Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for Corbett's office.

No telephone number was listed for Caroline McNeal. Brittany McNeal is not charged with any wrongdoing.

Jill Adams, the school district superintendent, said prosecutors have asked school officials not to comment publicly about the case.

"We would like to have it be finished, over and done," she said.

In all, McNeal is accused of altering nearly 200 scores and grades covering four school years.

The situation came to light in October 2007, when an employee of the high school guidance office discovered conflicting SAT scores for Brittany.

Scores provided directly by the College Board showed a cumulative score of 1370, while an unknown source had previously entered 1730, according to court papers.1

Further investigation revealed that the data had been entered from Caroline McNeal's computer starting more than a week before SAT scores for other students were entered.

Three other secretaries at the school told investigators they had shared their passwords with Caroline McNeal during vacations or other prolonged absences.

How many hands of people who know parents like this?

Of course, usually these people don't get the keys to actually do anything to interfere with the grades of their children. But I just want to say to people like these: "Ma'am, take a deep breath and step away from your child. They're not you, and you can't live through them."

Changing an SAT score from 1370 to 1730. Whew! Changing 200 grades!

You've got to feel for her poor daughter. But I especially feel for the other kids whose records she changed to help raise her daughter's standing. "Tampering" doesn't seem to cover it. I propose a new felony: Academic Assault.

Protecting the helpless

2009-06-25T01:08:00.000-05:00

Remember hearing about the school that encouraged disabled students to fight each other in Texas? Here's another piece of the puzzle:

Nearly 270 employees were fired or suspended for abusing or neglecting residents of large, state-run institutions for the mentally disabled in Texas during the last fiscal year, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. The revelations Friday come a day after Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation aimed at improving security and oversight at the 13 institutions, known as state schools. They are home to about 4,600 residents and more than 12,000 full-time employees.

Documents obtained by the AP through an open records request show that 11 of the 268 firings or suspensions were considered serious because they involved physical or sexual abuse that caused or may have caused serious physical injury. Employees may also be fired for a violation as mild as neglecting to protect a resident with mobility problems from stumbling into a wall. "I think what the number of firings and suspensions say is we do not tolerate abuse or neglect in our state schools," said Cecilia Fedorov, a spokeswoman with the Department of Aging and Disability Services, which oversees the schools.
It was not clear Friday whether any of those fired were prosecuted. The Department of Family and Protective Services, which investigates allegations of abuse, notifies law enforcement officials about any deaths, alleged sexual assaults, serious physical injuries or incidents involving children. But the agency does not track what happens once police or sheriff's deputies get involved, spokesman Patrick Crimmins said. The Coalition of Texans with Disabilities said Perry's legislation doesn't go far enough to protect state school residents. "Why is it that residents in state schools are somehow valued less than other citizens?" asked Dennis Borel, the coalition's executive director. "This speaks to me of a widespread, systemic problem, and personally I don't believe this can be fixed."

Defenders of the state schools include the Parent Association for the Retarded of Texas. Susan Payne, the organization's vice president, said her 47-year-old sister, Dianne, has been well served in the 37 years she has lived in state schools. "The medical care is unbelievable. She is alive because of the schools," Payne said. "These numbers and these reports make the places sound like hellholes, and that is just not what we see."

Perry declared state school reform a legislative emergency during the most recent session. State lawmakers reached a five-year, $112 million settlement with the Justice Department that documented widespread mistreatment of residents and alleged their civil rights were violated. The state will spend $24 million in each of the next two fiscal years to meet the terms of the settlement, which call for each school to have an independent monitor. Lawmakers also have provided funding for hiring nearly 3,000 additional employees.

The agreement resulted from a series of federal investigations that found that at least 53 deaths from September 2007 to September 2008 were from conditions the Department of Justice considered preventable, such as pneumonia, bowel obstructions or sepsis, indicating lapses in proper care. Nearly 1,100 employees have been suspended or fired in the last five fiscal years for mistreating, neglecting or abusing residents, according to state records. The fiscal 2008 figures are the most in any of those five years.

I'm sure this problem is not just limited to Texas. But what a tragedy!

Hunger strikes at LAUSD

2009-06-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

The California meltdown continues to pile up its casualty lists. And some teachers have gone on hunger strike:

Sean Leys sat huddled and still in a tent on a sidewalk outside of a Los Angeles middle school, fatigued by an ongoing hunger strike but resolved to protest looming teacher layoffs. The longtime English teacher, holding a biography of labor-rights leader Cesar Chavez in his lap, was camped outside John H. Liechty Middle School with about 20 colleagues, an occasional motorist honking a horn in support of their cause.

While he may avoid a pink slip, thousands of his teacher colleagues in Los Angeles will not. By next school year, 2,100 city teachers are slated to lose their jobs — a 5 percent hit to the nation's second-largest school district. Worse still, Leys said, is that the layoffs are concentrated in some of the city's grittiest neighborhoods. Los Angeles Unified's inner-city schools have higher turnover and tend to hire more new teachers, and state education code mandates that layoffs be issued based on seniority. "This is about civil rights and education for inner-city children," Leys said.

School districts across the nation are facing similar financial crunches, but many have avoided painful layoffs with the help of federal stimulus funds. California, however, is mired in a budget crisis and, despite the influx of federal money, is still moving to lay off thousands. The National Education Association estimates that some 34,000 teaching jobs will be eliminated this year. California — with Los Angeles Unified in the lead — faces the largest loss of nearly 18,000 teachers. The city's schools have roughly 40,000 teachers. Some inner-city middle and high schools could lose up to 40 percent of their teachers, according to an analysis by the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles.

By contrast, many schools in the district's more affluent areas, such as the San Fernando Valley suburbs, will be less affected because only up to 10 percent of their teachers are new, the analysis found. At schools such as Liechty, located in gang-riddled central Los Angeles, more than half the teachers are losing their jobs. Their classrooms will be filled by transferred senior teachers and administrators whose positions were eliminated. Administrators say layoffs are spread throughout the district, but Liechty has a large number because it opened in 2007 and was filled with new hires. District officials acknowledge staff turnover is a problem at certain schools and that layoffs will cut into the hires — including those who request to work in urban areas — that the district has worked hard to recruit in recent years.

Teachers who lose their jobs can join the substitute pool and are placed on the re-employment list, officials said. "Our hope is to keep them involved in the system," said Vivian Ekchian, the district's chief human resources officer. Until the district finds the money to rehire the teachers, students will find themselves in bigger classes this fall. Critics of the layoffs say the district's newer teachers bring sorely needed enthusiasm to the problem-plagued campuses, as well as new teaching methods and ideas.

Many of the district's newer hires are also minorities who can relate to the majority of the district's 650,000 students. "I share a lot of my life with my students," said Christian Aguilar, a Liechty seventh-grade math and science teacher who's facing layoff. "I tell them there's an opportunity for you to grow up and get out of here. I tell parents I want their kids to get out of here. I can only hope I made an impact on some of them." Aguilar grew up blocks from the school and shows students the scar on his neck, where he was slashed by a drug dealer, to underscore that he knows firsthand what their lives are like.

Students said they like the empathetic ear that the younger teachers can provide. "They're easy to talk to," said Marilyn Ann Flores, an eighth-grader at Liechty. "They understand you. It wasn't that long ago that they were teenagers. They tell us their background. Some teachers went through the same things we're going through. We see if that person made it, we can, too."

School board member Marlene Canter said the experienced teachers and administrators who will fill the gaps after the layoffs are also capable of motivating children. What's really needed, she said, is a way to reward higher-performing teachers and a simpler process to weed out poor ones. "Just because you're a senior teacher doesn't mean you're a bad teacher, or if you're a younger teacher, you're automatically good," she said.

Leys, a 10-year teaching veteran at Lincoln High School near Liechty, said the hunger strike, which started May 27, has cost him a pound a day from his already thin frame. But he appeared determined to continue his protest.
"In these neighborhoods, schools are life or death for a lot of these kids," he said. "It's the inequity of how these layoffs are being done. It's frustrating."

I heard that Lays recently relented on his hunger strike. I hope no one makes the sarcastic assumption that this means they should expect teachers to live on starvation wages.

I really don't think the issue is new teachers versus old teachers. I've seen some pretty bitter newbies, and I've seen some pretty enthusiastic veterans. I think the issue is a flat refusal to understand that -- listen up, voters-- there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, which my favorite author Robert Heinlein referred to as TANSTAAFL. Until people realize that taxes actually buy good things like good schools and good roads, this kind of problem will continue, but especially in La-La Land, brought to you thanks to Proposition 13.

University presses serve a definite purpose

2009-06-23T03:52:00.000-05:00

This is a shame.

Chancellor Michael Martin doesn't question the prestige the Louisiana State University Press brings to his school, with Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction and poetry, tomes on Southern history and culture and other noted works to its credit.
What it doesn't bring in is revenue, and like cash-strapped colleges across the country, LSU is getting tired of propping up its press.

The school has said the 74-year-old original publisher of "A Confederacy of Dunces" doesn't generate enough money to independently function. LSU officials are considering downsizing it or closing it as they face state budget cuts that could surpass $40 million at the Baton Rouge campus alone.

"We allocated $500,000 of university money to the press in the last fiscal year. They spent $1.4 million," Martin said last week. That type of subsidy cannot continue, Martin said. Other schools have reached the same conclusion.

Utah State University Press narrowly escaped the chopping block this year. Eastern Washington University Press is being phased out as that school copes with budget cuts. Even the most prestigious presses are feeling the pinch: Yale University Press reported in March that revenue was down nearly 8 percent, and the State University of New York Press announced five layoffs in December.

"They're all getting hammered," said Peter Givler, director of the American Association of University Presses, which announced earlier this month that it would work with the heads of LSU's business, communication and history departments to help develop a new business model that could keep the institution alive.

Al Greco, vice president of the Institute for Publishing Research in Bergenfield, N.J., said university presses face many of the same problems as commercial publishers, primarily that adults spend fewer hours reading and more time with television and the Internet. Complicating the problem for university presses, he said, are higher costs and a shrinking customer base. For instance, public and school libraries are buying fewer copies of university press publications because of declining readership and tax revenue.

Givler refused to speculate on what a new business model for LSU might entail but said any ideas will require a tighter budget. He said they also could involve new technologies, including e-books. However, Greco, cautioned that building a broad archive of digital titles is difficult and expensive.

Greco said some struggling university presses have explored forming regional consortiums for publishing or distribution. Other possible strategies could include trimming the number of new publications each year, seeking grants for publishing books in specific fields of research and charging nonrefundable fees for reading works submitted for publication. He also said university presses may need to recruit personnel from the world of profit-making commercial publishing.

One way or another, university press operations are having to prove their worth to their institutions, said Kate Wittenberg, a former editor-in-chief of Columbia University Press who is now a project director with Ithaka, a nonprofit group that assists in academic research and archiving.

"I don't know whether university presses are being used as 'bargaining chips' in budget cut battles," Wittenberg wrote in an e-mail. "However, I will say that it is probably easier for a state legislator to accept cutting a press's budget than, say, cutting funding for the school's English department."

LSU Press director Mary Katherine Callaway said she believes the press' value to the university is evident in its four Pulitzer-winning works, 240 other awards and in the 75 to 85 new titles it publishes each year.

"It's really easy, I think, to point at the numbers and get really wrapped up in those, and I'm not saying that numbers are not important," Callaway said. When it comes to status symbols like having an in-house press, however, sometimes the question isn't cost but value, she said.

News of LSU Press' possible demise sparked letters to Martin and Gov. Bobby Jindal from the American Historical Association and the Modern Languages Association. And it has fueled long-standing debates over the relative importance universities place on athletics. Ted Genoways, editor of the University of Virginia's literary journal, the Virginia Quarterly Review, calls the LSU Press one of the best university publishers in the nation. Losing the press and its literary publication, the Southern Review, would tarnish LSU's image, he said.

"Do you want to be known as some place that supports the history and culture of your region or some place that has fantastic outside linebackers?" Genoways said.

Martin countered that LSU's moneymaking athletic program subsidizes some academics. "In some respects," Martin said, "the press has been saved by the outside linebackers — up to this point."

I think I know the answer to that question, at least to most LSU fans. It would be "Save the linebackers!" And I'm NOT just kidding.

But seriously, I remember reading A Confederacy of Dunces for the first time about twenty years ago. It was provocative, and it was easy to see why it would have trouble finding a home among mass-market publishers. Many if not most of my favorite non-fiction books have been the products of university presses: Oklahoma, LSU, and Oxford in particular. They definitely serve a purpose in the publishing world.

Charter results: I wonder what this means?

2009-06-22T00:42:00.000-05:00

Are charter schoolsall that they cracked up to be?

On average, charter schools are not performing as well as their traditional public-school peers, according to a new study that is being called the first national assessment of these school-choice options. The study, conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, compared the reading and math state achievement test scores of students in charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia--amounting to 70 percent of U.S. charter school students--to those of their virtual "twins" in regular schools who shared with them certain characteristics. The research found that 37 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were significantly below what students would have seen if they had enrolled in local traditional public schools. And 46 percent of charter schools posted math gains that were statistically indistinguishable from the average growth among their traditional public-school companions. That means that only 17 percent of charter schools have growth in math scores that exceeds that of their traditional public-school equivalents by a significant amount.

In reading, charter students on average realized a growth that was less than their public-school counterparts but was not as statistically significant as differences in math achievement, researchers said.

"We are worried by these results," Margaret Raymond, director of CREDO and lead author of the report, Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States, said at a news conference. "This study shows that we've got a 2-to-1 margin of bad charters to good charters."

Charter schools, free public schools that operate under their own mandate ("charter") rather than the overall district policies, are a staple of education reform agendas across the United States. Supporters say they improve public education by giving parents options and forcing schools to compete for students. The Stanford report already is riling up these schools' most ardent advocates.

The Washington-based Center for Education Reform disputed the findings, saying that they're based on uncorrelated variables, contradictory demographics, and a virtual methodology. The organization said that comparing the test scores of charter-school students to their "virtual" peers in regular public schools--students who match the charter students' demographics, English language proficiency, and participation in special education or subsidized lunch programs--is simplistic and is a fundamental flaw in the research because no two students are the same.

"More than 16 years of charter school research and analysis from CER shows that charter schools are outpacing their conventional public school peers with fewer resources and tremendous obstacles," the nonprofit group said in a news release.
The CREDO report identified five states--Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, and Missouri--where charter schools had significantly higher learning gains than traditional schools. But the report contended that if charter schools are to flourish, their supporters must be willing to establish accountability in exchange for flexibility. The reluctance to close underperforming charters because of powerful community supporters hurts students and reflects poorly on charter schools as a whole, the report said.

The research comes on the heels of a recent pledge by President Barack Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, to use $5 billion of the $100 billion in federal stimulus funds for education to press states on charter schools. "States that don't have charter school laws, or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application" for federal grant money, Duncan said in a call with reporters last week. Currently, 10 states lack laws that allow charter schools, and 26 others cap their enrollment.

The Stanford report may offer some encouraging news for charter schools: Students in poverty and English-language learners outperformed their public-school peers in both reading and math. However, learning gains for black and Hispanic charter-school students were significantly lower than those of their traditional-school twins. But critics said those results demonstrated the flaws in the Stanford research: The overlap between low-income/English-learner students and black/Hispanic students is so great, CER said, that it should be impossible to get such contradictory results.

One thing that has always seemed illogical about charter schools is this: If allowing some public schools to opt out of some regulations is good for some, why isn't it good for all? But apparently that's not exactly the right question, according to this story. Perhaps the right question is this: Do those regulations that charter schools get to evade actually serve a purpose?

I will tell you that in MY neck of the woods, there have been some spectacular charter school flame-outs. And that's very distressing. Any school that fails represents failure for hundreds of people.

Ultimately, there is of course no magic bullet. It would be nice if we realized that, in no particular order, schools PLUS educators PLUS students PLUS parents all have their parts to play in improving the education provided.

And, furthermore, there's this:

2009-06-21T00:23:00.001-05:00

Speaking of unethical people....

A suburban Atlanta principal who resigned during an investigation into cheating on students' standardized tests was arrested Friday and accused of altering public documents. The school's assistant principal also turned herself in to local police Thursday night in a case that the head of a state teacher's group described as rare. School officials allege that the two changed answers on fifth-grade standardized tests to improve scores and help their school meet federal achievement standards. Former Dekalb County principal James Berry was arrested at his home on charges of altering public documents, a felony. His assistant principal Doretha Alexander faces the same charges.

Berry, the former principal of Atherton Elementary, left the county jail Friday evening without commenting to reporters gathered outside. A jail official said his bond was $15,000. Alexander was released earlier Friday on $1,500 bond.

A state investigation released last week found that student scores on state math tests were altered at four schools in the state, including Atherton, in an effort to boost those schools' performance. Officials do not believe students were involved. Jeff Hubbard, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, said this is the first time he's heard of teachers or administrators being arrested for such offenses.

"This is one of the worst academic offenses an educator can do or be accused of because it messes with a child's future," Hubbard said.

An administrative probe into the matter by DeKalb County Schools revealed that Berry was involved in altering the tests, said district spokesman Dale Davis. He said the district is still investigating Alexander, who has been reassigned. Davis released a statement Friday saying the school district was surprised at the arrests and had not been notified beforehand. It was not immediately clear whether Berry or Alexander had a lawyer. DeKalb County Chief Assistant District Attorney Don Geary said he expects the investigation to be turned over to his office in the next few days so a decision can be made on formal charges. Berry resigned last week, while Alexander was reassigned by district officials. Messages left at each of their homes Friday were not immediately returned.

The arrests follow a state audit that "showed very clearly that someone had intentionally changed students' answers on those tests," said Kathleen Mathers, spokeswoman of the Governor's Office of Student Achievement. The resulting higher scores helped four schools meet standards and avoid sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Schools that don't meet standards under the law must offer extra tutoring and allow parents to transfer their children to higher performing schools. The audit found the answer sheets of the altered tests had up to 40 erasures, compared with the average of two per student on other answer sheets. Most of the answers were changed to make them correct.

Tests from schools in three other systems are also under review.

Nice. Although this isn't the first time we have heard of instances like this, it IS the first time I heard of people being arrested.

Well, I'm sure it's all just a "mistake," or "misunderstanding" (sarcasm alert for those who didn't read my previous post). Who wants to bet that those terms will crop up somewhere in relation to this incident?

The cant of cheating and judging

2009-06-19T00:05:00.002-05:00

(Editor's note: Commenters Kim and Cynthia swiftly identified the picture at the left as Diogenes weary after searching for an honest man. Kudos!)

You know, I am a vocabulary nut. My love affair with words is longstanding. Some words are just cool to say or read. "Lethargy!" "Antediluvian!" "Mesozoic!" "Obfuscate!" "Empiricism!" "Ontological!" "Eschatology!" "Disingenuous!" All just fascinating words!

Another word I like is "cant." For such a short little word, cant has several meanings. Three of them occurred to me as I meditated further on cheating and American society.

One meaning of cant is a "slant" or "slope." Another meaning of cant is "the particular language or vocabulary of a certain group or used in a certain field of study." A third meaning of cant is "insincere talk about religion or morals." When we have talked about cheating and plagiarism, all three of these definitions of cant have been demonstrated.

My previous posts (here, and here, and here) about grading and plagiarism have generated some commentary in the Edusphere, which is a very good thing, regardless of your beliefs about these two issues. Some of that commentary has been in my comments section, and some has been on other's blogs. All cool! Everyone has certainly had their own slant or bias or agenda, including me. That suggested the first definition of "cant." But I find the consideration of the second and third definitions of "cant" in all of these discussions most fascinating. Some of the words that have been utilized in the cant of this discussion have included "ethics," "right," "wrong," "judgment," "punishment," mistake," "responsibility," "cheating," "theft," "punitive," "behavior," "rants," and "tolerance." I would like to meditate upon some of these words, and their meanings and contexts within this discussion of academic honesty, with a brief side-trip to grading policy, but focusing primarily on the use of particular vocabulary and upon morality.

Some would say that our society does tolerate cheating and plagiarism. Perhaps I understand the word "tolerate" differently than others, but to me, "tolerate" has an implication of acceptance. I find this concept -- um, ha-ha-- unacceptable. (Ba-doom ching!)

There are many problems I see with tolerating plagiarism, a behavior which I believe prevents our students from learning as surely as being unable to read does. But there are two separate questions being muddled together here.

From its inception, this discussion has had two very distinct parts: there is an ETHICAL part (Is cheating acceptable? If not--apparently a big IF-- what is our proper response to discourage such behavior?) and there is an ASSESSMENT part (what factors should be counted in grades?), which I think the previous comments have already addressed thoroughly if not completely satisfactorily. But right now let's deal with ethics, which is that field of philosophy which deals with determining right and wrong in the broadest application (a subfield known as metaethics,) and how to create standards of ethical behavior (a subfield known as normative ethics), and then specifically how to apply those standards to specific fields such as abortion, or animal rights, or even education (a subfield known as applied ethics).

Ethically, I believe that there is no such thing as a "tolerable" amount of cheating or lying. I often hear as a defense from students and parents that,

"Everyone does it." Or, "Everyone cheats."

Many of us refuse to get sidetracked or deign to respond to the obvious untruth of that statement, but I wonder if we should be so unconcerned as to let it pass unchallenged? Let me just point out that the addition of one brief adjective phrase to that statement WOULD actually make it true:

"Everyone who is unethical cheats."

Further, I would also posit a further statement, using my understanding of the word "tolerate" as defined above:

"Everyone who tolerates cheating is unethical."

These are harsh words, yes. They are definitely judgmental words. But ethics and morality is about judgment. Period. And see the third definition of "cant" again. Now judging right and wrong behavior is certainly not without controversy-- to quote part of one of my favorite lines of one of my favorite movies, "Ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates?" Not to mention Diogenes, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, and Friedrich Nietzche, the king of ethical relativism, who would oppose my two statements above and claim that morals and ethics are completely individual constructs-- which in my mind is a way of saying that whatever one can get away with, one can claim is good.

That's basically the starting position of those who claim that "Everyone does it." Besides that mind-whirring brief spin into ethical philosophy, I also believe that people who say such things are disingenuous at best. Once one posits that some cheating is acceptable or some lying is acceptable, where exactly does one draw the line? They are claiming that cheating is acceptable, but we all know that that applies only if THEY are not the ones being harmed by being themselves cheated.

In fact these people are usually the first ones to start screaming if they believe that something that happens to them is "Not fair!" It is the rare person indeed who cheats AND accepts that they will be cheated as well. I don't think that Nietzsche himself would have been so accepting.

But besides that, very seriously, my stance is that cheating and stealing actually DOES harm the person doing the cheating or stealing or plagiarizing. I will explain this now.

On the behavior side in the specific example of education, how does anyone expect students to learn and improve if they do not do their own work, and if they do not understand that there are consequences for choosing not to learn by stealing someone else's work? Choosing not to learn is a behavior, admittedly, but one which I would like to think we would actually seek to discourage in students. Choosing not to learn certainly has severe consequences for society as a whole. (And back to the grading and teaching part of this discussion, for those who say we should not judge-- whether we like it or not, every assessment is a judgment, in the broadest sense of the word.) We teachers (and parents, and adults) are in the business of informing, and of judging. "Informing" can here mean "providing knowledge," "shaping," and "guiding." Here I use the term "judging" in the evaluative sense of the word. When adults abdicate their very real responsibility to judge and to correct, we leave our students adrift and unable to determine how to help themselves and how to discipline themselves.

I have heard some say that we should understand that "everyone makes mistakes." True enough. But a mistake is something a reasonable and sane person tries to avoid. Mistakes are rooted in inattention, not deliberation.

Plagiarism and cheating are not mistakes but deliberate acts. Unless what one means by "mistake" is "what I call a bad action when I get caught, hopefully to deflect blame." Perhaps the mistake is in the getting caught. Hmmm. Depressingly cynical and nihilistic.

But let's pretend that we were to classify plagiarism or cheating as a "mistake." Just because something IS a mistake, doesn't mean there are not consequences for that mistake. Mistakes do not exist in a vacuum. A pitot tube in an Airbus aircraft is not replaced when it has been recommended-- serious consequences may have occurred due to that mistake. A pilot mistakenly misreads the altimeter-- there can be serious consequences for that mistake. A driver takes her eyes off the road to answer her cell phone as she is passing a bicyclist-- there can be serious consequences for that mistake. An overworked federal inspector misses evidence of salmonella in one of the hundreds of peanut processing plants he is charged to inspect-- there are consequences for that mistake.

We are deluding ourselves if we think the band-aid word of "mistake" should mean that there is no consequences or no responsibility. This touches upon "cant" in both its second and third meanings which I listed at the start of this post.

There are plenty of things in this world that are mistakes. But deliberately choosing to steal someone else's ideas --or possessions-- is not a "mistake." It is not an "accident." It is a deliberate choice which harms not only the person whose ideas were stolen, but also, in the case of academic plagiarism, harms the students who have plagiarized, because they have also deliberately chosen not to learn the information or skill that the plagiarized assignment was supposed to demonstrate. Cheaters hurt themselves. And how can anyone who cares about students stand idly by while they hurt themselves or deny themselves an education?

Now let's move away from plagiarism and cheating for a moment, and to a general discussion of the cant of our discussion about grading. I am also troubled by anyone, on either side of the grading debate, who views grades as punishment. One thing I think we all should be able to agree about is that grades should be assessments, and it is obvious that one of the goals of those who seek to refine grading systems is that they want to make grades less subjective and more objective-- admirable on the surface, if not a bit unrealistic, but let's leave that aside. I am mightily troubled by students who don't earn the grade they "wanted" to then claim that they are being "punished." Talk about a subjective response! THEY are not being punished-- their WORK and their UNDERSTANDING are being assessed -- and here's the kicker--so that improvement can be made.

For instance, student A performs at an acceptable level throughout the semester. A's work is not outstanding, but it is acceptable, although A is capable of outstanding work. When the teacher conferences with A about A's demonstrated performance periodically, the teacher suggests various strategies and skills that the student could avail herself of in order to raise her mastery of the information/skill-- and therefore, her assessed grade. Student A does none of these things-- but at the end of the semester claims that she is being punished by not being "given" an outstanding mark. The words in quotation marks are all a part of the cant that is used to imply that grades are not the result of assessment but are merely punishments generated external to any actions or behaviors on the part of the student.

I see this far too much, sadly. I unfortunately hear a lot of this same kind of reasoning of those who think that any time a student doesn't get the grade they "want," they are being "punished." Punishment in this instance is of course used in an extremely pejorative sense. This kind of displacement of responsibility serves no one in our society, but most especially it does a disservice to our students. In this line of reasoning, grades are "given" to them or they "happen," rather than being an assessment that has been earned and produced and demonstrated by the students themselves.

Students, parents, and administrators all too often focus on the "grade" but ignore the learning --or lack thereof --that that grade is meant to assess, and forget that the purpose of that assessment is to provide the opportunity to improve learning and therefore performance and skill level-- oh, and, correspondingly, of the grade. They are now abdicating their responsibility in the learning process-- and what a horrible idea to implant in our students' minds! Just like most of Western society, there is a logical consequence to this line of faulty reasoning--those who believe this don't want honesty, they want manipulation. They don't want to improve their understanding or skill acquisition, they simply want an empty credential. Students "want" grades, but earning them? Far more difficult. Students "want" to graduate, but earning that? Far more difficult, as well. Let's be honest: the current discussion about drop-out rates in American schools usually talks about wanting everyone --EVERYONE-- to graduate, which is a far more simplistic goal than expecting that everyone who graduates should meet certain standards of knowledge. These are two far, far different things-- there's a canyon of difference between them. Could it be that exactly this kind of thinking is a very large part of the current crisis in American education regarding achievement and assessment and opportunity?

I am appalled some of this same kind of reasoning from education professionals who advocate changing the grading system so that refusal to complete assessments, or refusing to do them in a timely manner, or refusing to do one's own work, is thought of as an anomaly that just somehow "happens."

And although the discussion of grading per se has nothing to do with this point, let's return to an ethical consideration of what to do when confronted by these kinds of behavior. I wish to address the issue of age of accountability or maturity in determining consequences-- ANY consequences!-- for misbehavior. Let's consider character education, a trendy term that is batted around in far too cavalier a manner, in my opinion.

Granted, our students are --usually-- not adults (my high school, and most everyone's, does have a population of those who have reached legal majority, but that is another problem). But they are not infants, either, and they do need to take responsibility for their deliberate actions. This needs to be a gradual process beginning in their earliest years, even before they come to school. By the time someone is in middle school, they need to understand that there are some choices they have, that they are responsible for those choices. This is an empowering concept, not a punitive one!!!! It can, unfortunately, also lead to negative consequences when they choose unwisely. But the purpose of those consequences is to help the child make the better choice the next time they have the opportunity. This is also not "punishment." This is the way in which one learns to become a upright human being and citizen.

We do not "punish" students as we "punish" adults. Adults who cheat and steal (if we agree that we should not tolerate this behavior in the first place) receive consequences of fines, legal adjudications, and possibly jail time. And I wonder how many of those adults that do get caught cheating and stealing started out with cheating and stealing in school, and then being tacitly encouraged to roll the dice to try it again-- on the chance that a) they won't be caught most of the time (probably true, but irrelevant to our thought experiment here) and b) that they would receive no consequence to deter them from such self-destructive behavior?

By the way, since we are talking about grading, extra credit for anyone who takes the trouble to find out what the meaning is of the picture at the top of the post, and its application to our discussion. I'll post a congratulatory note identifying you in a revision to this post at the top, even!