McDonnell eyes Asian schools as a model for Virginia

MoonHowler

Gov. McDonnell wants to make some changes to the Virginia educational system.  In particular, he has been impressed by what he has seen in Asian schools.   According to Newsadvance.com:

Driven by what he’s seen of education programs in Asian countries and other parts of the world, McDonnell said Virginia needs to step up its efforts. Those nations, he said, have “phenomenal education systems training people in math and science and technology.”

“I want to raise the bar,” McDonnell said. “I’d like to have more competition. I’d like to have more charter schools, more college laboratory schools, and more virtual schools. I’d like to find ways to increase our teaching of important life skills, from financial literacy to civics to business, so young people will have a sense of the broader things that are going to make them good citizens,” he said.

More money for K-12 schools isn’t necessarily the way to achieve his goals, he said.

“I am suggesting we may want to look at the ways we allocate that (money for K-12) and put it more directly into instructional programs and less in non-instructional ones,” he said.

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Catholic U to phase out co-ed dorms

MoonHowler

From the Washington Times:

Officials at Catholic University say the early response to their plan to phase out coed dorms has been highly favorable, but not every college student is anxious to see the move become a trend.

“I think if my school even attempted to introduce this measure, there would be riots,” said University of Cincinnati graphic-design major Elishia Candelaresi.

Ms. Candelaresi said that although she supports the option of single-sex dorms, she also cherishes her right to choose.

“I feel that it’s important to give people a choice on how they want to live their life and also to realize that you can’t just protect and shelter people their whole lives because then they never learn how to control themselves,” she said.

Are we still having this 40-year old discussion?  First off, I am surprised Catholic U has co-ed dorms.  Secondly, what is the attraction of co-ed dorms?  Don’t young people like privacy any more? 

I seriously doubt that co-ed dorms really affect anyone’s morality.  However, there is just something sort of comforting about being able to sit around in your shabby old robe or nightgown when you aren’t in class.  What is the attraction of co-ed dorms?

Time for this crap to stop!

MoonHowler

From insidenova.com:

MANASSAS, Va. —

A Stonewall Jackson High School attendance officer and girls’ basketball coach was charged Tuesday with having sex with a former student, police said.

 The victim told police that she and Nsonji White had performed “sexual acts” when she was a 17-year-old student at the school in 2004 and 2005, Prince William police spokesman Jonathan Perok said.

 Perok said the alleged assaults occurred at different locations within Prince William County – some in the school.

 White, 38, of the 10100 block of Woodbury Drive, in the Bannerwood neighborhood near Manassas, was charged with five counts of crimes against nature and five counts of indecent liberties by a custodian, Perok said.

 White was held without bond

Yesterday the paper reported that an 18 year old student sexually assaulted a 14 year old in the stairwell. 

What is going on?  I know this kind of crap didn’t go on to this degree when I was a kid.  It was a rarity, not an every day occurrence. 

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Pres. Obama calls for the replacement of No Child Left Behind

MoonHowler

The President has called for NCLB to be replaced.    He says reform just can’t wait. 

Reform  is critical only if NCLB is repealed.  Killed off.  Done away with.  The federal government needs to stay out of education.  Leave education up to local government and states.  No more unfunded mandates.  No more absurd hoops to jump through. 

NCLB has almost ruined national education.  President Obama calls for reform from the bottom up, not the top down.  This is a good direction.  Congress needs to start on this endeavor, yesterday.  Education is a local issue.

Guilty even when not guilty: Sean Lanigan

MoonHowler

 

 Last year Sean Lanigan was accused of molesting one of his students. After 47 minutes of deliberation, a jury of his peers acquitted him. Not guilty. They felt there was no evidence.

His accuser has been using her patrol position to bully other students. Lanigan corrected her and warned her that she could lose her position. That was it. The patrol decided that Lanigan had to pay. And pay he did. The story of the downfall of this Fairfax PE teacher can be found in the Washington Post. Sean Lanegan was set up. There were missteps made by Fairfax County Schools and by the Fairfax County police.

Once acquitted, Sean Lanigan’s life still hasn’t gone back to normal. He has over $100,000 worth of legal fees and he isn’t in his old school. He works 5 days out of 10 but is paid for 10. Fairfax County still appears to want him removed. By all accounts an excellent teacher, this man has been victimized by a vengeful student. It can happen to anyone.

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High school senior leads Louisiana fight against anti-evolution law

MoonHowler

Senior Zack Kopplin, age 17, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is leading the charge against a law that allows creationism to have equal time with evolution in Louisiana high schools.  Kopplin attends Baton Rouge Magnet High School,  and has been leading a campaign against the state’s Science Education Act since last summer.  He has organized students, faculties, clergy, and business leaders to support the repeal of the law and has the support of at least 40 Nobel laureates.

According to Washington Post:

The single most important reason why I took on this repeal was jobs,” Kopplin told me. “This law makes it harder for Louisiana students to get cutting-edge science-based jobs after we graduate, because companies like Baton Rouge’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center are not going to trust our science education with this law on the books.”

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Susan J. Demas: Michigan’s New Motto: Blame It on the Teachers

MoonHowler

Reprinted with permission from Susan J. Demas whose guest opinion appeared in the Huffington Post.

Unless you are saving lives on the operating table or vaccinating children in Africa, it takes a certain kind of chutzpah to constantly insult and berate teachers.

Because chances are, your job is nowhere near as important as that of the folks responsible for shaping the young minds of tomorrow. That goes for lawmakers, lobbyists and yes, annoying reporters like myself.

Anyone who has to corral a bunch of sugar-addled kindergartners or try to break through to angry teenagers deserves hazard pay. Because if our kids don’t get the education they need in their early years, they are screwed. That didn’t used to be the case, when the auto industry was fat and happy and doled out jobs as high school graduation gifts.

But nowadays, if kids don’t earn a college degree, they are almost completely shut out of the middle class. Maybe an associate’s degree in a technical field will suffice. But that’s about it.

Teachers are critical to this process. So are parents, but most of them are too busy working 60 hours a week, often at a couple jobs, to teach their kids very much at home. And let’s face it. Once kids start bringing home algebra, most of us are hopelessly lost.

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Next Season on Survivor

MoonHowler

A teacher friend of mind sent this.  I thought it needed a special place on the blog.

Next Season on Survivor

Have you heard about the next planned “Survivor” show?

Mayor Bloomberg (NYC), Kathy Black (NYC Schools’ Chancellor), Governor Walker ( Wis ) , Governor Kasich (Ohio) and Governor Christie (NJ) will be dropped in an elementary school classroom for 1 school year. Each of them will be provided with a copy of his/her school district’s curriculum, and a class of 20-25 students.

Each class will have a minimum of five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.H.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three students will be labeled with severe behavior problems.

Each of them must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organize, or create their materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. They must also stand in their doorway between class changes to monitor the hallways.

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VA Tech fined over failed campus security in 2007 massacre

MoonHowler

As VA Tech continues to heal from the worst massacre in US history, they got dealt another blow, this time by the US Department of Education.  According to the Washington Post:

The federal government said Tuesday that it plans to issue the maximum possible fine against Virginia Tech — $55,000 — for violations of a campus safety law in connection with the 2007 shooting rampage that left more than 30 students and teachers dead.

A federal official wrote in a letter to Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger that the penalty for failing to provide timely warnings about the threat to the campus on the day of the massacre should be greater.

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More join protest against mandated 150 minutes PE time

MoonHowler

Washington Post:

Three statewide education groups are joining with the Virginia Association of Counties and the Virginia Municipal League to urge Gov. Bob Mc­Don­nell (R) to veto a bill that requires elementary and middle schools to offer 150 minutes of physical education a week.

Fairfax County Schools have been voicing concern.  The three new educational groups urging the governor to veto include:

… the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, the Virginia Education Association and the Virginia School Boards Association have joined with the local government groups to make the same arguments. 

Their letter to the governor states the following:

“We recognize that the bill’s intent of fighting childhood obesity is a laudable goal.  We ask, however, that you exercise your discretion to veto this bill because of two major concerns: (1) the bill imposes a substantial unfunded mandate on school divisions and localities and (2) due to time constraints and other requirements imposed on the public schools, the bill’s implementation will pose very significant instructional and practical problems,” they write in a letter to Mc­Don­nell.

Basically, most buildings don’t have the facilities to comply with what would be the new law.  Very few elementary schools have gyms.  Scheduling is already difficult at middle schools.  Most jurisdictions simply don’t have the money to comply or to retrofit new gym facilities.  They certainly don’t have the money to hire new PE teachers. 

Parent groups are meanwhile lobbying Gov. McDonnell to sign the bill into law to help curb childhood obesity.  No one denies that kids need more exercise.  However, Virginia legislators really didn’t look at the reality of how to implement their new law or who was going to pay for it.  According the the WaPo, this is the most hotly contested of all of the 1600 bills passed this session.  Right now, jurisdictions and school systems are viewing the PE Bill as just another unfunded mandate. 

 

$250k isn’t rich for Bush tax cuts, but $50k is for teachers

MoonHowler

 

Huh?  Since when is $50k in this day and time adequate? 

Jon Stewart explains  tells it like it is. 

The Wisconsin fight continues and Jon points out the sheer hypocrisy of Republicans protecting those making more than $250k while at the same time howling over teachers making $50k.  That’s pretty hard to explain, unless you are Jon Stewart. 

 What part of his skit isn’t true? 

Why the Scorn? [aka… kick in the gut]

MoonHowler

From msnbc.com:

The jabs Erin Parker has heard about her job have stunned her. Oh you pathetic teachers, read the online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators. You are glorified baby sitters who leave work at 3 p.m. You deserve minimum wage.

“You feel punched in the stomach,” said Ms. Parker, a high school science teacher in Madison, Wis., where public employees’ two-week occupation of the State Capitol has stalled but not deterred the governor’s plan to try to strip them of bargaining rights.

Ms. Parker, a second-year teacher making $36,000, fears that under the proposed legislation class sizes would rise and higher contributions to her benefits would knock her out of the middle class.

“I love teaching, but I have $26,000 of student debt,” she said. “I’m 30 years old, and I can’t save up enough for a down payment” for a house. Nor does she own a car. She is making plans to move to Colorado, where she could afford to keep teaching by living with her parents.

Around the country, many teachers see demands to cut their income, benefits and say in how schools are run through collective bargaining as attacks not just on their livelihoods, but on their value to society.

Even in a country that is of two minds about teachers — Americans glowingly recall the ones who changed their lives, but think the job with its summers off is cushy — education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters.

This woman really isn’t making a great deal of money.  She has college debts that must be paid off.  The NO Child Left Behind Act sets unrealistic expectations for every teacher in this nation.  Specifically, the act says that by 2014 each school will have 100% pass rate.  In other words, every child in America will have passed all of his/her state objectives.  Sure, sure, by the time 2014 rolls around, someone in the Department of Education or Congress will have come up with some lamely concocted caveat to ease the pains of not being able to do the impossible, but that is still the albatross that hangs around each teacher’s neck as they enter the building each morning to go to work.  That is the axe  that hangs over their head during the work day. 

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Norfolk’s Maury High School Grad Backs Teachers

MoonHowler

That’s right, the boy from Maury High School has become the champion of the nation’s teachers.  Who is this Maury grad?  None other than MSNBC’s Ed Schultz.  Ed has never been one of my favorites but I have new respect.  He has been out to Wisconsin and has gotten down in the trenches. 

Jackie Haworth,  a retired  teacher from Ohio, appears on the Ed Show to discuss how things really are.  She was amazing.  Ed met Jackie because she emailed him after his radio show.  Jackie has been where many people have not.

 

Ed goes back to Maury High School next  week.  Maury is in the middle of Norfolk.  I assume he will find that things have changed alot.  Very few commentators have been as supportive of public school teachers during this crisis as Ed. 

Those wascally fat cat teachers are just greedy!

MoonHowler

Jon Stewart has it all figured out about teachers and has a little private talk with them.  He wants them to straighten up and fly right. 

 

 

 

Jon Stewart’s mother really was a teacher, in New Jersey.    Don’t let these teachers fool you!  Those money grubbers.

Stewart explores class warfare.  The Democrats are pitting the top 2% against the lower 98%.    What can be done abouut these villans of chalk board?  They are living in the 1890’s.   They are destroying America.  They have chalk dust on their clothing.  They drive old cars.  They have special text books with all the answers in them.  Who has a gym and a cafeteria at the work place, other than Google employees?  What about the greed that led these people into their profession?   The Crisis in Dairy Land continues.  The Curds are angry.

A Teacher Tells it Like it is

MoonHowler

USAToday:

Natalie Munroe was suspended from her job in the middle-class Central Bucks School District for her profanity-laced blog, which has since been taken down.

 In it, the 30-year-old teacher called her students “disengaged, lazy whiners” and complained that they are “just generally annoying” and “disobedient, disrespectful oafs.”

 Online comments applaud her for taking a tough love approach or excoriate her for verbal abuse. She’s attracted media attention, and backers have started a Facebook group.

 Munroe did not use her full name or identify her students or school. A school official did not return a message Tuesday.

If the lady didn’t use her full name or identify her students or school, it seems like she is being denied her first amendment rights.   It sounds as though some folks out her way are being either thin skinned or paranoid.

Many students are lazy, whine, cheat and think they should get good grades for doing not much at all.   Perhaps they need to read how they are perceived.  Their bosses will find the same thing their teachers  are currently looking at.  

I am not sure why she admitted to the blog being hers.  Something is missing in this story.  I am not sure how I feel about this story.  Meanwhile, if no names were given, what is the harm?  Contributors?  Is this teacher out of line?