How To Fire A Teacher In 20 Easy Steps

Well actually this list doesn't fire them either, it is just the steps a local school district must take but it leaves off at the appeal to the state board of education. Bear in the mind that throughout the entire process the taxpayers are still on the hook to pay not only the teachers' salary but the salary of the replacement teacher along with all the fees associated with the teachers' defense. Regardless of the outcome of the case some of these teachers will still be allowed to keep their pensions.

This has become a hot issue for the city of Atlanta in the wake of the largest teacher cheating scandal uncovered...so far. There is no teacher union in Georgia in the strictest definition of the word but there is a powerful association and in light of statements made by some of their representatives it is pretty clear that they are going pursue every step on the list, not out of any sense of duty to the teacher or to protect someone who may be wrongly accused. Their purpose here is to place as big a financial burden on the city and it's taxpayers as possible as some sort of perverse revenge for outing them.

This is only going to get messier and is meant to be a shot across the bow to any others who decide to investigate teachers in their areas. It is only further deteriorating the opinion of teachers and the education system within the community and the anger is only going to get worse the more this drags on.

Disgraced School Superintendent Has Time To Check Facebook

From a secret undisclosed location, probably one with no extradition agreement with the US, the disgraced former superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools system, Dr. Beverly Hall, has posted a message letting us know that everything that happened wasn't her fault and just the rogue acts of a few individuals. Umm, yeah like a 178 of 'em.

Now there is two ways to take this. If you give her the benefit of a doubt then she is merely an iron willed administrator who only had the children's best interest in mind when she was constantly telling those under her that test scores would improve and she never intended for any wrong doing to take place to accomplish this. Rather she wanted the teachers to get in the classroom, roll up their sleeves and get to work teaching.

I do not apologize for the reforms my staff and I implemented during my tenure as superintendent. The public has a right to hold educators - and administrators - accountable if they fail to teach children what they need to learn. We set goals for our schools because our students deserve no less. But, most importantly, we accompanied our targets and the targets mandated by No Child Left Behind with programs and facility improvements designed to give principals and teachers the means to achieve them.

Or as evidence shows, she tended to turn a blind eye to allegations of cheating whenever they were brought up to her, so while not condoning cheating explicitly by ignoring the reports she was giving her tacit approval.

To the extent that I failed to take measures that would have prevented what the Investigators have disclosed, I am accountable, as head of the school system, for failing to act accordingly. I sincerely apologize to the people of Atlanta and their children for any shortcomings. If I did anything that gave teachers the impression that I was unapproachable and unresponsive to their concerns, I also apologize for that. Where people consciously chose to cheat, however, the moral responsibility must lie with them.

I will leave it up to the individual to decide which of these scenarios you believe.

Unless you were a juror on the Casey Anthony trial then nevermind, have somebody explain it to you.

Uhh, Texas, About That New School Superintendent Y'all Just Hired

The DeSoto Independent School District (ISD), a suburb of Dallas, might be having some second thoughts about the hiring of their new school superintendent.

She won’t officially start work until next week but the new DeSoto Independent School District Superintendent is already under a cloud of suspicion.

New hire Dr. Kathy Augustine comes to DeSoto from the Atlanta, Georgia school system.

Earlier this week the Georgia Governor’s office issued a report naming Augustine as one of the school administrators suspected of giving investigators false information in their probe of massive test cheating.

Here is what the commission found specifically.

Dr. Augustine had a legal and ethical duty not to falsify, misrepresent, omit or erroneously report information submitted to governmental agencies. We conclude that Dr. Augustine violated this by duty by intentionally causing a letter containing false information to be transmitted to the state. Specifically, Dr. Augustine caused and allowed a letter to be transmitted to the state indicating that the investigation into allegations of cheating at Deerwood Academy was complete and that no evidence of cheating had been found.

We conclude that Dr. Augustine either knew or should have known cheating and other misconduct was occurring in schools in the APS system.

Finally, when questioned about the Deerwood Academy investigation and other matters, she made false statements.

Yeah, other then the part about the teachers sitting in the break room changing answers on the test while other teachers were surprised to discover that students who had previously been unable to read passed the CRCT test with flying colors. Of course, the principal making an occasional visit to the break room to get a candy bar and check up on their progress wasn't suspicious in the least.

The ball is in their court now. Let's see just how far that slogan "Don't Mess With Texas" goes.

Before Atlanta There Was Newark, NJ

Before coming to Atlanta to be the superintendent of schools, Beverly Hall was the superintendent of schools in Newark, New Jersey, where, surprise, surprise, allegations of intimidation and coercion were also made against her.

However, I must warn you to be prepared for Hall to say she did not know that such conditions existed. I must warn you to be prepared to be called a liar. I must warn you that you will probably be put into a room and escorted everywhere you go by a security guard until you see the errors of your ways. This is what happened to Mr. Embrey, former Principal of West Side High School now under house arrest, when he was brave enough to speak out for the children.

As for parental involvement which Dr. Hall cites as being important to her, here is what one parent had to say at that meeting in New Jersey.

Allegedly, Hall has since attempted to deny parents their 1st Amendment rights by sending investigators to the homes of parents who speak out at Advisory Board meetings.

This report from 1997 also contains allegations of mismanagement and misuse of funds, cronyism and the picture of a woman who ruled with an iron fist and would tolerate no insubordination in the ranks while painting only a rosy picture of the system she was in charge of.

Something she continued when she relocated to Atlanta in 1999. So if you want to read yet another damming report on this All Star of Academia go ahead and click on the link.

A Culture of Fear, Intimidation and Retaliation

"If Johnnie don't know how to read, he had better on test day"


What this investigation uncovered, and what is included in their 800-page report is, that for almost a decade, what began as isolated incidents of teachers cheating on the standardized tests to improve their students test scores became institutionalized, accepted, and practiced, and all who dare to question it quickly found themselves unemployed with their careers in shambles.

Replace educators with the corporate entity of your choice and imagine how much media attention this would be getting, even in light of the fact that this information is coming out at the same time as voyeur society is going nuts over the verdict in a murder case in Florida. A generation of kids lost, I guess, just doesn't have the glitz and glamor of hyperventilating pundits all offering their 2¢ worth on a unwed and unfit mother in the Sunshine State.

When the Educators Cheat

The results of a massive investigation in the government school system in Georgia, one which involved outside agencies such as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), has revealed what everybody in the state knew. With the release of the report we now have the hard evidence of just how poorly served your children are by those tasked with educating them.

In a report that Gov. Nathan Deal planned to release today, the investigators name nearly 180 educators, including more than three dozen principals, as participants in cheating on state curriculum tests, officials said over the weekend. The investigators obtained scores of confessions.

The findings suggest the national accolades that Hall and the school system have collected — and the much-vaunted academic progress for which she claimed credit — were based on falsehoods. Raising test scores apparently became a higher priority than conducting the district’s business in an ethical manner.

Those in academia of course are spraying excuses in all directions blaming everything from the color of paint on the classroom walls to the No Child Left Behind standards. Let me say this about the NCLB: while laudable in its goal, no reasonable person could have expected it to succeed in the real world. Some people are going to fail. Life sucks, but that is the truth. While it is noble to want help the failures at some point, you have hand them an apron and teach them to ask the customer if they want fries with their order.

Teachers are blaming the lack of parent involvement, which is really hypocritical when they constantly tell parents that they are not adequate when it comes to educating their kids, and over the years have sought to seize more and more control over your child. Administrators are blaming poverty, which will come as news for some of our past presidents, whom I seem to recall rose to the highest office in the land after spending a childhood in a log cabin with no running water or electricity and studied by candlelight.

No, what happened in Georgia, and mainly in Atlanta, is administrators wishing to keep drawing their six-figure salaries started fudging the data and in turn exerted pressure on the teachers. Teachers being predisposed to moral weakness and imbued with a philosophy that there is no right or wrong, only varying degrees of gray which can always be explained away to justify one's actions joined in. Soon these educators no longer knew right from wrong and cheating on tests and fudging data on other reports just became the accepted standard. It isn't just the competency tests that were changed, most other areas related to reporting of information related to the NCLB rules were also.

The investigators’ report, officials said, depicts a culture that rewarded cheaters, punished whistle-blowers and covered up improprieties.

Administrators no longer accurately reported bullying or assaults at their schools. Absenteeism was modified to show no problems and when it absolutely, positively became imperative to suspend a student it was more then likely an honor student for some sort of violation of the Zero Tolerance policy then it was the gang-banger selling crack in the hallway.

The report’s release comes less than a week after Hall departed from the district. It is likely to provide the harshest critique to date of her 12-year tenure, which reached an apex in 2009 when she was named Superintendent of the Year for the nation. [ed-Beverly Hall was the Superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools]

This report, while conducted in Georgia, and concentrated mainly on the Atlanta school system, could have been done anywhere; it is just that the governor could no longer ignore the smell and is indeed an indictment of the government-run school system. A system that is corrupt and dysfunctional at all levels, and like drug addicts, they seek to affix blame everywhere but where it belongs.

UPDATE: This thing is bigger then anybody imagined. Basically if you have a kid in the Atlanta School system they are screwed thanks to those wonderful professional "teachers" and "administrators". The full report is here. I don't know where the kids go to repair the damage. The next time you see your local teachers union out on strike or protesting, drop a copy of this report at their feet. If it happened in Atlanta you have to wonder how many other places it has/is occurring. A powerful indictment of academia in this country which so easily leaves their morals at the door.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link. Make sure to read today's update to this story. Yes, it gets worse.

A Tale of Two Schools or Why School Choice Is Important

A recent incident in the beleaguered Dekalb county school system, yet another metro Atlanta school district facing an accreditation battle, points up just why having a school choice is important.

The first participant is Lithonia High School. Last year the school did not meet the goals in the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) as outlined under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program, and as a result parents were allowed to transfer their kids to a better school.

Well many of the parents did just that and transferred their kids to a Arabia Mountain High School.

There are some distinct differences between the two schools. Arabia requires the wearing of uniforms and boasts of it's numerous academic achievements, although in fairness I am not sold on their whole environmental theme.

Near 100% pass rate on the Georgia High School Writing Test
Highest participation rate of any Georgia high school in the Garden Club of Georgia’s annual essay contest
Technology Student Association (TSA) – 2nd place in System Control Technology at the 2010 State Conference
TSA – 1st place in Agriculture and Biotechnology Design at the 2010 State Conference
TSA – 1st place in Electronic Game Design at the 2010 State Conference
TSA – Arabia’s Andrew W. elected as the 2010-2011 TSA State Reporter
TSA Vex Robotics team winners at the DeKalb County Vex Tournament
3rd place win in the Iron Chef High School Competition held at the Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School
Nine Arabia Mountain students were selected to perform in the 2009 Spivey Hall Honor Chorus

Lithonia applauds their athletes and on their main page post several warnings to the students and parents.

Punctuality plays an important role in the development of our students, and being on time to class further ensures optimal class time for instructional purposes.

As we monitor our hallways, we have noticed the number of students intentionally not arriving to class on time has increased. As you are aware, tardies are disruptive and interrupt the entire class during instructional time. Students having four classes in close proximity to each other and five minutes to transition to class on time, it is a reasonable expectation that all students are in class before the tardy bell sounds.

We have instituted a tardy lock-out process where occasional, random, unannounced tardy lock-outs will take place. Those students “swept” up in the lock-out will be escorted to the commons area where a discussion regarding punctuality will take place. The students will sign in, receive their tardy, and report to class. The awarded tardies will be cumulative, though if caught in a tardy lock-out, the following progressive discipline consequences will take place:

1st tardy lock-out : Warning/Parent Phone Call
2nd : Detention/Parent Phone Call
3rd : One Day In School Suspension/Parent Phone Call
4th : One Day Out of School Suspension with a
principal-parent conference and behavior contract
5th : Referral to School Social Worker

and

If a student misses 10 days of school, the Department of Motor Vehicles will rescind their driver's license or permit.

So what happened? Due to overcrowding at the high performing school the school was forced to bring in trailers. Citing a lack of space at the good school they located the trailers on the failing school grounds with the predictable results.

A fight, a near riot and vandalized trailers are why DeKalb County school officials moved 155 students from one campus to another Monday.

The county is going to separate the two schools but this points to one of the main arguments parents make for having a choice in which schools to send their kids too. Parents who are involved and concerned about their kids want to be able to send them to a school where they can have a chance to succeed. They want to get them out of an environment where low expectations are the norm. Remember the students at the high achieving school used to attend the low performing one, but once they were removed from that situation they suddenly became hated. When you punish success, or even the attempt at success you breed a mentality that becomes a deep seated hatred of those trying to climb above the station in life that has been assigned to them.

That applies to academics, business or any other endeavor in life. This lesson is lost on the fairness arguing folks. Life ain't fair. Never has been, never will. In the end we are left the choice to accept what happens to us and use it as an excuse to justify our failures or we treat it as a challenge and rise above it in spite of the obstacles.

Good Use of Taxpayer Funded Union Dues

In yet another example of how unions and the world of academia endear themselves to the taxpayers of this country we have this story of a "custodial engineer" in of course New York who managed to bilk the taxpayers out of thousands of dollars. And will continue to do so.

The new probe found that Radef also profited from a no-show gig that paid him at least $70,000 between 2007 and 2010 for more than 3,000 hours when he clearly wasn’t at work, judging from E-Z pass records obtained by Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon.

"To me what stands out is the length of time and the number of people [implicated] and the various ways in which Radef profited," Condon told The Post. "You wonder why no supervisor ever picked up on this."

If you read the article you will see no mention of unions, but even though I am government school educated I have learned how to add 2 + 2. You see in NYC you don't get the job unless you join the union and the union for "custodial engineers" is Local 891. Their web site proudly proclaims they put children first.

The taxpayers of NYC are not off the hook either if what we have learned about public sector unions because of the fiasco in Wisconsin is any indicator. You see the guy who perpetrated the fraud retired. That probably means the taxpayers will continue to pay his cadillac retirement benefits even if he goes to jail.

The report says Truman HS custodial engineer Nicanor "Nick" Fernandez signed the bogus work checks but it wasn’t clear if he pocketed any of the profits. He retired in December.

In 2003 Mr Radef made $170,145 working as a janitor. And he wasn't even the highest paid janitor that year. Who knows what he was making prior to this becoming public.

Reading Is Fundamental

I saw this story on my local news this morning and for some reason I felt compelled to share it with the readers of this blog. It isn't politics, or world events or misbehaving celebrities which is the usual fare here but instead think of it as a public service.

There is a national organization which records text books for people who have some sort of reading impairment, whether it is blindness or dyslexia or some other reason. I know many people struggle with the written word, and to hear about a group such as this is heartening. If you know of somebody who might benefit from such a service please make sure to pass on the information. More information is of course contained at the links, so just consider this your little bit of good news in what has become a constant stream of bad news.

For One County There Is No 'Race To The Top'

Because Cobb County Georgia is already at the top.
I live in the best county in America. No, really. The latest example of this is the refusal of school board to participate in a program to fleece taxpayers out of even more money in a federal program called "Race To The Top". Georgia did 'win' $400 million dollars in this, what do you call it, competition.
The basic concept behind it is your school system has to be such an abject failure that the only solution of course is to pour more money at the problem. Cobb County decided not to participate and the reasoning given when the subject came up way back when is sound.

"No. With federal dollars, you know there are long, strong strings attached and at what cost," Sweeney said. "You give up what makes this community so special; local control. ... We have the capacity and the intelligence to do what it takes to improve student achievement while reducing federal government interference. Besides, local control isn't the only expense. Federal programs are usually proven to be very inefficient. The costs for Race To The Top funds from a dollar, resource, administrative and time perspective are likely to outweigh the proposed program cost benefits."

Of course it doesn't hurt that the school system doesn't suck and therefore probably wouldn't have gotten any of the money anyway as evidenced by the largest city school system in the county.

In fact, Marietta City Schools was never eligible for the federal funds, intended to support new approaches to improve schools, because they do not meet the criteria of "low performing" set by federal education officials. To be eligible for RTTT money, a school system must have an overall graduation rate below 60 percent, and Marietta High School has a graduation rate of 83.7 percent.

It is just more proof of how poor performance gets rewarded all in the name of making it 'fair' or 'equal'. I have heard it said many times, and the view is correct, you will get more of the behavior you reward and less of the behavior you punish. At this time in America anybody who succeeds is to be punished and unless the trend is reversed then you are going to get exactly what you have rewarded.

The other reasons this is the best county in America? Our law enforcement is allowed to check the immigration status of anybody they detain for another law violation. Glock was just approved for a building permit to expand their handgun manufacturing facility and another business which sells guns was approved for an indoor shooting range. And the number one reason it is the best, our budget is not in the red. Yet.

No, most of that millions of taxpayer dollars will go to school districts, to line the pockets of the administrators, like Clayton and Dekalb county which are such total and complete failures that they constantly stay on the black list with the school accreditation committees. For more on Clayton county schools check here.

Do Educators Have A Problem With Reading Comprehension?

"Illegal immigrants who are students cannot be classified as Georgia residents," Newsome said. "They can still enroll, but they must pay out-of-state tuition."

That is the statement from the lawyer for the Board of Regents, the governing body of Georgia's colleges and universities.

Using the Regents circular logic why don't they just say that there is no reason a pedophile shouldn't be granted a day care license? Grand theft auto conviction? No problem, I'm sure a rent a car company would be jumping at the chance to hire you.

You see guys it is that first word, illegal, that is at the crux of the issue here. Illegal activity is supposed to be reported, not condoned. I am waiting for the day when some of these educated eggheads are charged with conspiracy or aiding and abetting this type of illegal activity. They will prosecute a pawn shop owner who traffics in stolen goods but they won't go after people who willfully assist in allowing the theft of taxpayer dollars and defrauding the state.

There is no moral high ground here. Stop the rationalization and start obeying the law. Academia is not above the law, no matter how much they feel like some Greek gods ruling from on high from Olympus.

This seems like some weird perversion of a 'Godfather' movie with Don Corleone holding a press conference and telling the world that sure he engaged in blackmail, extortion, money laundering and an occasional contract killing but it's all good cause all those folks deserved it.

We are supposed to be a nation of laws, with nobody being above the law.

So tell me oh great gods of Regents, what other laws are we allowed to just ignore?

My Kid Is Honor Stupid

How bad is the government school system in this country?

This bad.

Hemphill is an honors student at the city's Benjamin E. Mays High School, but she was a few points short of passing the English/language arts portion of the Georgia High School Graduation Test. The state may grant waivers on a case-by-case basis but otherwise requires Georgia graduates to pass all portions of the test. Most school systems -- Atlanta included -- require students to meet all requirements before they can take part in graduation ceremonies.

Folks I can testify that the graduation exam in Georgia is not that tough. My daughter took it while a junior in high school and passed with flying colors. She was not an honors student, or a member of any academic elite society, she just learned early on that it would cut down on the bullying so she flew under the radar.

I have seen two different types of school systems. The DoD (Department of Defense) schools, which she attended while I was serving and the civilian version which she attended the last few years after I got out. She went from a 'A' and 'B' student to a 'C' and 'D' one really quick. Never had trouble at test time which proved she was learning the material, she just got tired of getting threatened and beat up for not doing other peoples homework or helping them cheat on tests. The other thing she learned real quick. Don't let the teachers know daddy had been in the Army. I have nothing but great things to day about DoD schools, and to anybody who has school age kids it actually is just one more reason for considering joining the military.

Least you think this was just a fluke or the student had a bad day, this was her fifth attempt!

In Hemphill's case, she took the test for the fifth time in early March. She got her results back May 11,...

Yeah I am real impressed with your "My kid is an honor student" bumper sticker. That and a four year college degree will get you a job at the drive thru window of Mickey D's in Obama's wonderful economic world of unicorns and golf courses.

It's All About The Kids

We are all familiar with the common refrain among teacher unions that everytime they are lobbying for better pay, more vacation time, and better pension plans that it is all about the kids.

Well of course that is unless the governor of your state proposes cuts to those programs and tries to introduce programs to hold educators accountable. All of a sudden their political vendettas take priority over the kids. In Georgia they are trying to compete for a $400 million grant for the schools. Everybody wants the state to try hard and get this money. Well everybody but the biggest teachers association in the state. In Georgia we technically don't have teacher unions, rather they are called associations.

The teachers union, er excuse me, association is a powerful force in the state, and in fact they are one of the primary reason that our current governor is a Republican. The first one since reconstruction, please remember that all you race baiting types. When Sonny Perdue was running for governor, the current governor, a Democrat, had proposed several reforms to the education system including teacher accountability and the possibility of merit pay for the good teachers while making it easier to get rid of the bad ones. So now the teachers associations are against the very governor they helped to put in office.

Georgia's second largest teachers' group said Wednesday it will send a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan formally opposing the state's bid for new federal school reform grants.
The announcement by the 43,000-member Georgia Association of Educators comes on the heels of a legislative victory it shared last week with the state's largest teacher group, the 78,000-member Professional Association of Georgia Educators. Both groups successfully fought efforts by Gov. Sonny Perdue to create a merit pay system for teachers or, at the least, to create a statewide mandate to make student performance part of teachers' job evaluations.

I guess this makes the teachers association sort of apolitical huh? They will oppose anybody who tries to hold them accountable, and the children be damned. They are just props to be used to further their political agenda.

Gubmint Skools Fear the Competition

Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia recently signed into law legislation which makes it easier for charter schools to get funding.

The new law, called HB 881, allows a new state-appointed commission to authorize a charter school's use of a school system's per-pupil funding, including local money — even if the local board did not approve it.

The regular public schools, i.e., government schoolsaren't too happy, and of course in this over-lawyered society we have become, might take the expected next step and challenge the law in court.

Nothing like a little competition to bring out the best in folks, but of course the folks so firmly ensconced in the educational system in the administrative roles, rather then look to see what charter schools do that make them so successful and try to adopt those practices, would rather simply run the charter schools out of town.
If folks would really look at what portion of the school budget in their areas go to pay the salaries of the administrators, which is everybody from the principal on up to county board of education and compare that to what is spent in the classroom to pay the teachers and get school supplies there might be more outrage expressed by the citizens.

In Georgia, when you get your property tax bill it shows you just how much is going to education and how much goes to the county in real property tax. For me the amount targeted to schools is three times as much as what actually goes to the county. Since they have started doing this in Georgia a lot of people have started looking at the budget of their local school districts. If you gave people back that money there would be a lot more kids in charter and private schools. Once people started seeing that broken down they realized private school wasn't so expensive after all.

That is the big problem whether talking about Social Security, or Medicare or other taxes taken out of the paycheck, people never see the money so they don't miss it. Imagine if you actually got to bring home every penny of your salary? But that is a topic for another post.

Update: Gov Perdue also signed into law the bill whcih gives gun owners who have concealed carry permits greater freedoms in regards to where they can bring their gun.

Governor Sonny Perdue on Wednesday signed legislation allowing guns in restaurants, on public transportation and in parks.

The new law would only apply to the roughly 300,000 Georgians that have concealed weapons permits. Those permit holders have passed criminal background checks.

Whatever It Takes

German pupils given Holocaust comic book
German school students have been issued with a comic book account of the Holocaust as a teaching aid to learn the lessons of history.

Die Suche, or The Search, tells the fictional story of Daniel, who after seeking information on the Holocaust on the internet, hears a first hand account from his grandmother Esther, who as a young Jewish girl saw her parents deported to their death in Auschwitz.

She, though betrayed by neighbours, survives.

"Through the comic format, the subject becomes more realistic and closer to home for young people," said Julia Franz of the Anne Frank Zentrum.

"There is definitely a huge knowledge gap among teenagers. Most know about the Third Reich but there are lots of myths, prejudices and misunderstandings."

The book, produced by the Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin, has already been used in the Netherlands and is also to be piloted in Poland and Hungary - all countries that lost millions of Jews to horrors of Nazi death camps.

Eric Heuvel, the book's Dutch graphic artist, previously worked as a history teacher and The Search is his sequel to his first book on Esther and Daniel's story, The Family Secret.

To create the story in the “Clear Line” style made famous by Herge's Tintin books, historians were closely involved and many of Mr Heuvel's drawings are based on original Nazi-era photographs.

Die Suche's publication and issue to students marks the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the stepped-up efforts to make sure young Germans do not forget the darkest moment in European history.

The book is also available in English from the Anne Frank House, in Amsterdam.

Via The Telegraph

David Irving was unavailable for comment.

Despite Failing Schools, NYC Councilman Wants Less Homework

The worlds's most useless legislative body strikes again.

Council Member Calls for Limits On Homework

Amid growing calls for higher education standards, a City Council member is urging the Department of Education to limit the amount of homework teachers assign students each night.

Peter Vallone Jr., who represents parts of Queens, said his two daughters are routinely swamped with homework and stuck at home, slogging through it.

"As a parent, I have been unable to have fun with my kids. We can't go for bike rides. We can't go to the park. We can't go to the museum, and that's not fair," he said.

Mr. Vallone said he understands that the Department of Education is aiming to improve test scores, but he said an emphasis on homework is taking away students' childhoods and contributing to child obesity by forcing children to stay at home with their books.

He plans to introduce a resolution next month calling for homework in public schools to be limited to 2 1/2 hours a night and said he wants the Department of Education to create a weekly homework-free night.

Waaah, it's not fair!

Maybe if this idiot spent less time offering ridiculous legislation, he'd have more time to spend with his kids. And what about students who want to get ahead by studying more? Will he mandate they limit their time spent hitting the books so his kids don't suffer from a lack of self-esteem?

Then again, maybe it's a clever scheme to keep kids stupid so they keep voting for Democrats.

As we noted, hundreds of schools are failing, yet this nitwit wants less homework.

The Department of Education's plan for reducing class size doesn't go far enough to address overcrowding at 408 failing schools, advocates charged yesterday.

While the city agreed last week to direct $153 million in new state funds toward reducing class size citywide this year, its plan targeted fewer than 150 schools for more substantial interventions.

Even the New York Times recently reported there is little progress for New York City schools.

New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in reading and math since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of the city schools, according to federal test scores released yesterday, in contrast with the largely steady gains that have been recorded on state tests.

Here's a suggestion for Vallone. Why doesn't he retire and home-school his children? Then he can spend as much time as he'd like with them and give them less homework than they're currently suffering with?

BDS Extends to Education

Democrats move to slash Reading First
House Democrats want to put their own stamp on federal education spending by increasing Title I and other programs they favor and slashing Reading First and other priorities set by President Bush.
In the $56 billion fiscal 2008 spending bill for the Department of Education unveiled by the Democrats, No Child Left Behind Act programs would receive a $2 billion increase, with the Title I program for disadvantaged students receiving $1.5 billion of that.
But the $1.03 billion Reading First program—which the Bush administration points to as one of its biggest accomplishments under the NCLB law—would take a cut of $630 million, or 61 percent. What’s more, the administration’s latest proposals for private school vouchers and new mathematics programs would not be funded at all.


---------snip-----------------
Continued symptoms of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome)

It would decline to provide the $325 million the president proposed for private school choice to give such options to students who attend chronically low-performing public schools.
The bill also would not fund math programs for elementary schools and middle schools proposed by Mr. Bush. And it would give only level funding to the $31.9 million Striving Readers program for middle schoolers, far less than the Bush administration request of $100 million.
Rep. Obey said that the bill’s price tag has raised the prospect that President Bush would veto it. [ed.- You just have to love that reason in light of all the pork they tried to put into the military budget for Iraq] But the Appropriations Committee chairman, who also leads the Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee, had significant support from Republicans on the subcommittee to finance the programs Congress sees as a priority.

One other item of note is that all though the article they constantly refer to the President as Mr. Bush.
So who is Rep. Obey? Why he is the guy trying to become the pork barrel king of Washington.

Bloggers are particularly irked by reports that Obey will only add earmarks to House-Senate conference agreements that generally cannot be amended on the floor. In the past, earmarks have been included in the separate House and Senate versions of appropriations bills and the committee reports that accompany them.


So Mr Obey who is part of that party who was going to change that “culture of congress” is reporting for duty and has decided that rather then do something to get rid of the shading spending plans in congress he simply wants to hide them or make it so that you, the taxpayer, has no say in where your money goes. More here.

Apparently the main method the Dems wish to use to make sure "No Child is left Behind" is to also make sure no child succeeds.

Polling Idiocy

In this day and age of endless polling, this one may be one of the dumbest:
Bad Schools Bigger Concern Than Terror: Poll.

Improving public schools and cutting the dropout rate are more important to New Yorkers than affordable housing, jobs and protection from terrorism, according to a survey released yesterday.

More than half of those polled also said New York City high schools don't do enough to prepare students for the workforce, and favored extending the mandatory school age.

The survey, conducted by the Community Service Society, a think tank that addresses urban poverty issues, questioned 1,230 low-income city residents and 500 moderate-to high-income residents.

Overall, 23 percent of those polled selected "improving city public schools and decreasing dropouts" as their top priority from a field of 10 choices.

Twenty-one percent chose building more affordable housing, while 14 percent chose combating terrorism.

Perhaps if New York City students and residents were indeed better educated, they'd understand what's going on in the real world. Still, the news media would serve the public if it didn't just reflexively publish polling data from some dubious activist group without looking further into their agenda.