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U.S. hoping to quell school violence
By Ben Feller, AP Education Writer  |  October 10, 2006

WASHINGTON --Compelled to respond to a spike in school violence, the Bush administration is hoping that a high-profile summit will get the word out about safety.

President Bush called for Tuesday's conference after three shooting rampages in two weeks unnerved the nation. Communities in Colorado, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are still grieving.

Bush is expected to offer sympathy at the event and to encourage people to ask questions at home about whether their schools are prepared for emergencies.

Not sure what to think...

They say to read the letter to the teacher. You probably should.

Introduction to the Simulation

1865 marked the end of America’s most terrible war and a year in which decisions involving government and race still echo today. The simulation our class will play focuses on the early choices that began Reconstruction. In this totally fictitious convention held in Washington D.C. on New Year’s Eve 1865, you and your classmates will try to reach agreement on a set of issues that the United States faced at that time.

Today was Chicago Tribune day, time to check on Clarence Page and Dawn Turner Trice.

They have typically low-key summaries of Hastert's problems, okay, okay. But Ms. Trice has done some videos and has them linked on her sidebar. I always found the sister to be quite reasonable. Check this one, Ingesting Gangsta Lit. It's right sensible.

Dr. Cosby is still on tour, this time backed up by the Right Reverend Joseph E. Lowery.

At some point I need to hear one of these presentations. I suspect they are changing subtlely.

Perhaps playing to his young crowd, on Tuesday he was less caustic, but just as powerful.

They made a point of dragging up the stuff from his first rant that white folks liked so much. They didn't find but so much in this appearance, so they quoted the first one. I don't know, I'd just feel like I'd like to hear what's being said without the media filter.

There was the occasional rhetorical question that actually had an answer.

I'm supposed to be educating myself. I'm supposed to start reading a really fascinating bit of research by someone I get to claim as a friend nowadays.

The new friend:

La Vonne Neal is Dean of the College of Education at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She describes herself as a person who enjoys challenges that require her to move quickly and traverse difficult obstacles. Indeed, her record of accomplishments as an athlete, businesswoman, educator and leader proves her to be a woman of her word.

Neal is a teacher-educator whose work in the design and implementation of culturally responsive teaching methods has earned wide recognition both among educators and in the popular press. For example, her research on the correlation between African American male students' walking styles and their placement in special education courses has been featured in USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, DiversityInc.Com, and radio and television stations across the country.

Race and public education.

A lot of stuff that's not strictly instructional has fallen into the laps of educators by default. We really ought to be honest about how much the socialization part of the human maturation process takes place in the school systems. They are like mini-worlds where they at least start to learn the relationship skills they will use to navigate the adult worlds later.

Which has nothing to do with the upcoming Supreme Court case. I've just been looking for an opportunity to say that.

As for the case itself, it strikes me the other option would be to make sure all the "residentially segregated" areas have the same educational resources as the, what, non-residentially segregated areas? There are none. Okay, you have your statistical outliers... 

Anyway, you have a couple of options here.

1. You can assign students on a first come-first serve basis. It leaves the possibility of voluntary segregation in public schools...do not think it outside the realm of possibility for an Americhristian cohort to walk up with a box of completed applications at 9:01 am the first day applications are officially accepted.
2. A solution to this should satisfy all parties, would be to make every course of study available to every student of every school. Oh. Too expensive?
3. Random selection from among all students that apply
   

Justices to Hear Abortion, Integration Cases
'Partial-Birth' Procedure and Schools' Race Policies to Dominate Court's Agenda
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 1, 2006; A06

Abortion and race dominate the Supreme Court's agenda for the term that begins tomorrow, with the Bush administration and its conservative allies urging the justices to put limits on abortion rights and affirmative action...

Taking up race-conscious public school assignments was a surprise, however. The justices had turned down a similar case a few months earlier, when Sandra Day O'Connor was still on the court.

O'Connor wrote the court's opinion in a 5 to 4 case upholding race-conscious admissions in higher education.

But after Alito replaced her, the court spent almost two months discussing the public school issue before deciding in June to hear it.

At issue are voluntary school integration plans in Seattle and in Louisville, Ky.

But in July the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Education Department, undermined this national effort. A report on expenditures for public elementary and secondary education for the 2003-04 school year contained this finding: "The percentage of current expenditures spent on instruction and instruction-related activities was 66.1 percent in 2003-04 for the nation as a whole" (emphasis added). Seasoned students of government verbiage noted the suspiciously vague phrase "instruction-related activities."

Opacity is a sign of insincerity: Government language becomes opaque as the government's conscience becomes uneasy. When no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were found, the U.S. government began speaking foggily of finding "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."

Fair enough.

I would also suggest that things like building maintainence belong the the capital budget.

Education's Moving Target
By George F. Will
Sunday, October 1, 2006; Page B07

The Times leads the article with a picture of this big diesel-looking brother holding the "Board of Education." He's a Texan...which simply doesn't surprise me...and I noticed it's legal in Freaky Foley's district as well.

“I believe we have reached the point in our social evolution where this is no longer acceptable, just as we reached a point in the last half of the 19th century where husbands using corporal punishment on their wives was no longer acceptable,” said Murray Straus, a director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire.

Among adherents of the practice is James C. Dobson, the child psychologist who founded Focus on the Family and is widely regarded as one of the nation’s most influential evangelical leaders.

DuBose Ravenel, a North Carolina pediatrician who is the in-house expert on the subject for Mr. Dobson’s group, said, “I believe the whole country would be better off if corporal punishment was allowed in schools by parents who wish it.” 

In Many Public Schools, the Paddle Is No Relic
By RICK LYMAN

EVERMAN, Tex. — Anthony Price does not mince words when talking about corporal punishment — which he refers to as taking pops — a practice he recently reinstated at the suburban Fort Worth middle school where he is principal.

“I’m a big fan,” Mr. Price said. “I know it can be abused. But if used properly, along with other punishments, a few pops can help turn a school around. It’s had a huge effect here.”

Tina Morgan, who works on a highway crew in rural North Carolina, gave permission for her son to be paddled in his North Carolina middle school. But she said she was unprepared for Travis, now 12, to come home with a backside that was a florid kaleidoscope of plums and lemons and blood oranges.

“This boy might need a blistering now and then, with his knucklehead,” Ms. Morgan said, swatting at him playfully, but she added that she never wanted him to be beaten like that. “I’ve decided, we’ve got to get corporal punishment out of the schools.”

Over most of the country and in all but a few major metropolitan areas, corporal punishment has been on a gradual but steady decline since the 1970’s, and 28 states have banned it. But the practice remains alive, particularly in rural parts of the South and the lower Midwest, where it is not only legal, but also widely practiced.

Okay, so I'm at this ASALH convention. It's kind of funny that evryone is walking around wearing these name tag/pouch things...no worse than those "Hi! I'm (write your name)" stickers and does not stain your clothes. But I never wore those either...guess I should get over it.

Yesterday the big thing was the reception to view segments of a DVD titled "Freedom's Song." It's the story of Black History and a very nice piece of work. How nice? They showed the section on the Tulsa race riots, and a survivor of said riots was in the audience...and she said it was good and correct.

Farmers has joined with The Association for the Study of African American Life and History to create a documentary film, Freedom’s Song: 100 years of African-American struggle and triumph, that highlights significant milestones in the history of the African-American experience during the past century. It includes living testimonials designed to put a personal face on the actual historical events featured in the film.

The Freedom’s Song package is free to educators and includes a DVD copy of the film, engaging and thought-provoking lesson plans and an interactive web site that will be continually updated with audio and video content.

DATA PROPOSALS THREATEN EDUCATION AND CIVIL RIGHTS ACCOUNTABILITY

Full Report (PDF format)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The U.S. Department of Education has proposed sweeping changes in the way we count minority and white students in our schools, changes that would dramatically alter the reported enrollment by race and ethnicity in our states and in many of our educational institutions.   The changes are partly in response to a need recognized in the 2000 Census to collect information on students who are biracial or multiracial in their background.    However, the Department of Education has proposed changes that are very different from the Census changes and would make it extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to conduct meaningful research or monitor civil rights compliance and educational accountability for students by race and ethnicity. The guidelines published August 7, 2006 in the Federal Register, specifythe changes by which schools, colleges, and state governments will collect and report individual-level data and aggregate data on race and ethnicity.

This Week in Competitive Parenting
By Daniel Klein  |  September 25, 2006

EVER SINCE competitive parenting was officially recognized as a national sport in 1994, more than 80 million parents have turned pro. Every major urban center now boasts its own CP league. Fortunately, competitive parents from Greater Boston continue to dominate the sport. And one look at our Top Five Plays of the Week tells why.

3. Our refs have always displayed a special weakness for liberals. So it is not surprising that the following exchange between Cantabrigians Mr. L. F. and Dr. M. K. in front of the Harvard Book Store made the list.

A little more at PBS, if you can stand it. 

The process of forgetting began almost immediately. “Atlanta is herself again, business is restored, and the riot is forgotten,” one newspaper headline declared two days later.

But the riot shaped the city in powerful ways. Scores of middle-class blacks left the city, and segregation grew more entrenched.

“Interracial cooperation was not equal,” said Clarissa Myrick-Harris, a historian and member of the Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, which planned this weekend’s events. “It was another way of maintaining and asserting power over blacks.”

“The white elite chose who they were going to meet with in the black community,” Dr. Myrick-Harris said, and a class divide emerged. Whites blamed the lower classes, both black and white, for the violence, and some black leaders characterized blacks who fought back as threats.

The riot also weighed heavily against assimilationists like Booker T. Washington in favor of more radical black thinkers like W. E. B. DuBois, who thought federal intervention was needed to protect blacks.

“It disproved Washington’s belief that if blacks worked hard, saved money and became respectable, then whites would recognize their interest in protecting them,” said David Fort Godshalk, the author of a recent book about the riot.

100 Years Later, a Painful Episode Is Observed at Last
By SHAILA DEWAN

ATLANTA, Sept. 23 — Two years ago, Saudia Muwwakkil, the director of communications for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, invited community leaders to discuss how to mark the 100th anniversary of a 1906 race riot in which mobs of whites descended on the city’s black residents.

The abuses described in the report occurred during 2002 and 2003, when Rod Paige was education secretary. John Grimaldi, spokesman for the Chartwell Education Group where Mr. Paige is chairman, said he had not read the report but would seek Mr. Paige’s reaction to it.

Report Says Education Officials Violated Rules
By SAM DILLON

Department of Education officials violated conflict of interest rules when awarding grants to states under President Bush’s billion-dollar reading initiative, and steered contracts to favored textbook publishers, the department’s inspector general said yesterday.

He admitted this kind of campaign "generally fails badly."

"But I'm going to try again because I'm going to present this national slavery museum as a jewel that's missing in a crown."

Cosby: Donate $8 to Slavery Museum
By DIONNE WALKER
The Associated Press
Friday, September 22, 2006; 10:03 PM

RICHMOND, Va. -- Bill Cosby called Friday on each American to contribute $8 to help build a national slavery museum amid the battlefields of the Civil War. Cosby, who already has committed $1 million to the project, joined Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder on Friday in launching a new campaign to raise $100 million toward the Fredericksburg museum's $200 million price tag.

At the center of the Museum’s mission is the capacity to present the complex issue of slavery in a more balanced, comprehensive and comprehensible manner. Historians now acknowledge the centrality of slavery to the early economic and political development of the United States of America. Yet, in far too many settings slavery is still viewed in a time worn reactionary and jaded manner. It is for this reason that the U. S. National Slavery Museum will become the national repository for an expanded focus on this topic along with scholarly resources to support revisionist efforts that will be directed towards new knowledge, conciliation and ultimately a much better informed public.

Commerce being the model by which we judge all our interpersonal relationships, I'm not surprised.

[B]usiness school students described cheating as a necessary measure and the sort of practice they'd likely need to succeed in the professional world.

"The typical comment is that what's important is getting the job done. How you get it done is less important," McCabe said. "You'll have business students saying all I'm doing is emulating the behavior I'll need when I get out in the real world."

And the grad students most likely to cheat are...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 8:08 AM ET

Why We Need a National School Test
By William J. Bennett and Rod Paige
Thursday, September 21, 2006; Page A25

You're going to hear about this and I want you to be ready.

Two economists at Princeton University and one at the University of Virginia collaborated on an analysis that examined the rates at which black incomes are growing and are projected to grow. Then they looked at the patterns in which increases in black income levels translate into test score increases of the sort needed for admission to top colleges. The scholars’ data show that even 25 years after the O’Connor ruling, and assuming significant gains in black income, the abandonment of affirmative action in admissions would lead to a huge drop in black enrollments at top colleges. The gains in black incomes and academic performance just aren’t fast enough to meet O’Connor’s deadline.

That's the sort of result that primes the cannons of the Brookses, Wills anf Tierneys of the world.

I was going to go through David Austen-Smith and Roland G. Fryer, Jr.'s An Economic Analysis of 'Acting White' to pull the quotes showing that in private schools the most popular white kids have C averages and popularity drops as their GPA increases.

But it's such a silly thing I couldn't keep reading long enough to find it again, so you'll have to take my word for it.

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids
Madeline Levine

Madeline Levine has been a practicing psychologist for twenty-five years, but it was only recently that she began to observe a new breed of unhappy teenager. When a bright, personable fifteen-year-old girl, from a loving and financially comfortable family, came into her office with the word empty carved into her left forearm, Levine was startled. This girl and her message seemed to embody a disturbing pattern Levine had been observing. Her teenage patients were bright, socially skilled, and loved by their affluent parents. But behind a veneer of achievement and charm, many of these teens suffered severe emotional problems. What was going on?

The main obstacle to getting children into the military -- concerned parents -- has at long last been circumvented. Private companies can now harvest data on children and provide recruiters, some of whom are also now private contractors, with the information they need to contact children directly...

I signed my form directing our local high school to withhold my daughter's contact information from military recruiters. Other parents undoubtedly missed it. When military recruiters eventually come knocking at their doors, these families will find out the hard way what Bush really meant when he promised to "leave no child behind."

Reading, writing, and recruiting
By David Goodman  |  September 16, 2006

MY DAUGHTER started high school last week. This milestone was marked by the arrival in our home of a ream of paperwork. Along with the usual bureaucratic permissions, I found tucked into this package a seemingly innocuous form that carries extraordinary consequences: failing to fill it out might result in my daughter being harassed, assaulted, or being fast-tracked to fight in Iraq.

This form asks us whether we want to opt-out of having our daughter's contact information sent to the US military. If we overlooked this form, or did not opt-out , our high school is required to forward her information to military recruiters. This is thanks to a stealth provision of the No Child Left Behind law. It turns out that President Bush's supposed signature education law also happens to be the most aggressive military recruitment tool enacted since the draft ended in 1973...

Massey to leave Morehouse in 'very good shape'
By ANDREA JONES
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/15/06

Massey, 69, announced Thursday at the college's opening convocation ceremony he will retire at the end of this academic year. He is the ninth president in the 139-year history of Morehouse, the nation's only all-male historically black college and the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent African-Americans.

During Massey's tenure, the college completed its most successful capital campaign — raising more than $120 million — $15 million over its goal. Morehouse built a 74,000-square-foot leadership center and spearheaded a revitalization effort for the West End neighborhood that surrounds the campus.

“People like to paint this in terms of black and white, back-to-basics and constructivism, but I think there’s a lot of agreement about what students need to know.”

Report Urges Changes in the Teaching of Math in U.S. Schools
By TAMAR LEWIN

In a major shift from its influential recommendations 17 years ago, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics yesterday issued a report urging that math teaching in kindergarten through eighth grade focus on a few basic skills.

If the report, “Curriculum Focal Points ,” has anywhere near the impact of the council’s 1989 report, it could signal a profound change in the teaching of math in American schools. It could also help end the math curriculum struggles that for the last two decades have set progressive educators and their liberal supporters against conservatives and many mathematicians.

This is NOT the German Marshall Fund.

This is the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, just announced yesterday, and only anti-civil rights organizations are named more cynically. It should be called the Committee on Capital Markets DeRegulation.

Panel of Executives and Academics to Consider Regulation and Competitiveness
By FLOYD NORRIS

A committee filled with business leaders and academics was created yesterday to consider changes in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other laws and regulations governing securities markets and companies, with the intention of improving competitiveness for American markets.

On a simple 100-point reading test or math test, this "teacher gender effect" might alter a boy's score by one or two percentage points. Hardly the difference between a C and a B... Even what your child eats for lunch matters more than the sex of his teacher.

Beware of Dubious Teaching Secrets
The media crowned a study as the answer to the Boy Crisis—but the study's "proven" effects are negligible at best
By PO BRONSON & ASHLEY MERRYMAN

One of the most emailed stories on the web last week reported that junior-high boy students do better when taught by a man, and girl students do better when taught by a woman. Here was a magic-bullet explanation for The Boy Crisis from Stanford's Hoover Institute: the boys are lacking because 4 out of 5 teachers are women.

As a result of calling into a radio station to harrass politicians a while back, Darkstar had a meeting with a couple of Gov. Ehrlich aides last week.

He had a bag of suggestions, of which Ehrlich's people liked three.

My Ideas They Liked

• They liked the idea about kids being able to attend schools, freely, across school district boundaries. The reality is, in some cases, it already exists. For example, county kids are able to attend schools in Baltimore if they want to do so. And, some do. Their parents pay the school system to do it, but they do it.
• The use of PSAs to encourage parents to be an active part in their child's education.
• Tax credits or deductions for parents who pay for tutors and for tutors who pay for supplies.

He also was told a story of a local Democratic blocking Lt. Gov. Steele's implementing a partnership between an HBCU and a couple of local schools. A very incomplete story, which I would like to hear the end of. You all know by now I'm quite judgemental...I've already judged Lt. Gov. Steele as being entirely too chummy with active enemies of Black folks. I have no problem passing judgement on Democrats when appropriate.

SAT scores tied to income level locally, nationally
Ron Cassie, The Examiner
Aug 31, 2006 5:00 AM (1 day ago)

BALTIMORE - There is a direct correlation between income level and SAT scores nationally — results that matched locally with the new U.S. census findings, according to newly released data released from the College Board.

The overall SAT results were broken into 10 family-income blocks, beginning at less than $10,000. They increase in $10,000 increments to students with family income levels greater than $100,000. Students from families with less than a $10,000 income scored a mean of 429 in critical reading, which improved to 445 in the $10,000 to $20,000 income range. That score jumped in each of the next eight income groups, peaking at 549 with students from families earning more than $100,000. The same trend occurred in math: Students at the lowest-end income level had a mean score of 457, which crept to 465, 474, 488, 501 and then 509 in the $50,000-$60,000 range. The numbers kept improving to a mean score of 564 at the $100,000 and above level.

George finally got around to speaking in New Orleans today. He wants to specifically support a parochial school (read: religious) school system to compete with the public school system.

When I get a minute I'll post a clip documenting it. 

There's a reason this mother was subjected to these ridiculous charges.

Court Ruling Clears Mother in Son’s Suicide
By AVI SALZMAN

STAMFORD, Conn, Aug. 28 — The Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday overturned the conviction of a woman who prosecutors said had kept such a messy home that it endangered the safety and mental health of her 12-year-old son, who killed himself in 2002. The case had sparked a national debate over parental responsibility for a child’s suicide.

The case of Judith Scruggs, a single mother from Meriden, and her son, Daniel, was the first in which a Connecticut parent was charged criminally in a child’s suicide, experts said. It also brought national attention to the issue of child bullying after it was revealed that Daniel had been abused repeatedly by his classmates.

This kid didn't kill himself because his house was a mess. He was brutalized in school and the officials did nothing about it.