Public school culture

(Difference between revisions)

Public school culture is an atmosphere fostered in public school,[1] especially in the most liberal of public schools, which is characterized by:

prohibition of classroom prayer sex education, homosexual curriculum and sexual abuse by school personnel has been referred to as a "red-light district" for students [2] a culture of incompetence [3][4] fashion that includes all black clothing (Goth), facial piercings and rings, tattoos, and male earrings depressed demeanors (a so-called "emo" culture amongst some teens) an absence of objective morality; instead, a principal will say someone "made the wrong choice" a sense of hopelessness a lack of critical thinking about liberal indoctrination compulsive profanity general inability to look someone in the eye lewd behavior euphemistically referred to as "PDA" or "Public Display of Affection" [5] racial discrimination resulting from set cliques of racially homogeneous students [6] tolerance of homosexuality due to school-supported and funded groups [7] extreme anxiety feeling that it is funny to be dumb disruptive yelling lack of supervision, class cutting being so accustomed to censorship of ideas that there is genuine surprise when someone actually says something unfamiliar or politically incorrect lack of awareness that prayer is censored in public schools and that teachers' unions are very liberal smoking, alcohol and drug abuse drug testing [8] disrespect for teachers, taking advantage of substitute teachers bullying, hazing, public humiliation gang activity [9], weapon detectors, locker searches lack of proper etiquette and manners glorification of certain groups such as athletic teams and outcast of others bitter hate for rival schools and their students corrupt and abusive teachers and school administrators[10][11][12] censorship of conservative sources of news and information violence and school shootings excessive network abuse complete lack of awareness or involvement by parents rampant cheating by students[13] and teachers[14] cross-dressing - in schools plays, boys wearing girl jeans, powder puff sports, etc. special concessions for certain ethnic groups and religions while Christianity is ignored allowing students to opt-out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance pregnant students being accepted by school officials, and sometimes even pregnancy pacts[15] acceptance and sometimes even encouragement of abortion and birth control a lack of respect for public property and other people's personal property, as seen by vandalism (e.g. defacing and/or inscribing obscenities into desks, lockers, etc.) and high rates of theft disruptive pranks like false fire alarms have caused many schools to implement detection mechanisms such as surveillance cameras and tamper dyes.[16] students impeding traffic by walking on roadways instead of walking on the sidewalk or on the grass going to and from the school bus stop. disrespect for authority figures and high-ranking elected public officials[17] Participation in sports and other activities. Social Development ? Public schools are the government-controlled schools in the United States. In other countries different terms are used to describe the government schools.? Public schools: The new red-light district?, Olivia St. John, World Net Daily, January 09, 2008? POINT: A Call for Action, Rick Norwood, The Mathematical Association of America, Accessed May 4, 2008? John Merrow, Mixed Results for School Reform Efforts in New Orleans. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS: July 24, 2008? http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0523/p03s01-ussc.html? http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/lifestyle/nearly-all-high-school-cliques-are-racially-divided-study_10025532.html? http://www.gsanetwork.org/? New Jersey School District Random Drug Testing Program Fox News, July 29, 2001? Gangs recruiting at middle schools, Diana Hefley and Kaitlin Manry, Daily Herald, April 27, 2008? "School Says Official Embezzled Millions". Court House News. January 21, 2010.? "National Media Largely Ignore Public-School Sex Scandals" Citizenlink. 01.26.2007.? "Not the Catholic Church? MSM Mum About Huge L.A. School Sex Abuse Scandal". Dave Pierre. NewsBusters. May 19, 2008? http://articles.cnn.com/2002-04-05/us/highschool.cheating_1_plagiarism-cheating-students?_s=PM:fyi? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,992885,00.html? http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/19/eveningnews/main4197525.shtml? http://www.ahs.albany.k12.ny.us/AHS/misc/Hall_Sweeps_October_2008.pdf? http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/emma-sullivans-potty-mouthed-tweet-has-a-lesson-for-all-of-us/2011/11/29/gIQAG6CEAO_story.html

View the original article here

High School Science Teacher Investigated For Using Word ‘Vagina’, Showing Clip Of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

Turns out “climate change” isn’t the only thing you can’t say in Idaho biology class.

The headline grabber, as Raw Story covered it, was “Idaho teacher investigated for saying ‘vagina’ during biology lesson.” That would be Tim McDaniel, who has been teaching in the Dietrich, Idaho biology department for almost two decades. Here’s the part of the Twin-Falls’s Times-News story that is germane to Climate Progress:

According to McDaniel, the commission is also investigating a complaint that accuses him of using school property to promote a political candidate. The complaint was because he showed the climate change film “An Inconvenient Truth,” also in his science class. McDaniel said he includes the film to spark a discussion on climate change among the students. After watching the film, he asks students to write a response paper explaining their thoughts on climate change. “I’m not looking for one answer, I just want them to be able to explain what they believe,” he said.

How do you stop a teacher from showing one of the most popular documentaries of all time? Assert Al Gore is a political candidate. I wonder where they teach people to come up with that kind of logic.
Students have set up a “SAVE THE SCIENCE TEACHER!!” Facebook page and online petition here.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery('#comment_submit').click(function(){if(jQuery('#comment_check:checked').length

View the original article here

As GOP Seeks Cuts To Child Nutrition Programs, Democratic Rep. Pushes To Expand School Lunches

Republican budget proposals have included deep cuts to social safety net programs, including those that are aimed at ensuring that needy children have access to nutritional food at school. Last year’s House Republican budget, for instance, would have kicked 280,000 children out of the program, and spending cuts that have been enacted have targeted it too.

Amid those efforts, though, Democratic Rep. Dina Titus (D) is pushing in the opposite direction. School lunch programs provide breakfast and lunch to children when they are in school, but they leave many children without food options on weekends and holidays during the school year. Titus wants to fix that by expanding the program through the Weekends Without Hunger Act, which she introduced last week and rolled out in her Las Vegas district Thursday.

That the Republican budget seeks to cut such programs is a statement of “how out of touch it is with our nation’s needs and priorities,” Titus told ThinkProgress in an email.

“With 50.1 million American living in food insecure households, including 16.7 million children, it is our responsibility to protect programs such as free and reduced school lunches, SNAP, and WIC that these families rely on every day just to get by,” Titus said. “The federal budget is a statement of our national priorities, and providing funding for nutritious meals to ensure that vacation from school does not mean hunger for children is one of my top priorities.”

The legislation is co-sponsored by Reps. Marsha Fudge (D-OH), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Terri Sewell (D-AL) and is one of several efforts to expand child nutrition programs. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (D) has introduced a bill that would expand those programs to child care centers in an effort to get food to more low-income children.

The Great Recession drove up the number of children living in poverty, adding to the number of children who live without enough food. Nearly 15 percent — more than 17 million in total — American households were food insecure in 2011, meaning they had difficulty providing food at some point in the year. There are 20 million students who benefit from free and reduced lunches at school, and another 10.5 million who are eligible but don’t receive the benefits.

The school lunch program gets food to children during the week, but weekends and holidays create gaps that leave many hungry. “While school meals help keep children healthy and ready to learn during days that school is in session, there is currently no targeted Federal child nutrition program available to provide these children with food during the weekend or extended holidays when they do not have access to school meals,” a release from Titus’ office said when the bill was introduced. “Vacation from school should not mean hunger for children.”

View the original article here

Only Half Of Kids Eligible For School Breakfast Program Are Receiving It

Across the country, millions of American children struggle to get the food they need, a crisis that impacts educational attainment and their futures. But even though about 21 million American children are eligible for school programs that provide them with free or reduced-price meals, only half are regularly eating breakfast at school, according to a new study on food insecurity and childhood hunger.

Only 11 million of the 21 million children eligible for school lunches and breakfasts eat breakfast at school, according to the study from Deloitte and the No King Hungry campaign:

Connecting eligible children to the breakfast program would enhance academic achievement and school attendance, according to the authors. If 70 percent of the students who were eating school lunches also ate school breakfasts, there would be 3.2 million students achieving higher standardized test scores, 4.8 million fewer absences, and 807,000 more high school graduates, the study says.

No Kid Hungry suggests that to expand access to more eligible children, schools should move their breakfast programs out of the cafeteria and into the classroom, making breakfast part of the regular school day. The study examined schools in Maryland that have made that transition and found that serving breakfast in classrooms increased participation from 46 percent in 2010 to 56 percent in 2012. Schools that served breakfast in classrooms, it found, saw a decline in chronic absenteeism, while students who received breakfast in the classroom were 12.5 percent more likely to achieve proficiency on standardized tests.

View the original article here

South African Student Who Accidentally Shot Himself Allegedly Used School Guard’s Gun

A 13-year-old student in Durban, South Africa accidentally shot himself in the leg at school this week – reportedly using a school security guard’s gun. Guards are not armed at the school, but this guard had allegedly brought his personal gun from home. IOL reports:

A security guard was on duty at an oThongathi (Tongaat) primary school when the teen allegedly removed the guard’s private gun from his unsecured bag.

The Grade 7 pupil at Hambanathi Primary, sustained a single gunshot wound to his thigh and is reported to be in a stable condition at Osindisweni Hospital, in Verulam.

According to the school principal, he had allegedly removed the gun from the guard’s bag and was attempting to shove it into the waist of his pants, when a shot accidentally went off, said the school principal, Mrs S Mahlinza.

The guard, who was meant to be unarmed, is contracted by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education.

He has been arrested and charged for failing to secure his firearm.

The incident has prompted calls for “urgent” action to ban guns in schools, with officials citing the recent Newton, Ct. tragedy. In the United States, meanwhile, the National Rifle Association has urged more armed school guards as a solution to preventing future school shootings, and several states are now considering legislative proposals, in spite of scientific and historical evidence that armed school guards don’t prevent these sorts of incidents. Many states are even implementing programs to arm teachers and add gun courses for students.

The physical danger of armed guards highlighted by this incident is not the only threat posed by the NRA’s plan. Placing more officers in schools has also been correlated with drastic and racially disproportionate upticks in student arrests – often as an alternative means of school discipline. The criminalizing of minor student infractions known as the “school-to-prison pipeline” is already an epidemic in some states, and has the potential to dramatically alter a child’s future by funneling them out of school and into the criminal justice system.

View the original article here

Parents Sue School For Making Children ‘Religious Guinea Pigs’ — By Teaching Them Yoga

Children being indoctinated

A San Diego couple is suing the area’s school district for allegedly violating their children’s religious freedom by offering yoga classes for physical education.

Stephen and Jennifer Sedlock actually have the option to opt their children out of taking the classes, which the school’s superintendent describes as, “stretching, moving, breathing.” But their lawyer, a part of the conservative National Center for Law and Policy, still believes there is a strong case for why yoga classes are an unconstitutional violation religious freedom:

In a press release issued by Escondido-based National Center for Law and Policy, attorney Dean Broyles said the Encinitas yoga program was a “breach of public trust” that sets a “dangerous precedent.”

“This is frankly the clearest case of the state trampling on the religious freedom rights of citizens that I have personally witnessed in my 18 years of practice as a constitutional attorney,” Broyles said.

The lawsuit, which alleges civil rights violations, was filed in San Diego Superior Court. It ultimately seeks to suspend the yoga program indefinitely and “restore traditional physical education to the district.”

If the couple’s lawyer thinks that this is “the clearest case of the state trampling on [religious] freedoms” that he has witnessed, he may want to look a little harder. The First Amendment does not simply protect against legitimate threats to the free exercise of faith, it also forbids the government from endorsing religious views or forcing religion upon others — most often non-Christians. So when an Indiana lawmaker proposes requiring “the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day,” that’s a violation of religious freedom. When a conservative judges places a massive Ten Commandments monument in the middle of the Alabama Judicial Building, that’s a violation of religious freedom.

When a child does a yoga pose, on the other hand, that’s just a good way to stay in shape.

View the original article here

Hey Fairfax County, High School Seniors Can Handle ‘Beloved,’ And Learn About Racism and Sexism

Laura Murphy, whose son is a senior in high school in Fairfax County, Virginia, doesn’t think he—or anyone else—should be reading Beloved in their English classes, and she’s on a quest to get it bumped from the curriculum. Per Raw Story:

“I’m not some crazy book burner,” Murphy, a mother of four, insisted to the Post. “I have great respect and admiration for our Fairfax County educators. The school system is second to none. But I disagree with the administration at a policy level.”

In spite of the awards and accolades won by Beloved and its author, who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, Murphy feels that the book’s theme of the brutality of slavery and scenes depicting gang rape, infant murder and violence are too intense for high school seniors. She said her son had nightmares when he had to read the book for his senior English course.

“It’s not about the author or the awards,” said Murphy. “It’s about the content.” On Thursday, the Fairfax County School Board voted not to hear Murphy’s challenge to the book. She now plans to take her fight to the Virginia Board of Education.

The thing about sending your children to public school is that you’re consenting to give up a certain amount of control over what they’re exposed to, because one of the major points of public schools is to make sure students have a pre-established set of skills and cultural references in common. And that often means teaching children things that their parents don’t know, or giving them access to literature and history that their parents might not have at home, or frankly, might not want them to read or learn about. It also, on an emotional level, means letting your children come into contact with ideas and art that will expand their sense of the world.

An associated risk of that is that they might be upset by some of the things they learn about the world. Racism is frightening. So is sexual assault. But both of those things have happened in the United States, and for many people, continue to be major factors that affect their day-to-day life. And I think high school seniors, especially those who will be going off to colleges where they have much more sexual autonomy, and will be dealing with larger and more diverse peer groups, not only are old enough to understand the reality of those facts and to be confronted with the emotional impacts they have, but really ought to be confronted by them. I’m not a parent yet, but my understanding is that parenting is a balance between protecting children from things they genuinely don’t have the capacity to process—Wu-Tang may be for the children, but I’m not sure Toni Morrison is—and helping them process the difficult things they have the moral and emotional ability to confront, even if that involves hard work on your, and their parts.

If Murphy’s son is having nightmares about slavery and gang rape, that actually seems to suggest that he’s pretty attuned to the emotional horror of racial and sexual violence. Maybe, instead of trying to protect him from those feelings, she could find some way for him to channel them into productive anti-racist or anti-sexist work. That would be much better college prep (and resume-building) for him than trying to save him, and other seniors, from being upset. I doubt Murphy is going to have much luck with the Virginia Board of Education. And she’ll have much less with whatever institution of higher learning he heads off to.

View the original article here

Court Holds Low Kansas School Funding Unconstitutional, Lawmakers Respond By Attacking Constitution

Just weeks after a three judge panel unanimously ruled the Kansas legislature was failing to meet its constitutionally defined responsibility to suitably fund the state’s education needs, conservative Kansas legislators responded with a proposal to limit judicial oversight of education funding. The January ruling ordered the legislature to raise education funding around $400 million to return the state’s schools to reasonable standards and called out the hypocrisy of cuts given other “priorities” pursued by the legislature at the same time:

The court said it was “illogical” for the state to argue that it could not adequately fund schools at the same time it slashed income taxes.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court victories for a group of public school districts, parents and students in Kansas who have demanded for years that the state provide more money for education.

A funding plan was devised for Kansas in 2006 through a settlement of a prior lawsuit but the groups filed suit again in 2010 when the state made an estimated $300 million in funding cuts. The state made even more cuts in 2011. There have been $511 million in cuts to the base funding between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal 2012.”

Rather than accept the decision and provide Kansan students with adequate funding, last week conservative legislators introduced a constitutional amendments intended to reduce judicial influence and Attorney General Derek Schmidt (R) appealed the ruling.

The large conservative majorities in both chambers of the Kansas legislature, have pursued an aggressive agenda under Governor Sam Brownback, including gutting arts funding, and attempting to end income taxes.

Kansas is not alone in constitutionally requiring education funding standards, with many other states including New Jersey and Washington fighting similar battles over education funding in recent years. Just yesterday, a District Judge ruled Texas’s school-finance system unconstitutional due to funding disparities between richer and poorer districts.

View the original article here

As Part Of Lockdown Drill, School Fires Off Blanks In The Halls

Students at a high school in Illinois experienced a uniquely terrifying school shooting drill on Wednesday. Instead of conducting a regular school lockdown, Cary-Grove High School administrators simulated gunfire by shooting off blanks in the hallways while students locked their classroom doors, pulled the curtains, and hid.

The drill, understandably, upset some parents in the area, who received a letter ahead of time telling them what their children would be experiencing:

The simulation will take approximately 15-20 minutes, during which time teachers will secure their rooms, draw curtains, and keep their students from traveling throughout the building. Please note that we will be firing blanks in the hallway in an effort to provide our teachers and students some familiarity with the sound of gunfire. Our school resource officer and other members of the Cary Police Department will assist us in sweeping the building to ensure that all students are in a secure location during the drill. At the conclusion of the drill, we will take some time to process what occurred and then we will return to our normal classroom routine.

I encourage you to discuss the drill with your student both before it happens and after. These drills help our students and staff to be prepared should a crisis occur, but it may cause some students to have an emotional reaction.

Schools and parents have gone to exceedingly extreme lengths, in the wake of the horrific killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, to come up with ways to prepare for school gun violence. A school district in Texas is considering allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons; parents have been purchasing bulletproof backpacks for their kids to take to school; the South Carolina legislature is even considering making a gun training class for high schoolers; and some parents even packed a gun for their sixth-grader to bring to class.

View the original article here

One Student Shot At Price Middle School

Police are reporting that a 14-year-old student was shot in the back of the neck at Price Middle School in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday afternoon and is awake and breathing. One teacher was also injured from being trampled after the shot was fired. At least one suspect is in police custody.

Parents are not being allowed to come to the school at this time and the kids are not able to leave. Early reports suggest that the shooting was a result of an altercation between students from another school.

View the original article here

Arizona Bills Require Public School Students To Recite Loyalty Oaths

Public high school students in Arizona will have to “recite an oath supporting the U.S. Constitution” to receive a graduation diploma, if a new bill introduced in the new session of the state legislature is passed and signed into law. The measure, House Bill 2467, was offered by Rep. Bob Thorpe (R), a freshman tea party members who also backs a bill preventing state enforcement of federally enacted gun safety laws. Here is the text of HB 2467:

As written, the bill does not exempt atheist students or those of different faiths from the requirement, though Thorpe has pledged to amend the measure. “In that we had a tight deadline for dropping our bills, I was not able to update the language,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Arizona Republic. “Even though I want to encourage all of our students to understand and respect our Constitution and constitutional form of government, I do not want to create a requirement that students or parents may feel uncomfortable with.”

A separate measure introduced by Thorpe’s colleague would also “require all students in first through 12th grades” “to say the pledge of allegiance each day.” Currently, “schools must set aside time for the pledge each day, but students may choose whether to participate.”

Constitutional experts warn that both proposals are unconstitutional. As American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham explained, “You can’t require students to attend school … and then require them to either pledge allegiance to the flag or swear this loyalty oath in order to graduate. It’s a violation of the First Amendment.”

View the original article here

School choice: 49 million students still without options

By Robert Enlow, president and CEO, Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice - 01/23/13 11:00 AM ET

Heidi and Frank Green used to worry about their daughters while they were at school. The Clarksville, Indiana couple was concerned about bullying, cursing, large class sizes, a revolving teaching staff, and a general lack of attention for students.

Thankfully, the Greens say their lives have changed for the better as daughters Gillian and Emma are now eager to attend school. Today they are getting quality instruction at their new Catholic school thanks to a voucher program adopted in Indiana two years ago.

“School choice should be everywhere,” said Mrs. Green. “Parents should be able to decide what’s best for their kids.

Gillian and Emma are among the 255,000 students nationwide who attend a private school of their family’s choice using vouchers or tax-credit scholarships. Another 2.3 million students utilize public charter schools as their preferred option.

But there are still almost 49 million public school students throughout the country who do not have such freedom. They must attend their neighborhood public school regardless of its safety, quality, class sizes, teaching staff, or other issues outside their parents’ control. But such restriction doesn’t have to be the case.

Sunday marks the beginning of the third annual National School Choice Week, which runs through Feb. 2. There will be 3,000 events across 50 states including rallies and forums where parents will ask lawmakers for more choices for their kids.

National School Choice Week highlights the private, charter, online and home school education options available to families and those stuck with a school assigned to them by their address. Parents can choose public or private colleges for their children using many federal and state aid programs. They should be able to do the same with K-12 schools.

After major school choice victories last fall in which Washington voters agreed to allow charter schools to open in the state and Georgia voters agreed to an easier path to create more charters, a host of other states will consider additional school choice measures in 2013. Among the highlights:

•    Tennessee’s governor will include a school voucher program in his legislative package.
•    The Texas legislature will consider a program in which taxpayers would receive tax credits for donations they make to nonprofits that provide private school scholarships for low-income students.
•    Mississippi’s governor proposed a private school choice program for students in underperforming public schools.
•    North Carolina’s lawmakers will review proposals for opportunity scholarships and quite possibly education savings accounts, a new type of private school choice available only in Arizona.
•    Alaska lawmakers will vote on a school voucher plan for all students statewide regardless of their family income.
•    Indiana’s new governor has proposed expanding its voucher program to increase scholarship amounts and student eligibility.
•    Maine lawmakers will hear a proposal from their governor to give children school vouchers.

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, the father of the school choice concept, believed that offering parents education options other than their neighborhood school would not only be good for children but would improve education. Studies show school choice is helping children in their new schools and those who don’t participate – something vitally important when so many children don’t get a quality education.

The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University found that high school dropouts are more dependent on government assistance such as food stamps, housing assistance, and Medicaid. They are also more likely to be in jail or prison, another cost to federal, state, and local taxpayers. And unemployment rates are highest among dropouts, according to the study.

If our society is to address its burgeoning debt problem and give young people a chance to become successful, offering parents an opportunity to access high-quality schools is a path to prosperity for themselves, their children, and society.

In several states, policymakers are ensuring more students have access to the schools, public or private, that work best for them. National School Choice Week is the time to shine a spotlight on those leaders and anyone else working to make sure every family is free to choose in education.

Enlow is president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the legacy foundation of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose.

View Comments

View the original article here

Armed School Guard Leaves Gun In Student Bathroom

A gun was left in the bathroom of a Michigan public school by an armed guard paid to protect it, according to the school’s director. The Chatfield School, a charter school that teaches K-8 students, hired a retired police weapons instructor to provide armed protection after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. The result wasn’t exactly what they intended:

The security officer “made a breach in security protocol” and left an unloaded weapon in a restroom “for a few moments,” said Chatfield School Director Matt Young.

Young said the school has been in contact with local authorities about the matter and wouldn’t discuss any possible repercussion for the officer, calling it “a personnel matter.” Young also declined to name the security officer.

Experts on gun violence believe that armed guards are unlikely to deter or head off school shootings. Guards also have a track record of abusing students, often in a racially discriminatory fashion.

View the original article here

How to Get High School Dropouts Into 'Recovery'? Ideas Bloom Across US

Six classes shy of the credits she needed, she thought that she could skip getting a diploma and still find a college that would train her to be a medical assistant.

"I've been doing nothin' for a whole year," Ms. Quinones says. Actually, she's been running into walls – spending hundreds of dollars on in-person and online programs that made false promises to get her a high school credential. Meanwhile, her friends graduated and went on to college, including her boyfriend. This fall, she says he told her, " 'I can't have a girlfriend that didn't do nothin' in life.' " So she decided, "OK ... I have to do it for myself and for everybody else.... I have to get my diploma."

Nationally, about 600,000 students drop out of high school in a given year. And more than 5.8 million 16-to-24-year-olds are "disconnected" – not in school and not working. In 2011, governmental support (such as food stamps) and lost tax revenues associated with disconnected youths cost taxpayers more than $93.7 billion, according to Measure of America, an initiative of the Social Science Research Council, a nonprofit based in New York.

"Education has become so key to getting into the labor market [that] we call dropping out 'committing economic suicide' at this point," says Kathy Hamilton, youth transitions director for the Boston Private Industry Council, which partners with the school district to run the Boston Re-Engagement Center (REC), a hub for helping dropouts like Quinones complete their education.

Dropout prevention has been in the spotlight in recent years. But increasingly, school districts are also realizing that they can do more to bring young adults back into the fold.

It's called "dropout recovery," with districts deploying a host of strategies – from door-to-door searches for dropouts to alternative schools where people earn free college credits while taking their final high school courses. The efforts are taking place in dozens of cities ranging from Camden, N.J., to Alamo, Texas.

(Read More: Education Nation: Rural Arkansas Town Rethinks High School)

America has "long had a forgiving education system, where people can come back at any time to complete a diploma or finish a degree, but we haven't been structured to reach out and reengage youth who have dropped out," says Elizabeth Grant, chief of staff in the US Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. "As educators across the country saw more-accurate graduation and dropout numbers and recognized the size of the challenge, our school systems started to get more responsive."

The US Department of Education launched the High School Graduation Initiative in 2010 to support school districts doing dropout prevention and recovery work. Competitive grants were given out to 27 districts and two states, for a total of just under $50 million.

A Personalized Approach

At least 15 cities have organized stand-alone reengagement centers. They offer a one-stop, personalized case-management approach – bringing together schools, private businesses, workforce-development experts, and other partners to try to reconnect young adults with a promising future.

Since 2008, New York City's centers have reenrolled about 17,000 students, and the centers in Newark, N.J., have brought back 3,900, according to the National League of Cities.

Staff members at Boston's REC listen to each student's story, share struggles from their own school days, help them find the right school or alternative program to fit their needs, and stay in touch once they've reenrolled.

That's what won the trust of Quinones. In November she started coming every weekday to take online credit recovery courses at the REC, a bare-bones set of offices and computer labs with inspirational posters.

In just a month – keeping normal school hours, though that's not required – Quinones finished four courses and is on track to earn her diploma in February. Although she feels "stuck" in geometry, a teacher is on hand to guide her.

"In high school, teachers never really sat with me.... Having teachers take out their time ... to go through one problem for four hours, that means a lot," she says.

(Read More: Economy Adds 155,000 New Jobs; Rate Holds at 7.8%)

The REC "has expertly directed students toward options that are best suited to their needs, rather than falling into the habit of putting them back in the school where they were previously unsuccessful," says Chad d'Entremont, executive director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy in Cambridge, Mass.

Since 2010, the REC has re-enrolled more than 1,300 students. About 7 out of 10 persist for at least a year. The tracking system for the total number of graduates is still being developed, but at least 160 earned their diploma within about a year, Ms. Hamilton says, and she predicts many more will do so over a longer time frame.

Dropouts are a diverse and difficult group to get across the finish line. About 1 in 5 says he or she lacks parental support, and another fifth are parents themselves, according to the 2012 High School Dropouts in America survey by Harris Interactive. Other reasons for dropping out include mental illness, the need to work, too many school absences, and uninteresting classes. Some dropouts have spent time in prison or on the streets.

Settings that offer flexible schedules and sustained personal attention are often required to help them master the skills they need.

"I'm always very honest with them: 'It's going to be tough, but it doesn't mean it's going to be impossible. And I'm going to help you envision yourself with a cap and gown a year from today, or two years from today,' " says Carolina Garcia, a dropout recovery specialist at Boston's REC.

An 'Early College' Approach

In Texas, an "early college" approach to dropout recovery is gaining national attention.

At least 10 districts are motivating dropouts to come back not just to finish high school, but also to take community-college courses free of charge – sometimes enough to earn an associate's degree or a training certificate.

The most notable is the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo district (PSJA), where 90 percent of the population is Hispanic and about a third is low income.

When Daniel King became superintendent there in 2007, he faced a dropout rate of about 18 percent. Nearly half the dropouts that year were seniors – 237 of them. "I felt I needed to immediately do something ... [because] the more time that went by, the harder it would be to find them and reengage them," he says.

In a matter of weeks, he had teamed up with South Texas College to launch the College, Career, & Technology Academy (CCTA) for 18-to-26-year-olds – in leased space in a former Wal-Mart.

(Read More: Taco Bell Responds to Teen's Request for a Custom Speedo)

He put up banners around town with the message: "You didn't finish high school. Start college today." That, combined with a door-to-door search for students who had dropped out, resulted in 223 of those seniors coming back to school.

By May 2008, about 130 had earned their diplomas. To date, more than 1,000 students have graduated from CCTA, more than half of them with college credits.

Along with core academic courses, former dropouts start with a college-success course that solidifies their study skills. Then they move on to career and technical-education courses such as welding or medical terminology.

The state allows both the school district and the community college to receive per-pupil funding, so the education at CCTA is free to students. Texas is also unique in funding high school students up to age 26. (Most states stop at around 21.)

"Before I came to this school, I had zero drive in me," says CCTA student Edgar Rodriguez. He was out of school for a semester and a summer while being "reckless" and "irresponsible," he says.

At CCTA, teachers tutored him for exams that had previously stumped him. The college-success class, taught by his former English teacher, inspired him to want to pursue teaching.

View the original article here

Utah School Realizes Book About Lesbian Family Helps Prevent Bullying

Last June, Utah’s Davis County School District caved to the complaints of 25 parents and removed the book In Our Mothers’ House by Patricia Polacco from general circulation in the elementary school library. The book, which features a family with two moms, was not outright banished, but was held behind the librarian’s desk such that students could not access it without first obtaining permission from their parents. The ACLU filed suit in November, and now the school has come to its senses and returned the book to general circulation. In a letter explaining the decision, the district’s assistant superintendent, Pamela Park, explains that a committee actually had positive things to say about In Our Mothers’ House, including that it will help prevent bullying:

I have considered the written summary and recommendations of the District Reconsideration Committee. I agree with and support the Committee’s conclusions regarding the book as follows:

“Removing the book completely is not a good option.”“We all know many non-traditional families” with students attending our schools.“It could help those children in same sex families see their family in a book.”“[T]his book teaches acceptance and tolerance.”“The book could help prevent bullying of kids from same sex families.”“It could be used by a family to discuss the issues . . .”

Parents can still restrict their children from checking out certain books, but that policy would not prevent students from reading the book in the library.

Another wrinkle in this situation is that Utah’s sex education law prevents the use of instructional materials that include “the advocacy of homosexuality.” However, the ACLU argued and the school agreed that library books not incorporated into a curriculum are not covered by the law.

The parents who complained about Polacco’s book may now have to deal with questions about same-sex families. It’s quite likely, however, that they may have already faced such questions given the existence of same-sex families in the school their kids attend. Now, those kids have one extra resource for understanding the diversity that surrounds them.

View the original article here

Ohio School Board Votes To Arm School Janitors

The Montpelier Exempted Village Schools Board of Education in Montelier, Ohio voted unanimously on Wednesday night to allow handgun training for four custodians, who will then tote firearms on the school’s campus. In an explanation of this policy that echoes the National Rifle Association’s infamous claim that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” school Superintendent Jamie Grime claimed that “having guns in the hands of the right people are not a hindrance. They are a means to protect.”

This is not the first time janitors were suggested as the first line of defense against a school shooter, in an article arguing that the Sandy Hook shooting resulted in more deaths because “[t]here was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred,” the National Review’s Charlotte Allen lamented that “[t]here didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees.”

[HT: Stephen Webster]

View the original article here

Arizona Attorney-General Calls For Arming School Principals

Arizona Attorney-General Tom Horne

Merging an environment of state budget cuts with calls for heavily arming schools, Arizona Attorney-General Tom Horne has suggested arming school principals or “another designee.”

On Friday, the National Rifle Association in a press conference called for there to be armed police officers in every school to prevent attacks along the lines of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT, rather than stricter gun control. With state budgets hurting, however, Horne noted that “school resource officers,” members of the police force specially trained to handle instances of juvenile law, emergency response, and student counseling, are on the decline in Arizona schools.

The solution then, to Horne, is to model schools after the post-2001 mandate that airline pilots be armed in plane cabins. In proposing that only principals be armed, Horne believes he is taking a moderate stance:

“This proposal presents a golden mean between two extremes,” Horne said. “One extreme is to allow all teachers to bring guns to school, which could create more dangers than it prevents. The other extreme is to do nothing, which everyone will regret if a preventable incident like Newtown would occur in the future.”

The first extreme Horne lists is actually the preference of several conservatives who want to see more arms in school. Among those are Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell who wants to up the number of weapons in schools, Texas Governor Rick Perry who advocates concealed-weapons on school grounds, and members of the Oklahoma state legislature who want teachers to bring whatever guns they want. In proposing arming principals, Horne both manages to go beyond the position of the NRA’s call for more police officers in schools and point out the struggles that local budgets are undergoing as state and federal government budgets are cut.

View the original article here

Hate Mail From a PBS/LA School District Employee

He’s a Producer/Director for KLCS-TV/DT, The Education Station. We know because he used his work address.

From: brian.heffron@lausd.net
Subject: Congratulations!
Date: April 3, 2012 4:18:44 PM EDT
To: contact@redstate.com

Congratulations, Gentlemen! (We know that no decent woman would be caught dead in your offices. Right on!) Your site has won the coveted Most Bigoted , Misogynist & Racist Website on the Entire Internet Award!

What a tremendous accomplishment! And you certainly could not have done it without all the many dark and vicious comments from knucklehead commenters on your site who hail from over the southern, former slave state, portion of this great nation!

This singular recognition means you will go down in history as the most intolerant, evil, and backward website ever run by wing nuts who could speak in complete sentences! Keep up the bad work and you will definitely wind up never having any effect at all, none at all, on any issue in our wonderful country! Why? Because as us regular Americans learn more about just how base and moronic your 1% ideas and greedy plans truly are, they will continue to turn their backs on you “republics” in droves!~ Wave bye-bye to the Independent vote and the Hispanic vote, although they may bow to your blustery hatred of emigrants, they will most certainly not vote for your candidate! Even if you pick a Hispanic VP. They’ll see right through that, plus Cubans are different from the rest of the Hispanic world, but you would not know any thing at all about a subtlety like that or you wouldn’t win this wonderful award!!

No way, Jose! : )

Please send $2000 for your trophy and certificate which depicts a lynching from the good old days!

View the original article here