Posted by Flatnose
Checked: No Child Left Behind Act of 2002,
Title I: Adequate Yearly Progress
Florida A+ Plan: School Grades
from Education Next
Checked by Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West
No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the federal school-accountability law, is widely held to have accomplished one good thing: require states to publish test-score results in math and reading for each school in grades 3 through 8 and again in grade 10. The results appear to be telling parents whether their child’s school is doing a better job than the one across town, in the neighboring city, or across the state.
But accountability works only if the yardstick used to measure performance is reasonably accurate. Unfortunately, the yardstick required by the federal law is not. Our analysis of its workings in Florida reveals it to be badly flawed and not as accurate as the measuring stick employed by the state of Florida for similar purposes.
Read the article
October 14, 2006
October 5, 2006
Authorities arrest teenager who brought gun to school
Posted by Flatnose
By FRANCIS McCABE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Oct. 04, 2006
A 17-year-old boy who brought an unloaded gun to Mojave High School on Monday was arrested Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
The North Las Vegas school along with four other Clark County schools were locked down for hours Monday morning while police searched for the teen.
He was in the school's courtyard about 6:50 a.m. Monday when some students recognized the boy as a former student.
Read the story
By FRANCIS McCABE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Oct. 04, 2006
A 17-year-old boy who brought an unloaded gun to Mojave High School on Monday was arrested Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
The North Las Vegas school along with four other Clark County schools were locked down for hours Monday morning while police searched for the teen.
He was in the school's courtyard about 6:50 a.m. Monday when some students recognized the boy as a former student.
Read the story
EDITORIAL: April Fool's?
Posted by Flatnose
Oct. 04, 2006
Las Vegas Review-Journal
We had to check the calendar when this story moved on the wire yesterday. But, no, we're still six months from April Fool's Day.
According to Bloomberg News, the nation's largest teacher union on Tuesday called for tackling the high school dropout rate by raising the compulsory education age to 21. Really.
So if a young adult leaves high school at age 17 or 18 without a diploma, the union apparently wants armed government agents to force him back into the classroom until he's able to graduate.
Read the editorial
Oct. 04, 2006
Las Vegas Review-Journal
We had to check the calendar when this story moved on the wire yesterday. But, no, we're still six months from April Fool's Day.
According to Bloomberg News, the nation's largest teacher union on Tuesday called for tackling the high school dropout rate by raising the compulsory education age to 21. Really.
So if a young adult leaves high school at age 17 or 18 without a diploma, the union apparently wants armed government agents to force him back into the classroom until he's able to graduate.
Read the editorial
October 3, 2006
Let’s take back schools from ‘non-students’
Posted by Flatnose
by William K. Richardson
Guest Columnist
Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN
October 1, 2006
As a young teacher at Riverview Middle School entering my third year in the classroom back in 1994, I knew—despite my inexperience—what the number one problem of the perpetually underperforming Memphis City Schools was: the deviant, dysfunctional, disrespectful, indecent and even criminal behavior exhibited daily by a large percentage of the students. In a guest column I wrote for The Commercial Appeal at the time, I called for the school system to expel these “non-students,” for whom normal behavior is a rare occurrence and appears to be an alien concept.
Twelve years later, do I still feel the same? Yes, more than ever!
Several superintendents and their various “innovative” strategies to improve the system have not worked. The No Child Left Behind Act makes demands that are impossible to achieve at many schools; the horrible conduct of the “non-students” will not allow for such. The much-heralded Blue Ribbon Plan has done nothing to stem the tidal wave of dysfunction and counterproductivity heaped upon teachers (and “real” students) each day. The recent decision to hire adults to monitor school hallways will do little, if anything, to alter the chaotic climate at many of the city’s middle and high schools.
Simply put, the Memphis City Schools (MCS) system has a thug problem.
Now, I do hear the collective “Duh!” from readers of this column and many other MCS teachers, but therein lies the problem: an awareness and even acceptance of this disturbing fact. I refuse to accept this fact.
The Blue Ribbon Plan is an utter failure. Spending precious funds to force a teacher to kiss the backside of the Crip who just called the teacher a “weak-ass bitch”—or in my case, a “bald white motherf---er”—is demeaning and makes a mockery of a school’s purpose. The disciplinary policies of MCS have no teeth, and the numerous ne’er-do-wells wandering (literally) the halls know it. The entire system and its “enlightened” policies are a joke and in dire need of re-evaluation, if not total demolition.
Just this school year, I have been called the aforementioned slur and have been told to “f---k off” because I had the temerity to insist a school rule be obeyed. In years past, I had one student threaten to shoot me, and my vehicle was vandalized. I have caught “non-students” engaged in drug deals, craps games and even sex. I have seen a 5-3, 70-pound boy traipse down the hall, his pistol cupped in his hand. Parents have cussed me out. Because class-cutting and profanity are so prevalent, teachers have been told to ignore it. “Everything must be done to keep the children in the classroom,” I have been told—even those young people who view school as little more than a place to eat free and socialize.
Instead of extracting the money of taxpayers and wasting it on initiatives such as the Blue Ribbon Plan, I suggest that school board members shell out a few bucks each at Amazon.com to buy Joe Clark’s book “Laying Down the Law.” Subject of the film “Lean on Me,” Clark writes in his book: “There is no way I am going to allow 75 to 110 non-learners to destroy the learning environment for the other 3,000 students.”
The chaos that existed at Clark’s Eastside High School in New Jersey can now be found in the public schools of Memphis.
Teachers, principals and school police officers know who the thugs are; they know who the gang members are; they know who the overage underachievers are. Why do we act as if these “non-students” will somehow morph into well-behaved scholars overnight? Shouldn’t the taxpayers get a return on and some accountability for the over $6,000 that MCS spends each year on each of its students? Why should teachers be forced to dedicate so much class time and attention to people who could not care less?
Schools should not be baby-sitting services or psychiatric clinics for the many 16- and 17-year-old eighth- and ninth-grade “criminals in training.” The time has long passed to expel the “non-students”
whose mere presence destroys the day-to-day learning of anyone near them. Enough is enough. Show them the door, shake their hands and wish them luck in prison.
Because a child is of school age does not necessarily mean he or she is school material. Laws that mandate attendance should be repealed. Laws that give special education kids carte blanche to raise hell without consequence need serious revision. It is time for tough love and common sense to marry in the union of permanent—meaning forever—expulsions.
I realize my suggestions, if enacted, would invite some lawyers to take up the cause of parents with dollar signs in their eyes. To these lawyers, I have one question: Would you allow your son or daughter to sit in a class next to the innocent little darling (who is also a drug-dealing, gun-toting, drive-by-shooting Vice Lord) for whom you are advocating?
William K. Richardson teaches 10th-grade English at Frayser High School. Contact him at coachwkr@aim.com.
by William K. Richardson
Guest Columnist
Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN
October 1, 2006
As a young teacher at Riverview Middle School entering my third year in the classroom back in 1994, I knew—despite my inexperience—what the number one problem of the perpetually underperforming Memphis City Schools was: the deviant, dysfunctional, disrespectful, indecent and even criminal behavior exhibited daily by a large percentage of the students. In a guest column I wrote for The Commercial Appeal at the time, I called for the school system to expel these “non-students,” for whom normal behavior is a rare occurrence and appears to be an alien concept.
Twelve years later, do I still feel the same? Yes, more than ever!
Several superintendents and their various “innovative” strategies to improve the system have not worked. The No Child Left Behind Act makes demands that are impossible to achieve at many schools; the horrible conduct of the “non-students” will not allow for such. The much-heralded Blue Ribbon Plan has done nothing to stem the tidal wave of dysfunction and counterproductivity heaped upon teachers (and “real” students) each day. The recent decision to hire adults to monitor school hallways will do little, if anything, to alter the chaotic climate at many of the city’s middle and high schools.
Simply put, the Memphis City Schools (MCS) system has a thug problem.
Now, I do hear the collective “Duh!” from readers of this column and many other MCS teachers, but therein lies the problem: an awareness and even acceptance of this disturbing fact. I refuse to accept this fact.
The Blue Ribbon Plan is an utter failure. Spending precious funds to force a teacher to kiss the backside of the Crip who just called the teacher a “weak-ass bitch”—or in my case, a “bald white motherf---er”—is demeaning and makes a mockery of a school’s purpose. The disciplinary policies of MCS have no teeth, and the numerous ne’er-do-wells wandering (literally) the halls know it. The entire system and its “enlightened” policies are a joke and in dire need of re-evaluation, if not total demolition.
Just this school year, I have been called the aforementioned slur and have been told to “f---k off” because I had the temerity to insist a school rule be obeyed. In years past, I had one student threaten to shoot me, and my vehicle was vandalized. I have caught “non-students” engaged in drug deals, craps games and even sex. I have seen a 5-3, 70-pound boy traipse down the hall, his pistol cupped in his hand. Parents have cussed me out. Because class-cutting and profanity are so prevalent, teachers have been told to ignore it. “Everything must be done to keep the children in the classroom,” I have been told—even those young people who view school as little more than a place to eat free and socialize.
Instead of extracting the money of taxpayers and wasting it on initiatives such as the Blue Ribbon Plan, I suggest that school board members shell out a few bucks each at Amazon.com to buy Joe Clark’s book “Laying Down the Law.” Subject of the film “Lean on Me,” Clark writes in his book: “There is no way I am going to allow 75 to 110 non-learners to destroy the learning environment for the other 3,000 students.”
The chaos that existed at Clark’s Eastside High School in New Jersey can now be found in the public schools of Memphis.
Teachers, principals and school police officers know who the thugs are; they know who the gang members are; they know who the overage underachievers are. Why do we act as if these “non-students” will somehow morph into well-behaved scholars overnight? Shouldn’t the taxpayers get a return on and some accountability for the over $6,000 that MCS spends each year on each of its students? Why should teachers be forced to dedicate so much class time and attention to people who could not care less?
Schools should not be baby-sitting services or psychiatric clinics for the many 16- and 17-year-old eighth- and ninth-grade “criminals in training.” The time has long passed to expel the “non-students”
whose mere presence destroys the day-to-day learning of anyone near them. Enough is enough. Show them the door, shake their hands and wish them luck in prison.
Because a child is of school age does not necessarily mean he or she is school material. Laws that mandate attendance should be repealed. Laws that give special education kids carte blanche to raise hell without consequence need serious revision. It is time for tough love and common sense to marry in the union of permanent—meaning forever—expulsions.
I realize my suggestions, if enacted, would invite some lawyers to take up the cause of parents with dollar signs in their eyes. To these lawyers, I have one question: Would you allow your son or daughter to sit in a class next to the innocent little darling (who is also a drug-dealing, gun-toting, drive-by-shooting Vice Lord) for whom you are advocating?
William K. Richardson teaches 10th-grade English at Frayser High School. Contact him at coachwkr@aim.com.
October 2, 2006
How well were you trained?
Posted by Flatnose
A leading teacher-educator says most teachers get poor training from colleges of education
Arthur E. Levine's latest study says American teacher preparation is in a poor state and needs a major overhaul and new accreditation standards.
Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University until recently, is now president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
This is the second of four reports on the broad subject of American public education. The first report, issued in March 2005, criticized the nation's preparation of school leaders and administrators.
Levine claims that most future teachers are in low-quality programs and relatively unprepared for classroom teaching. Universities bear much of the blame, he says, for paying too little attention to their schools of education, other than to treat them as convenient cash cows.
He also maintains that today's licensing and accreditation processes don’t pay enough attention to actual student achievements.
“As many as three-quarters of the programs that prepare the nation’s future teachers have inadequate curricula, low admissions and graduation standards, faculty disconnected from the K-12 schools, and insufficient quality control.
Educating School Teachers, the new 140-page report, is part of the Education Schools Project, an independent initiative supported by the Annenberg, Ford, Ewing Marion Kauffman, and Wallace Foundations. The project’s team of researchers conducted a five-year study of education schools, based on broad surveys of deans, alumni, and faculty, as well as public school principals.
The report offers six primary recommendations:
• Transform education schools into professional schools focused on classroom practice.
• Close failing programs, expand quality programs, and create the equivalent of a Rhodes Scholarship to attract the best and brightest to teaching.
• Make student achievement the primary measure of the success of teacher education programs; create state data systems that gauge student progress from the start of school through graduation, enabling universities and states to associate student achievement with their teachers’ preparatory programs and thereby judge the effectiveness of education schools.
• Make five-year teacher education programs the norm, requiring every future teacher to complete a traditional arts and sciences baccalaureate degree followed by a master’s degree in subject-specific pedagogy.
• Shift the training of a significant percentage of new teachers from master’s degree granting-institutions to research universities.
• Strengthen quality control by redesigning accreditation and by encouraging states to establish common, outcomes-based requirements for certification and licensure.
Education Week
Prominent Teacher-Educator Assails Field, Suggests New Accrediting Body in ReportBut others finding fault with Levine’s conclusions, methodology.
Download the entire study
A leading teacher-educator says most teachers get poor training from colleges of education
Arthur E. Levine's latest study says American teacher preparation is in a poor state and needs a major overhaul and new accreditation standards.
Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University until recently, is now president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
This is the second of four reports on the broad subject of American public education. The first report, issued in March 2005, criticized the nation's preparation of school leaders and administrators.
Levine claims that most future teachers are in low-quality programs and relatively unprepared for classroom teaching. Universities bear much of the blame, he says, for paying too little attention to their schools of education, other than to treat them as convenient cash cows.
He also maintains that today's licensing and accreditation processes don’t pay enough attention to actual student achievements.
“As many as three-quarters of the programs that prepare the nation’s future teachers have inadequate curricula, low admissions and graduation standards, faculty disconnected from the K-12 schools, and insufficient quality control.
Educating School Teachers, the new 140-page report, is part of the Education Schools Project, an independent initiative supported by the Annenberg, Ford, Ewing Marion Kauffman, and Wallace Foundations. The project’s team of researchers conducted a five-year study of education schools, based on broad surveys of deans, alumni, and faculty, as well as public school principals.
The report offers six primary recommendations:
• Transform education schools into professional schools focused on classroom practice.
• Close failing programs, expand quality programs, and create the equivalent of a Rhodes Scholarship to attract the best and brightest to teaching.
• Make student achievement the primary measure of the success of teacher education programs; create state data systems that gauge student progress from the start of school through graduation, enabling universities and states to associate student achievement with their teachers’ preparatory programs and thereby judge the effectiveness of education schools.
• Make five-year teacher education programs the norm, requiring every future teacher to complete a traditional arts and sciences baccalaureate degree followed by a master’s degree in subject-specific pedagogy.
• Shift the training of a significant percentage of new teachers from master’s degree granting-institutions to research universities.
• Strengthen quality control by redesigning accreditation and by encouraging states to establish common, outcomes-based requirements for certification and licensure.
Education Week
Prominent Teacher-Educator Assails Field, Suggests New Accrediting Body in ReportBut others finding fault with Levine’s conclusions, methodology.
Download the entire study
NLV schools in lockdown over gun incident
Posted by Flatnose
Mojave High School, Elizondo Elementary School and three other schools in North Las Vegas were placed in lockdown after a person described as a nonstudent dropped a small-caliber semiautomatic handgun in the high school quad before school began this morning.
North Las Vegas police and Clark County School District police were searching the neighborhood for the young man, who authorities said attended the high school last year.
The incident happened about 6:58 a.m., authorities said. The lockdown was lifted at the three other schools — Watson Elementary and Findlay and Johnston middle schools — later in the morning. No one was injured in the incident, police said.
Mojave High School, Elizondo Elementary School and three other schools in North Las Vegas were placed in lockdown after a person described as a nonstudent dropped a small-caliber semiautomatic handgun in the high school quad before school began this morning.
North Las Vegas police and Clark County School District police were searching the neighborhood for the young man, who authorities said attended the high school last year.
The incident happened about 6:58 a.m., authorities said. The lockdown was lifted at the three other schools — Watson Elementary and Findlay and Johnston middle schools — later in the morning. No one was injured in the incident, police said.
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