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Naughty Pictures of Knox County Teacher Being Investigated

From the KNS:

School security chief Steve Griffin said this morning that his department scoured the web after they received information Friday relating to photographs of Inskip Elementary School teacher Melinda England.

Get ready for an onslaught of this. I predict that “nude teacher pictures” will be the new “doing it with the teacher” in 2008.

The fact is, lots of people have digital cameras, but not many people have common sense. Really, it’s bad enough to let someone else take and have pictures of you in compromising situations, but to post them yourself?

Forget about whether or not it is inappropriate–is this person smart enough to teach kids?

Some people don’t think it’s a big deal, and maybe they are right. But if you are going to be employed by the public (schools) you have expect that they (the public) are going to judge you by the community’s accepted standards–right or wrong doesn’t come into play.

Maybe people will eventually catch on that you can’t do stuff like this and expect that it is going to be copasetic, because chances are we are pretty far away from parents thinking this is ok.

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What Will You Be For Halloween?

The question gets asked every year of everybody. If you’re like me, there are two basic rules–your costume has to be homemade, and you have to keep it a secret until Halloween. It seems the administration at Kohl Elementary School in Westminster, CO only have half of the equation down.

What they are going to be is definitely homemade, but unfortunately they let it slip to the Denver Post early this year. So what will they be?

Turds.

We’re still weeks from this glorious pagan celebration, but you can already hear the sound of the pinheads sucking the fun out of life.
…
Why can’t kids celebrate this spooky orgy of fun? Well, as one fourth-grade Kohl teacher puts it – and I paraphrase here – if even one child feels left out because of Halloween, we’ve all failed.

Hopefully this is a wake up call to all of the people who cheer when Christmas is attacked and banned because it is exclusionary or offensive to a few people. I’m sure included in that group are a few Pagans, to whom Halloween has some meaning beyond wearing really uncomrotable platic masks with rubber bands holding them to your head (remember those?) and eating teeth-rotting candy for two weeks.

Realistically, most kids either don’t know or don’t fully understand the deeper meaning behind either one of these holidays. To them it is just innocent and harmless fun. You may view that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your own religious beliefs, or lack of. But as a guy who doesn’t really care one way or the other, I can tell you this…

When you start squashing something that is innocent and harmless fun for kids, you are just a jerk.

If you don’t want it for your own kids, that’s your right. And honestly, I applaud the fact that you have some conviction and care enough about your kids to raise them the way you think is rght. But don’t ruin it for everybody else.

Now, what are you guys gonna be for Halloween?

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School Choice Has No Impact. And Your Point Is..?

Steven D. Levitt writes about some of his cohorts whose studies indicate that sending kids to “better” schools doesn’t guarantee better results.

Part of the answer is likely that the definition of “better” is based on outputs, like how high the test scores are at the school or what fraction of its students attend good colleges. That sort of metric ignores the fact that “better” schools tend to attract “better” kids. These are kids with strong families and good academic backgrounds. So even if the school is not at all good at adding value, it will still have the best outputs, because it had the best inputs. If the school does not have high value added, there is no reason to expect that a child who transfers there will do better than she did at her previous school. Parents don’t have good information on the inputs to a school, only the outputs, so it is difficult for them to accurately assess value added.

If this is an argument against school choice, it is a weak one. Parents should be able to choose what school their kid attends not because of the expected outcome, but because he is their kid!

In thinking about the broader implications of this research, it is important to bear in mind that the school choice program that Julie and Brian analyze is just one kind of school choice (albeit the most common one), operating within a single public school system. It differs from voucher programs or school choice across school districts, and increased competition may be more effective in those settings.

It is a very slippery slope to decide policy based completely on the predicted outcome without regard for the rights of the individual to choose. Here’s why…

In Levitt’s conclusions in his book, Freakonomics, he contends that the drop in crime rate of the 1990s was a result of Roe vs Wade. Essentially, many would be criminals from difficult socio-economic backgrounds were never born, and therefore never grew up to be criminals two decades later.

Assuming this is true, would it be a valid policy to require all mothers in stressed economic conditions to have ablortions? Would we set a policy to kill all babies born into difficult socio-economic conditions in order to reduce the crime rate later on? Of course not.

No matter the expected outcome, it is wrong to violate the rights of the individual to choose, so long as the choice does no harm to anyone else.

Sorry, but where we send our kids to school is none of anyone else’s business. Period.

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New Feed Subscriptions in September

Here are all of the new sites I added to my reader in September. When I say “new” I mean new to me in most cases.

Total Diatribe
If you were impressed with Billymacs ability to consume adult beverages, you’ll be even more impressed with his ability to find nutty stuff and add cleverly biting commentary. A new blog, and I’m expecting great things from it.

Donklephant
Here’s one I can’t believe I just found. A common sense moderate political blog. I don’t mean to imply that common sense can’t be found there, but usually only as it exists on the line between Democrat and Republican. Very pragmatic, as opposed to the, uh, idealism(?) you find here.

KTownLowDown
Another new blog authored by Little Bigfoot SVD. So far a lot of the lowdown that exists there is on a personal level, but he’s running a poll right now asking what you want him to blog about. One man, one vote. If you don’t like it, you had your chance to change it!

Ideas From Free Minds
I found out about Michelle’s blog after seeing her on Tucker Carlson’s show and wrote a post about her. My only complaint is that she doesn’t post enough–there was a huge opportunity to make this blog big when she appeared on TV. I hope she takes advantage of it!

Taylor the Teacher
As Taylor states on her site, she’s a philosophical anarchist who loves to help children learn. Sometimes the public education system even helps her in this endeavor.

TED
Technology, entertainment, and design videos. You’ll agree with some, you’ll disagree with others, but they are all pretty interesting.

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Student Loans–Education by Doctor Evil

Student loans–yet another thing I’m against. I’m not against the fact that they exist, mind you, I just don’t think think they are a good idea for me or my posterity. You can do what you want, but Katherine Coble and several other people agree with me.

I still think that the student loans I took out were some of the biggest financial mistakes of my life.

And from the comments, Jim Voorhies adds this.

Being able to do what you love is the goal all of us should have. Knowing what that was at a time early enough in life to be able to mesh it with your degree is remarkable.

It’s totally contrary to the norm, but I think many 18 year olds would be a lot better off if they didn’t go to college right away. They’d be better off getting a job doing something, getting their partying out of the way, learning what it means to have real bills, saving some money (for school) and figuring out what they really want to do. It would have been good for me.

Maybe a good rule of thumb is to have two of these three things in place:
1) Absolutely sure of what you want to study
2) Can pay for it without loans
3) Have done enough real labor to know you don’t want to wash dishes for the rest of your life.

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A Possible Book Ban?

SomeONE apparently didn’t like a couple of paragraphs of Lee Smith’s “Fair and Tender Ladies”, and wants the book banned from Washington County Schools.

Makes sense. High school kids these days really aren’t prepared for that kind of language, mostly because they’ve been failed by our school systems. Back in my day, we could to hande the “F” word and anything else a book could fire our way because we’d already learned all about that stuff in middle school–on the bus.

Seriously, be glad if your high schooler is reading a book at all. Didn’t book banning go out of style some time in the 70s or 80s? Weren’t all of these kids running around named Holden and Pheobe named so in commemoration of its death?

via Michael Silence

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Five Quick Tips On Evaluating Your Kids’ Teachers

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a conversation between the missus, a former elementary school teacher and education consultant, and a couple of her teacher friends. They were talking about good teachers, bad teachers, and the differences between them. For once, I just shut up and listened–they brought up a lot of interesting observations of their peers that help them make a quick judgments about the effectiveness of the teacher. There were a few that I thought were really interesting and could help parents when they head out to open house or when visiting the school.

1. Where is the teacher’s desk located in the classroom?
If the teacher’s desk is located in the back or on the side of the classroom, this is an excellent sign. This means that your child’s teacher most likely spends most of his instructional time standing and moving around the classroom, which helps hold the kids’ interest and helps the teacher interact better with all of the kids, not just the ones up front. If the desk is located in the front of the room, check to see if it looks “lived in”. The best sign is if the teacher doesn’t have a desk at all, or if it is located in an office separated from the classroom.

2. Are the kids’ desks in rows, or are they in groups, a circle, or some other configuration?
Rows may be fine for older kids, but in the younger grades U-shaped or grouped desks help the kids better interact with the teacher and one another. If your child always has an unobstructed and close view of the teacher during instructional time, chances are better that he’ll be paying attention. These configurations also allow the teacher to more easily keep tabs on what each student is doing and pick up on important physical cues as to whether or not the kids are absorbing the lesson. The ability to interact with other students fosters cooperative learning. Kids often learn things from one another that they don’t learn from the teacher.

3. What activities does your child do for homework?
Most of us grew up copying each vocabulary and/or spelling word three times or copying the definition from the book. The latest research has shown that while wrote memorization is a valuable component to learning when used in conjunction with other activities that reinforce understanding, it is at best marginally effective when used by itself. Words need to be made meaningful to the child in order for them to internalize them. If these are the only activities your child is given for homework, her teacher may be a little “old school”. He may not be up to date on the latest research, or may just be ignoring it altogether.

4. Are the materials on the wall functional, or just pretty?
Motivational posters from Wal-Mart are nice, but the classroom walls are best used by good teachers to reinforce what is being taught in the curriculum. Another positive sign is an abundance of materials made by the teacher and/or the students themselves.

5. What does the class look like when walking down the halls
Is the teacher a “mama duck”–heading up the line down the hallway while a chaotic mass follows her? Is he a “shusher”–constantly having to remind the kids to be quiet while they walk? Both of these are strong indicators of teachers who may lack discipline and control in the classroom. If the teacher really has control and respect in the classroom, that will carry over with her kids outside the classroom. The best teachers walk in the middle, beside the line. At corners, they stand at the apex so that they can view both the front and back of the line.

These tips are just a few starting points to help you get a feel for your child’s teacher, but just because your child’s teacher doesn’t meet every point outlined here doesn’t mean she is a bad teacher. Of course, you will learn much more by meeting with the teacher face to face and asking specific questions about your concerns for your child. Hopefully the tips covered here will give you some ideas about what questions you may need to ask.

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Constitution Day — Creating Solid C Students Nationwide

The KNS says that a study reports

51 percent of high school students questioned had not heard of the day when they are required by law to learn about the Constitution.

The occasion, created by Congress in 2004, usually is observed on or around Sept. 17, the day the document was adopted in 1787.

There’s some irony for you. Congress makes a federal law regarding public education (which by the way is covered nowhere in the Constitution) that students must learn about the Constitution. Doing what it does best, our public education system then strikes right at the meaty part of the bell curve and makes sure that a healthy 49% of students actually receive the education as mandated.

Sounds about right.

Personally, my favorite part of the Constitution is “Congress shall make no law”. Ever wonder if we’d be better off if they’d just stopped there?

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Bueller? Bueller?

FladaBlog has an excellent post on public school socialism:

Let’s consider an island with one family with children and one childless couple. Does the family have a right to force the autonomous couple to contribute to the education of their children? Most rational people will agree that they do not have such a right. Additionally, the childless couple does not have the right to force the other family to let the couple dictate how the family’s children should be educated. Does adding another family with children change the underlying principle of rights? Again, most rational people will agree that it does not.

So the question is: at what number of families does it become moral to force the childless couples to pay for the education of the families’ children? At what number does society gain the right to force families to start allowing the society to educate their children? Is 100 the magic number? 1000? 1,000,000?

Anyone? Anyone?

Read it again, substituting “education” with “health care”.

Again, this time with “retirement”.

Again, this time with “cable television”.

Again, this time with “reduced rates for energy” (corporate welfare).

Again, this time with “watermelon”, or “hair brushes” or “tire guages” or “jock straps”.

Of course, we all have the right, and I believe responsibility, to choose to contribute at any time. The question is, at what point do others have the right to force us to contribute?

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This Story Had So Much Potential

I was all giddy to read this story entitled “Fury Face Greets Teachers“. I thought it may be about some parents who were up in arms about the quality of education their children are receiving. They were fed up with being ripped off by gov’ment education, mad as hell, and unwilling to take it anymore.

🙁

Never mind. It was just a feel good story (self-written PR), about 1/3 which was about a ground hog at a local school. The rest was singing the praises of how great the school is. I assume it was written by a teacher at the school who misspelled the word “furry”–twice.

God luk two all the kidz at Fort Craig Elementary in this yeers spilling be!