Weeks ago I noted reports that SC Governor Mark Sanford’s tax credit/voucher plan was DOA in the House Ways and Means Committee. Well, today, The State reports that the bill is still dead in the House Ways and Means Committee.
And who’s old enough to remember the origin of the title (not counting re-runs)?
Senator Zell Miller (DINO- GA) wants to give the edu-crats even more power than they have now.
Miller said one of his bills would limit the rights of students and parents to appeal disciplinary decisions by principals, and the other would limit federal court oversight of public schools that violate federal laws.
The bills are intended to override and simplify the layers of court precedents, laws and regulations protecting student rights that have accumulated since the Supreme Court ruled in 1975, in a case known as Goss v. Lopez, that students are entitled to “due process” before they are suspended or expelled from public schools.
“What happened to the days when students were expected to behave or face the consequences?” Miller asked.
“The rules and regulations for teachers protect the bad ones and make the good ones suffer,” the Democrat said. “It is the same for students.”
Since edu-crats are all too quick to trample on the few constitutional rights g-school students still retain, I’m not keen on Miller’s idea.
We had an early taste of summer today. The kids got to go swimming with some homeschooling friends.
Dave Graham yesterday announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for Delaware Governor.
Dave Graham, 50, made his official announcement with the traditional three-county campaign kickoff tour in Georgetown, Dover and Wilmington. He joins former Superior Court Judge Bill Lee and airline pilot Mike Protack in the GOP field. Given the late start, Graham said his plan is to focus his efforts on the primary election Sept. 11.
…Graham said he opposes state standardized tests and the three-tiered diploma, which would award different types of diplomas based on state tests administered in 10th grade.
It’s not in this article, but Mr. Graham uttered one of the dumbest lines in the history of Delaware politics during his stump speech yesterday. Saying that the country is at war with terrorism, he announced that the state accountability tests had turned parents into terrorists of their children. Yes, he actually equated testing with terror. Fortunately, the relative unknown has exactly zero percent chance of receiving the GOP nod:
Graham said he notified all 344 delegates to this weekend’s state Republican Party convention about his scheduled campaign announcement, not one of whom showed up in Dover.
“I take it as a compliment,” he said. “It takes a concerted effort for no one to show up.”
Last week the kids took a field trip to Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island. The fort has
a storied history, including time spent as a notorious Civil War-era prison for captured Confederates. Lydia captured this image of Jonathan walking down one of the many tunnels. I played around with the image in Gimp 2, a free Photoshop clone.
The TN lottery/scholarship is already in trouble, as revenues will not likely be high enough to pay for the expected scholarships in just a couple of years. The chief sponsor wants to raise the requirement from a ACT score of 19 to 23 or a 3.0 GPA. You might recall, that 23 was the score required of homeschoolers until just this past legislative session. Now, everyone may be in the same boat.
The other proposal, to drop the ACT requirement and just mandate a 3.0 GPA would create a serious problem for homeschoolers. Home educators in TN are really on the ball; I’m sure they won’t let this one slip through.
That’s the title of a Charolotte News-Observer editorial about homeschoolers not being allowed to play on the g-school teams. It’s pretty good.
An arrangement more hospitable to home-schooled students would be worth considering, but it would be complex, controversial and time-consuming. School officials, already up to their eyeglasses in complex, controversial matters, can’t be blamed if they’re not eager to take it on.
One lesson students (and parents) must learn is that sometimes life involves either/or choices. At present, this is one of them. Students who are enrolled in a public school have access to its classes and activities. Students who aren’t, don’t. To some it may not seem fair, but it’s a fact.
This is a terrific Mother’s Day story. A homeschooling mom is fighting (and beating) breast cancer while homeschooling seven boys.
Joan’s faith is central to her being. It steeled her when the family adopted Sam, a severely disabled Korean baby; it gave her the determination to home-school her children; and it provided the courage to continue in spite of cancer and chemotherapy.
“This is just a season in our lives,” Joan often says. “We’ll get to the other side.”
She’s tough. I’m sure she will.
Lydia had a great time yesterday at CHAP. As such, I’m feeling a little poor today.
She was able to order the Arabic program from Rosetta Stone. Evidently, we’re oddballs among the homeschooling community (no shock there); the folks working the booth had never sold an Arabic package before. One of their competitors even insisted that noone had Arabic and tried to talk Lydia into Spanish.
BTW, the Rosetta Stone Arabic program is for spoken Arabic only. It does not teach them to read or write. We’ve got a line on another program for that. I’ll update this post with details as they become available.
Homeschoolers were omitted in the following calculation:
OF THE ROUGHLY 50 million children enrolled in American grade schools, all but about 5 million attend government-run public schools. Of those 5 million, approximately 800,000 attend secular private schools. That leaves just 4.2 million who attend the nation’s religious schools — only one American child in 12.
The piece is an observant Jew’s response to T. C. Pinckney. It’s pretty good, and I’m sure Pinckney would agree with nearly all of it. But, not this:
T.C. Pinckney, a retired Air Force brigadier general, and Houston attorney Bruce Shortt. Lay leaders in the Baptist church, they have drafted a resolution… urging the denomination’s 16 million members to take their children out of public schools and either home school them or send them to parochial schools. [emphasis added]
Parochial schools? In the South? I think he means private, Christian schools. I grew up Catholic in SC. Trust me; you just don’t want to confuse parochial (i.e., Catholic) schools with the private schools.
Of course, the writer is in Boston where the two terms are probably synonymous.
Ignore the woman in the robe. She seems to be drunk with power she doesn’t have.
A couple has been ordered not to conceive any more children until the ones they already have are no longer in foster care.
A civil liberties advocate said the court ruling unsealed Friday was “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Ya think? At least the judge recognizes that there are some limits to her power.
The judge is not forcing contraception on the couple nor is she requiring the mother to get an abortion should she become pregnant. The couple may choose to be sterilized at no cost to them, [Judge Marilyn] O’Connor ruled.
No doubt the parents haven’t exactly been shining examples of the genre, but to order them not to have any more children smacks of eugenics. Do we really want to go there?
School districts across the country are attempting to introduce market concepts, such as pay-for-performance, into the public schools. Teachers unions are wary, so it’s been slow going.
Two years ago, teachers in Cincinnati overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to link their pay to their skills, and in Iowa, a 2001 law tying salary to teacher evaluations and student test scores has been undone by a lack of financing.
In New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, also want to tie raises to teacher and student performance, as did Mayor Bloomberg’s predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani. But without the track record of cooperation that marked the Denver initiative, New York City officials have been blocked by the teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers.
It’s basically a power struggle; the union sees p-f-p as a union-busting technique. I’m sure it’s not, but I have other concerns. Like, how do you measure the relative success of any one teacher? In Denver, nearly 95% of the teachers in the program got the (modest) bonus. Not exactly a bell-shaped curve. Politicians crafting these programs will need to be especially careful to make sure they’re not just a giveaway of money to the teachers.
Anyone else miss this school shooting?
Four high school students were wounded Friday when at least two young men emerged from a car in a school parking lot and opened fire.
The shooting occurred about 4:30 p.m. outside Randallstown High School in Baltimore County, where a number of students were lingering after a charity basketball game between local politicians and school faculty members.
It’s pretty sad when a local shooting doesn’t even get attention.
OT- diet blogging.
Krispy Kreme is blaming a decrease in same-store sales on the Atkins and South Beach diets. I found this line hilarious.
The company announced this spring that it planned to begin developing a lower-fat, lower-carb doughnut.
Easy to do- just make ’em smaller.
These parents have so bought into the g-school myths, that they are willing to subect their autistic daughter to this:
In order to attend school, Chelsie requires a para educator, an adult who can be with her at all times. The person needs a strong personality, must be able to interact positively with Chelsie and know how to use her communication system, Kim Jay said.
At the beginning of last school year, there was a para educator at Shoemaker that the Jays liked. She was a friend of theirs outside of school and they felt she handled Chelsie well. When the para educator was fired, Chelsie was devastated and, although the school provided another person immediately, the trust Chelsie had developed with the previous para educator was gone, Kim Jay said.
She testified she’d been able to observe the new para educator working with Chelsie and was unhappy with the lack of interaction she witnessed.
Eventually, the second para educator was fired.
Chelsie missed several days of school last school year as well as this fall because of the family’s dissatisfaction with the para educators. Kim Jay said they worked with the school over the summer on an education plan that included hiring another para educator and easing Chelsie back into school by having her attend for a few hours a day. Kim Jay also went to school with her daughter for awhile to help train the newest para educator on how to work with Chelsie, who has a tendency to run away.
After two more para educators failed to work out and the partial day schedule also failed, the Jays [temporarily] pulled Chelsie out of school completely.
They didn’t want to homeschool her because she has socialization problems. Geez! The parents were found innocent of the truancy charge against them. In the court of public opinion? Guilty of stupidity!
< /sarcasm >
Let’s see how many insults a (female) columnist can throw at homeschooling moms.
You know how there are terrorist cells embedded throughout the world? Well, in my neighborhood we have numerous “homeschool” cells humming in the cul-de-sacs. They’re almost as scary as the terrorist ones in some ways — and they definitely have some traits in common with them.
…What’s scary is that a lot of the homeschooling faithful are as fueled by a fanatical, religion-based belief in their mission as Islamist terrorists, and seem to be just about as brainwashed. Sometimes I even wonder if they’re a manufactured race along the lines of the Stepford wives in Ira Levin’s book, but assembled in fundamentalist Christian churches instead of family basements. Like the Stepford robots, they’re programmed to fulfill their husbands’ fantasies, only in this case it’s their role as the Ultimate Selfless Mothers.
…They’re not only terrorist-like in their conviction that their calling is divinely ordained, homeschoolers also often have a broad martyr streak. Rather than suicide bombings, though, they commit “suicide book-learning,” sacrificing their own lives to teach their kids. I’ve known one or two to get pregnant as an excuse to get out of homeschooling hell, but the true martyrs keep right on instructing, with the newest little pupil glued to their breast.
…What’s really scary about homeschooling is what it can do to the sanity of a mother deluded into thinking it’s her Christian duty. No woman was ever meant to be trapped in a house all day with children old enough to spell “homicide.”
Hmmm. Terrorist-like; fanatical; brain-washed; Stepford wives programmed by their husbands; martyrs; deluded and insane.
Happy Mother’s Day.
OK- it’s probably completely OT but is related directly to the paucity of posts on H&OES.
I am in the process of nearly completely renovating our only bathroom. After I’m done, the only things that will be original will be the tub and most of the drywall. Last night my quest was to buy the new vanity along with all the associated hardware. Here begins the Home Depot tale of woe.
Lydia and I had already scoped out the exact pieces we wanted. We yanked the seats out of the minivan and I hustled over to the local HD. After picking up the few tools I would need, I went back to where the vanities are stored on those 20 foot high shelves. Cool. They had the exact one I needed. It was up just a bit too high for me to grab it by myself, so I asked a passing “associate” (who happened to be driving a fork lift), if he could use the truck to get the vanity down. It would have taken all of one minute. No- he couldn’t help me but the girl right behind him could (he said). Well, she couldn’t and walked down to where he and his buddy were to tell them to come back and get the vanity down. Should be a couple of minutes, she said.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m watching them moving 5 gallon water bottles all over the store. They see me. They know I’m waiting. But, moving the friggin’ water bottles is more important than helping a customer.
Finally, I gave up and walked up to the sarcastically named “Customer Service Desk.” I told them the story and that I was going to Lowes. Their response? A shrug.
I went straight to Lowes and spent $350.
I swear I will never shop in Home Depot again, even though Lowes is three times farther away.
UPDATE: Misery loves company.
We’re part of a 30-family co-op that’s moving to new quarters in the
fall, and we’re finding it very difficult to find someone willing to
give us a quote for liability insurance. Has anyone out there in HS&OES
Land had similar trouble, made it through the process, know any
insurance companies that have shown themselves willing to work with
community/”school” groups, etc.?
If you have any suggestions, post them in the comments.
Homeschooling is now a way for a non-custodial parent to kidnap his (or her) kids.
An arrest warrant alleging violation of a court order, a misdemeanor, is active for Don Ives.
“It is a misdemeanor because, in the eyes of the law, he is a parent,” said Alison Hade, executive director of the Larimer County domestic-abuse program.
She described parental-abduction cases as legal quicksand because a child may appear to be safe and in the care of a responsible parent. When, for example, is a child a captive of one parent and when is a child the parent’s confederate in a spoiled-silly adventure that breaks all the rules of home school?
The AP picked up the Southern Baptist story from the other day. So, lots of folks across the country have now decided that both Southern Baptist and home educators are a bunch of wackos. (Just kidding.)
From now on, every time I see another story about home educators begging the educrats to let their kids play on the g-school teams, I’m going to email them this link.
The head coach of a New Jersey middle school basketball team who presented a Crybaby Award trophy to a 13-year-old player at a sports banquet may have lost his job over it.
…Just prior to the April 24 banquet at the Pleasantville Recreation Center, Guillen called him to be sure to attend the event to pick up his special trophy, said the boy’s father, Terrence Philo.
He wasn’t told what the trophy signified.
At the event, the boy watched as all of his teammates received trophies or certificates. He was then called up to receive his award and a coach told the crowd the boy was being honoured because “he begged to get in the game and all he did was whine.”
The trophy consisted of a silver figure of a baby atop a pedestal engraved with the boy’s name, which was spelled incorrectly. Family members said the teen – an honour-roll student – was so embarrassed he stayed home from school on the following Monday.
…Philo said the award caused his son to lose some of his passion for sports.
“He doesn’t even want to play outside (now),” Philo told the Press of Atlantic City newspaper.
Read it and weep, home educators.
Over the last couple of days I’ve noticed a new trend in spam techniques. The spammers call me a loser and write that I have a small … (Well, actually, they never get around to specifying what part of my anatomy must be small. Since, the spam is selling fake Viagra, I think I can probably guess.) Insulting me is supposed to make me want to buy their product? What a great concept! Why didn’t Pfizer think of this? I can see the ad now- Bob Dole speaking directly into the camera, “Your wife says I’m better in bed than you are.”
You just gotta love the lede in this article.
Two unions have turned their recruitment battle into a legal one, with the head of one school union calling the president of another a “felon” for trying to steal members.
Is it wrong to root for a protracted and nasty legal battle?
Robert Murphy on the Mises site has a pretty good column about what a truly free market in education might mean. Homeschooling gets a significant mention.
[O]ne sure sign that the present system is horribly failing is the success of the homeschooling movement. In my experience, some of the very best students were not products of institutionalized schooling, but instead were taught by Mom and Dad (even through the high school level).
On the one hand, this phenomenon is a tribute to the abilities of average parents who are concerned with their children’s education. But on the other, it is a shocking indictment of government and even many private schools, for we should certainly expect the division of labor to operate in the area of education as well as in other contexts. (We would certainly be surprised to discover that the children with the straightest teeth were those who had braces applied by their parents, rather than professional orthodontists.)
Bad analogy. Murphy is a teacher (at the university level), so I can forgive his misunderstanding about what education is and what it requires. If he truly understood homeschooling, he wouldn’t be surprised that Mom and Dad can (supposedly) teach all the way through high school. By high school, the kids are probably teaching themselves what they want to learn. If anything’s the secret to homeschooling’s success, that’s it. Schools (“g” or private) beat the love of learning out of kids at an early age.
The rest of the column is still worth a read. (Thanks to Skip Oliva)
A seven-year-old FL homeschooler is ranked number 1 nationally in his age group by the U.S. Chess Federation.
A homeschooler in WA won a regional competition for best teen chef.
Winning the Seattle contest earned Ledesma the regional teen chef title, a $2,000 scholarship to the Art Institute’s culinary school in Seattle and an expense-paid trip to compete later this month at the Art Institute of California in Orange County. There, he’ll face 17 other high school students from around the nation and be judged by a panel of professional chefs and culinary school faculty. The ultimate prize: a full-tuition scholarship to the Art Institute the prize winner represents, worth approximately $30,000.
…His mom and home-school instructor, Patti Ledesma, said it’s hard to explain where his cooking talent comes from. Cooking was definitely part of her children’s home-school curriculum. But Dominic seemed to take to it more than her other three children, she said.
…”I’ve been told there are easier ways to make money,” Ledesma said of his chosen career. “But it’s important to have a passion for what you’re doing. And I enjoy being in the kitchen.”
Being able to chase that passion- Advantage: homeschooling!
Another article about how unfair it is that homeschoolers aren’t allowed to play on the g-school teams. The reporter seems to be sympathetic to the parents, quoting several g-school coaches who want the kids to play. Not a lot lot new but this really caught my eye.
A legal challenge is unlikely because of the potential cost, according to Howard Forstrom, the president of the NJHSA.
Hey, Tim, what gives? Were you kicked out for hanging with those troublemakers at H&OES.
UPDATE: Just caught an error in the article, which claims there are 40,000 homeschoolers in NJ. From what I’ve been able to tell, the number is probably closer to 15,000.
We’ve been growing these Painted Lady butterflies for a couple of weeks, and today they were all paroled. The kids really enjoyed the “Live Butterfly Garden.” Me, too.
A Maine entrepreneur is charging folks $1.99 to listen to them rant. Smart guy but I think it’d be more cost-effective for the “customers” to sign up here. BTW, mental health professionals are aghast that someone would charge $1.99 per minute to listen to someone bloviate. Why, that works out to a mere $119.40 per hour. He’s undercutting them. Unfair competition! Have him arrested!
Thanks to Gary Davis, who gave me the html code to properly place the ads on the archive pages. Check it out.
Southern Baptist Vice President T. C. Pinckney will introduce a resolution at the Southern Baptist Convention next month calling for all SBC parents to pull their kids out of the g-schools and homeschool them or send them to Christian private schools. This is not a Damascus Road conversion for Pinckney. In 2001 he wrote, “The ideal, most biblical solution is for parents to teach their children, to be home schoolers. All our churches should welcome and openly encourage home-schoolers. But clearly many parents cannot or will not home-school. For their children we need to start large numbers of Christian schools.” The resolution takes it to a new level, though. Just think what would happen to the g-schools in the South if even a fraction of Baptists heed the denomination’s call.
The CS Monitor does a nice job explaining what cyber-charters are and, more importantly, what they are not. The arguments the edu-crats present against them are so lame.
In the online learning world, however, K12 – which has partnered with districts in 12 states – is relatively controversial. Many educators are uncomfortable with the idea of a for-profit company receiving public funds. And despite the somewhat futuristic and avant-garde image of virtual schooling, some experts lament that curriculum like K12’s is anything but innovative.
One recent study funded by the Education Policy Studies Laboratory found that the K12 curriculum was frequently age-inappropriate, and was more focused on memorizing than developing concepts.
Do the teachers work for free? Until they declare themselves a 501(c)3, they’ve got no beef with for profit companies running schools, virtual or not. And, I’d rather have my children memorizing the multiplication table than telling me how they feel about numbers.
Do I think virtual charters are perfect? No. I don’t like how some former home educators have been misled into thinking that they were still homeschooling. Do I think there’s a place for them in the educational firmament? Sure.
For the Magnors, going with WIVA was a no-brainer, says Ms. Magnor.
The private school her children attended two years ago demanded too much help with fundraising. Last year, she tried homeschooling, but often felt lost and in need of guidance. The idea that she could enroll her kids at WIVA, get two computers, dozens of boxes of educational materials and books, and have an experienced teacher oversee everything – albeit from a distance – seemed too good to be true.
“I feel like I’m a partner with my teacher,” she says, as Bridget plays number bingo on a computer. “We work as a team, and she helps me figure out the learning style for each kid. This gives me structure. I wanted someone to tell me what to do.”
Magnor and her kids talk twice a month with their teacher, and go on regular field trips to museums or the symphony.
For this woman, homeschooling was too difficult. Yeah- after that first confusing year she might have made it. Or, she might have thrown in the towel and sent her kids back to the g-school. For her and her kids, the virtual charter seems to be the right option.
Do cyber charters “hurt” the homeschooling movement? I don’t know. Possibly in the short run some home educators will go over to the dark side and take government money. But, who’s to say that they won’t miss the freedom of homeschooling and bring a herd of folks back with them?
In the end, it comes down to trust in parents. Do we as a society trust them to make the best choices for their kids? As home educators, I would hope that the answer is a resounding “Yes!”
OK- I admit it. I actually watched five minutes of the lamo “10.5” mini-series. Absolutely hideous acting. Bad dialog. And, worst, a “news” headline that read “President declares marshal (sic) law.” Don’t they have spell-checkers in Hollywood?
Izzy and Chris are having a mild disagreement over this article. For the record, I’m with Chris on this one. Sorry, Izzy.
So, that’s where it comes from.
Teachers and other edu-crats are so hung up on socialization as the be-all and end-all of education, that I’ve often wondered if they all read the same manual somewhere. Evidently, they did.
The shortage of factual content in public schools is no accident. It’s a consequence of a doctrine of education teachers themselves learn in the universities, called “socialization.”
The socialization approach, known by the innocuous title “Progressive education,” has dominated the educational establishment ever since philosopher John Dewey ushered it in early last century. According to Dewey, the purpose of school is to encourage “the child’s own social activities.”
“The mere absorbing of facts and truths,” Dewey maintained, “is so exclusively individual an affair that it…tends toward selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for…mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.”
And, here I thought that education involved the transmission of knowledge from teacher to pupil. Boy, do I feel silly. (Hat tip to Skip Oliva)
Let’s see how long I can leave the comments on this time.
Another WA school district has decided to “help” home educators.
Vancouver Home Connection will offer two different programs.
A consultation program for kindergartners through 12th-graders. Parents and students meet regularly with teachers but can complete all of their studies at home.
A combination of structured classes and at-home work for first- through 12th-graders. These students would attend classes two days a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays or Wednesdays and Fridays).
All students enrolled in Vancouver Home Connection will be considered full-time district students. They will be required to take district and state standardized tests, including the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, commonly called the WASL.
Any home educators who fall for this crap should have their “union” membership revoked.
John Rosenthal has a NYT Op/Ed on the tyranny of punctuation.
The question that readers and editors should ask is not whether the punctuation violates the rules, but whether the meaning is clear. Is anybody addled by the film title “Two Weeks Notice?” Have you ever seen “dont” without an apostrophe, and wondered what the author meant? Of course not.
I’m not advocating punctuation anarchy. Punctuation that serves to eliminate confusion is as imperative today as ever. But as the language evolves we should put the most picayune punctuation rules out to pasture, the way we do with obsolete rules of grammar.
Years ago, splitting infinitives was verboten. Today, even grammarians can’t muster a persuasive argument against it. Indeed, when students ask for an example of a split infinitive, their teachers are likely to cite the one from “Star Trek” (“to boldly go . . . “), which by now seems so natural that to say it any other way would sound stilted. With enough tolerance, who knows what lurks on punctuation’s final frontier? Some day we may even regard isn’t (with an apostrophe) as quaint as to-day seems today.
As one who has broken more than a few rules in this space, all I can add is a hearty “Amen”! No, that’s doesn’t look right. Is it supposed to be “Amen!?” Wrong again. “Amen!”? Ahhhh- you know what I mean.
We’re under another spam attack. Comments will be off until tomorrow a.m.
UPDATE: Back on.
UPDATE: Back off.
I just listened to a “Fresh Air” interview with Tina Fey, screenwriter of the movie. Earlier I had mentioned that the main character had been homeschooled. Now, Ms. Fey explains her rationale. She chose to make the main character a homeschooler because she wanted a “social blank slate.” Later, during production, they decided to make her a homeschooler from abroad because American homeschoolers are “too weird” and having one as the main character might be “off-putting.” One more reason not to see the movie. If you want to listen to the interview, the “interesting” part starts around 4:05.
A Columbia Business School professor thinks he has a way to end pornography in our time:
What we need is a kind of regulation that does not implicate the First Amendment at all — yet goes to the heart of the enterprises that fuel the multibillion-dollar pornography industry. The value of laws against prostitution is well established. What if we were to enact laws that made it illegal to give or receive payment to perform sex acts?
And what about amateur porn?
I’ve got a better idea. Just outlaw sex. All the time. For everyone, everywhere. Yeah, I’m sure that’ll work at least as well as the professor’s suggestion.
How does one get taken in by such nonsense?
Kyle Sager told the News-Sun that his daughter was in Walker Memorial High School, then attended Avon Park High School, but started skipping classes, so he enrolled her at South Florida Community College in the General Educational Development diploma program. Shortly afterwards, she was skipping that, too.
Kyle Sager first met Correll at the beginning of 2004. Allegedly, Correll was standing on Sager’s doorstep smoking a cigarette when he introduced himself. Correll explained that he ran the Highlands Home School — a home-visit teaching service, reportedly with an accelerated program for high school students and adults.
He said he charged $500 for a half-year of school. Kyle Sager wasn’t interested.
Later, after hearing good things about Correll’s program from what other students said either directly to him or through his daughter, Kyle Sager decided to enroll her.
He gave Correll a $150 deposit toward tuition. Within a couple of days, Correll came to Kyle Sager’s place of work and said he needed to get the rest of the tuition, and even offered to drop the price. So, Kyle Sager paid Correll another $300, and Sierra Sager was enrolled.
Sierra Sager told the News-Sun that two friends who were enrolled in the program recommended it to her as an alternative to getting her GED.
The program looked good to her father because she would have to spend a year and a half in the GED program, and Correll promised to have Sierra Sager, a ninth-grader, graduated by June 5, 2004.
Guess what happened? Nothing! Literally. The guy showed up a couple of times, didn’t teach anything, and basically took them for a ride.
The father was looking for a cheap, easy way to get a piece of paper saying his daughter was educated. You get what you pay for.
Here’s a nice article about how home educators employ museums in their programs.
Museum educators might see students from public schools a couple of times a year. Home-schoolers, they know by name.
“They become part of the fixtures here,” said Cyndi Bergquist-Zwadlo, director of gallery programs at the Science Museum. “You really get to know them. It’s nice because it is so individualized. [Public] schools stick to the group and have a generalized focus. Home-schoolers are on their own mission.”
When they visit the Science Museum, for example, they can choose among biology, wildlife, electricity and space. They might watch large-screen documentaries or witness the dissection of a cow’s eyeball.
That last bit reminded me of something. Lydia and the kids have been dissecting organs in science “class” for a several weeks. A while back, while digging in the refrigerator for something to eat, I opened up a plastic bag to find a cow eyeball staring back at me. Killed my appetite, for sure.
Hey, I must be doing something right. An idiot embarassed himself in the comments here.
Erin O’Connor is giving up a tenured professorship to teach high school English.
I’ll simply note that what gives me license to point fingers in this moment is that I am leaving academe–in no small part because I cannot see a way to resolve the many interlinked crises facing the academic humanities, and I cannot reconcile my beliefs in institutional fairness, personal and professional integrity, and, much more basically, education, with a life lived from within a university English department. I’m not sure the problems can be resolved at this point. And, frankly, I’m not sure they should be. The self-discrediting behavior of the humanist “haves” during the past several decades of progressive deprofessionalization, combined with their confirmed collective refusal to take their own disciplinarity seriously (whether as scholars or as teachers), doesn’t suggest there is a whole lot worth saving.
There is a saying: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. There is another saying: Shit or get off the pot. Such sayings are worth careful contemplation by the cluckers and breastbeaters, and I hope at least some will be moved to find a way to move beyond the clucking assumption that to theorize a problem is to solve it. Such is the stuff of false consciousness.
Good luck, Erin.
It’s not often that you’ll see this here, but I actually feel sorry for these educrats. They are under court order to desegregate the Hartford (CT) schools. The approved plan is to build magnet schools in the downtown in order to attract suburban whites to the city. That’s the plan, anyway.
The school has attracted nearly three times more suburban minority children than suburban whites, complicating the effort to reach racial balance goals under a court settlement in the Sheff vs. O’Neill desegregation case.
It is part of a perplexing pattern that is occurring in many of the magnet schools that are the centerpiece of a school choice plan approved a year ago as the Sheff plaintiffs and the state reached a settlement stemming from a 1996 state Supreme Court order.
…In a recent lottery for suburban families, 246 applicants were selected for new slots in seven city-operated magnet schools next fall, he said. Of those, three-fourths are white. In that lottery, the chances were weighted in favor of white applicants because whites have been underrepresented in the magnet schools, Linehan said.
Educrats are taking heat because there are so few whites in the magnet schools. OTOH, this columnist doesn’t like the program for a different reason.
Label it an inclusion program, or racial preferences, if you’re so inclined, but there is no disputing this: With an inordinate number of suburban minority parents applying, if you’re a white student competing for a slot in the city’s emerging magnet school network, you’re in – at least this year.
…I’m a proponent of inclusion, diversity and multiculturalism. But what’s happening since the year-old Sheff vs. O’Neill desegregation settlement is a little unsettling. After all, most white students haven’t been historically disenfranchised, discriminated against or relegated to inferior public institutions. Now, many get an edge in enrolling at some of the city’s promising schools.
He doesn’t like segregated schools, and he doesn’t like racial preferences for whites. The primary purpose of these schools is to bring white kids downtown. Without the preferences, I don’t see how they could meet that goal. If a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, what is a foolish inconsistency? (Thanks again to Judy Aron.)
Personally, I really don’t care about the prostitution (that’s my libertarian side sneaking out), but this guy just doesn’t have the brain power to be in the classroom.
A veteran teacher at Northwestern Regional High School has been placed on leave after his arrest a week ago in Farmington on a charge of patronizing a prostitute.
…Brochu himself initially contacted the police. On April 17, Brochu, of 283 Main St. in Farmington, reported that a male prostitute from Hartford had stolen his 1999 Honda Accord, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
In giving police information about the stolen vehicle, Brochu said he had known the man for about 1½ years, and that they had an established “prostitute-john” relationship, police said. Brochu told police he discovered his car had been stolen the morning after he brought the man back to his Farmington apartment for sex, police said.
Brochu said he had been drinking at the Union Bar in Hartford onApril 16 and was intoxicated when he picked up the prostitute between 7 and 8 p.m. in the Wolcott Street area, Farmington police said. Brochu drove the man back to his apartment and paid him $40 in exchange for oral sex, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
“Brochu stated that it was customary for him to pay [the prostitute] after arriving back in Farmington,” the affidavit says.
So, he admitted to the police that he drove drunk and then picked up a prostitute. Too late for Miranda, I guess. (Hat tip to Judy Aron.)
This First Amendment case is likely a tempest in a teacup.
A souvenir T-shirt from a national landmark has a Needville, Texas student fighting for her rights and a school defending its dress code policy, Houston television station KPRC reported Friday.
The T-shirt says, “Somebody went to the Hoover Dam and all I got was this ‘Dam’ t-shirt.”
The school has a dress code that bans “pictures, emblems or writing on clothing that is lewd, offensive, vulgar or obscene.”
It’s questionable whether the shirt would fall under this category, but why push it? The parents are threatening to homeschool her unless she can wear the ugly shirt to school.
How’s this for a stereotype (from a New York Times article on a creationist theme park)?
Ken Ham, the group’s chief executive, said marketing surveys suggested that the complex would draw not just home-schooling families and other creationists, but mainstream church groups and curiosity seekers.
Y’all won’t be shocked to learn that there are more than a few homeschooling families who are (Shock!) evolutionists. For the record, this blogger counts himself among them. And, I read the Times. Y’all can decide if I fit the rest of the stereotype.
