Filed on January 18, 2005 at 6:34 pm under by dcobranchi
handwriting.
Filed on at 4:22 pm under by dcobranchi
Homeschool grad David N. Bass thinks global warming is a bunch of hooey. To bolster his argument, he puts up the flimsiest straw man I’ve ever seen:
No sooner did Americans finish ringing in the New Year than global warming is again appearing in news headlines around the nation. The devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean has served to renew concern over the possibility of cataclysmic changes in the earth’s crust or weather patterns. Some scientists insist that blame for the destructive tidal wave can be laid squarely in the hands of human beings, while others say such assertions are politically motivated and skew scientific reality.
Some scientists are claiming man caused the earthquake and subsequent tsunami? Who? Show me one genuine scientist who has claimed that. The only thing I found was a bunch of right-wing sites claiming that that’s what some environmentalists/scientists said. Now, some environmental groups have claimed that rising sea-levels could make areas like Indonesia more susceptible to tsunamis. But that’s a far cry from blaming man for the earthquake.
Evidently, David Bass didn’t follow a trivium-based homeschooling program.
Filed on at 3:37 pm under by dcobranchi
Just call me Daryl Williams. 🙂
I got an email from the owner of the Algebra Video Lessons website that I thought was worth passing along:
A little about us: Our “real” business is math textbooks for community college students. My father (www.mckeague.com) and I have been producing video lessons to accompany his books for years.
We decided to sell the video lessons to the public. We made them free in September in order to see what the response would be like. Once a person signs up, we have their email address. In about a month we are going to offer a “word problems” CD for $20 or $25 to our users.
The textbooks seem to cover middle-school and high-school level topics (Pre-algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II, and Trig).
And, no, I’m not getting a cut of any sales, smartass, though for a quarter mill I’ll shill for NCLB, too.
Filed on at 10:02 am under by dcobranchi
A bank is experimenting with small credit cards that college students will be able to afix to their key rings. The idea, of course, is to get them to carry (and use) the cards more often. Interestingly, this is actually a throwback to the very first credit cards. Dating back to at least the early ’60s, department stores in NYC issued small metal tabs that fit on a key ring and were inscribed with the account number.
Filed on at 9:43 am under by dcobranchi
therefore your kids will be punished.
That’s the rationale behind this superintendent’s push to get random drug testing in his schools.
“I didn’t know that my kid was in trouble,” Levine said Thursday, still sounding surprised seven months after he discovered his son, Joel, could not get through most days without inhaling the prescription painkiller OxyContin.
Now the father who feared he might lose his son is crusading to save other daughters and sons on the North Shore, where dozens of people die each year of OxyContin and heroin overdoses. Levine has suggested that Salem schools start randomly testing students for drug use.
As sometimes happens, the kids seem to be smarter than the grownups.
“I don’t see the point of it,” said Christina Davies, a Salem High School freshman. “Just because the superintendent’s son did drugs, everyone in the school shouldn’t be [required] to take a drug test.”
The ACLU is threatening to sue if the schools implement this policy. I’m pretty sure it’d be found unconsitutional.
Filed on at 6:48 am under by dcobranchi
Should kids spend a significant amount of time on penmanship? It seems to me that the skill, while nice, is essentially useless. Not so, say penmanship proponents (yes, there really are such folks):
Students still need to know how to communicate effectively through good handwriting skills, said Charles B. Pyle, director of communication at the Virginia State Department of Education.
“There will still be occasions when students need to express themselves with pen and paper, and what they write should be read and understood without a lot of difficulty,” he said.
The only time I can think of would be when writing “Thank You” notes. Are there any other reasons?
Advocates say teaching penmanship has benefits, citing research evidence of a direct link between the process of learning to write and developing the ability to read fluently.
Correlation/causation? Personally, I really don’t care if our kids have terrible penmanship, as long as they can read it themselves. The one advantage that italics does provide, speed, can be addressed in other ways. I’m toying with teaching the kids shorthand so that they’ll be able to take notes in college. I used to know Gregg shorthand (many, many years ago). It’s a pretty easy skill to pick up.
Filed on at 6:24 am under by dcobranchi
Izzy! In a squeaker, Homeschool Rev edged out Relaxed Homeskool (Kim, you might want to demand a recount). Congrats to all the finalists and especially Izzy and Kim. The winner gets a site re-design. Maybe now Izzy will finally get a working RSS feed.
Filed on January 17, 2005 at 11:54 pm under by dcobranchi
We almost had a candidate for the Darwin Awards up here yesterday. It seems a local would-be bank robber is none too bright; he attempted to rob the bank at the drive thru. Yep- he pulled up in his car and sent the teller the hold-up note through the slot. When she refused to comply he drove off. From the description given on the radio, he didn’t even bother to wear a mask.
Why not just send the note through the mail and save the gas?
Filed on at 11:13 am under by dcobranchi
Florida’s voucher system has been fighting lawsuits for six years. The major case is finally getting to the state Supreme Court. At issue, are the vouchers in violation of the constitution’s Blaine Amendment. I find this argument disingenuous, to say the least:
One provision — the religious freedom section — includes language not in the U.S. Constitution. It goes further than the First Amendment by banning the use of state money “directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect or religious denomination or in any of any sectarian institution.
That language is more than a century old and in the minds of some — including Bush — its past is stained because it was passed at a time in history when anti-Catholic bigotry was a force in society. Others disagree that prejudice played a role in putting the language in the constitution — or in keeping the provision three decades ago when the constitution was modernized.
Anyone who knows anything about the history of the Blaine Amendments should know exactly why they were passed. And they had everything to do with anti-Catholic bigotry.
Filed on at 3:00 am under by dcobranchi
I think this Mike Smith column contains some statements that are misleading or just plain incorrect.
Home-schooling has grown from about 1.2 million children 10 years ago to just more than 2 million today.
2M is at the extreme high end of estimates. No one knows the exact number, of course, but I’d be surprised if we make up 4 percent of the total “school” population.
If the growth in home-schooling continues at its recent yearly rate of 7 percent to 15 percent, the home-school market will break the $1 billion barrier in a few years.
We’re not growing at anywhere near that rate. I’ve shown the data for Delaware. I’ve seen data for several other states that homeschooling numbers have leveled off or even declined over the last several years. Dollars to donuts that right now we’re not growing nationally more than a couple percent per year.
School districts lose an average of $7,000 per child per year once a child is removed from public school. Regrettably, some school administrators are threatened by the loss of revenue. Others are still reluctant to accept the idea that noncertified teachers can be effective.
Consequently, many families who choose home-schooling continue to be challenged and turn to the Home School Legal Defense Association to smooth their transition from public school.
It depends what the meaning of “many” is. I follow these things pretty closely, and I can’t come up with five current cases where homeschoolers are being harassed for homeschooling. “Many” as a percentage of the hundreds of thousands of homeschooling families? Not hardly.
Filed on at 2:42 am under by dcobranchi
A homeschooling dad is persona non grata in Iowa g-schools for fighting bond issues, but it’s really not a homeschooling issue.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The biggest threat to Iowa educators trying to raise money for new schools is one northwest Iowa man who has helped derail several school bond issues.
Paul Dorr, an activist and home-school parent from Ocheyedan, sells his services to taxpayers who want to reject school bond referendums. By most accounts, he’s very successful.
“He’s kind of a kiss of death for bond issues in a lot of places,” said Spencer Superintendent Greg Ebeling.
…Dorr has called on other home-schooling parents to start their own political consulting services.
“We need to become more offensive-minded and show that we have a superior educational program to replace the rapidly failing government system,” Dorr wrote in an online essay. “And we need to do everything else we can to speed it on towards its certain demise.”
I disagree. Homeschooling should stay out of this. Strange advice, sure, from a guy who pounds the keyboards with anti g-school rants. But there’s a big difference between ranting and taking away the educrats’ bread and butter. I fly way below the radar; no educrat is going to know or care if we laugh at teachers who don’t know who James Joyce is. I guarantee that every superintendent in the country knows about Dorr.
Filed on January 16, 2005 at 8:45 pm under by dcobranchi
This one is just too strange.
A dentist found the source of the toothache Patrick Lawler was complaining about on the roof of his mouth — a four-inch (10-centimeter) nail the construction worker had unknowingly embedded in his skull six days earlier.
A nail gun misfired and shot a 4 inch nail through the roof of his mouth and he didn’t know it? And, even stranger, this is not the first time this has happened:
“This is the second one we’ve seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn’t actually realize the nail had been imbedded in their skull,” neurosurgeon Sean Markey told KUSA-TV in Denver. “But it’s a pretty rare injury.”
BONUS: Props to whomever can come up with the composers of the song the title alludes to. Hint: Korn did a cover.
Filed on at 6:22 pm under by dcobranchi
Our pastor gave a very interesting sermon today to our very conservative Baptist church. It was on Genesis Chapter 1 and the conflict between The Bible and the physical sciences. Sound familiar? I was shocked to find that he basically defended science and said that he believed that Genesis 1 was not to be interpreted literally. He analogized this to Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son. The son never really existed. Nor did the foreign land. It was a fictional story told to illustrate a point about God. Our pastor believes that Genesis 1 is the same.
And, yes, he endorsed the old Earth theory.
UPDATE: Here’s the text from last week’s sermon (which I missed). It was a lead-in to today’s.
Filed on at 3:31 pm under by dcobranchi
Here’s a Q&A with a parent who has some problems with the books that were being assigned at her local g-school. That’s not the depressing part, though. This is:
Q. Do you love to read?
A. I do. Believe it or not, I used to be a public school teacher. I taught seventh and eighth grade. I was an English and German teacher. I taught 10th grade.
…Q. Some judge [Ulysses] to be the greatest novel ever written.
A. Yeah, I think they – the author is Irish or something? But whatever. That’s all I’d like to say about that.
Yeah, wasn’t it written by that Joyce chick?
Filed on at 8:46 am under by dcobranchi
Izzy and Kim are neck and neck for the Education/Homeschool BoB Award. Voting ends tomorrow.
Filed on at 5:04 am under by dcobranchi
Here’s a nice Charlotte Observer profile of a budding young artist. Of course she’s homeschooled.
However, Chelsey knows she can’t draw all the time. She also must pay attention to her schooling. Lucky for her, though, school is at home in Harrisburg.
“(Home school) has really given her the freedom she needs,” [her mom] Kim says.
…Chelsey will graduate next year and is already looking into different art schools. “Ideally I would be a storyboard artist or inspiration artist for Disney or Pixar,” said Chelsey.
“I see her being successful as an artist,” [art teacher] Ferguson says. “I think she could probably make a career as an artist, and there are not that many people that can do that.”
Filed on January 15, 2005 at 7:46 pm under by dcobranchi
Mea maxima culpa. I missed this LttE which surely would have won the award for the idiocy of the day (week, month, millenium, etc.).
Dark ages, indeed
Rod Dreher’s attempt to foist his personal lifestyle and unctuous mentality as a serious study merits a severe rebuttal and possible admonishment.
It is most consistent with his mindset that he chose the most correct and hideous analogy for his alleged intellectualism, the “monasteries of the dark ages” and their keeping of the faith and the books.
Congratulations on Mr. Dreher’s personally contrived elitism and for locking his progeny into the monstrous modern monastery of home schooling. He and the faithful will cause another Martin Luther to arise – Mohammed Luther King Bin Laden.
Nicholas D. Ricco, Carrollton
I haven’t yet been able to locate Rod Dreher’s column which initiated this rant. If I find it I’ll post it as an update.
UPDATE: Here it is and here are the full ‘grafs that Ricco dissed above:
I explained to Mr. Levy how the religious and social conservatism my wife and I share led us to be more or less countercultural regarding where to live, how to live, and how to educate our children. I told him that we’ve chosen homeschooling not to protect our kids from rampant heathenism, but because we want to make sure they read deeply in, and learn to cherish, Western civilization.
In fact, I told him, it may sound grandiose, but if our civilization is to be saved in any meaningful sense, it’s going to have to be done in large part by families consciously defending the Western religious, intellectual and cultural tradition. We have to see our families as akin to the monasteries of Dark Ages, which preserved sacred and secular knowledge through a period of great turbulence and social distress.
Pretty innocuous, IMHO.
Filed on at 12:46 pm under by dcobranchi
but not eventually denied. A Muslim student in TN will be allowed to wear her hijab even though school dress codes forbid the wearing of any head covering. The girl applied in August for an exemption, which was finally granted this week. It really shouldn’t have taken this long; schools have long recognized that male Jewish students can wear a yarmulke.
Regardless, props to the principal who resolved this before it escalated to a lawsuit.
Filed on at 11:52 am under by dcobranchi
I saw this one the other day and just didn’t get it.
Raleigh, NC — A state education panel put off a decision Friday on whether North Carolina should toughen grading of its end-of-grade tests, deciding to seek more data on the issue.
Some education observers point to the fact that more than 70 percent of the state’s students pass end-of-grade tests as evidence that the grading standard for the tests is too easy.
This is just plain dumb. Either the tests cover the material that is deemed appropriate or they don’t. If they don’t, then change the tests. If they do, then what does it matter if 100 percent of the kids pass? In fact, isn’t that the eventual goal?
Filed on at 6:53 am under by dcobranchi
The Census Bureau is sending out their American Community Survey (pdf). Twenty-one pages of intrusive questions:
Does this house, apartment, or mobile home have COMPLETE plumbing facilities; that is, 1) hot and cold piped water, 2) a flush toilet, and 3) a bathtub or shower?
Is there telephone service available in this house, apartment, or mobile home from which you can both make and receive calls? (They’re really behind the technology on this one. I’d answer in the negative, as we’ve gone entirely to cell.)
LAST MONTH, what was the cost of electricity for this house, apartment, or mobile home?
At any time DURING THE PAST 12 MONTHS, did anyone in this household receive Food Stamps?
And that’s just skimming through page 5. If we get another form this year, you can probably guess how I’ll handle it.
Filed on at 5:46 am under by dcobranchi
I promise I’m not going out looking for creationism articles. My GoogleNews homeschooling search keeps pulling them in. Anyway, here’s a really good piece on the social ramifications of the Dover, PA lawsuit.
Filed on at 5:37 am under by dcobranchi
This Samuel Blumenfeld column is quite depressing. He vaguely endorses torture, at least the “very benign kind used at Abu Ghraib,” and then goes on to say that we should preach the Gospel at detainees at Guantanamo and keep them locked up until they convert.
But, as Christians, we would be trying to liberate these Muslim prisoners from their enslavement by a malevolent religion that calls for their death as martyrs. I have no idea whether or not giving them a Bible to read would have much of an effect on these men, who are so completely committed to their religion. But it would be worth a try. Perhaps the religion of love might begin to separate them from their religion of death. All we would have to do is simply put doubt in their minds over the rightness of their religion.
Of course, they would be under great pressure from other prisoners not to read the Bible and refuse to attend lectures. Perhaps they have been so deeply brainwashed by Osama bin Laden that conversion is an impossibility. That would teach us something about the fanatical psychology of these terrorists, and why they should be locked up for life.
Can we benignly torture them until they confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord”? And who gets to play Torquemada in this revival? Bush? Rumsfeld? Perhaps Blumenfeld would like to audtion for the part.
BTW, here’s Blumenfeld’s bio-blurb at the end of the column:
Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including: “Is Public Education Necessary?” “NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education,” “The Whole Language/OBE Fraud” and “Homeschooling: A Parents Guide to Teaching Children.” His books are available on Amazon.com. Back issues of his incisive newsletter, The Blumenfeld Education Letter, are available online.
Friends like this, we don’t need.
Filed on at 5:18 am under by dcobranchi
TLC’s show built a treehouse for a homeschooling family. The joke is sprung on the dad tonight at 10 p.m.
Filed on at 5:09 am under by dcobranchi
NPR did a profile of a homeschool mom who skateboards and wrote a book about it.
Filed on at 4:47 am under by dcobranchi
This one is going to disappear off the News-Journal‘s site tomorrow. It’s all about a local Ph.D. chemist who went over to the dark side. 🙂
UPDATE: To the folks here who are more knowledgable about ID and creationism– a question: What is the Young Earth explanation for why God would put up so much physical evidence to make the universe appear billions of years old? And wouldn’t Occam’s Razor indictate that the most likely explanation is that it really is billions of years old?
Filed on January 14, 2005 at 8:06 pm under by dcobranchi
OK, I’m back from my sales job. Now the real selling begins; I have to convince my lovely wife. She’s not keen at all. Understandably, of course. Moving is a huge undertaking. And uprooting the kids from their friends and activities is nothing to be taken lightly.
Filed on at 10:10 am under by Tim Haas
The speaker is quoted at the end of this article, saying that “My educated guess is that I won’t be invited next year.”
Salesman Bill Fried thought he was keeping it real when he told Palo Alto middle-schoolers at a career day this week that strippers can earn $250,000 a year — and $50,000 more for every two inches they expand their busts.
School administrators mollified upset parents and met with students Thursday to discuss the gaffe, sending letters home with them to apologize.
But the kids at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School found Fried’s straightforward approach refreshing.
“For the record, I just want to say he was my favorite speaker,” said eighth-grader Jason Garcia. Jason said he liked Fried’s message that people should pick a career they really love — no matter how unseemly or unimpressive it may seem to others.
“It’s the truth,” Jason said.
Filed on at 7:43 am under by Tim Haas
The Washoe county school board is trying to get enough votes together to turn down a sex-ed video for teens.
In a letter to the board of trustees, SHARE committee member Nancy Lim criticized the video for suggesting that condoms “don’t work” and for potentially inspiring irrational fears.
“The over-hyped, fear-based tone was felt to be a turnoff for many teens who most needed to hear the abstinence message,” Lim said. “Examples of the alarmist format included blood dripping into a sink when a link was drawn between teen suicide rates and teen sexuality.”
I think they’re missing the real problem. This video isn’t going to inspire irrational fears, it’s going to make the kids laugh so hard they’ll figure the entire curriculum is a lot of bogus hype.
Filed on at 7:34 am under by dcobranchi
Time to write another LttE:
Arizona Virtual Academy offers home schooling via computers
BULLHEAD CITY — Kara and Tiffany Robinett can spend all day in their pajamas, eat their lunch at the kitchen table and get their school work done by noon to play outside.
The Robinett sisters get their schooling at home thanks to Arizona Virtual Academy.
The public charter school is funded by tax payers and is free to all students.
Any AZ readers out there?
Filed on at 7:28 am under by dcobranchi
I just couldn’t help highlight this one as I sit in the hotel lobby, waiting for the realtor.
Regrets and resentment over relocation
…Make an action plan and set monthly goals. Remember why you agreed to move: generous salary, promotion or excitement. If housing is a problem, arrange to move. If local schooling is an issue, consider boarding or home schooling.
BTW, I’ve got the job (unofficially).
Filed on January 13, 2005 at 7:34 pm under by dcobranchi
How’d you let this one slip by? If Pennsville enacts one of these ordinances, would my family be harassed for going to the matinee (only $4.50) at the Premier Cinema?
Actually, Tim et al. almost certainly handled it correctly. It’s much easier to fight these curfews at the local level.
Filed on at 7:22 pm under by dcobranchi
This may be worth getting behind. North Dakota SB2042 would allow the g-schools to basically pull a student’s driver’s license for skipping school. No biggie for us. But another section of the bill (which is evidently not in the online text linked above) may directly affect homeschooling for the good.
[Anita Decker, director of school improvement and accreditation for the Department of Public Instruction] also said the measure would eliminate the Department of Public Instruction’s authority to enforce home schooling rules and make sure children attend acceptable schools. She asked that the legislation be amended to restore the authority.
Filed on at 7:02 pm under by dcobranchi
Beware politicians who want to help:
REP. MARK CLOER, R-COLORADO SPRINGS
…“There are issues you have to stand the ground on and I look forward to helping the governor on issues like home schooling. I was a little disappointed that the life issue was not brought up though.”
Does anyone have any idea what the governor wants to do with homeschooling?
Filed on at 6:56 pm under by dcobranchi
Oh, wait. We’re in a hotel.
This is an “Ewww!” post. Read at your own risk.
I’m sitting in the lobby with my laptop (the WiFi doesn’t work in the room). There’s another guy sitting about 3 feet away also surfing. Unfortunately, I can see the sites he’s visiting. Wife swapping. Happy swingers.
I wonder if he’d be embarassed that I’m blogging this. Probably not, I’d guess.
Filed on at 8:30 am under by Tim Haas
A fourth grader says she was attacked at school.
Her principal believes her, the police don’t.
What I find odd is that the article doesn’t mention any evidence indicating that she’s lying, only that there’s a lack of evidence to prove that she’s telling the truth.
I’m guessing everyone (especially the Superintendant quoted in the article) just wants this one to go away.
Prichard Police Chief Sammie Brown said he and his investigators have no reason to believe that an 11-year-old student at Whistler Elementary was attacked at school Monday by a man who attempted to rape her.
But the school’s principal, Alice Lewis, said she is standing behind the fourth-grader’s story. Lewis said the girl ran into her office Monday morning, crying and scared, to report the attack.
Mobile County schools Superintendent Harold Dodge said he was “relieved for the child” when he heard police say that they do not think she was actually attacked.
“But I’ll be more relieved when the principal calls me and says we’ve resolved this from the inside.”
Dodge said Lewis is supporting the girl because the principal is “an advocate for her children.”
Dodge said that if the girl’s story is untrue, he would not want her punished. He said he’d be more interested in finding out why she would have made up something like this. “After all, she’s a child,” he said.
Filed on at 8:21 am under by Tim Haas
There’s something chilling about an Education Act that can suspend a boy for “persisting in opposition to authority” – pretty much a catch all charge for “you won’t toe our line” whatever they decide that line happens to be.
OTOH, the school should have a right to set its own minimum standards of dress and grooming. The students can either opt in, or find another venue in which to get an education.
An 11-year-old boy was suspended this week from F.W. Begley Public School for defying a teacher after she told him to flatten his Mohawk-styled hair because his “primping” was a distraction in class.
“He’s missing his education for his hair,” said Katherine Muzzin, whose son Jordan was accused of disrupting his Grade 6 class with his new hairdo that copies a style worn by his idol, British soccer star David Beckham.
“They made a big issue out of a little thing,” Muzzin said.
The school vice-principal issued the suspension Tuesday under the Education Act for “persisting in opposition to authority.”
Filed on at 5:14 am under by dcobranchi
I’m off to the plant. Back tonight?
Filed on at 4:57 am under by dcobranchi
I’m starting to get a little concerned about the North atlantic Regional High School in Maine (originally mentioned in this blog post). When press releases for homeschoolers start throwing around words like certified and accredited, it makes me think that someone believes these add value and that independent homeschooling is somehow second-rate.
The school is now expanding “operations” into several states.
Filed on at 4:41 am under by dcobranchi
From a piece on a homeschooler who helping out with cotillions:
Miller and Koch’s other teen assistants work with children in grades four through nine to demonstrate proper manners in social situations and the dances. Students learn the foxtrot, waltz, cha-cha and swing.
“We even learned the Electric Slide,” said Miller. “Even though it’s an old dance, we can still use it at weddings and other events.”
Yeah, that Electric Slide pre-dates the dinosaurs.
Filed on January 12, 2005 at 8:54 pm under by dcobranchi
i think I’ll sign myself up for this class.
Filed on at 8:56 am under by dcobranchi
Eduwonk links to an Op/Ed in the NYT that excoriates the EdDept for the Armstrong Williams debacle. What he fails to point out, though, is that he wrote the Op/Ed.
Surreptitiously linking to yourself? Pitiful!
Filed on at 7:38 am under by dcobranchi
The second half of the job interview begins today. Yes, begins. I’m flying down to Fayetteville in a little bit. Dinner tonight with the new (proposed) boss. All day interview/plant tour tomorrow and house-visiting/touring the area set for Friday a.m.
The hotel allegedly has WiFi in the common areas, so I may be able to get in some blogging. Chances are, though, that it will limited until the weekend.
Wish me luck.
UPDATE: Dinner went well; I managed not to drop the salad in my lap or slurp my linguine. BTW, the espresso at the Italian restaurant we went to was the best I’ve ever had.
Filed on at 7:28 am under by dcobranchi
Neal Zupancic has an excellent piece up at LewRockwell on why we have too many college grads.
Filed on at 7:22 am under by dcobranchi
Here’s a new program for students who have made a difference in their communities.
Mignon wants to make sure that education becomes a leveling of the playing field between the rich and the poor,” Ms. Tyler said. “But this scholarship is not for slackers. It’s for the child raised by a single mom who’s been helping with siblings and working part-time and doing volunteer work in a nursing home.
The scholarship is for a full ride for 10 students at any college in Alabama.
Filed on at 7:08 am under by dcobranchi
Several states are working together to design a “work readiness credential.” This credential would be in addition to (or possibly in lieu of) a HS diploma. It would also be test based.
The result would be a test or other assessment for high school students or dropouts to receive the credential. That could be in the form of a certificate that shows certain “soft” skills needed for holding a job have been learned, despite a lack of a high school diploma. It could also take the form of an additional stamp of approval on a high school diploma.
I guess I could go along with this if the following criteria were met:
1) All students- g-school, private, and homeschoolers- would have to meet the same requirements and take the same test. Just assuming a HS diploma was evidence but forcing homeschoolers to jump through hoops would be unacceptable.
2) The test is not age restricted. By that I mean if a 14- or 15-year-old wanted to take the test, they could. That doesn’t mean they could then violate child labor laws, of course.
3) If the test is offered for “free” at the g-schools and private schools, homeschoolers must be permitted access.
BTW- I think the states will have their work cut out for them.
The soft skills sought by many business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is co-sponsoring the effort, include speaking well with customers, some basic math and teamwork.
How exactly do you design a test to show speaking well with customers and teamwork?
Filed on at 6:53 am under by dcobranchi
Pres. Bush wants to expand NCLB testing requirements into the high schools. Good luck. NCLB is complicated enough, and has generated enough enemies that there is a zero percent chance of expanding the law without significant “upgrades.”
Filed on at 6:32 am under by dcobranchi
I didn’t realize that “Relaxed Homeskool” was also a finalist for the BoB Awards. Sorry, Kim. I’m now splitting my votes between you and Izzy (although you don’t need the re-design).
Filed on at 6:26 am under by dcobranchi
One of my resolutions was to blogroll everyone who linked H&OES. I think I’ve got that done, but if I’ve missed your site (and you want to be included) apologies and please let me know.
Of course, the offer is null-and-void for comment spammers.
Filed on at 6:19 am under by dcobranchi
I’ve been meaning to purchase a copy of The Fallacy Detective but haven’t got around to it yet*. Now I really wish I had. There’s a logical error in here for sure; I just don’t know what to call it.
Southern Baptists are advocating Christians to exodus from public schools, decrying a “staggering loss of faith and morals in children who attend the ‘officially neutral’ public schools,” says GetTheKidsOut.org. More and more, cases are revealing that Christians “lack power” in the school system.
Four families have recently sued the Plano Independent School District over its ban on traditional Christmas colors and on students handing out religious-themed gifts. This is cited as evidence by AgapePress that the schools are increasingly hostile to Christians.
One brain dead educrat in TX proves that Christians are being crowded out of g-schools?
*I really don’t know for sure that we don’t already own a copy. Our bookshelves are not organized by the Library of Congress method, nor do I have a database of books in our home by ISBN. Slackers are we.
Filed on at 6:00 am under by dcobranchi
Picture Daryl with pointy ears and an arched eyebrow.
I love the internet. You can start with a discussion of homeschooling in Germany and end up at a really interesting essay on the history and arguments for and against civil disobedience. I like Thoreau and even quoted him in my HS valedictory. The essay linked above does a nice job explaining his (and several others’) views on CD.
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