Get Schooled

A few weeks ago, I posted a NYT story on twin college grads in desperate search of jobs in Manhattan. The Washington Post now has published a similar saga, only this bright young graduate is not crammed in an apartment with five friends subsisting on Ramen noodles, but back at home eating dinner with mom and dad.

The long piece on former valedictorian, class president and Senate intern Melissa Meyer includes this great passage:

For 23 years, she had advanced down America’s path to success — perfect grades, a $200,000 college degree, a folder overstuffed with business cards — only to have it dead-end back where she started.

“What was the point?” she asks.

For Melissa, that question is the legacy of the recession as she rises one Tuesday morning in early fall and begins her day with the same routine that defined her adolescence. She rummages through her parents’ refrigerator, eats leftovers from a dinner party hosted by her parents the night before and then retreats upstairs to …

Continue reading College grads: Home for the holidays and beyond »

In reading about the 20-day suspensions handed out in two Clayton County cases — the drama student sex in the empty classroom and the teacher love triangle melee – and the threat of suspension in the Barrow County Facebook case, I have several questions:

1. Doesn’t the suspended teacher come back under a cloud? None of my children’s teachers has ever been suspended, but I would certainly worry about what a teacher did to be removed from a classroom setting for four weeks. Can the teachers be effective after this or is their reputation shot?

2. Don’t the students of a suspended teacher lose valuable and irreplaceable instruction time? I have read studies about how teacher absences affect student performance. In one study, high teacher absences from the classroom were associated with lower scores. The timing of a suspension – before the CRCT or near the end of an AP class — could certainly hurt student performance. I have been a substitute teacher in a high school, and those …

Continue reading When teachers are suspended, aren’t students punished? »

Several of you have asked for an explanation from DOE about state testing and why we don’t see how Georgia students performed on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills

Here is the response from Melissa Fincher, associate superintendent of assessment and accountability:

The assessments that comprise the Georgia testing program are mandated by Georgia law. For years the Georgia program has included a national norm-referenced test (NRT), which historically has been the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS).

During the 2008 legislative season, the law was amended to make school district participation in the NRT optional. In addition, the law allows districts to select two grades – one in grade band 3 – 5 and one in grade band 6 – 8 – to assess with the NRT.

This option went into effect during the 2008-2009 school year. Prior to this time, school districts were required to test students in grade 3, 5, and 8 annually.

Before we discuss why statewide performance on the NRT is not …

Continue reading DOE response on ITBS versus CRCT: Testing basics »

I have idea which UGA this is. They all look alike to me.

UGA  died today. The mascot, not the college.

Maybe, it is time for a sturdier breed since bulldogs are rife with health problems. This guy was only in his second season as the UGA mascot.

Growing up next to an aunt and uncle with bulldogs, I know how delicate they can be and how many health problems they can have. They demand extraordinary care from their owners.

Because of UGA’s relative youth, people are speculating foul play in his early death. It was more likely a heart attack, which apparently is a risk for the breed.

I would offer my mixed breed furball to UGA, but he refuses to wear a sweater.

Continue reading UGA died. The mascot, not the college. (Could it have been Buzz?) »

A Get Schooled poster surprised many of us today with her scary account of the Dean Rusk Middle School gun incident in which a 12-year-old boy brought a handgun and ammo to the Canton campus Tuesday.

However, according to the poster, what happened at Dean Rusk was far more frightening than what was reported:

“The truth is … is that this student who informed the school of the situation was actually held at gunpoint and robbed for her bubble gum while in math class wih a teacher present. He opened his jacket… pointed the gun at her and insisted on her giving him her bubblegum… said ” give it to me or I will shoot you and kill you” so she threw it at him… then he proceeded to pop the gun open and drop the ammo out. He put the ammo in one pocket… and the gun in another. This poor child was robbed at gun point…. and this situation has been diminished so small to a “buddy ratting out her friend.”

I sent a note to Cherokee school spokesman Mike McGowan this morning …

Continue reading Canton middle-schooler pointed gun at a classmate »

We aren’t the only state socking it to college students:

From the New York Times:

The University of California Board of Regents was expected to approve a plan on Thursday to raise undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — 32 percent by next fall, to help make up for steep cuts in state funding.

The state allocation for the 10-campus system, one of the leading public university systems in the nation, was cut $813 million, or 20 percent, this year, leading to a hiring freeze, furloughs and layoffs.

The impact on the University of California campuses has been dramatic: faculty hiring is not keeping up with enrollment demand, and many course sections have been eliminated. Instructional budgets are being reduced by $139 million, with 1,900 employees laid off, 3,800 positions eliminated and hiring deferred for nearly 1,600 positions, most of them faculty.

From the Triangle Business Journal:

Continue reading North Carolina and California also raise college costs »

I didn’t want to post this as I think poor Clayton schools have had more than enough negative publicity in the last few weeks, but a teacher friend said she thought it was a good topic and please put it out there for discussion.

In a nutshell, a Clayton teacher was suspended without pay because a 17-year-old current senior and a 2o-year-old former student – both in the building after hours for a drama practice – chose to have sex in his classroom.

Forest Park High School teacher Kevin Jones was suspended for 20 days without pay. He had been leading a drama club rehearsal after school with a 20-year-old Forest Park High graduate.

“The teacher left the classroom after he had informed the students they had to go home,” school spokesman Charles White said.

A short time later, a school administrator entered the classroom and found a 17-year-old female student having sex with the 20-year-old graduate, White said. The other students had left. (No criminal charges were filed as …

Continue reading Student sex in the classroom: How is the teacher to blame? »

The Barrow County case has drawn comments and e-mails from around the country. Here is an astute note from a Californian in the information technology field.

I thought Andrew Karp raised compelling issues, and he was happy to allow me to post his comments. (Karp has a technology consulting firm,  Sierra Information Services, in Northern California.)

He writes:

Ashley Payne’s predicament is both upsetting and illustrative of the perils our “information society” faces.  Normative values for “privacy” and “appropriate conduct” are rapidly changing, largely fueled by Internet-based tools like social networking sites allowing near-instant access by others to our personal information, whether we like it or not.

My job as an independent information technology consultant and my personal experiences with the Internet inform my opinions about and reactions to Ms. Payne’s case.  She seems to have been done in by an anonymous predator who took innocuous information and …

Continue reading Facebook in the workplace: Take care on both sides »

I was going to strongly urge a rewording of the way the Cherokee County school spokesman explained how officials at Dean Rusk Middle School learned today that a 12-year-old-boy brought a gun and ammo to the Canton school. But the quote in the story was changed in the course of the day.

In the original posting of the story earlier today, the spokesman Mike McGowan was quoted as saying:

“He told a buddy who ratted him out.”

A reader sent me a note about the quote minutes after it appeared: ”Ratted? To quote my favorite AJC writer, Judas Priest!!! What the hell’s wrong with those people?”

In later stories, the “ratted” reference is gone, which I attributed to the spokesman recovering his sanity. We should never refer to kids who report classmates with guns as anything but heroes.

After I posted this originally Tuesday night, Cherokee spokesman Mike McGowan posted a response, which I am reproducing here. I didn’t understand what Mike was saying so I sent him an e-mail asking him …

Continue reading “Ratted out” or not, Cherokee gun story had a good outcome. »

As expected, public college students in Georgia will have to dig deeper to meet their bills next semester as the Regents grapple with new budget cuts.

Public college students including those at UGA will have higher fees next semester as a result of a Regents vote Tuesday.

AJC reporter Kristina Torres reports that the State Board of Regents voted this afternoon to double a mandatory student fee that, starting in January, will cost students up to an extra $100 per semester depending on which campus they attend.

Torres reports:

Regents instituted the fee last January, as the economy tanked and the state cut funding to Georgia’s University System. Now, university system officials said the state plans to cut an additional $41 million out of the higher education budget.

Increasing the student fee will make up about $24 million of that amount, according to the regents.

Students at Georgia’s research universities as well as Georgia Southern, Valdosta State, Georgia College and State, …

Continue reading Regents turn to college students to cover budget cuts »