Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

Here is the video explanation of the state’s private school state scholarship by state Rep. David Casas, R-Lilburn. Please look at this to fully understand how this Legislature-approved program — characterized as a way for poor children in persistently failing schools to afford private schools — has become a back door for middle class parents to use tax dollars to pay their private school tuition bills.

Continue reading Here is the video urging private school parents to “scam” state for tuition money »

The investigation in The New York Times about the abuses of the Georgia Private School Tax Credit program has riled up a lot of people. (See earlier blog on this.)

The AJC has also written about this law, noting that the Georgia Legislature has enshrouded this questionable program in so much secrecy that it is near impossible for taxpayers to see where the money is going.

An investigative piece last year by AJC reporters James Salzer and Nancy Badertscher raised questions about the weak public accountability imposed on the program, which was created by the Legislature in 2008. (The bill was part of the general heave-ho given to public education that year.)

Last year, the Legislature made changes this year to the law that make it a crime for state officials to release key information about the program.  In contrast, other states with similar laws have strict public accountability rules including Florida.

Because of the lax language and virtual absence of oversight, a …

Continue reading Some private schools refuse to follow lawmaker’s advice and cheat the state »

Many people contend that the private school scholarships approved by the Georgia General Assembly were a back-door voucher and subsidy, that the money would not go to poor students in public schools to move to private schools as promised, but to students already in the private schools.

Reports that parents were making donations to schools that were then repackaged as “scholarships” for their own kids have been made to the Georgia General Assembly, which has ignored multiple reports of abuse and, in fact, enabled even greater abuse of the program.

In the last few years, the General Assembly has adopted a strong anti-public school posture, which remains puzzling given that nine out of 10 Georgia children attend public schools. But these legislators keep getting re-elected, so voters either don’t care or, more likely, don’t know what their lawmakers are doing.

A lengthy new New York Times investigation into these private school scholarships found that it’s no secret that the …

Continue reading Georgia’s private school scholarships: “Neovouchers” »

Too little time or too much?

A judge today sentenced former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail and 300 hours of community service for using a video camera to spy on his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi, during a romantic encounter in the dorm. Clementi later jumped from a bridge to his death.

The sentence didn’t satisfy either side. Ravi’s attorneys argued that he shouldn’t spend any time in jail, while prosecutors pushed for a much longer sentence for the charges, including invasion of privacy, witness tampering, tampering of evidence and a hate crime based on bias intimidation.

Telling the crowded courtroom that Ravi had no prior record, Judge Glenn Berman said, “I do not believe he hated Tyler Clementi … but I do believe he acted out of colossal insensitivity.”

This tragic case mobilized people all over the country to address the frequent bullying of gay teens.

According to the LA Times:

Judge Glenn Berman addressed Ravi before announcing his …

Continue reading Roommate in Rutgers spying/suicide case gets 30 days in jail. Is that fair? »

I have written a lot about the resurgence of segregated schools in the South, not by court order, but by housing choices.

Despite the hopes of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, court-ordered school desegregation never led to full community integration.

“Our nation, I fear, will be ill served by the court’s refusal to remedy separate and unequal education, for unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together, ” wrote Marshall in his dissent of the 1974 Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley.

That decision effectively blocked drawing from heavily white suburbs to integrate city districts with high minority populations. When the Harvard Civil Rights Project looked at race and education 10 years ago, it concluded that metro Atlanta’s suburban residential segregation was the cause of its school resegregation.

School resegregation is occurring at the same time that the United States is …

Continue reading A nation grows more diverse as many of its schools grow less »

A judge has granted an injunction allowing Jake Zimmerman, one of the East Paulding students arrested for a senior prank that escalated to costly vandalism, to attend his graduation ceremony. The judge overruled the school board, which voted last month to bar the student from attending.

Class president, Zimmerman admitted painting a skull and crossbones on the road outside the school, saying it was an annual tradition for seniors. But he said he left the scene before fellow pranksters moved to the school and painted vehicles and buildings, causing $7,500 in damage.

The school system suspended him for the duration of his high school career, banishing him to an alternative school. Unlike most of the teens, he appealed the decision, but the school board denied his appeal last month. Then, a school board member made a motion to heap on more punishment: prohibiting Zimmerman from attending his graduation ceremony. The teen said Wednesday that the board voted 6-1 in favor of …

Continue reading Judge shows more mercy toward accused East Paulding High vandal than school board »

This rates as one of the most moving education stories I’ve read in a long time.

It is about a law student who fled his war-ravaged homeland for America, took a job as a janitor at Columbia University, learned English and now, at age 52, earned a degree at the the university.

He is a remarkable man. And he has a story worth sharing.

From AJC.com. (This is only an excerpt. Try to read the full piece by AP reporter Verena Dobni.)

NEW YORK — For years, Gac Filipaj mopped floors, cleaned toilets and took out trash at Columbia University. A refugee from war-torn Yugoslavia, he eked out a living working for the Ivy League school. But Sunday was payback time: The 52-year-old janitor donned a cap and gown to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in classics.

As a Columbia employee, he didn’t have to pay for the classes he took. His favorite subject was the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca, the janitor said during a break from his work at Lerner Hall, the student union …

Continue reading A story to inspire us all: Immigrant janitor earns Columbia degree »

The APS cheating scandal has led the system to pursue principal firings in schools where there was widespread cheating by classroom teachers.

But some principals counter that they did not order teachers to cheat, so why are they to blame when their employees do the wrong thing. Are they responsible for the actions of their teachers? Even if they should have known something was amiss, what if they didn’t?

In the AJC story this week on her APS tribunal hearing, Slater Elementary School principal Selena Dukes Walton contended,  “I am not responsible for something I did not know about. I’m not responsible for the teacher.”

But in an interview with the AJC last week, APS Superintendent Erroll Davis said, “When principals say to me that ‘The investigators’ report said I wasn’t involved, why am I being removed from the job?’ I say, ‘Absolutely, you did not cheat but you failed. I put the malleable lives of young children in your hands and you failed.”’

Davis said, “You can predict …

Continue reading Are principals accountable for the cheating on their watch? Should they be fired? »

Updated Tuesday with statement from Anti-Defamation League:

This is one of those explosive stories that will get a lot of national attention before it is clear what went on and why.

First the news story from AJC.com:

A middle school teacher in South Carolina has been accused of dragging a student under a table during class, telling the boy “this is what the Nazis do to Jews,” police said Monday.

The 12-year-old student said he got up to sharpen a pencil at Bluffton Middle School on Wednesday when Patricia Mulholland grabbed him by his collar and said, “come here, Jew,” police said. The teacher then dragged him 10 feet under a table and made the comment about Nazis, according to police.

The seventh-grade teacher claims she was trying to teach the students a lesson about the Holocaust. The social studies teacher had a lesson on the Holocaust the day before. “What was a demonstrative attempt to teach about World War II and the Holocaust has been taken to mean an …

Continue reading Teaching the Holocaust or slavery: Is role playing effective or fraught with problems? »

In tandem with my earlier blog on the Fordham panel on digital learning, I want to direct you to a blog from Will Richardson, a former public school educator and author of several books on learning and technology.

Richardson writes in response to this week’s Education Innovation Summit at Arizona State University and begins with a series of tweets from educator and blogger Chris Lehmann about the Gates Foundation sponsored event. Lehmann is principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia and co-chair of EduCon.

Among Lehmann’s tweets about the summit: Educators – if you don’t see that there is a billion dollar industry wanting to take over schools using tech as the Trojan Horse, wake up…Jeb Bush has said: a) he does not read edu research. b) he does not care about anything that is not a test score. Problematic…This is what scares me – those who do not believe in schools will use edu-tech-speak to dismantle the things we hold most dear.

In his blog, Richardson …

Continue reading The business of education: Is the trend troubling you? »