education

Chris Knight's avatar

This community has lost a respected and admired leader… and a friend to many.

The sad word came late last night that Tim Scales, Vice-Chairman of the Rockingham County Schools system here in North Carolina, passed away yesterday morning. He had served on the board since 2000, and had been representing District 6 in the western part of the county.

Can’t express how torn up I’m feeling since yesterday.

Tim was… well, whenever I’ve thought of him, I’ve most especially remembered his exuberant smile and hearty disposition the very first time that we met. It was in August of 2006: the early days of that wacky school board election. I went to a meeting of the school board – figuring that if I was going to run for a seat on it that I’d better get watch and observe as much as I could.

Tim and I met after ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

The sad news is coming out of California today that Jaime Escalante has died at the age of 79, following a battle with cancer.

Escalante, originally from La Paz, Bolivia, was a teacher of math and physics in his own country for many years before coming to the United States. When he got here he could speak no English, began taking night classes to earn degrees in biology and calculus, and eventually received credentials to begin teaching in California.

And that’s where Jaime Escalante’s life really began to get interesting. After accepting a position at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, Escalante – appalled at how the school taught very little in the way of higher mathematics – took it upon himself to challenge the students at Garfield to take an advanced placement calculus course. Eventually the students proceeded to blow away darn nearly everybody’s expectations of them ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Don’cha wish we knew this when we were in high school!

(Oh who am I kidding? North Carolina’s government is so bass-ackwards on everything, the concept would never even get the chance to fly here…)

Anyway, an experiment being conducted by an Oxford neuroscience professor at Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside in Great Britain has had students starting classes an hour later than usual, at 10 a.m. The remarkable findings of the experiment thus far are that the later class time has caused an 8% drop in general absence and a 27% drop in chronic absenteeism. Furthermore, memory testing done on the students indicate that the best time for learning more difficult lessons is in the afternoon. Researchers believe that teenagers wanting to sleep in is not a matter of laziness, but merely a component of biology adjusting during the adolescent years.

(Or maybe it’s just that ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

A few days ago my friend and fellow blogger Matthew Federico addressed the situation with history education in the state of Texas. In case you missed that bit of news, last week the Texas State Board of Education voted 10 to 5 to make drastic changes to the history, social studies and economics curricula being taught in that state’s schools.

The vote occurred along split partisan lines. The ten Republicans on the board voted for the curriculum changes and the five Democrats opposed it. The results have been both hailed and condemned as giving the teaching materials a “conservative” and “right-leaning” slant, as opposed to what some construe is a “liberal” one.

The reason this is going to be a big deal for the rest of the country is because Texas is one of the biggest consumers in the highly lucrative business of school textbooks. So if textbook publishers ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Ahhhhh geez, not this sh-t again.

As if making an admittedly imperfect health care system even more broken isn’t enough, President Barack Obama now wants to “restructure” No Child Left Behind.

When the hell are we ever going to get a President that is going to be content to simply govern wisely, instead of being fixated on putting his imprint on everything?

So now Obama is determined to “improve” No Child Left Behind: one of the biggest blunders of the all-too-blunderful misadministration of George W. Bush.

Pssst… hey, Obama. Wanna do something for once that will make a lot of people sing your praises? Then don’t “overhaul” No Child Left Behind, but instead scrap the whole damned thing entirely!!!

If Obama did that one thing, then I might entertain the notion of casting a vote for him in 2012.

Would he do that? Probably not. Far too many ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Click here for the official purchase order for 27 Remington shotguns, deliverable to the Department of Education.

And here’s the full text, in case it goes down the proverbial “memory hole” (or if you’re too lazy to hit the link)…

Remington Shotguns
Solicitation Number: EDOOIG-10-000004
Agency: Department of Education
Office: Contracts & Acquisitions Management
Location: Contracts (All ED Components)

Synopsis:
Added: Mar 08, 2010 10:39 am

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) intends to purchase twenty-seven (27) REMINGTON BRAND MODEL 870 POLICE 12/14P MOD GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 GAUGE: 12 BARREL: 14″ – PARKERIZED CHOKE: MODIFIED SIGHTS: GHOST RING REAR WILSON COMBAT; FRONT – XS CONTOUR BEAD SIGHT STOCK: KNOXX REDUCE RECOIL ADJUSTABLE STOCK FORE-END: SPEEDFEED SPORT-SOLID – 14″ LOP are designated as the only shotguns authorized for ED based on compatibility with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.
The

...
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Chris Knight's avatar

If true, this is worse than George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. At least in that book the people of Oceania knew that the telescreens were everywhere watching them.

What I’d love to know is: how does a public school system – any public system mind ya – have enough money in these dire economic times to give a laptop computer to each and every student?

According to a lawsuit filed in federal court, administrators of the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania could and were using the built-in webcams on laptops given to students of Harriton High School to watch them in the privacy of the students’ homes (and obviously without knowledge or consent of the students or their parents). The revelation about the webcams came to light when Harriton High School Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko told student Blake J. Robbins that Robbins was “was engaged in improper behavior ...

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Rosewood Middle School in Goldsboro, North Carolina is in a money crunch like many schools across the country. So like most of those schools it held a fundraiser last year, selling chocolate candy bars.

But that didn’t raise anything. So with the principal’s blessing, Rosewood Middle embarked on a new scheme…

The school began selling grades.

For $20, a student would be able to add 20 points to a test grade: 10 points on two tests of the pupil’s choosing. Enough to raise a B to an A or possibly make a failing grade a marginally passing D.

Read all about it on the website of the News & Observer, which caught wind of the plot and ratted the school out. School administrators are now stopping the “fundraiser” and refunding any and all donations that might have been made (Rosewood Middle’s principal Susie Shepherd said that the plan had ...

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“You’ve never seen a street like Sesame Street. Everything happens here. You’re gonna love it.”

— Gordon (played by Matt Robinson)
the first words spoken on the first episode of Sesame Street
November 10th, 1969

Forty years ago today a new kind of television burst onto the scene. It was an educational program, but one that eschewed dour and boring lessons. Instead, fast-paced skits and high-brow humor were to be the norm.

And the cast of characters of this new show? An eclectic mix of adults, children, puppets, monsters, grouches… and one very big bird.

Forty years later and Sesame Street is still going strong! And after all this time Gordon is still right: we’ve never seen a street anything like Sesame Street. Everything does and has happened there.

And we’re still loving it.

So you know, what better time than this to put up another classic Sesame Street video? ...

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