Lockdown at Guilford Primary

This afternoon, an unidentified, unspecified threat made by telephone briefly forced the lockdown of Guilford Primary School. Thankfully, we’re told no students were injured and staff and administrators handled it professionally. We have no further info at this time.

E.C. 🙂

Black Parents Seek to Raise Ambitions: Wash. Post

Good parents, hopefully, have high expectations for their sons and daughters. But in the Northern Virginia (Washington DC)  suburbs of Loudoun County, a specific group of black parents have high expectations for their sons. They are pushing them to finish school on time, have options after they complete high school and not lower their test scores. See last month’s Washington Post for more on this.

Here’s an excerpt:

Twelve-year-old Alex Carter is an A student who loves science and reads a book a week. So it surprised his father when he announced last year that he didn’t want to enroll in an honors class that his teacher recommended for the following term.

“That class is for the smart people, the nerds,” Alex told him. His father replied, “Well, who are you?”

Alex is a junior league football player, an avid golfer and a lifelong suburbanite. He’s also one of only a handful of African American students in his seventh-grade class at Eagle Ridge Middle School in Ashburn. He dreams of becoming a professional athlete like his dad, Tom, who played cornerback for the Washington Redskins. But as he nears his teenage years in a predominantly white school in Loudoun County, his parents are concerned that he could abandon academic pursuits because he thinks they are better left to his white classmates.

That’s why Tom and Renee Carter joined last year with about 15 families, including the parents of nearly every black male sixth-grader, to push their sons to graduate on time in 2012 with options for the future and without lowering their expectations or test scores along the way. They call it Club 2012.

I think this is a good article to put in perspective. But here’s what i would add…I think all parents (of all races/cultures)should have just as high expectations for their sons (and daughters). All this is, my friends, is good parenting. And when you have good parenting, you have good children. When you have good children, it makes the job for teachers and public servants, much much easier.

E.C. 🙂

WS/FC Schools Charge $100 for Summer School: W-S Journal

Our neighbors to the west will charge $100 for students to enroll in summer school, partly in an effort to have students take summer school a little more seriously. See yesterday’s Winston-Salem Journal for more.

The article says: “Ninth-graders will be the first class having to meet new state graduation requirements, which include passing end-of-course tests in five subjects: Algebra I, Biology I, civics and economics, U.S. history and English I.

“Those requirements – and higher standards on math tests – mean that more students will need to attend summer school if they don’t pass the tests in those subjects, said Paul Puryear, the assistant superintendent for high schools, in the article. Before, students could fail the test but still pass the class if their grades were high enough.

“Students who have already taken end-of-course tests have not done as well as students in the past few years, Puryear said in the article.

“So far, 1,010 got scores low enough to need remediation in three subjects – Algebra I, Biology I and English I.

“For the same period last year, 692 needed remediation,” the article states.

Guess you can thank NCLB for that. Lovely…

E.C. 🙂

Bill Introduced to End Corporal Punishment: N&O

Today’s Raleigh News & Observer includes a story on a bill introduced in the State House to effectively ban the use of corporal punishment in all North Carolina public schools. It is supported by State Supt. June Atkinson and NCAE chief Eddie Davis.

“Chatham, Johnston, Franklin and Harnett counties are among those that allow corporal punishment in their public schools.  ‘It’s very rarely, if ever, used,'” said Harnett County Superintendent Dan Honeycutt, in the article.

Comments?

E.C. 🙂

Char-Meck Reforms Continue

Yesterday’s CLT Observer reports the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board appaorved a series of drastic cuts in an effort to “regain the public trust” before asking voters to approve another bond package. See article here.  

“Board member Vilma Leake said the community is too willing to spend more on prisons than education. And Tom Tate said a first-rate education is worth the money.

Tate said his job was “not to be money-saver, but an education advocate,” according to the article. 

Says the article, Trent Merchant said CMS helps more students by stretching dollars. And Kaye McGarry said the cuts wouldn’t harm instruction, and could build support for the bond.

“We have to bring the trust and credibility back to the school board,” she said to the Observer.

Wow…what a novel concept. Trust and credibility to the school board. Wow…

E.C. 🙂

GOPers Turn Against NCLB: Wash. Post

Finally…someone in DC gets some sense.

Several Republican lawmakers in Washington have publicly turned against Pres. Bush’s No Child Left Behind-leaves many children behind reauthorization. See today’s Washington Post for more.

“More than 50 GOP members of the House and Senate — including the House’s second-ranking Republican — will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush’s signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates.

“For a White House fighting off attacks on its war policy and dealing with a burgeoning scandal at the Justice Department, the GOP dissidents’ move is a fresh blow on a new front. Among the co-sponsors of the legislation are House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a key supporter of the measure in 2001, and John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Bush’s most reliable defender in the Senate. Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House GOP’s chief deputy whip and a supporter in 2001, has also signed on,” the article says.

And consider this paragraph from the article: “Some Republicans said yesterday that a backlash against the law was inevitable. Many voters in affluent suburban and exurban districts — GOP strongholds — think their schools have been adversely affected by the law. Once-innovative public schools have increasingly become captive to federal testing mandates, jettisoning education programs not covered by those tests, siphoning funds from programs for the talented and gifted, and discouraging creativity, critics say.”

Finally…

E.C. 🙂