Sunday, January 04, 2004

Well, after all that blogging in one sitting, I guess I'm ready to return to work tomorrow set to conquer all of public education's problems.  :)   6:31:39 PM    comment []

Wow, the AJC is just full of aritcles on important education issues today. In this editorial, the staff recommends redistributing school funds equitably throughout the state. OUR OPINION: EDITORIAL: Give rural schools more metro money Whether a child obtains a quality education in Georgia is often an accident of geography. Because of a funding formula that includes local property taxes, children in wealthier areas typically enjoy better schools than their less affluent peers. Even though Georgia has attempted to reduce the disparity by giving grants to poorer counties, a significant gap remains. I must admit, even as a an urban school teacher, that I think their suggestion is fair. 6:19:20 PM    comment []

Also from the AJC: Grade scales flunk consistency test  The letter grade that can save a slack student from summer school has disappeared from some metro Atlanta districts. I had no idea that some school districts had done away with D's. So it's just A,B,C or F. I wonder why they did that. And for those who do give D's, like us, the standard for what constitutes a C or D (in terms of numerical grade on a 1-100 scale) differs. Our definition of a D is only a 4 percentage point range, from 70-74. Others, according to this article, have even a smaller range for a D. The only rationale I can think is that the administrators are trying to prevent teachers from giving free "sympathy" passing grades (which is often what a D is) to students who show up but don't do the work. If you ask me, it's nonsense. They have to stop trying to micro-manage teachers. The other issue, addressed by the article, is that if there is going to be a statewide standard for gaining the HOPE scholarship based on a GPA, then there absolutely has to be a statewide standard in grading scales. As defined as that can be, anyway. 6:05:14 PM    comment []

From today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Perdue proposing 2 percent teacher pay hike Teachers would earn about $900 more in pay next year on average under the budget proposal Gov. Sonny Perdue will make to legislators next week.[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution] And it's not even a gubernatorial election year! 5:55:44 PM    comment []

Unruly Students Facing Arrest, Not Detention. Schools are increasingly sending students into the juvenile justice system for the sort of adolescent misbehavior that used to be handled by school administrators. By Sara Rimer. [New York Times: Education] I agree that it is going too far to cart students off to jail for refusing to conform to the school dress code, outright defiance, or super-disruptive behavior. I think there are two things driving this trend. One, schools are feeling more and more underresourced in their capacity to handle serious problem children. Funding is gone for in-school suspension and saturday work detail programs. And with unruliness becoming more and more common, schools can only handle so much. Second, it reflects the societal tough-on-crime trend of the last couple decades, seen in such things as 3-strikes laws and the insistence on delivering the maximum penalty for every crime. 5:42:46 PM    comment []