Controversial public-school theorist and expert user of erasers on official documents, Chancellor Michelle Rhee has awarded her reformer of the year designation to… Tennessee House Representative John Ragan.
According to Rhee’s official political apparatus, StudentsFirst, this is how Ragan won:
Representative John Ragan has consistently voted to do right by kids when it comes to education. Rep. Ragan supported an overhaul to Tennessee’s outdated tenure system, and in doing so helped guarantee that school system leadership has the ability to ensure that great teachers are in every classroom. And Rep. Ragan cast an important vote to end arbitrary limits on the number of charter schools in Tennessee.
According to the actual record, this is what Ragan did:
So what is the real and only qualification that Rhee found that pumped Ragan to the top reformer? I can only guess because he was successful in dumping tenured teachers. Everything else is secondary. Michelle Rhee has an agenda, and it clearly has almost nothing to do with benefitting public school kids, and everything to do with justifying her terrible record at the DC School District.
If you live in Tennessee, your family is down on their luck and you’re struggling in school, then you’re about to get a little more hungry if a bill goes through:
Failure to comply with attendance requirements, or to receive a proficient or advanced score or a grade point average sufficient to ascend to the next grade, will be a failure to comply with the personal responsibility plan required by this bill and will result in a 30 percent reduction with regard to the temporary assistance payment until such time as compliance occurs.
Study hard kids. Your dinner depends on it. Glad Reps Evans and Dennis are thinking about the kids.
OK, aside from the fact that it is Stuart Varmint talking to The Other Dumb One on an episode of Petunia and Pals, and aside from the fact that Varmint is claiming The Kenyan Usurper is trying to bribe 4-year olds with free stuff to vote for him in 15 years (WTF?), don’t we already have public education in this country? In what way is having pre-school any different from any other grade level?
BOISE – Coeur d’Alene Sen. John Goedde, chairman of the Idaho Senate’s Education Committee, introduced legislation Tuesday to require every Idaho high school student to read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and pass a test on it to graduate from high school.
When Sen. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, asked Goedde why he chose that particular book, Goedde said to laughter, “That book made my son a Republican.”
[snip]
Sen. Cherie Buckner-Webb, D-Boise, questioned the choice of the book for a graduation requirement. “We have a wide variety of children who will be trying to graduate and reading and grasping some of these things, and their cultural context may be different,” she said.
Goedde responded, “I don’t plan on moving this forward – it was a statement.”
Nevertheless, as a formally introduced bill, the measure will be read across the desk in the Senate Wednesday morning and will receive a bill number; it will be among the bills posted on the Legislature’s website for the session and preserved in its records.
OK, it is not moving forward, but there it is.
“When I read Atlas Shrugged, and it’s been probably 30 years since I read it, but it certainly gives one a sense of personal responsibility,” Goedde said.
Like the personal responsibility to introduce legislation you have no intention of moving forward, wasting everyone’s time and money for your own personal vendettas? Congratulations, sir, you have learned the true essence of Atlas Shrugged: Fuck you, I got mine. What an assrocket.
Jeebus, the guy who will never admit that he has been wrong about anything (and lord, has he ever been right about anything?) is going to teach a class on humility? But the kicker is: No Final Exam. Just like in Bobo’s life. All pass and no fail.
(CBS News) Republican nominee Mitt Romney said Tuesday that Democratic politicians have a conflict of interest in dealing with teacher unions because the unions contribute so heavily to their campaigns. He suggested that money should somehow be diverted or cut off, although he did not offer details.
The Willard Mechanism is an imperious incompetent, some sort of designed-by-committee experiment in artificial intelligence and run by oafs. If he really doesn’t see that he has just projected the problem of the entire Citizens United unlimited corporate cash to buy a presidency for plutocrats, then he’s even more dumb than I suspected.
(CBS News via Scissorhead Some Techie in the Tip Line)
Watch Petunia get her angry xenophobia on as she discusses teaching English as a second language for adults in Clevelandistan.
That it is court-ordered doesn’t concern her, nor does she make any mention that children succeed when their parents are involved in their education, and frankly, how can they be involved if they don’t understand English?
“You go to school, you rack up a lot of school loans, that was your choice. We also have to understand that those choices have eternal consequences. And consequences that ripple throughout society…If you can’t afford to go to college, go to the free public library. I did it. It works.”
–Glenn Beck
Well, I’ll enjoy what that swine Graves has to say on getting praise from the dim-witted assistant to the snake oil salesman.
College graduates are the fastest-growing group of consumers who have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past five years, according to a new study by a financial nonprofit, which underscores the broad reach of the Great Recession.
Such a mensch, that Gregory is. Let’s skip over the very pertinent question about defunding public schools to give Bob’s Big Boy a chance to explain his temperament.
Imagine you are an idiot and a wingnut representative. Now imagine that you have a kid in public school. Now imagine that you propose cutting funds to public schools
(CBS/AP) RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina lawmaker doesn’t think it was right for his daughter and her third-grade class to write to him and other elected officials protesting possible cuts in state education spending.
Republican state Rep. Mike Stone says his daughter asked in her note to “please raise the budget, dad” and help keep two teacher assistants employed.
Stone told WRAL-TV: “As I read through this (letter), anger completely shot through me, and I was trying to hold myself together. (It’s unconscionable) to know any education system would use a daughter against her father.”
Only 14 High Schools have applied to have President Carebear speak at their commencement ceremonies.
The White House is ramping up an effort to promote a nationwide competition to decide which high school wins a commencement speech by President Obama.
An internal White House memo indicates that the White House is facing a shortage of applications less than a week before the deadline.
The competition was extended from the February 25 deadline until Friday, March 11 after few schools met the original application deadline. CBS News has learned a White House Communications Office internal memo dated February 22 noted “a major issue with the Commencement Challenge.”
“As of yesterday we had received 14 applications and the deadline is Friday,” the memo said. The memo also urged recipients to, “please keep the application number close hold.”
I dunno, could it be that no one wants Chimpy 2: Electric Boogaloo to use their graduation ceremonies as a 2012 Goat Rodeo photo-opp and to address the impressionable youth of America?
The three-year survey found that teens who had oral sex by the end of ninth grade were at the highest risk of having sexual intercourse during high school. These teens had a 25-percent chance of having intercourse by the end of ninth grade and a 50-percent chance by the end of 11th grade.
Meanwhile, teenagers who did not have oral sex until the end of 11th grade had only a 16-percent chance of having intercourse by the end of that school year.
The survey also found that most sexually active teenagers will start having oral sex and intercourse within the same six-month period.
Um, my memory of it–of course so long ago I could be mistaken–was that it was about 10 minutes between having oral sex and then having intercourse… but that’s withing the same 6-month period, so I guess the research is valid.
I’m still trying to understand this. Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Bachmannsylvania, opines on the Mayoral race in Washington DC:
Mayor Fenty lost after the teachers’ unions led a campaign against him and Michelle Rhee. Fenty’s loss is further evidence that despite all their rhetoric about ‘the children,’ what the teachers’ unions really care about is getting more money for jobs they can’t lose at schools that produce students who are not prepared to compete.
Maybe he’s hoping that someone in DC can educate Bachmann-the-Nut?
Now it appears that Texas kids will have to glean those points from supplementary materials rather than new textbooks that were supposed to arrive in the fall. The state normally replaces textbooks on a rotating basis every 10 years. With Texas facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion in 2011, the money isn’t going to be there. Textbooks covering the new science standards would have cost $400 million, and the Legislature is already expecting a bill of $888 million for textbooks already ordered.
Yes, the native sons and daughters of the Lone Star State will have to learn about the significant contributions of the confederate soldiers elsewhere, because the state is broke, and will not be replenishing their old textbooks this year.
But not to fear, y’all: they found enough money stashed away somewhere so that they hope to produce a Science supplement about Evolution’s failabilities. And there will be a test: they upgraded the exit exam to match the new standards before they rolled out the new text books. Lots’a luck with that!
Oakwood Elementary’s principal was placed on administrative leave Friday as school officials investigated why life like, 4-inch-long plastic fetus dolls were given to dozens of third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students.
We’ve seen indoctrination before, but this one takes the cake. Plastic fetus dolls? Anyway, the Xristian Xrazy principal also was coercing staff and students to attend Bible Study and pray before tests. Some of the teachers of other faiths walked out of staff meetings which began with prayers and requests to testify.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—California moved one step closer Thursday to establishing an annual day honoring Ronald Reagan, the former president, governor and actor.
The state Senate unanimously passed a bill designating Feb. 6 as Ronald Reagan Day. The measure encourages schools to spend the day commemorating Reagan’s life and accomplishments.
Jeebus!, I wonder if the curriculum will include that Ketchup is a vegetable?
For every Predator missile we fire at an Al Qaeda target here, we should help Yemen build 50 new modern schools that teach science and math and critical thinking — to boys and girls.
Yes, it is still happening, and I know it is hard to believe, but the so-called sex education programs that were forced upon a generation of America’s youth during the Chimpy McStagger Reign of Error (and then renewed once the Dims took over, go figure), have been shown once again to be remarkably ineffective when compared to comprehensive sex education.
One of the many problems of the Xristian Xrazy sex education program is that there is quite literally no way to measure success in with maintaining your purity until marriage, and yes, this falls into the very Clinton-esque definition of what “is, is.”
So while the Xristian Xrazies set up Purity Balls, and the modern-day chastity belt pledges for the fallen Daughters of Eve, and in some locals there is a male equivalent, the urge to merge is never addressed.
The problem is not that kids don’t know that Tab A goes into Slot B, the problem is that they do not know about disease, pregnancy prevention, or what to do when accidents happen. Interestingly, the statistics show that teen pregnancy spikes when it is an abstinence-only education program, and perhaps more telling, the teenage mother population is exploding in the red states of the Bible belt.
You link to me, I link to you; but I do not link to commercial eCommerce sites. Yes, it is that simple. Send me an email to let me know. Tengrain AT mockpaperscissors DOT com.
