Mike Rice should have been fired the moment his abusive behavior was discovered. Let’s not stop there. The athletic director and the president of the university need to go also. They were aware that Rice treated his players like this. For that matter, it is their business to know how he treated his players.
Mike Rice hurled racial slurs, homophobic slurs, hit players, pushed them and threw basketballs at their legs and groin. He was verbally and emotionally abusive. Who on earth thinks this behavior is acceptable? It is unacceptable behavior for any coach at any level of competition. Read more…
Prince William County teachers plan to attend the BOCS meeting tomorrow en mass. Prince William County teachers have not had a step increase in 3 years. They are not expected to get one until 2016. They have had a couple of very small raises. They will once again ask for the supervisors to set an advertised tax rate that sustains a teacher raise and reduced class sizes.
Teachers want the Supervisors to set a tax rate high enough to accommodate a step increase, raise, and reduction in class size. The uninformed often wonder why teachers don’t approach the PWC School Board for this raise and reduction, rather than the BOCS. They do. However, school boards, in Virginia, do not have the power to tax so they must get the funds from the governing body, in this case, the Board of County Supervisors. The BOCS sets the tax rate and so they are who the teachers must appeal to.
Yes, we have discussed this topic before. However, it is getting very close to becoming a reality. Most educators are horrified. The politicians all love it. Parent opinion is mixed. Just wait until their kid’s school doesn’t get an A. Then there will be a hue and cry. NCLB looked good on paper also. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
The House of Delegates passed legislation Monday that would assign letter grades to public schools in Virginia just as teachers grade students from A to F.
The bill, a conspicuous piece of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s education reforms, won final House passage on a bipartisan 54-40 vote with six delegates not voting.
Egging McDonnell on was Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who said that this plan helped improve his state’s schools. For starters, Virginia isn’t Louisiana. The two states have very different demographics.
The book Laura Murphy wants removed from Fairfax County classrooms is considered a modern American classic. It is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a masterpiece of fiction whose author’s 1993 Nobel Prize in literature citation said that she, “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
But Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” Murphy said, depicts scenes of bestiality, gang rape and an infant’s gruesome murder, content she believes could be too intense for teenage readers.
“It’s not about the author or the awards,” said Murphy, a mother of four whose eldest son had nightmares after reading “Beloved” for his senior-year Advanced Placement English class. “It’s about the content.”
A measure obligating Virginia public schools to receive A through F grades passed the Virginia House of Delegates Feb. 4 in a 54-40 vote, despite objection from state education groups.
The bill is part of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s education reform plan. Under the proposed legislation, local school boards, in addition to establishing accreditation standards, must develop a grading system for their districts’ schools by Aug. 1. The grades schools received would be public.
RICHMOND – Lawmakers from across Virginia are pushing a half-dozen bills this legislative session to let public schools start classes before Labor Day.
Delegate Kaye Kory, D-Falls Church, is among legislators sponsoring bills to repeal Virginia’s “King’s Dominion law,” which prevents local schools from opening before Labor Day unless they get special permission from the state. Read more…
From the State of the County Address (Corey Stewart):
We invested in our teachers and public servants. We provided the revenues the Schools needed to increase teacher pay and remain competitive, and we provided County staff a merit increase for the first time in four years.
When Corey? last year? This year, The upcoming year?
That is a blatant lie. You have not invested in the Prince William County teachers. Every year they come to the BOCS and ask for money. Their chief concern has been about class size. They asked the Supervisors to set the tax rate at a few cents more. That was not done.
Students receive a letter grade on their report cards and so, too, would their public school under a proposal Gov. Bob McDonnell unveiled Thursday as part of the next phase of his K-12 education legislative agenda.
Each school would be assigned a grade, A-F, which McDonnell’s office contends would help parents and others to fully understand how their child’s school is performing.
Oh dear God, when will the politicians stay out of education! Surely Gov. Ultra-sound didn’t think this one up all by himself. Let’s take a careful look at what would happen if the good governor gets his way.
First off, who decides the grade? Will there be a list of objects the school is to master? Will it be based on SOL scores? Hasn’t there been enough stress on SOL scores already? What will be done to ensure that schools with high populations of minority students, ESL students, economically disadvantaged students, and special ed students aren’t the schools making the D’s and F’s?
Just when you thought nothing could be worse than No Child Left Behind (NCLB), think again. The Common Core State Standards could be worse and a whole lot worse. To date, Virginia is one of 5 states that has not adopted the Common Core State Standards: Nebraska, Alaska, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia. That’s a scary group to be grouped with but in this case, I think it might just be a good thing.
As states across the country implement broad changes in curriculum from kindergarten through high school, English teachers worry that they will have to replace the dog-eared novels they love with historical documents and nonfiction texts.
The Common Core State Standards in English, which have been adopted in 46 states and the District, call for public schools to ramp up nonfiction so that by 12th grade students will be reading mostly “informational text” instead of fictional literature. But as teachers excise poetry and classic works of fiction from their classrooms, those who designed the guidelines say it appears that educators have misunderstood them.
Proponents of the new standards, including the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, say U.S. students have suffered from a diet of easy reading and lack the ability to digest complex nonfiction, including studies, reports and primary documents. That has left too many students unprepared for the rigors of college and demands of the workplace, experts say.
Hampden-Sydney College, an all-male school in central Virginia, is investigating an election-night incident in which a group of students upset about President Obama’s reelection set off fireworks, threw bottles and then shouted racial epithets at members of a minority student organization, officials said Thursday.
Some in the group also threatened violence against the Minority Student Union members, college officials said, but there was no physical contact. Officials said about 40 students were involved, but it was unclear how many were active and how many were bystanders.
A black helicopter hovering overhead can lead those below to become worried, scared or suspicious. But when a large aircraft positioned itself over a Prince William County high school’s football field last Wednesday afternoon, students who had just been released for the day excitedly watched as a stuffed bulldog with a red-bandanna parachute emerged.
The big-eyed pup drifted to the turf, delivering a message from a junior boy to a senior girl: “Fall Fest?”
Nearly 7,000 Virginia children whose families have opted to keep them out of public school for religious reasons are not required to get an education, the only children in the country who do not have to prove they are being home-schooled or otherwise educated, according to a study.
Virginia is the only state that allows families to avoid government intrusion once they are given permission to opt out of public school, according to a report from the University of Virginia’s School of Law. It’s a law that is defended for promoting religious freedom and criticized for leaving open the possibility that some children will not be educated.
What’s it all about? Emanual and union president Karen Lewis each tell a different story. Lewis’s can be heard in the above video.
But when it comes to exactly what the strike it about, the stories of the city and the union vary dramatically. Shortly after Lewis finished saying that the union was striking over contract negotiations, teacher evaluations, lack of proper air conditioning, and broader pedagogical issues — such as class size and out-of-class services for poor kids — Emanuel addressed the press.
“This is totally unnecessary, this is avoidable, and our kids do not deserve this,” he said.
The mayor, who fashions himself an education reformer, wore no tie. While Emanuel usually doesn’t mince words, his anger appeared more internalized, more resolute. At moments, he appeared to be on the verge of tears. His hand shook visibly as he took a sip of water in between statements. “This is a strike of choice,” he said.
Several Prince William County teachers, some of whom were placed on administrative leave, will have to undergo retraining after giving students inappropriate help on state-mandated exams, and students were required to retake tests, according to a school official.
County schools spokesman Phil Kavits said the teachers, who were supposed to interact minimally with students during testing in the spring, were overzealous in offering assistance
Twenty-eight students had to retake tests, Kavits said. He could not say exactly how many teachers were involved.
The testing problems were first reported Tuesday in the Washington Examiner.
Governor Bob O’Donnell is giving himself another black eye. This time it is for dodging the issue at UVA. Not only has McDonnell dodged the issue, it is he who appointed the leader of the ouster, Rector Helen Dragas, from a mere post on the Board of Visitors to the University Rector (chairman of the BoV).
Dragas has bungled her attempt to overthrow popular President Teresa Sullivan. 42 Department chairs have taken a stand against her behavior. The Faculty Senate has condemned her and the Board of Visitors in support of Sullivan. Student and faculty protests and demonstrations have been ongoing since the announcement of Sullivan’s ouster.
