Julie Woestehoff: Educational Accountability Doesn’t Have A Time Limits

I have a big gripe with the misuse and overuse of time in “education accountability.” I don’t like:
timed tests, the artificial “year” during which all students are supposed to make a “year” of “progress” which leads to…the worst practice of all — flunking and labeling students who supposedly do not make the proscribed amount of progress in the proscribed amount of time.

My son would have been held back in elementary school because of his poor reading skills. He did finally learn to read, and reads well according to his SAT, but it didn’t happen on school time. If he had stayed in school, he most likely would have fallen behind in other areas as a result of not progressing at the expected pace in reading.

As for learning to meet deadlines and expectations (an expectation of factory workers?), he’s managed to figure that out as well without the rigid direction of the school system. He’s been taking community college classes and has seemed to adjusted to classroom expectations without any problems. It doesn’t have to be done just one way.

Taxpayers, school districts and the state are entitled to know the number, some argue, because they bear the brunt of the costs.

How do we pay for public schools in Texas? Let’s see, locally we pay property taxes which everyone pays whether they rent or own. And do we have a state income tax that these aren’t filing and paying for the state’s dwindling share? No, we have a sales tax that everyone pays.

So when Berman say’s that “illegal aliens aren’t paying for those school buildings,” he’s wrong again, as usual.

Why are we so intent on punishing the children who have no say in the matter. If someone brings their kids with them on a hold-up, the kids aren’t put in jail. They’re provided with social services so that they can overcome the problems caused by their parents and become functioning, contributing members of society. You want to get rid of illegal immigrants, fine, but focus on the adults involved who make the decision to come here and those who decide to hire them so that the rest of us can have lower price housing and food.

Parents outraged over finance class reading – Monday, Dec. 6, 2010

Taylor and his wife Aimee became upset when they learned that their son had been assigned the book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” in his personal finance class at Bedford High School.

“Nickel and Dimed” is a first-person account of author Barbara Ehrenreich’s failed attempts to make a living at various minimum wage jobs across the country. Written in response to 1996 welfare reform, the book offers a serious critique of the current economic system, which Ehrenreich argues preys on the poor.

That’ll teach Mike Leach to embarrass Texas Tech University during contract negotiations.

This is the definition of payback, everyone. Nearly a year after the fact.

The record will show that Leach, Tech’s unorthodox yet highly successful coach, was fired Wednesday for mistreatment of a player with a “mild” concussion. The reality is Leach was fired because he took Texas Tech for everything it had last February during contract negotiations — and made the university brass look like bumbling fools in the process.