Samantha Fitzpatrick, shown on the
left in a mug shot and on the right in a school yearbook photo, was
arrested Tuesday for an alleged sexual relationship with an underage
student, according to a police report.
(Fond Du Lac County Sheriff
department / Ripon Area School District)
A former teacher in Wisconsin was
charged Tuesday following an alleged ongoing sexual relationship with an
underage student, according to a report from the Ripon Police
Department.
Fitzpatrick was charged with child
enticement, sexual assault of a student by school staff, exposing a
child to harmful material and obstructing an officer, police said.
Per the arrest report obtained by Fox News, officials
were provided information in April about “an inappropriate relationship”
between Samantha Fitzpatrick, 28, and an underage teenager at Ripon
High School, where Fitzpatrick worked at the time. The teacher, who left
her job in May, was reportedly having marital problems at the time of
the alleged relationship. Two teachers who spoke to authorities claimed to see
the teen and Fitzpatrick together often, and one added that the pair
“would both be missing from school on the same days and late to school
on the same days,” the report said. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS SMOKED MARIJUANA IN OFFICE EVERY DAY BEFORE SCHOOL BEGAN, COPS SAY When interviewed, the student told an officer that he
was not sexually involved with Fitzpatrick, had never been alone with
her and “never sexted, texted, or communicated by phone,” police said.
When questioned again later about the nature of their relationship, the
teen reportedly claimed he’d joked to friends about having sex with
Fitzpatrick. But according to the report, another student told
police that the pair had "done stuff" and based on what the teen had
said, the pair had sexual relations at the teacher's house and a hotel.
Police said the student also recalled dropping the teen off at a gas
station, where he allegedly said Fitzpatrick would pick him up. Police said they also spoke with Fitzpatrick who
similarly denied having a sexual relationship or any type of
communication with the teen, adding that she didn’t have his phone
number. Officers learned that both statements denying the
situation were false after uncovering “extensive electronic
communication” between the pair thru the Facebook Messenger app, the
report said. They also reportedly recovered data from Fitzpatrick’s
phone, including 67 phone calls, messages and the teen’s phone number,
the latter two of which had been deleted. SPECIAL ED TEACHER, 24, FIRED FOR ALLEGED TRYST WITH MALE STUDENT IN CLASSROOM “Sexually graphic messages” were exchanged between May
2016 and November and detailed that the pair wanted to have, and had
previously had, sex with each other, the report said. In one message,
Fitzpatrick also reportedly expressed “her love” for the student. According to a statement from Mary Whitrock, the
superintendent of the Ripon Area School District, the school is aware of
the police investigation and said Fitzpatrick “voluntarily” quit her
job after employers complained of her attendance record. She stopped
working there in May, they said. Whitrock’s statement also said the school had
previously notified parents of an internal investigation into
Fitzgerald, unrelated to her attendance, but police determined at the
time that there was “insufficient evidence” to move forward. Upon
receiving new information in April, police then decided to open an
investigation, the school said. “Student safety is an essential part of the District’s
purpose and mission,” Whitrock said in the statement. “The District has
adopted policies and administrative guidelines designed, in large part,
to ensure student safety. The District’s administration and staff are
trained to enforce these policies and guidelines and to enlist the
assistance of law enforcement as necessary. We trust that our
administrators and staff are taking necessary actions to ensure student
safety.”
______________________________________
More College Kids Pledge to Remove Genitals if Trump Builds Wall
s reported previously, 2 students at The University of California
stated that they would publicly remove their penis’ if Trump enforced
the existing USA-Mexico border wall. In a continuance of this trend, 4
students at the University of Washington have promised to remove pieces
of their reproductive anatomy if Trump builds the wall.
Washington Sophomore Trent Griliphaen said he was inspired by the
movement at The University of California, and that he “thinks that
Trump’s construction of the wall is just an extension of his penis, and
an expression of Patriarchal rape culture. Really, by building the wall,
we are raping the Mexican people, and I am no longer willing to be a
perpetrator of rape culture. If I remove my penis, I am making a
statement that I reject this mentality.” Griliphaen was apparently the first student at UW to embrace this
movement, and according to him, he has inspired three other male
students to emasculate themselves, in public, when construction of the
new border wall commences. “I heard about what was happening in California, and new that this
kind of movement could gain traction up here – we are a progressive
state. I kind of feel guilty, I’m removing my penis, but one of the
other guys is going to castrate himself, and he’s even considering
taking off a couple of fingers” stated Griliphaen. Source: www.usadailyinfo.com Like Us On Facebook – USA DAILY POLITICS!
SAN FRANCISCO — Zabrina Reyes of San Diego
threw 11 passes into an oversized Dr. Pepper can Saturday, December 6
during halftime of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) Championship Game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
As a result of her throwing accuracy, the University of California -San Diego freshman was awarded $100,000 towards her college tuition. Reyes revealed that she entered the competition prepared. It was
reported that she had built a replica target and practiced three times a
week for an entire month. She was even deft enough to grab two
footballs at a time from the rack with one in each hand, cutting down
her motion time.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I felt like I could have practiced more, but I guess it was enough,”
said a modest Reyes, one of 16 finalists picked out of over 1,700
participants. Reyes, who is studying arts and sciences, was emotional after the
victory, bursting in tears in front of the nationally televised
audience. She said the prize money would take some weight off of her and
her parents’ shoulders, and that it would “lessen the financial
burden,” allowing her to concentrate on her studies. “I just started crying, that’s all I could do,” Reyes said in a
telephone interview via a video story on CBN News 8 with Matt Johnson. She thanked the soft drink company
for the opportunity to participate in the event then thanked her family
and friends in both San Diego and Philippines for their support. Many
on social media were so impressed with her passing skills that they
called for Reyes to play quarterback for their favorite college football
team. “Out of my three sisters I’m like the least athletic, so it’s pretty
funny,” said Reyes, who saw the tweets directed her way and admitted the
most quarterbacking she would be doing in the future is maybe playing a little toss out in the yard. In Reyes’ profile page for the contest, she said she would like to
“cure ignorance,” “redefine abnormal” and has “always had an itch to
understand the people around me.” Part of the scholarship money will
also go towards funding school for her younger sister.
The washington Post Reports January 3, 2017 By Sari Horwitz
More than 1,100 law school professors nationwide oppose Sessions’s nomination as attorney general
Trump's Transition: Who is Jeff Sessions?
Play Video1:29
President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he plans to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
By Sari Horwitz January 3 at 2:25 PM
A group of more than 1,100 law school professors from across the country is sending a letter to Congress on Tuesday urging the Senate to reject the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general.
The letter, signed by professors from 170 law schools in 48 states, is also scheduled to run as a full-page newspaper ad aimed at members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will be holding confirmation hearings for Sessions on Jan. 10-11.
“We are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States,” states the letter, signed by prominent legal scholars including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School and Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California at Irvine School of Law.
[Trump’s pick for attorney general is shadowed by race and history]
The professors — from every state except North Dakota and Alaska, which has no law school — highlight the rejection of Sessions’s nomination to a federal judgeship more than 30 years ago. Robin Walker Sterling of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, one of the organizers of the letter, said that 1,000 professors signed on within 72 hours. “Clearly, there are many, many law professors who are very uneasy with the prospect of Attorney General Sessions, and they are willing to take a public stand in opposition to his nomination,” she said.
The civil rights case that haunts Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general
Play Video7:20
The career of Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general, has been shadowed by his prosecution of the "Marion Three." Sessions brought forth the voter fraud case as a U.S. attorney in 1985, and his critics alleged the charges to be racially motivated. (Video: Dalton Bennett/Photo: Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)
The law professors wrote that some of them have concerns about Sessions’s prosecution of three civil rights activists for voter fraud in Alabama in 1985, his support for building a wall along the nation’s southern border and his “repeated opposition to legislative efforts to promote the rights of women and members of the LGBTQ community.”
[These are all of the law schools represented in the letter sent opposing Sen. Sessions]
“Nothing in Senator Sessions’ public life since 1986,” the letter states, “has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge.”
Sessions’s former chief counsel William Smith, who is African American, has said that people who call Sessions racially insensitive are “just lying. And they should stop the smear campaign.”
Content from Taboo on FX
Examining the underbelly of Regency London
The British capital was the height of sophistication in the early 1800s. But it was also full of secrets and decadence.
“The people making these allegations against Senator Sessions don’t know him,” Smith said in an interview. “In the last 30 years, they probably haven’t spent 10 hours with him. I spent 10 years working with him . . . as his top legal adviser. There are not statements that he made that are inappropriate.”
Allegations of racial insensitivity were made against Sessions at a 1986 Senate hearing when he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to be a federal judge. His nomination was defeated after being opposed by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, People for the American Way and the NAACP, which is now protesting his nomination for attorney general, calling it “despicable and unacceptable.”
Supporters of Sessions note that his nomination has been endorsed by Gerald A. Reynolds, a former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In a letter to the Judiciary Committee’s highest-ranking Republican and Democrat, Reynolds, who is African American, said, “Sessions is a man of great character and integrity with a commitment to fairness and equal justice under the law.”
More than 100 former U.S. attorneys who served under Democratic and Republican presidents have written to the Senate in support of his confirmation.
Sarah Flores, a spokeswoman for Sessions, said Friday in response to the NAACP statement that Sessions “has dedicated his career to upholding the rule of law, ensuring public safety and prosecuting government corruption.”
“Many African-American leaders who’ve known him for decades attest to this and have welcomed his nomination to be the next Attorney General,” Flores’s statement said. “These false portrayals of Senator Sessions will fail as tired, recycled, hyperbolic charges that have been thoroughly rebuked and discredited. From the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Sheriffs’ Association to civil rights leaders and African-American elected officials, to victims’ rights organizations, Senator Sessions has inspired confidence from people across the country that he will return the Department of Justice to an agency the American people can be proud of once again.”
_______________________________
For Profit Schools Like The University of Phoenix Being Investigated ByThe FBI If Your Federal Student Loans Are From The University of Phoenix, Act Now. Many for-profit schools like The University of Phoenix are under fire by the US Senate for luring students with false promises. Some schools inflated their successful job attainment numbers after graduation. Others paid employers to hire their grads for one day just so the school could say their grads were being hired by these companies. Students enrolled under these false pretenses racked up tens of thousands of dollars in Federal Student Loan debt which they can not pay off because they are not finding the jobs they were promised.
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Brittany Mirelez, a freshman at Paradise Valley
Community College in Maricopa County, Ariz., is suing college
administrators over its speech policies. (Photo: Brittany Merelez)
A student at an Arizona community college is challenging her
school’s so-called “speech zone,” arguing the policy “severely limited”
her right to free speech and due process. Brittany Mirelez, a freshman at Paradise Valley Community College in
Maricopa County, Ariz., was kicked out of the designated speech zone in
October for failing to obtain permission to use the space. Mirelez had set up a table to converse with students about a group she is trying to start called the Young Americans for Liberty. The group, which has branches nationwide, advocates for limited government and liberty-minded candidates. Originally, Mirelez said a Student Life official granted her
permission, but shortly after setting up her table, a different official
told her she had to leave because she didn’t get approval to use the
space 48 hours in advance.
The Daily Signal is the multimedia news
organization of The Heritage Foundation. We’ll respect your inbox and
keep you informed.
“It was just rude and uncalled for,” Mirelez, 18, told The Daily
Signal. “I didn’t really understand the big deal, so we had a little
argument for 10 minutes. Then I finally was like, ‘I’ll go inside even
though I don’t see the difference between being inside versus outside.’” After being told that she violated campus policy, Mirelez packed up her belongings and left the area. But two months later, The Daily Signal has exclusively learned that Mirelez filed a federal lawsuit
in the U.S. District Court of Arizona against Dr. Paul Dale, president
of Paradise Valley Community College, along with two other campus
officials. In the lawsuit, Mirelez alleges “the fear of arrest or punishment
severely limited [her] constitutionally-protected expression on campus.” “This is unnecessary and unconstitutional,” Mirelez said, arguing her
free speech shouldn’t be confined to a particular space on campus. In the lawsuit, her attorney argued that because Paradise Valley
Community College receives public funds, “the First Amendment rights of
free speech and press extend to campuses of state colleges.” Mirelez is not seeking specific monetary damages, but she is asking
the school and its officials to cover her legal fees and more
importantly, to change its campus “speech zone” policy. The Daily Signal obtained a copy of the school’s current policy,
which states that students are entitled to “speak in public and to
demonstrate in a lawful manner” Monday through Friday between the hours
of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. That speech is limited to one particular outside
walkway.
According to court documents, the speech zone “comprises less than
0.26 percent of the entire Paradise Valley Community College campus.” “Colleges are supposed to be a place where ideas are freely shared,
not gagged or suppressed,” Tyson Langhofer, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom,
which is representing Mirelez in her lawsuit, told The Daily Signal.
“College really works against its own purpose when it places restrictive
speech rules above freedoms that the First Amendment guarantees to
students and all other citizens.” Free speech zones are a contested policy among college campuses, and often find themselves subject to lawsuits. This is not the first lawsuit that members of Young Americans for
Liberty have brought forth against speech codes. In March, three
students from Dixie State University filed a similar lawsuit,
alleging the university refused to approve promotional flyers about
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Cuban revolutionary Che
Guevara. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, those flyers “disparage[d] and “mock[ed]” those individuals. On Sept. 17, Dixie State settled with the students, agreeing to
revise the campus speech policies and pay $50,000 in damages and
attorney’s fees. >>> Read More: Students Score Victory for Free Speech at Dixie State University Mirelez said she is “hopeful” to reach a similar outcome. And for the
most part, the political science major said she has the support of her
teachers and fellow students. “I think a lot of people would approve of getting the [speech zone]
taken away,” she said. “A lot of students have told me it’s weird that
they only see us in one spot, that they would like to see us around
campus more.” “You don’t wake up and say I kind of want to sue my school to get rid of something,” Mirelez added. “But it’s gotta happen.”
Wesleyan student government cuts campus newspaper funding in half after dissatisfaction with diversity
MIDDLETOWN — In a move they say is aimed at
increasing diversity, Wesleyan University's student government has cut
more than half of the funding for the school newspaper, leading some to
question the body's commitment to free speech and the very diversity it
seeks to promote. The Wesleyan Student Assembly voted Sunday to
decrease the Wesleyan Argus budget from $30,000 to $13,000, and divide
the savings — $17,000 — among the four top campus publications,
including the Argus. The money will be used to pay students in
work-study positions. The move comes after an outcry in September in response to an
editorial the Argus published critical of the Black Lives Matter
movement. Outraged by the opinion piece, students circulated a petition
calling for the student government to defund the paper. The
assembly on Sunday approved the resolution 27-0, with four abstentions,
and agreed to make the budget change in fall 2016 after spending the
next year discussing the best way to implement it.
But some on campus, including the paper's editor, Rebecca Brill, and Wesleyan President Michael Roth, have questioned the cuts. "I'm
bothered by this as a symbolic gesture," Brill said in an email. "The
[student assembly] mandating the way a student publication operates,
especially in light of a controversial op-ed, sets a dangerous precedent
for student press at Wesleyan and in this country."
On
Twitter Tuesday, Roth wrote, "I believe students will realize that it's
a big mistake to cut newspaper funding, and they can find ways to
support alternative publications." James Smith, president of the
Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, said any weakening of the
newspaper by the student government, no matter the reason, is wrong. "This
is the government controlling the press and that's not the way America
works," Smith said. "Whether it's directly connected to the op-ed or
not, if you're attempting to defund a campus publication for whatever
reason, one has to wonder about a commitment to diversity and to a free
press."
Wesleyan
junior Alexander Garcia, who wrote the resolution, said it was in part
aimed at helping to get more diverse views into the pages of the Argus. "I
believe newspapers should have complete editorial freedom," Garcia said
Tuesday. "The main thing I'm concerned about is helping them be
inclusive to a greater number of students." Garcia, an East Asian
studies major, said the Argus is the most widely read publication on
campus and would likely end up with more work-study positions than the
other publications. Providing paid positions and course credit
would remove a financial barrier that keeps some students from
participating in the newspaper, Garcia said. Garcia said the cuts
could result in the paper, which publishes twice a week, eliminating one
of its editions, reducing paper waste and costs. He said he has met
with Argus leadership for more than five hours combined, and taking the
next year to discuss the issue will provide plenty of time for the paper
to determine if it needs to continue printing two editions. "It
essentially means we won't be able to continue printing twice a week,"
Brill said Monday. She said she is in favor of reducing slightly the
number of copies printed because many go unread, but said the Argus is
not in favor of eliminating either its Tuesday or its Friday edition. The Argus also posts its stories to its website, wesleyanargus.com. The
controversy began in September when the Argus published a lengthy op-ed
by frequent contributor Bryan Stascavage, who questioned whether Black
Lives Matter was achieving positive results or creating extremism in its
ranks. Students petitioned the student assembly to defund the
paper, and the Argus issued an apology for not publishing a counterpoint
and for poor fact-checking. "The conversation has moved away from
the op-ed and it's become more of a question of racial diversity,
socioeconomic diversity and saving money," Brill said. She said
the Argus is accepting donations to help it continue to publish twice a
week, and will also continue pressing the student government to restore
funding. Wesleyan administrators supported the paper's decision to
publish the Sept. 14 op-ed and defended the student's right to free
speech even if others did not share his opinions. In their own op-ed,
three top university officials said that other students have the same
right to respond with their own opinions and that censorship diminishes
diversity.
___________________________
Harvard's prestigious debate team loses to NY inmates
BOSTON – A group of New York inmates has toppled Harvard's prestigious debate team. It took place at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, a
maximum-security prison in Napanoch. The Ivy League undergrads were
invited last month to debate the inmates who take in-prison courses
taught by Bard College faculty. Harvard's team won the national title this year and the world championship in 2014. But the inmates are building a reputation, too. The club has notched
victories against teams from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and
the University of Vermont. Against Harvard, the inmates were tasked with defending the position
that public schools should be allowed to turn away students whose
parents came to the U.S. illegally. Harvard's team responded, but a
panel of neutral judges declared the inmates victorious.
Former Mississippi State cheerleader Taylor Corley left school for Playboy
Former Mississippi State cheerleader Taylor Corley left school for reality show, she says
Taylor Corley had to give up cheerleading after she posed for Playboy.
A Mississippi State cheerleader is choosing Playboy over pom-poms. After posing naked for the men's magazine last November, Taylor Corley was asked to choose between her Playboy gig and the squad. "Me
and my coaches decided that it was either Mississippi State
cheerleading or my Playboy career. Pretty much the decision was made for
me that I was no longer going to be cheering for them," she told a Memphis radio show Memphisport Live earlier this week.
And of course, she got a reality show in the process. The
scandal erupted a month ago when bloggers who read the magazine noticed
that one of the centerfolds bared a striking resemblance to the
cheerleader, despite the model going under the name "Taylor Stone". Corley said she was discovered at a casting call in Atlanta. "It
was kind of a joke at first," she said on the radio show. "And then it
actually ended up turning into something. It was a little nerve-wracking
at first because I've never shown my boobs in front of the camera
before, but it was pretty fun!" After she decided to leave the
squad, Corley announced she would be leaving school too - to pursue a
career in reality television. She said she'll be appearing on a new
pilot called 'Girl Swagg', which "brings 4 women of various backgrounds
together to resolve challenges," according to the show's Facebook fan page. A website for the show says it will debut in the spring. The college freshman said her change in plans shocked everyone. "I
don't think they were expecting something like that to come from a
cheerleader, especially in such a conservative state," she said. nmandell@nydailynews.com
Teacher: No longer can I throw my students to the ‘testing wolves’
Veteran teacher Dawn Neely-Randall and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown look at a post Neely-Randall wrote for The Answer Sheet about the reform movement. (Photo by Tom Traut)
Dawn
Neely-Randall, who just started her 25th year of teaching, is sick and
tired of the effects that obsessive standardized testing is having on
her students. She is a member of the Badass Teachers Association, a national group of more than 51,000 educators who
came together to organize resistance to school reform that focuses on
using standardized test scores for high-stakes accountability purposes
and that ignores the role that poverty plays in student achievement. In
this powerful post she explains how her work as a teacher has been
skewed by mandated standardized testing and how students are reacting.
One child, she wrote, “sobbed” because she cared so much about her test
score, and “it became blatantly obvious how one high-stakes standardized
test had just negated the year’s worth of reading confidence and
motivation she had worked so hard to attain.” And, she wrote, “I can no
longer be a teacher who tries to build these 10-year-olds up on one
hand, but then throws them to the testing wolves with the other.” Here’s the whole post. By Dawn Neely-Randall I’m
not a celebrity. I’m not a politician. I’m not part of the 1 percent. I
don’t own an education testing company. I am just a teacher and I just
want to teach. My life changed dramatically after a Facebook lament I wrote was published on The Answer Sheet last
March. I was explaining how weary I was from the political addiction to
mass standardized testing and how educationally abusive it had become
to so many of the students in my care. Last spring, you
wouldn’t find the fifth-graders in my Language Arts class reading as
many rich, engaging pieces of literature as they had in the past or
huddled over the same number of authentic projects as before. Why?
Because I had to stop teaching to give them a Common Core Partnership
for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) online
sample test that would prepare them for the upcoming PARCC pilot
pre-test which would then prepare them for the PARCC pilot post test –
all while taking the official Ohio Achievement Tests. This amounted to
three tests, each 2 ½ hours, in a single week, the scores of which
would determine the academic track students would be placed on in middle
school the following year. In addition to all of that, I
had to stop their test prep lessons (also a load of fun) to take each
class three floors down to our computer lab so they could take the
Standardized Testing and Reporting (“STAR”) tests so graphs and charts
could be made of their Student Growth Percentile (SGP) which would then
provide quantitative evidence to suggest how these 10-year-olds would do
on the “real” tests and also surmise the teacher’s (my) affect on their
learning. Tests, tests, and more freakin’ tests. And
this is how I truly feel in my teacher’s heart: the state is destroying
the cherished seven hours I have been given to teach my students
reading and writing each week, and these children will never be able to
get those foundational moments back. Add to that the hours of testing
they have already endured in years past, as well as all the hours of
testing they still have facing them in the years to come. I consider
this an unconscionable a theft of precious childhood time. One
parent sent me her district’s calendar showing that students would
complete 21 mandated (K-3) assessments before a child would even finish
third grade. When I asked an Ohio Department of Education employee
about this, she insisted there were not that many tests. When I read
them to her one by one from the district’s calendar, she defended her
position by saying that some of them were not from her department, but
from another one. “But it’s the SAME kid!!!” I told her. Indeed, it sure seems that school just isn’t for children anymore. As
I sat in my recliner writing about my frustrations all those months
ago, I felt that I was sitting alone in a darkened theater watching a
horror movie with my students in the starring roles. After it was
published, however, it seemed as if the lights had been switched on and I
found that the room was full of people from across the nation and they
were just as traumatized as I. Many Ohio teachers told
me they were afraid to speak out because it might hurt their rating
based on the new Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES) framework for
scoring (now House Bill 362). When I, for example, worked through this
process last year, I was evaluated based on my students’ test scores as
well as the evidence of “teacher performance” my principal had collected
on me. One 40-minute lesson alone took me over seven hours to write up. Since
OTES also evaluates teachers based on their “positive rapport” as well
as their “active volunteer, community, and family partnerships,” of
course, teachers were afraid to speak out against harmful test practices
and risk sounding negative and, of course, they worried about not being
perceived as a team player if they didn’t want to be a part of test pep
rallies or hosting parent PARCC information nights. When
teachers are being rated based on student test scores as well as their
own attitudes about such, speaking out becomes a very risky business. Principals
too are afraid to speak out. Why? What if their disgruntlement empowers
their staff to rally against all the testing and parents started opting
their children out of taking the tests? In Ohio, a zero is given in
place of a score if a student does not take a standardized test. This
zero is then averaged into the school’s rating on the state report card,
which then affects the district’s rating. Administrators don’t have a
union backing them to give them the freedom to advocate on behalf of
students; most of them only have term contracts. Parents
were afraid to speak out because they are worried that school officials
might consider them trouble makers or, worse, hold it against their
child. And parents have no idea how their child’s teacher feels because —
back to the beginning — many teachers are afraid to speak out. One
parent told me recently that she asked her daughter’s teacher if she
thought her 10-year-old could handle the stress of the new PARCC pilot
test and the teacher said she had been advised to say “no comment” when
it came to either topic of the Common Core curriculum or testing. (What
country do we live in, anyway?!) Many students didn’t
speak out as much as they acted out. Cried. Gave their parents a hard
time about going to school. Disengaged in class. Got physically sick. Or
became a discipline problem. Struggling students struggled even more. Last
school year, one of my fifth-grade below-level readers was working hard
and making great gains. However, during the big Ohio Achievement
Assessment in reading at the end of April, when she had already put in
about an hour and a half of testing with an hour to go, the stress
became too much and she had a total meltdown. As much as I had already
reminded her “this is just one test on one day in your life” and “just
do your best,” this student was smart enough to know that this “one
test” would determine the class she would get into in middle school and I
knew she was worried about being pulled out of class for remediation
(again). This
child sobbed because she cared so much and watching her suffer became a
defining moment for me. It became blatantly obvious how one high-stakes
standardized test had just negated the year’s worth of reading
confidence and motivation she had worked so hard to attain. I can no
longer be a teacher who tries to build these 10-year-olds up on one
hand, but then throws them to the testing wolves with the other. My
student had trusted me and jumped through hoops for me all year long,
but then in her greatest moment of testing distress, all I could do was
hand her some tissues. A lot of people in our Buckeye
state (and country) are making nutty decisions that aren’t at all good
for children; ones I feel sure teachers could prove are harmful in a
court of law (don’t even get me started with the testing that’s going on
in kindergarten classes with 5-year-olds). And most
disconcerting of all, in my entire 24-year career, not one graded
standardized test has EVER been returned to the students, their parents,
or to me, the teacher. Also, for the past three years here in Ohio,
released test questions have no longer been posted online. In addition,
teachers have had to sign a “gag order” before administering tests
putting their careers on the line ensuring they will not divulge any
content or questions they might happen to oversee as they walk around
monitoring the test. This lack of transparency seems
very suspicious to me and many educators and parents alike are beginning
to agree that testing companies have been given a “full faith” free
pass for way too long. Aren’t schools supposed to be in
the business of teaching and learning? If we’re forced to stop
instruction to give state tests, shouldn’t a student’s results at least
be used to help further that student’s academics? Just how exactly is
my student taking a high-stakes standardized test at the end of the
year, the test questions of which I never see, the scored tests and
essay questions which are never returned to the child, helping that
fifth-grader to learn? If
you are still with me, let’s talk about Ohio’s 8-year-olds who are
getting caught right in the middle of the madness. Our state legislature
has mandated a Third Grade Reading Guarantee that fails an 8-year-old
an entire school year even if he or she is only one point off from
passing a 2 ½-hour standardized reading test (the same amount of time
as a tenth-grader taking an Ohio Graduation Test), which is first
administered in October. That same 8-year-old must try
to pass yet another 2 ½-hour reading test again in the spring. If the
child fails again, the child must take yet another (shorter) test to try
to get into fourth grade. So, apparently, a third
grader is going to fail a school year based on tests that the teacher
and parents have never seen, neither the questions nor the answers, and
yet, the test company held the key to the specific errors the student
made and could have learned from all along the way, after the very first
test was given in October? In my opinion, this is complete and utter
education malpractice. Are the third graders failing the test or is the test failing the third graders? Let’s
add to that all the test-scoring nightmares that have been reported in
state after state after state (students receiving zeros due to scoring
errors, missed graduations due to erroneously failed tests, parents
receiving incorrect scorecards, blank pages found on tests, appealed
scores found to have been miscalculated, etc…) and what does our nation
do? It keeps shelling out millions upon millions of dollars for
standardized testing. Shouldn’t our country demand
accountability from the testing company? Is simply accepting phantom
test scores from assessors even good business? One Ohio
School Board member shared with me that although she asked, the testing
company would not allow board members to take the same PARCC tests the
students would soon be mandated to pass. Shockingly, she was told that
board members could not see a sample test in its entirety until the
students piloted them. She said the legislature had, indeed, mandated
that Ohio third-graders pass a reading test that not one legislator or
Ohio School Board member had even seen; one that had not yet even been
written. Also,
please note: If so many of our schools are seen as “failing,” yet so
many of our students are using a test company’s test prep materials
($$$) which are being reported to the state via the test company’s
computerized program ($$$) and then taking the test company’s multitude
of standardized tests ($$$), which are then assessed by the test
company’s evaluators ($$$), and then remediation is done with students
using, again, the test company’s intervention materials ($$$); and are
then taking the same test company’s own graduation test ($$$) that the
test company has prepared the K-12 materials for in the first place…….
then, just exactly who, or what, is really failing that child? But have no fear, dropouts can later take a GED ($$$) administered by the same testing company. As
for my language arts classroom, just give me some uninterrupted time
with my students, some paper and pencils, and a great book and I’ll show
you what amazing things my fifth-graders can do. I’m
just a teacher, but I do propose that we (myself included) stop the
education bickering, the lawsuits, the union bashing, the political
polarization and the spinning of our wheels and all take a moment to at
least start SOMEWHERE to be the adults in the room and start a
patriotic, non-partisan revolution for lasting, real school reform on
behalf of our students who are already getting slammed by way too many
societal woes. Let’s all come together to find one area,
at least ONE, in which the majority of our citizenship (legislators and
constituents alike) can agree will be in the best interests of our
nation’s youth. I think I know one starting place that
not one person could dispute would benefit students and their
learning. I can’t imagine how anyone, other than a test company
executive, could say this request is unreasonable. I hope you agree so
our country can then move on and figure out a Reform #2. So, may I, just a teacher, speak? Transparency in Education Reform #1 :
No student, in the United States of America, will be given a
high-stakes standardized test by any state or testing company unless
said standardized test is returned scored, and in its entirety, to the
parents, teacher, and child in an efficient and timely manner. Can
we at least start there? Let’s just then see how “failing” our schools
really are. Let’s publicly lay the tests out, in full K-12 panoramic
view, and evaluate how many tentacles of testing are being inflicted
upon the psyches of our children. Let’s analyze if these tests are
truly measuring what we would like and if these tests are, indeed, an
appropriate measurement tool to be used to determine “good” or “bad”
teachers or to label, or flunk, our children. Let’s just see what
exactly is wrong with the answers our students are giving, anyway. And
let’s do it quickly, because we might just be failing an entire
generation. However, in the meantime, beware. Remember
that the current climate of education bashing will keep wafting down
into the ears of our children until they take to heart that in those
failing schools sitting in the classroom of those “bad teachers” can be
found them, the “failing” students. Is this the way we do education today in the United States of America? Is this the way we treat the children on our watch?
Members
of the Badass Teachers Association during a demonstration in Washington
D.C. against corporate school reform this past July (Photo by Dawn
Neely-Randall)
Obama to announce 'free' two-year college education, hashtag tops Twitter
Barack Obama to announce "free" two-year college plan.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
On Thursday, Politico reported that President Obama is set to announce a budget-busting proposal that would provide "free" two-year community collegeeducation to American students of all ages. The announcement, Twitchy added, caused the hashtag #FreeCommunityCollege to become the number one trending topic in the United States on Twitter. The proposal, Politico said, has no official price tag, but White
House officials said it would be "significant." Nevertheless, the White
House said that if all 50 states participated, as many as nine million
students would benefit and could see an average savings of $3,800 in
tuition. The claim sounds eerily familiar, as Obama claimed Americans
would save $2,500 in premiums once Obamacare was passed. That promise,
however, never came to fruition. USA Today reporter Gregory Korte did the math and found that Obama's plan as announced would cost $32.4 billion. “What I’d like to do is to see the first two years of community
college free for everybody who’s willing to work for it,” Obama said in a
Vine video
Thursday. “It’s something we can accomplish, and it’s something that
will train our workforce so that we can compete with anybody in the
world.” Of course, there would be lots of caveats and loopholes as there are
in any government program. Students would have to maintain a C+ average
and attend school at least half-time. Additionally, community colleges
would have to offer programs with credits fully transferable to
four-year colleges. The federal government would fund up to three-quarters of the average
cost of community colleges. States would be asked to pick up the rest
of the tab. Taxpayers would naturally be hit hardest. “I hope we’ve got the chance to make sure that Congress gets behind
these kinds of efforts to make sure that even as we rebound and grow in
2015, that it benefits everybody and not just some,” Obama added. The
video, Politico noted, was just a preview of the plan Obama intends to
unveil at the upcoming State of the Union speech. White House director Cecilia Muñoz said Obama wants to make two-year
college “the norm in the same way high school is the norm now.” But the
Institute for College Access and Success, an organization Politico said
normally sides with Obama, called the measure “a wolf in sheep’s
clothing.” According to the group, costs like living expenses,
textbooks and transportation, are left out of the deal. "Obama's 'free' 2yr college is accompanied w/no proposal to
accomplish or pay for it," one Twitter critic said. "Blatant political
pandering." Others, knowing that Republicans would be hammered if they oppose the
plan, attacked the proposal as a cynical political ploy. "GOP wants to
ban college!" one Twitter critic said, anticipating the attacks certain
to come from liberal Democrats. "So let me get this straight," another person tweeted. "Obama wants
us to pay for 2 yrs of community college to teach stuff unlearned in 12
yrs of public school." "Swell," added conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. "Obama wants
#FreeCommunityCollege so Common Core-impaired American kids can have 2
more yrs of brainwashing." Several wondered how much more "free stuff" American taxpayers could
handle. Others slammed it as another way to soak taxpayers while
redistributing wealth. The only winners, some argued, would be tenured
professors and university administrations. It's not known if a GOP-led Congress would fight the measure.
Politico said that administration officials claim the idea has
bipartisan support, citing the Tennessee Promise program, the brainchild
of Republican Gov. Bill Haslam. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., plugged
Haslam's program on the Senate floor Wednesday, Politico added. But some are ecstatic about the idea, Twitchy said. "Wow," one
person tweeted, calling two years of "free" college "epic." The Twitter
user went on to say that "there are no words for the awesomeness." At
least not until the bill comes due. As many noted, nothing is truly
"free." At some point, the bill has to be paid. And Obama's track
record on such promises isn't exactly stellar.
Megyn Kelly Stops By The ‘O’Reilly Factor’ To Destroy Sandra Fluke’s Hobby Lobby Argument
When Fox News host Megyn Kelly was a guest on The O’Reilly Factor,
host Bill O’Reilly played a clip of Sandra Fluke blasting the decision
by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow certain companies like Hobby Lobby to
exempt themselves from aspects of the Obamacare contraception mandate.
Fluke criticized the decision as just another way to restrict women’s
reproductive choices. Megyn Kelly takes about 90 seconds to set Fluke straight on a common
misunderstanding about the court ruling, explaining that birth control
pills are still mandated, while emergency contraceptives are not.
Changmaszeto / Wikimedia CommonsOne of the supposed selling points of
the Common Core standards is that they are "internationally
benchmarked" in order to make the U.S. education system more
competitive with better systems in other countries. Implement
Common Core, and U.S. students will catch up to Chinese students in
no time—or so proponents of national standards claim. Even if that's true, it may not be a good
thing. The
New York Times recently published a fascinating
interview with Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the
University of Oregon. Zhao was born in China; unlike many American
intellectuals, he does not think U.S. schools should try to emulate
China. "If the United States and the rest of the West are concerned
about being overtaken by China, the best solution is to avoid
becoming China," he said. Chinese schools stamp out individuality and make kids spend all
their time preparing for exams that are focused on "narrow
intelligence." This produces fewer creative and entrepreneurial
people, which is precisely what the authoritarian national
government of China wants, according to Zhao. Zhao warned that the kind of standardization offered by Common
Core is a danger to a free culture and a free economy. Relevant
excerpts from the interview below:
Q. You have said that traditional Chinese
education actively “harms” children. How? A. It basically ignores children’s uniqueness,
interests and passion, which results in homogenization. It forces
them to spend almost all the time preparing for tests, leaving
little time for social and physical activities. It also places them
under tremendous stress through intense competition, which can
damage their confidence and lowers their self-esteem. Q. Is the United States becoming like China in
education? How? A. The U.S. has certainly become more like
China in recent years. The No Child Left Behind Act has increased
the stakes and usage of standardized testing. President Obama’s
Race to the Top and other initiatives continue to push testing into
schools and classrooms by associating test scores with teacher
evaluation. The Common Core State Standards Initiative has been
pushed to many states, creating de facto national standards in math
and English language arts. So American education today has become
more centralized, standardized and test-driven, with an
increasingly narrow educational experience, which characterizes
Chinese education. Q. Will this damage America? A. I believe so. Because a narrow education
experience that is centrally dictated, uniformly programmed and
constantly monitored by standardized tests is unlikely to value
individual talents, respect students’ interest and passion,
cultivate creativity or entrepreneurial thinking, or foster the
development of noncognitive capacities. But it is the diversity of
talents, passion-driven creativity and entrepreneurship, and
social-emotional well-being of individuals that are needed for the
future economy.
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Put Down the Cupcake: New Ban Hits School Bake Sales New Requirements May Squeeze Out Gooey Fundraising Fare; Fat Standard
At Chapman School in Nebraska, resourceful
students hawk pizza and cookie dough to raise money for school supplies,
field trips and an eighth-grade excursion to Washington. They peddle
chocolate bars to help fund the yearbook. But
the sales won't be so sweet starting this fall. Campus bake sales—a
mainstay of school fundraisers—are going on a diet. A federal law that
aims to curb childhood obesity means that, in dozens of states, bake
sales must adhere to nutrition requirements that could replace cupcakes
and brownies with fruit cups and granola bars. Jeff
Ellsworth, principal of the kindergarten through eighth-grade school in
Chapman, Neb., isn't quite sure how to break the news to the kids. "The
chocolate bars are a big seller," said Mr. Ellsworth.
Photos: Which Treats Are In and Out at School Bake Sales?
The restrictions that took effect in July stem from the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by first lady
Michelle Obama
and her "Let's Move!" campaign. The law overhauled nutrition
standards affecting more than 30 million children. Among the changes:
fatty french fries were out, while baked sweet potato fries were deemed
to be fine. The law also required the
U.S. Department of Agriculture to set standards for all food and
beverages sold during the school day, which includes vending machines,
snack carts and daytime fundraisers. It allowed for "infrequent"
fundraisers, and states were allowed to decide how many bake sales they
would have that didn't meet nutrition standards. Without
state-approved exemptions, any treats sold would have to meet calorie,
sodium, fat and other requirements. The law permits states to fine
schools that don't comply.
Forget
about buttery, salty popcorn, for instance. Kernels sold on site during
the day must contain no more than 230 milligrams of sodium per serving
until 2016, when it drops even lower. No more than 35% of calories in an
item can come from total fat. A graphic put out by the USDA shows where some snacks stand. Six
chocolate sandwich cookies at 286 calories would be out, but a 4-ounce
fruit cup with 100% juice at 68 calories would make the cut. Also out: a
large doughnut at 242 calories and a 1.6 oz. chocolate bar with 235
calories. Homemade fare is more challenging to measure, schools say. Each
state can mandate the number of daytime fundraisers held each year that
buck the nutrition requirements. But so far, 32 states have opted to
stay strictly in the healthy zone, according to a draft report from the
School Nutrition Association, which said the final number could change
before the school year begins. That
means students in those states, which range from Alabama to California
to Texas, can't sell fatty or sugary fare that doesn't meet the federal
requirements.
"For some districts, this will be a
huge change," said
Julia Bauscher,
president of the School Nutrition Association and director of
school and community nutrition services at Jefferson County Public
School in Louisville, Ky. "There's a lot of fear among school food
directors that we will have to be the food police." The
Obama administration said it has provided states flexibility with the
rules, which cover schools that participate in the federal school meals
programs. "We defer to the states to make decisions that made sense to
them," said Sam Kass, executive director of Let's Move! Tennessee will allow schools to sell food items that tip the federal scales for 30 days each year. "Schools
have relied on these types of sales as revenue streams for sports,
cheering clubs, marching bands," said David Sevier, deputy executive
director of the Tennessee Board of Education. "We get the obesity issue,
but we don't want to jerk this out from under the kids." In
advance of the law, some schools had already banned students from a
near-sacred activity: setting up tables to sell boxes of Girl Scout
cookies during the day. There are also those that have replaced
food-centric fundraisers with calorie-free events such as wrapping-paper
sales, pie-throwing events and bowl-a-thons. Others have prohibited
homemade fare in favor of processed items where the nutritional
information is calculated and displayed. At
least 12 states have also already adopted limits on bake-sale foods on
their own—providing a taste of what's to come for hundreds of schools
nationwide. "We used to have a carnival
with a cake walk, now we do a book walk," said Adam Drummond, principal
of Lincoln Elementary School in Huntington, Ind. "The students get to
pick a book." Child obesity has more
than quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of children 6-11, in 2012,
18% were obese. That is up from 7% in 1980, according to the CDC. Texas
has had nutrition requirements since at least 2010 that cover
fundraisers, but had allowed campuses to have three events a year during
the school day where students could sell candy or other restricted
items. This year, it didn't adopt such exemptions. "Some
don't follow the spirit and set up bake sales right after the bell
rings," said Christine Jovanovic, of Austin, who is a member of the
parent-teacher association at Canyon Vista Middle School and Westwood
High School.The result of the new requirements may be more processed-food products. "We
use prepackaged food because it has to have nutritional requirements
posted," said Keli Gill, president-elect of the Arkansas PTA, where the
state has had nutrition standards for bake sales for a few years. "Items
like apples are perishable and don't last as long, so we don't want to
waste money and have it go bad on us." Schools are also grappling with how to monitor food sales so as not to end up in the penalty box. Davis
High School in Kaysville, Utah, was fined more than $15,000 during the
2012-2013 school year for selling certain snacks and carbonated
beverages near the lunch area while meals were served, which isn't
allowed under federal requirements. The Utah Department of Education
conducted on-site visits and found the infractions. The fine was reduced
to $1,297, according to Christopher Williams, a district spokesman. Said Tennessee's Mr. Sevier: "It's not like we're going to have a brigade of black helicopters coming in to check."
If
you watch college sports on television, you’ve probably seen the ad for
Enterprise Rent-A-Car featuring former college athletes working behind
the counter at your nearby Enterprise location. Enterprise – which hires
more entry-level college graduates annually than any other company in
the U.S. — likes recruiting college athletes because they know how to
work on teams and multitask. “We see a lot of transferable skills in athletes,” Marie Artim, vice president of talent acquisition at Enterprise, told me. Even
so, Enterprise, like many employers, still finds today’s college
graduates severely lacking in some basic skills, particularly problem
solving, decision making, and the ability to prioritize tasks. “This
is a generation that has been ‘syllabused’ through their lives,” Artim
said, referring to the outline of a class students receive at the
beginning of a college course. “Decisions were made for them, so we’re
less likely to find someone who can pull the trigger and make a
decision.” Bosses, of course, have long complained that newly
minted college grads are not ready for the world of work, but there is a
growing body of evidence that what students learn — or more likely
don’t learn — in college makes them ill-prepared for the global job
market. Two studies in just the past few weeks show that the clear
signal a college degree once sent to employers that someone is ready for
a job increasingly has a lot of noise surrounding it. One study is the result of a test
administered to 32,000 students at 169 colleges and universities. It
found that 40 percent of college seniors fail to graduate with the
complex reasoning skills needed in today’s workplace. The test, the
Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus, is given to freshmen and seniors
and measures the gains made during college in critical thinking, writing
and communication, and analytical reasoning. The results of the
test found little difference between those students who graduated from
public colleges and those who went to private schools. Not surprisingly,
students who graduated from the best colleges did better than everyone
else on the test as seniors, but their gains since taking the test as
freshmen were actually smaller than those students who graduated from
less elite schools. The
big difference between the skills of graduates depended on their
college major: Students who studied math and science scored
significantly higher than those who studied in the so-called helping and
service fields, such as social work, and in business, which is the most
popular college major. A second study released this month found a similar disconnect
between what employers need and the readiness of college seniors. In a
pair of surveys by the Association of American Colleges &
Universities, would-be graduates said college armed them with the skills
needed for the job market. But employers disagreed. On a range of
nearly 20 skills, employers consistently rated students much lower than
they judged themselves. While 57 percent of students said they were
creative and innovative, for example, just 25 percent of employers
agreed.
Wesleyan College Newspaper Loses Thousands in Funding After Publishing Negative Black Lives Matter Op-Ed Wesleyan College
A private liberal arts college’s student government unanimously
decided to slash its student newspaper budget following intense
controversy over an op-ed that was critical of the Black Lives Matter
movement.
The opinion piece published in the Wesleyan Argus on Sept. 14 was titled, “Why Black Lives Matter Isn’t What You Think.” Within a few days, according
to the author of the piece, ”all hell broke loose.” Hundreds of copies
of the student newspaper were destroyed, anonymous social media apps
buzzed with negativity directed at the paper and the author, and a
petition circulated the campus demanding that the paper be defunded.
Image via Facebook/The Wesleyan Argus
On Sunday, the Wesleyan Student Assembly Senate voted 27 to 0, with four people abstaining, to pass a resolution
cutting the Argus’ funding by more than half and redistributes that
money to other campus publications for paid worker positions and digital
innovation. That funding would be allocated through measuring online
data analytics and the student body’s vote. “The Argus, which was founded in 1868, is recognized as the oldest
twice-weekly student newspaper in the country,” the newspaper’s
editor-in-chief and executive editor wrote. “The current parameters of
the resolution would place tight restrictions on the number of issues
The Argus would be able to print each semester.”
According to the student newspaper, their funding will be reduced to $13,000 from $30,000 for the upcoming academic year. A member of the student senate suggested the student newspaper print “only special edition issues.” In the op-ed in question, staff writer Bryan Stascavage, an Iraq War veteran, wrote:
I warned in an article last semester that a movement that
does not combat its own extremists will quickly run into trouble. The
reasons why are now self-evident. If Black Lives Matter is going to be
the one responsible for generating these conversations, then a
significant portion of that conversation needs to be about peace. They
need to stand with police units that lose a member, decrying it with as
much passion as they do when a police officer kills an unarmed civilian. [Black Lives Matter supporter Michael] Smith does have a point,
though. An organization cannot be labeled based of [sic] a small
percentage of their membership. There is a reason why so many have shown
up to protests across the country: there is clearly something wrong,
and wrong enough to motivate them to exit their homes and express their
frustration publicly. That is no small effort. The system is clearly
failing many, and unfortunately they feel like they will only be
listened to if their protests reach the front pages of the news. And so
far, they are correct.
Stascavage continued, “It boils down to this for me: If vilification
and denigration of the police force continues to be a significant
portion of Black Lives Matter’s message, then I will not support the
movement, I cannot support the movement. And many Americans feel the
same. I should repeat, I do support many of the efforts by the more
moderate activists.” Following his article, Stascavage said he received more than just
criticism. Students shouted at him on campus, he received anonymous
messages and he was referred to as a “racist” several times.
The Argus published a separate staff editorial
a few days later in which the paper’s co-editors apologized for the
“distress” Stascavage’s opinion piece caused their peers and apologized
that a counter-argument was not published alongside it. The editors also
promised to ensure that the newspaper was a “safe space for students of
color.”
Yet the WSA still decided to slash the paper’s funding. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit
organization that advocates the defense of civil liberties in academia,
wrote a letter to the student senate prior to their vote. In their letter, FIRE wrote:
Defunding the Argus either in part or in full due to
student opposition to its content stands in direct opposition to these
admirable commitments to free expression. The WSA must not condition the
funding it gives to the Argus — or to any student organization at
Wesleyan — on the popularity of the opinions expressed by its writers.
To do so would undermine freedom of expression at Wesleyan, make a
mockery of journalistic freedom on its campus, and fail the WSA’s
responsibility to ensure access to the marketplace of ideas for all
students, regardless of their opinions.
As FIRE noted in their letter, Wesleyan’s student handbook states
that “every member of the Wesleyan community should feel that he or she
can enter into controversy without fear of being silenced or
constrained.” “This community’s commitment to the free exchange of ideas and
pursuit of knowledge requires a wide range of protections for speech and
expression, even when noxious or offensive,” the handbook states. “Putting the operational funding of a student publication up to what
is essentially a popular vote is a troubling idea, and in passing its
resolution on Sunday, the Wesleyan Student Assembly sends a deeply
chilling message to student journalists: steer clear of controversial
topics or opinions that might upset others,” Ari Cohn, a lawyer at FIRE,
told TheBlaze.
Cohn said that even though Wesleyan is a private university, the
student senate’s resolution does “great harm” in terms of training
future journalists and “fostering an engaged and informed” student body,
as well as sends a message that is “antithetical to the marketplace of
ideas that a university should embody.” “If student journalists must worry that their next year’s funding
will be reduced because a large segment of the campus disagreed with
some of the opinions it has published, the student press will be reduced
to non-controversial puff pieces intended to be agreeable to as many
students as possible,” Cohn said. “The Wesleyan Student Assembly should
be protecting the expression of controversial ideas and opinions rather
than handing the student body a tool with which to suppress them,
ultimately damaging the state of dialogue on campus.”
Paul Singley, president of the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists, told
the Student Press Law Center that college students, who help to fund
their campus newspaper, should have a say in what it looks like to a
certain extent. “Trying to come to some sort of middle ground seems to be the best
approach,” Singley told SPLC. “You don’t want to alienate anyone on your
campus of any race or religion. You also want to be receptive when
there are people in the community that have an issue with the way you
are reporting things. That isn’t necessarily to say that you give them
editorial consent over what you publish, but you should consider what
they have to say and try to be as receptive as possible.” Alex Garcia, the Wesleyan student who authored the resolution, pointed TheBlaze in an email to his interview with the Huffington Post during
which he said that his proposal was first posted online around the same
time as the Black Lives Matter student protesters were calling for the
defunding of the campus paper.
“It is related to the discussion, but it’s not a reactionary
response,” Garcia told the Huffington Post Monday following the vote.
“It’s a well-thought-out and structural change.” Wesleyan student group Kai Entrepreneurship, an organization
“that creates programs and highlights existing programs that promote
openness, inclusion, and community in tech and social entrepreneurship,”
promoted
Garcia’s resolution on its website and makes the claim that it was not
in direct response to the controversial op-ed but more an effort to
digitalize the campus publications. The group, of which Garcia is a co-president, states that by cutting
the funding and reallocating funds to create work-study jobs, the Argus
can pay reporters and editors who would otherwise work for free. However, the loss of funding seems to be less about creating more
paid positions for members of the Argus as the publication’s website now
includes a section where it appeals for donations.
THEARGUSNEEDSYOURHELP! Donate here! In light of conversations surrounding a controversial op-ed that appeared in The Argus in September, the WSA
passed a resolution to restructure the funding of student publications
at Wesleyan. This will likely mean a $17,000 cut from The Argus' $30,000
annual printing budget in the fall of 2016. This decrease that would
prevent us from printing twice a week, as The Argus has for decades. The
WSA's interference with The Argus' ability to
print and use of Student Budget Committee funding also puts our
editorial independence at stake. In the face of unexpected financial
difficulties and loss of editorial control, The Argus is pursuing
alternative fundraising methods. We will need your help in order to keep
The Argus in print while maintaining total control of its content. Additionally, payment for student workers, specifically copy editors,
layout staff, business manager, and ads manager, is essential to
ensuring that the newspaper remains factually and grammatically correct,
visually appealing, readable, and efficient. The hiring process is
based on merit, and payment is necessary to ensure that workers treat
their duty at The Argus as a job with mandatory attendance and late
nights regardless of other commitments. Without the minimal payment that
we have offered in past semesters, we can unequivocally say that
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A new school year means a new career for one teacher at Shasta Middle School
by KVAL
Shannon Evans will be teaching 6th Grade English Langue Arts at Shasta Middle School this year.
EUGENE, Ore. - It's the start of a new school year, and for one middle school teacher, that means the start of a new career. Shannon Evans is teaching 6th grade English Language Arts at Shasta Middle School. She always imagined herself in the classroom one day. "I'm really happy and thankful to be here," Evans said. "I
started out with the dream of being an English language arts teacher
and then I had this little voice in my head saying 'what if what if what
if you pursued acting,'" she said, so she wound up starting her career
on stage. "Still just loving language arts and Shakespeare." After leaving the stage, she worked for Disney programming apps until she realized teaching was really her calling. "I
wanted a career that really meant something to me, and that I was
really passionate about that could have longevity," Evans said. That's how she found herself at Shasta. "I
know people are like 'Why do you? Middle school? My gosh it's such a
crazy time,' and that's kind of exactly why I love it," she said. Evans says she's excited to teach them writing and help them express themselves, part of the reason she got the job. "Just
to have that energy and excitement for learning - it's really fun for
the kids to feed off that," Shasta Principal Brady Cottle said. Some
of the lesson plans draw on her own experiences, like acting: "Kids are
going to come up with their own vignettes for a fable or fairy tale and
then perform it for Clear Lake Elementary." And digital media:
"Building their own slideshows, choosing their own images, choosing
their own poems that they want to feature." And overall the
inspiration to follow their dreams: "That paths don't always go in a
straight line, but that they can pursue what really means a lot to
them." Just like she did.
Real estate executive and dedicated Trojan alumna Jaime Lee joins USC Board of Trustees
The past president of the USC Alumni
Association Board of Governors oversees one of the largest office and
multifamily residential real estate firms in Los Angeles
Jaime Lee has been elected to the USC Board of Trustees. (Photo/Will Chiang)
Jaime Lee, CEO of the real estate firm Jamison Realty, has been elected to the USC Board of Trustees. In addition to her professional role overseeing 20 million square
feet of commercial and residential properties throughout Southern
California, Lee is a dedicated community volunteer and USC supporter.
She recently served as president of the USC Alumni Association Board of
Governors and has volunteered extensively with other USC alumni groups. “Jaime Lee is an extraordinarily dedicated member of the Trojan
Family who has generously given her leadership skills and expertise to
so many USC events and initiatives,” USC President C. L. Max Nikias
said. “Her enthusiasm and passion for the university, as well as her
exceptional talents in the business world and in real estate, will be an
invaluable addition to the board.” Lee earned her bachelor’s degree in English from the USC Dornsife
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in 2006 and completed her law
degree at the USC Gould School of Law in 2009. She is a Provost member
of USC Associates and a lecturer at USC Gould, the USC Price School of
Public Policy and the USC Marshall School of Business. The Encino native has longstanding ties to the university. She
graduated from high school a year early to enroll at USC through its
Resident Honors Program. After a few weeks on campus, the 17-year-old
told her parents she wanted to become a trustee of the university.
When you love an institution so much, to be a significant part of advancing its mission and goals is a tremendous honor.
Jaime Lee
“When you love an institution so much, to be a significant part of
advancing its mission and goals is a tremendous honor,” Lee said. “All
of the alumni who give back do it because we love USC. The proof is
really in the results, in how unbelievably popular USC is among
applicants and how it’s becoming more and more exclusive without
sacrificing its paramount commitment to diversity and inclusion. It’s a
great time to be a Trojan.”
From third-generation Trojan to USC Board of Trustees member
A third-generation USC graduate, she followed in the footsteps of her
grandfather, Andrew Chung Woo Nam, who earned his doctorate in dental
surgery in 1972, and her mother, Miki Nam, who graduated with a
chemistry degree in 1979. Lee’s three brothers, Phillip, Brian and
Garrett, also earned dual degrees at USC. Lee can also thank her father for introducing her to the Trojan
Family by strongly encouraging her to apply to the university’s early
entrance program. She had initially planned to attend a college on the
East Coast, but Lee said her experiences as a freshman at USC proved she
had made the right decision to stay in her hometown. Many of her professors in fine arts and creative writing were
internationally known artists or writers. They took Lee and her fellow
students to visit galleries on Museum Row or art studios in Venice,
exposing her to new cultures and diverse pockets of the city. “You don’t realize all of these things that are special to L.A. when
you grow up here,” she said. “USC really opened my eyes to these
different worlds.” After completing her undergraduate and law degree, Lee went to work
for her father’s real estate firm, rising quickly through the ranks to
her current position of CEO. Despite her busy work schedule, she
remained connected to USC through alumni volunteering, including a
two-year term as president of the USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association.
Community service roles
She has embraced community service roles as well, serving on the
boards of the California Film Commission, the Anderson Munger Family
YMCA, Town Hall Los Angeles and the Harvard-Westlake Korean American
Alumni Network. Appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, Lee was recently
elected president of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners,
which oversees the Port of Los Angeles. She has served as board
president and commissioner of the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement
System and held leadership roles with other community, municipal and
state organizations. Lee also dedicates time to her young family — 2-year-old daughter,
Nora, and son, Evan, who turns 1 in July. Her husband, Matt Cheesebro,
is president of Wilshire Construction, a general contracting and
construction management firm. He holds a master’s degree in product
development engineering from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. As the youngest president of the USC Alumni Association Board of
Governors and the first Asian woman to hold the post, Lee emphasized
outreach to young alumni and promoted diversity and inclusion. As a USC
trustee, she hopes to continue that work, especially through programs
like the USC Leslie and William McMorrow Neighborhood Academic
Initiative, a rigorous college-prep program for young students who live
in the neighborhoods around USC’s campuses. “That’s what makes USC so special,” Lee said. “That’s truly the lifeblood of the Trojan Family, diversity of all kinds.”
LLC 501C- 4 UCC 1-308.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE
Changmaszeto / Wikimedia CommonsOne of the supposed selling points of
the Common Core standards is that they are "internationally
benchmarked" in order to make the U.S. education system more
competitive with better systems in other countries. Implement
Common Core, and U.S. students will catch up to Chinese students in
no time—or so proponents of national standards claim.
________________________________
![IMG_2607[1].JPG](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_txDVYbEg5CefElT4btG3NaenMUkjvYlZBlLFqgoFSEZaNLn3xhhC9F7i5SdiwTjpwyL_ArZt53m7azHXRYMAXTVyO_Tlm_BEjdL4IhE96ScUp-XkGPIaH2jwjM3OasvbkENofQtBvC-3rhbP-awqnrL6Gtfh93YMS5eCF0W-23l6ISCyMJFTAZNUaO5WBL6wRyOeK6W3vFXw=s0-d "Shannon Evans will be teaching 6th Grade English Langue Arts at Shasta Middle School this year.")
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