Cathy
Friday, July 10, 2015
Ideas to Chew On
Cathy
Former Utah teacher Brianne Altice - Sentenced to up to 30 Years
The following piece appears in full on The Salt Lake Tribune.com visit said page to read the full story. Every day you can read stories of teachers sexually abusing students or harming students in other ways. When will teachers who hold the group think mentality being a part of unions have the unions address the major issue and start to decry this problem in our public schools.
But she emphasized at Altice's sentencing hearing on Thursday that her son and the other two boys were victimized when Altice had inappropriate relationships with them. They have been damaged, she said, psychologically and emotionally.
"I can tell you, unequivocally, that these boys are victims," the tearful woman said in 2nd District Court. "They will be affected by this unlawful relationship throughout their lives."
The woman added that she is "heartbroken" that Altice's criminal decisions will affect the defendant's own children.
"It is unfair and it is unfortunate, but we can not help wondering how much she was thinking about her children when she chose to engage sexually with ours," the woman said.
Former Utah teacher Brianne Altice sentenced to prison for sexual contact with students
First Published Jul 09 2015 08:39AM
Farmington • The mother of one of the three teenage boys who had sexual encounters with former Davis High School teacher Brianne Altice
lamented that society often applies a double standard when a female
teacher has sex with male students — and the boys are not seen as
victims.
But she emphasized at Altice's sentencing hearing on Thursday that her son and the other two boys were victimized when Altice had inappropriate relationships with them. They have been damaged, she said, psychologically and emotionally.
"I can tell you, unequivocally, that these boys are victims," the tearful woman said in 2nd District Court. "They will be affected by this unlawful relationship throughout their lives."
The woman, who was not identified in court to
protect her son's identity, said she wanted to tell Altice,
"mother-to-mother," that the former English teacher has hurt her son and
the other boys in ways that she will never know.
The woman added that she is "heartbroken" that Altice's criminal decisions will affect the defendant's own children.
"It is unfair and it is unfortunate, but we can not help wondering how much she was thinking about her children when she chose to engage sexually with ours," the woman said.
Judge Thomas Kay sentenced 36-year-old Altice to prison for up to 30 years for her crimes.
To read the rest of the story click here.
Cathy
To read the rest of the story click here.
Cathy
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Common Core's Failure
This article appears in full on Reason.com.
Cathy
States that adopted the Common Core national education standards still can’t provide textbooks that actually teach what the standards require. That’s a big problem for students who have to take Core-mandated standardized tests that are misaligned with their teachers’ instructional materials.
An eye-opening investigation by Matt Collette of The Daily Beast reveals that most textbooks don’t fully meet the standards, despite advertising themselves as Core-aligned. Collette consulted EdReports, a non-profit that evaluates textbooks; the group recently reviewed more than 80 textbooks and found that only 11 of them matched Common Core requirements.
Most damning of all was the fact that Pearson—a publishing giant with significant Common Core ties and exclusive contracts to develop testing materials for some Core-compliant states—“had zero textbooks evaluated as being aligned with the Common Core,” according to Collette. This means, in a sense, that the gigantic corporation making the tests is also producing textbooks that don’t teach to those tests.
Additionally ironic—and certainly noteworthy—is the fact the EdReports is funded by the Gates Foundation, an organization that funded and developed the Common Core and lobbied for its widespread adoption. I would thus expect EdReports to air on the side of favorable coverage for Core-related matters. That even a Gates-funded endeavor has serious concerns about textbook compliance suggests to me that concern is indeed merited.
The degree to which misaligned textbooks are a huge problem for students and teachers can’t be overstated. From The Beast:
It would appear a massive federal takeover of K-12 education that was subsequently outsourced to a confluence of pseudo-government and crony corporate interests isn’t delivering a very practical product for American children. Now who would have expected that?
Cathy
Common Core’s Corporate Backers Admit Widespread Failure of Textbooks
Central planning sucks.
States that adopted the Common Core national education standards still can’t provide textbooks that actually teach what the standards require. That’s a big problem for students who have to take Core-mandated standardized tests that are misaligned with their teachers’ instructional materials.
An eye-opening investigation by Matt Collette of The Daily Beast reveals that most textbooks don’t fully meet the standards, despite advertising themselves as Core-aligned. Collette consulted EdReports, a non-profit that evaluates textbooks; the group recently reviewed more than 80 textbooks and found that only 11 of them matched Common Core requirements.
Most damning of all was the fact that Pearson—a publishing giant with significant Common Core ties and exclusive contracts to develop testing materials for some Core-compliant states—“had zero textbooks evaluated as being aligned with the Common Core,” according to Collette. This means, in a sense, that the gigantic corporation making the tests is also producing textbooks that don’t teach to those tests.
Additionally ironic—and certainly noteworthy—is the fact the EdReports is funded by the Gates Foundation, an organization that funded and developed the Common Core and lobbied for its widespread adoption. I would thus expect EdReports to air on the side of favorable coverage for Core-related matters. That even a Gates-funded endeavor has serious concerns about textbook compliance suggests to me that concern is indeed merited.
The degree to which misaligned textbooks are a huge problem for students and teachers can’t be overstated. From The Beast:
Cheryl Schafer was a veteran math teacher by the time Common Core arrived in New York back in 2010. It was apparent to her almost immediately that teachers didn’t have the materials they needed to teach to the new national standards.If Common Core puts the Pythagorean Theorem on the test for seventh graders, but the textbook doesn’t teach it until eighth grade, students are going to be screwed over by low test scores. That’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to teachers whose salaries and job security rely on their students scoring well.
Take a middle school staple like the Pythagorean Theorem: “One text series had it as a sixth grade unit, one had it at eighth grade, and the Common Core wanted us to teach it in seventh grade,” Schafer recalled. “So it didn't matter what you were using: there was disagreement all over the place.”
In response to the new standards, textbook publishers touted new editions they said were aligned to the Common Core. But nearly all of them were just repackaged versions of earlier books.
And even five years later, the vast majority of textbooks say they’re aligned with the Common Core when they actually aren’t, creating a huge burden for teachers whose performance is often tied to their students’ test scores based on those standards.
It would appear a massive federal takeover of K-12 education that was subsequently outsourced to a confluence of pseudo-government and crony corporate interests isn’t delivering a very practical product for American children. Now who would have expected that?
First Amendment
"An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs
is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment."
-- Justice Hugo L. Black
(1886-1971) US Supreme Court Justice
Source: New York Times Company vs. Sullivan, 1964
is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment."
-- Justice Hugo L. Black
(1886-1971) US Supreme Court Justice
Source: New York Times Company vs. Sullivan, 1964
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Monday, July 6, 2015
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