Zero Intolerance

Under a new policy instituted by Lowndes County Schools in Georgia -- report cards and progress reports will reflect a 60 out of 100 as the lowest grade.

Teachers must offer students opportunities to retake tests and redo assignments until a passing grade is earned. The highest grade earned will be recorded, and teachers cannot record zeros, but can give an "incomplete" for work not turned in after insisting that the assignment be completed.

"Assigning a grade of zero is equivalent to giving up on a child," Assistant Superintendent of Lowndes County Schools Troy Davis told reporters.

The district has posted the full text of the new guidelines online. The grading guide states that teachers should not be satisfied with issuing grades below a student's potential.

Digital Textbook Target - 2017

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other Obama administration officials challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years.

At a recent "digital town hall" a new "playbook" was released that promotes the use of digital textbooks and offers guidance. The Obama administration hopes that dollars spent on traditional textbooks can instead go toward making digital learning a reality. Duncan told reporters:

"Do we want kids walking around with 50-pound backpacks and every book in those backpacks costing 50, 60, 70 dollars and many of them being out of date? Or, do we want students walking around with a mobile device that has much more content than was even imaginable a couple years ago and can be constantly updated? I think it's a very simple choice." 

Missed America

Laura Kaeppeler -- Miss Wisconsin -- was crowned the new 2012 Miss America. Kaeppeler, 23, has an unusual background. She says she thought long and hard as to whether she should make her father's jail time for mail fraud part of her pageant platform, reports AP.

Her father, Jeff Kaeppeler, served 18 months in federal prison for mail fraud, a sentence he started when Laura was entering college. Kaeppeler's mission: She wants children of incarcerated adults to feel less alone, to have mentoring and as much of a relationship with their parents as possible.

"Miss America represents everyone," she said. "Miss America represents all."

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Atlanta's Slavery Math Quiz

Kirsten West Savali has written a great piece entitled: Atlanta Metro-Area School District Defends Using Slavery Equations To Teach Math To Third Graders:

Third grade math is not normally the course where students are taught about beating slaves and dehumanizing labor, but two teachers at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Atlanta thought it was a perfectly normal integration.

Chris Braxton told Fox 5 Atlanta that his son came home from school Friday afternoon with a racially inflammatory assignment that featured such questions as:

"Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?"

"How many baskets of cotton did Frederick fill?"

"If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week? Two weeks?"

While the Gwinnett County School District admits the questions were "inappropriate," they are not disciplining the teachers in any way; in fact, they came swiftly to their defense. Spokesperson Sloan Roach said "two teachers from the school came up with the questions as part of a cross-curriculum activity," reports Fox 5. After learning about slavery in social studies, they apparently felt it would be an excellent idea to reinforce the horrific violence of oppression by having their students count how many times African slaves was abused by their owners.

"They were trying to connect what they learned there with the math," Roach said. This is simply a case of creating a bad question."

Though Braxton rightfully feels that the questions are racist, the school district defends the teachers against the charges by simply stating that the "bad" questions will not be used again.

I have seen many cases of ignorance and racism in the media, but this is one of the most vile, reprehensible forms of indoctrination. To teach eight-year-olds math by inserting slavery into the equation is evidence that plantation philosophy not only runs rampant in Georgia politics, but in education as well.

There were no other questions that could have been asked? Maybe: How many slave-owners deserved to be lynched for the atrocities they committed against their African slaves?

Answer: All of them.

Read the full article here.


Also see:
Parents Hold Protest

MN Races to the Top

 
Nine states will share $500 million in grant money won in a high-profile competition intended to jump-start improvements in early childhood programs. The Obama administration recently announced that Minnesota, California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington state will see funding for innovative efforts in often-overlooked pre-K schooling.

The Text Revolution

Texting is on the rise, especially among teenagers age 13 to 17. According to an article in MashableTech.com, the average teenager now sends 3,339 texts per month. That’s more than six texts per waking hour. Teen females send an incredible 4,050 texts per month, while teen males send an average of 2,539 texts. Teens are sending 8% more texts than they were this time last year.

Other age groups don’t even come close

 

 

While voice may be on the decline, data and app usage is on the rise. Data usage among teens has quadrupled, from 14 MB to 62 MB per month. In a role reversal, teen males use more data than their female counterparts: 75 MB vs. 53 MB of data. App and software downloads also increased by 12% among teens in the past year.