Teacher Busted Bullying

Fan Daily reports that on February 17, Stuart Chaifetz decided he would do all in his power to know what was happening at school with his son, 10 year-old Aiken (who has autism). He was one of the students in the New Jersey classroom of Mrs. Kelly Altenburg at Horace Mann Elementary. So, Mr. Chaifetz sent Aiken to school wired with a hidden audio recorder.

"I just knew I had to find out what was happening there," the father told reporters. "My only option was to put a recorder there. I needed to hear what a normal day was like in there."

When Mr. Chaifetz listened to the tape, he was devastated. His son was the victim of bullying -- and worst of all, the people who were bullying Aiken were his own teachers -- Kelly Altenburg and teacher's aide, who has to this point only been identified as Jodi. The tape contains hours of verbal and emotional abuse. 

Friends of Kelly Altenburg who talked to media said that "Kelly is not like that," and swore she would never hurt a child’s feelings -- particularly one with special needs.

Stuart Chaifetz uploaded sections of the taped abuse to YouTube. The secretly recorded audio catches teaching staff mocking, arguing and verbally bullying the child. One adult calls Chaifetz's autistic 10-year-old son "a bastard."

A lawyer for Altenburg has denied that the teacher was in the classroom when the abusive remarks were made. She has been placed on paid leave. Since the allegations have surfaced, school officials have announced that one school aide resigned, another was put on leave, and that a substitute aide will not be returning.

Correction: The teacher in this story is not the Kelly Altenburg who studied special education at Minnesota State University in Mankato as previously posted here in error. My sincere apologies for re-posting false information. My source was Huffington Post. I would like to blame that site, but since I failed to mention or link to the source -- I wrongly printed the incorrect information as fact. Fan Daily and Radar Online, which I did provide links to, were the other websites from which I sourced the bad information. I am sorry. I offer my apology for the error. I have learned an important lesson.

School of Hate Settles Lawsuit

The Anoka-Hennepin School District has announced a settlement in the lawsuit filed against the district that alleged persistent bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation. According to a report in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the settlement will likely bring an end to a federal civil rights investigation, "which stemmed from a student complaint in the fall of 2010."

The lawsuit was filed last summer on behalf of six current and former students who said the district did not adequately address complaints of severe and persistent bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation.

The Anoka Hennepin School District -- which lashed out over a Rolling Stone article that profiled the spate of suicides in the district and the school's policy which forces teachers to remain neutral on the subject of homosexuality -- recently voted to replace its old policy with one intended to provide a "respectful" environment for all students.

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.


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