A Cleveland-area principal says he’s embarrassed his students got proof of their “educaiton” on their high school diplomas.

Westlake High School officials misspelled “education” on the diplomas distributed last weekend. It’s been the subject of mockery on local radio.

That’s nothing…last week, our 8 year old daughter received a trophy for making the Principal’s Homor Roll.

It isn’t that they’re stupid, it’s that they don’t care.

A Texas teacher has filed a police complaint alleging a principal threatened to kill some science teachers if students did poorly on standardized tests.

*blink*

YEAH!  Teaching Texas-style!  If your class tanks the SAT-10s, I’ll see you on the football field, mister, and you’d better be armed because I sure will be.

I say again, none of the people currently involved in teaching our children are the least bit qualified to be there.  Do you think, if the allegation is true, that Mister Man there will be held to the zero-tolerance principle?  Suuuure he will.

A British Columbia father has sued his son’s Grade 2 Montessori teacher claiming that she “purposely and maliciously worked to damage the self-esteem” of his son over such things as failing to encourage the child’s spelling, not sending home a daily homework list and, in one case, displaying an unfinished poem in the school hallway.

Grade 2 = 8 years old or so.  Here’s a clue, sir:  kids have no self-esteem.  Or they should not, at any rate.  Incident after incident of falsely-entitled little bastards turning on each other, and their parents, in acts of horrific violence has proven that time and time again.

In a statement of claim first filed in court last fall, Mr. Finkelstein said that his son “suffered and will continue to suffer loss and damages” — including anguish, suffering, humiliation, embarrassment, anxiety, worry and loss of dignity –because Susan Rialp, the boy’s teacher at Selkirk Montessori School, did not make him do his homework or coax his reading and comprehension, and in one case, put his unfinished poem in a hallway for all to see. Ms. Rialp “falsely created and attempted to reinforce artificial differences between his son and his peers and falsely asserted the son exhibits behavioural difficulties,” according to the writ.

This is a guy with a personal grudge against the teacher, simple as that.  Here’s another newsflash, buddy…it isn’t the TEACHER who makes the child do the homework, it is YOU.  Way to set a “pass the buck” example for your kid there.  But that’s ok, you’ve already told him he’s the specialiest boy in the world and he’ll never have to work for anything.

In the lawsuit, Mr. Finkelstein says the teacher also failed to protect the boy when he was bullied by another student, blaming his son instead.

I’m very sure this precious snowflake, so comprehensively enabled by Daddy, is absolutely blameless in the matter.  No doubt he’ll grow up to be someone very, very important in civil service.

But the dog isn’t the damn issue here. And oddly enough, neither is the one hundred and fifty million dollar lawsuit.

The issue is that we have one — ONE — student here who is affecting the ‘learning environment’ of fifteen hundred other students, because at some point in the past, someone else probably sued about being allergic to animals.

The super can’t win for losing. If he lets the dog on campus without being forced into it, he would be held responsible if for any reason the dog EVER bit anyone, someone slipped in doggy pee or doggy doo, or claimed that they couldn’t be in any classroom the dog had been in because it made their allergies act up. If he doesn’t let the dog on campus, the parents of this ONE kid will sue the budget out of the system for a hundred years, and he will still be held responsible if any of the above happen.

But school officials think the Labrador Retriever could aggravate or serve as a distraction to students with severe allergies and would pose a danger during fire and emergency lockdown drills. Cave’s family countered that the 1,500-student school could be outfitted with air filters.

The lawsuit-happy parents say that the school should just get better air filters. They do actually let this dog into their house, right? Do they not notice that dog hair has a way of eluding even the best high powered vacuum cleaners, let alone their A/C filter?

Leaving aside for the moment that there have been some horrid comments left on the site where I found this story, there seems to be more actual data from the local coverage area. For example, the Human Rights Division Commish (dang, almost typed kommisar) is apparently brand spanking new to the job, the rulings of her Commission do not necessarily carry the weight of a court or legislative act, the kid needs the dog because he doesn’t always wear his implants, and gee darnit, some folks are really rude about their need to actually, y’know, breathe.

This is the crap I mean when I say that frivolous lawsuits create bad precedent. On the other hand, the parents of this ONE kid are totally gunning for a fight.

But, let it not be said that I offer no solutions, because I have one for this case:

Leave the damn dog at home and have an actual person who can translate speech to sign language (the dog can’t do that, can he? no? good, I’m still on safe ground here then) accompany this kid throughout his day. Make it be an education major from whatever the local university is and it would give that person a useful resume enhancement and/or course credit or work/study paycheck. That solves the problem of this ONE KID screwing with every other special snowflake’s chances of getting an education while still letting his parents get their Munchausen’s on.

Because that’s all this is: these parents want to not only make sure that poor deaf (sometimes) son knows that they wuv him vewwy mush but wants all of us to know it too; even it that means placing unreasonable demands on a school system that I’m sure struggles just to make sure that kids even come to class or that parents give a crap in the first place.

Savana Redding, an eighth grade honor roll student at Safford Middle School in Tucson, Arizona, was pulled from class on October 8, 2003 by the school’s vice principal, Kerry Wilson. Earlier that day, Wilson had discovered prescription-strength ibuprofen – 400 milligram pills equivalent to two over-the-counter ibuprofen pills, such as Advil – in the possession of Redding’s classmate. Safford maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward all prescription medicines, including prescription-strength ibuprofen. Under questioning and faced with punishment, the classmate claimed that Redding, who had no history of disciplinary problems or substance abuse, had given her the pills.

After escorting Redding to his office, Wilson presented Redding with the ibuprofen pills and informed her of her classmate’s accusations. Redding said she had never seen the pills before and agreed to a search of her possessions, wanting to prove she had nothing to hide. Joined by a female school administrative assistant, Wilson searched Redding’s backpack and found nothing. Instructed by Wilson, the administrative assistant then took Redding to the school nurse’s office in order to perform a strip search.

In the school nurse’s office, Redding was ordered to strip to her underwear. She was then commanded to pull her bra out and to the side, exposing her breasts, and to pull her underwear out at the crotch, exposing her pelvic area. The strip search failed to uncover any ibuprofen pills.

The zero tolerance policy is in place because there is not one person in administration smart enough to say, “hey, that’s just ibuprofen, confiscate it and let’s move on with our day.” That should scare the unholy crap out of everyone with school-age children.

So how do we fix it?

We spent a chunk of last evening teaching our kids math disguised as blackjack. And if they also learn to stand on a 16 when the dealer is showing a 3, then that’s just an extra-added bonus, no?

Speaking of teaching math to our children, the public school situation here in Florida is a continuing source of…anger in our household. Here the kids are subject to annual testing, the FCAT. This standardized testing actually pre-dates the No Child Left Behind Act but was adjusted in 2001 to match the new federal standards. Now the kids have to pass the tests in grade 3 to advance to grade 4 (reading only), and in grade 10 (reading and math) to graduate.

In theory, I have absolutely no problem with this. Too many kids are passed along when they should have been held back. They simply didn’t learn what was required to advance, but were promoted anyway to avoid damaging their self-confidence/self-image, whatever keyword the socialists were bandying about that particular year. It was a system that did no one any favors, least of all the promoted kids.

What I object to in this standardized testing environment is the way preparation for these tests is being handled. Last year, for instance (which for #1 Son was not a pass/fail year…something that is not specified to parents, btw, you have to find that information for yourself), it seemed to us that everything outside of prep for the FCAT writing exam just stopped. Math disappeared, science disappeared…you know, the important subjects. And then after the testing in early March, the teacher tried to cram in a half year’s worth of math before school ended in mid-May. And I’m not the only one who has noticed this trend.

Everyone with school-aged kids knows the schools teach TO these tests, instead of just teaching the material. They do this in Florida because their jobs literally rely on how well the kids do on the tests. Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan, grades schools “depending on student performance and the degree to which the bottom 25% of the school has improved compared to its past performances,” and pulls/delivers Title 1 funding appropriately. This is wrong, creates a seriously stressful environment for all involved, and will result in knowledge-gaps that our kids will pay for down the road.

Overall, our public school systems are really in dire shape. An ex-teacher with whom Ted works tells us that people fail upwards in public schools, which means the Principal/Vice Principal were likely seriously inferior teachers. I will admit that teaching and administration do not have very much to do with each other, but would like to see some actual standards applied to the people running our schools nonetheless. For example, when we had problems earlier this year with #1 Son’s teacher, and met with him, the P and VP, the Principal was quite confrontational, demanding to know what Ted thought he would accomplish by being angry at the man’s treatment of our kid (which to us was personal and extremely unprofessional) and putting them on the defensive.

*blink*

That the school administration obviously considers parents as adversaries is a major problem for me. I understand that there are truly troublesome parents out there, from the ones who just do not care, to the ones who cry about every imagined slight to their special snowflake, but you would think that functioning adults could tell the difference between them and have the ability to react to each appropriately. Then again, those devoted to bureaucracy do not like to have their little ponds stepped in, so perhaps these schools in Denver have the right idea:

Eighteen northeast Denver schools are seeking to build an autonomous school zone — freeing them from union and district rules they say are bureaucratic barriers to improving student achievement.

Principals from several of the schools met Monday with 50 community members and educators at Montbello High School to outline the proposal, which will be presented this month to the school board.

Principals from the 18 schools want to create a “zone of innovation,” giving them control over their budget, the educational program in the schools, staffing and incentives.

Of course if they suffer from the same bureaucracy at the school-level, then how exactly does that make a difference? And aren’t they just trading old bureaucracy for new with this essentially new district they’re creating?

Welcome to my headache.