Safer than at home?

Safer than at home?--The Tennessean provides lots of inches to push Schools Under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public Education by Vanderbilt Professor Torin Monahan. A lot of 'duh' statements in this overview such as:

"Generally speaking," [Monahan] said, "surveillance is not good for preventing crime. It's more useful for catching people after the fact."

But this statement certainly wasn't.

"Schools are some of the safest places you can be," Monahan said. Students are "significantly safer there than on the streets or at home." [Emphasis added]

Add this to the already growing pile of "expert" statements that are being collected to prove that government knows better than parents how to keep children safe and raise them correctly.

Another take on school safety: School Choice Reduces Crime, Increases College-Attendance...: According to Harvard researcher, David Deming:

Seven years after random assignment, lottery winners have been arrested for fewer and less serious crimes, and have spent fewer days incarcerated… The reduction in crime persists through the end of the sample period, several years after enrollment in the preferred school is complete. The effects are concentrated among African-American males whose ex ante characteristics define them as “high risk.”

Maybe we should say YES to choice so we can save that $2.2 million in security costs for curriculum, paying good teachers well or maybe even fixing a roof or two.

Garcia needs to testify

MNPS BOE Chairman David Fox (District 8-Hillsboro-West End) is exactly correct. The memos of former MNPS Superintendent Pedro Garcia are not the inviolate word of God. And considering how much weight appears to be given them I'm convinced that Garcia, himself, needs to be subpoenaed and state under oath what he alleges in the memos and be subject to cross examination.

He could have left quietly but no, he had to leave this little present. I say let's get him on the first plane back to Nashville. We're footing the bill and having to live with the consequences. I don't care of it's inconvenient for Garcia. Maybe he should have more thoroughly considered the consequences of his memos. Shades of junior high note passing! He should be man enough to come and stand by and defend his words.

The Nashville Scene seems very correct with their cover article in 2007: Best Foes Forever.

Who is William Rock?

For a man who has spent a life time, we're told, in education and is being called as an expert witness in the MNPS rezoning trial he's got a remarkably light public presence. Good thing he was friends with the plaintiff's attorney...we might never have heard of him otherwise.

William Rock is a distinguished service professor emeritus of the Department of Educational Administration at SUNY Brockport and served on the faculty here from 1968 through 1995. In 2001, he established the Annette Lamphier Rock Nursing Scholarship in honor of his wife, Annette, a lifelong nurse. This award will help support and nurture the education of nursing students at the College for years to come. He and Annette reside in Brockport. (SUNY-Brockport)

Give it a try...Google, Google Scholar, Bing, Ask, Yahoo, Cuil, Dogpile, LinkedIn--they would have nearly nothing at all on this guy if it weren't for current news coverage. How do you get to be a "nationally recognized school rezoning expert" and not have a paper trail that's on-line somewhere?