Metro teacher arrested in animal abuse case

From WSMV where you can view the video.

Elizabeth Sadler is a teacher at Hattie Cotton Elementary School, where she was arrested. She was an interim teacher until September, when she was hired full-time as a kindergarten teacher. She is now on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation [for aggravated animal cruelty].

Pictured are David and Elizabeth Sadler. Since MNPS is going to keep paying her pending a conviction I suggest they find some appropriate non-classroom work for her to be doing in the meantime. The MNPS budget is too tight to get zero return on her salary and benefits.

Cheating on the tests

Red Hat Rob reveals that the Tennessee Department of Education hasn't been honest about reporting the ACT scores for its students.

"...the Tennessee Department of Education takes advantage of the higher ACT scores by Non-Public School students by falsely reporting the average score forALL Tennessee students’ as if it were the average score for Public School Students."

What got Rob started down this statistical labyrinth?

"I was hoping to discover the average ACT score for Tennessee homeschool students so that I could compare it to the average ACT score for Tennessee public school students. Sadly, the ACT Corp. doesn’t report the homeschool scores separately for individual states.The irony and outrage here is that the state Department of Education has the audacity to reject the high school diplomas issued by homeschools and church-related schools while at the same time using the higher ACT scores from those students to boost their own average."

Head over to Rob's blog to see what the real ACT scores are for Tennessee public school students.

Thursday 12/05/08

MNPS Budget:

MNPS BOE member Gracie Porter (District 5-East Nashville) “I certainly am not a proponent of having classroom teachers cut from the budget.” (via City Paper)

She's walking a tight rope here, as are several BOE members. Porter is careful here to mention classroom teachers but she's well aware of the fact she got about 75% of her campaign money in 2004 from the unions that will be insisting not one job be cut. It's time to repay that war chest.

The Tennessean is suggesting that "One option on the table includes allowing all employees to take pay cuts so that no layoffs are necessary." Obviously, they didn't run that by Metro Nashville Education Association President Eric Huth. Wonder if the MNPS BOE would consider walking in solidarity with the staff and take a cut themselves? Actually, they could start by brown bagging it instead of eating catered meals at district expense.

And those of you combing through the budget and financial commitments should not overlook the obligations regarding health and retirement that contracts with those unions have committed us to. It's not just GM/Ford/Chrysler that have been hampered by those.

New Director of Schools:

The Board interviews the three candidates this weekend in the Board Conference Room. The first interview starts Saturday from 9 to 11, the second from 11:15 to 1:15 and the third one on Sunday from 4 to 6.

I'll repeat what I said a year ago, let's leave Chris Henson as Superintendent--if he'll agree to it. THIS is not the time to bring in someone new when our situation is so tenuous with the State of Tennessee and the whole applecart could be tossed over in just nine months. I see no sense in taking a chance on an understandably limited pool of applicants in a rush to get someone in the job.

If qualified candidates were scared off by the pitiful open records laws in this state then let me suggest we just go whole hog and bring back elected superintendents. The answer is not to pull this huge decision back into the shadows but to bring it fully into the light.

Nashville Board of Education members also have been advised by [consultant] Attea to avoid commenting on individual candidates. So school board members were hesitant to speak in much detail as to their perceptions of the quality of the applicant pool. (via City Paper)

This annoys me and is typical of the way the MNPS Board operates. It provides convenient cover and short circuits real discussion between the public and their elected representatives at a time when their input should be considered. I think voters and parents need to know what our BOE members think about these applicants and their qualifications.

And we don't need to be taking advice from this fellow:

"I've never heard of these people, and it is my job to know everybody," said James Guthrie, chairman of Vanderbilt's department of educational leadership. "Maybe one will just come in and dazzle us — we need to be dazzled now." (via Tennessean)

I'll repeat myself. We need a hard worker who will put the actual education of the children first. If they're good at helping the community understand what that entails and how their need for flash and dazzle is a distraction to the core mission---so much the better.

Not smart at all

We don't have cable TV in the Brooks home. We spend our money on DSL service instead which is far more useful to our family. So with the change from analog TV to digital coming we purchased the Magnavox TB100MW9 converter box for the TV in the living room. We've two other TV's in the house but one is a 20 year old 19" and there is a third 10" one in the kitchen I got from Goodwill last year for $10. We're waiting before deciding what, if anything, to do about them.

The connection of the converter box went very quickly and the television reception is remarkably better. However--

Our BIGGEST complaint about this Magnavox TB100MW9 converter is the remote. I'll confess that I didn't even consider the remote when purchasing the unit. The remote wasn't pictured on the box (now I know why) and I didn't open the box before purchase to examine the remote. It never occurred to me that it'd be any different from the remotes we've gone through over the years. The fact is, the buttons are itty-bitty. I'm not kidding here. The majority of the button are 1/4" x 1/8th" inch. I guess the generous size of the on/off button (the red one) of 5/8th" x 3/8th" was supposed to make up for the rest. I've photographed the Magnavox TB100 remote along side the universal remote we regularly use. It's obvious that the Phillips remote, on the right, is made for real world hands and fingers. The Maganvox one---well, who did the consumer testing on this and decided that these were big enough? They couldn't have been more wrong. The big ones in the middle of the Magnavox remote are NOT for the usual channel up and down or selection---no, no, those big buttons are for navigating through the electronic program guide. Something that is handy for those "WHAT are you watching?" moments but we don't use it often enough to justify those being the biggest buttons on the entire remote.

And that's not all--while very small the buttons are also VERY hard to engage. You have to press HARD and directly in the center of each of the button in order to get them to respond and actually change the channel or volume. I'm watching TV folks. If I wanted a hand workout I'd come back here and spend time at the keyboard blogging.

Further, who decided that you can't exclude some channels from your usual line-up? Great we've got all these new channels with this conversion to digital (NPT2 with the Documentary Channel has been interesting) but we don't need 5 channel 50's and we don't appreciate the Spanish language soap operas on Telemundo. OK, it has occasionally been fun to watch something like "Zorro" in Spanish but usually we don't need that channel at all. Why can't we ignore it?

And the final complaint is that we're now back to using two remotes. One to cycle through the channels via the converter box and the other to raise and lower the volume. Apparently, it's possible to create a $20 remote that will operate nearly every electronic device in your home (TV, VCR, DVD, CD player, Cable, Satellite) EXCEPT for your digital TV converter box. Some serious lack of planning here folks.

The Magnavox slogan is "Smart. Very smart." No, not this time...not at all.

Works for me

Red Hat Rob points out that the new Republican controlled Tennessee legislature doesn't have to wait until 2011 and another election cycle to redistrict the state:

The state constitution requires that districts be re-drawn after each Federal Census, but the constitution specifically reserves to the legislature the right to re-district at any time: (snip)

Incidentally, the current district scheme appears to violate the state constitution which prohibits a multi-county house district if it is carved out of parts of 2 counties. Wherever possible, house districts are supposed to respect county boundaries - a very reasonable prescription intended to check the temptation to gerrymander.

Republicans might want to strike while the iron is hot. The Democrats left a huge mess to clean up. It's going to take as many Republicans as possible to get things in order and set a better course. The Democrats are going to whine and moan about everything next session anyway...might as well pile it on and get as much done as possible as quickly as possible.

Bedfellows

Ken Marrero has a great post about working together where you can. Ken notes, regarding the variety of issues and support on the right:

We agree on more than we disagree. There are some very real differences and these will need to be worked out. But using exclusion as a tool in this working out is precisely the wrong approach.

When I read it last week it put me in mind of the homeschooling community. While there are folks out there who mistakenly assume we're all right wing fundys the truth is our community is much more diverse, and getting more diverse all the time. Our community agrees on a narrow edge of issues regarding our freedoms. Nicky Hardenbergh likened that sliver of agreement to the sharp edge of a knife. As long as we stay on that knife edge we're united, strong and effective. But the truth is if we move on to parental rights, immunizations, UN Conventions or even education policy generally, you'll find homeschoolers all over the map. As Ken makes clear none of us needs to stubbornly refuse to work with the other because 'they' don't support 'us' on all of 'our' issues.

It's important to always keep in mind the truth that politics does make strange bedfellows. We all need to remember not to hog the blankets while we share the bed.

145 chances

Almost un--be--liev--able. After 146 criminal charges and just 5 days after his latest conviction he obtains a gun, attempts to rob a convenience store and gets himself killed by an off duty security guard who obviously doesn't work for Wackenhut. Here's the MNPD press release. Emphasis added.

November 30, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Detectives are classifying this morning’s shooting death of armed robbery suspect Jamie L. Sullivan as justifiable homicide.

Sullivan, 37, entered the Mapco market, 2101 Murfreesboro Pike, at 1:45 a.m. wearing a mask and carrying a pistol. Also in the market was uniformed security guard Eric Gordon, 22, who had stopped in to buy gasoline. According to Gordon, Sullivan pointed his pistol at Gordon’s head and threatened to kill him if he (Gordon) didn’t surrender his holstered gun. As Sullivan moved to take Gordon’s gun, a struggle ensued. Gordon drew his nine millimeter pistol and shot Sullivan one time in the face. Sullivan died at the scene. Detectives subsequently discovered that Sullivan’s gun was a BB pistol that closely resembled a real firearm.

Sullivan had been charged by Metro police with 146 offenses over the past 19 years (between June 1989 and this month). His last arrest was November 20 for trespassing, which resulted in a conviction and a 30-day sentence on November 25.

Sullivan’s photograph is being withheld at present so as not to jeopardize potential photo lineups as South Precinct detectives investigate whether he was involved in other crimes.

Gordon is a security guard for ASPI Services.

Who was the judge who didn't send him directly to jail upon his conviction? Sullivan would likely be alive now and two citizens wouldn't be two more victims.

Idiots!

File this with the statements from folks who think outlawing guns will actually work. This from the chairman of the corporation that owns the hotel in Mumbai, India that was attacked this past week.

However, [Ratan] Tata said the attackers did not enter through the entrance that has a metal detector. Instead, they came in a back entrance, he said.

"They knew what they were doing, and they did not go through the front. All of our arrangements are in the front," he said.

"They planned everything," he said of the attackers. "I believe the first thing they did, they shot a sniffer dog and his handler. They went through the kitchen."

Melanie Phillips is exactly right on in calling this another specific attack on civilization. These Islamic Terrorist picked that location and the people that would be there. We need to quit being surprised that they're using non-conventional tactics. It's completely foolish to expect people at war to use the front door and politely wait to be scanned for metal. Apparently, our local middle schools have better intrusion protection than this luxury hotel in an area that has a history of violence between factions. How dare they come in the back way?

Spreading the wealth

I love contrasting the Jamestown and Plymouth Plantation settlements while teaching. There were important differences. The Heritage Foundation's Insider reminds us during this season of remembering the first Thanksgiving that spreading the wealth didn't work then and won't work now:

William Bradford, governor of Plymouth, wrote in his journal that the experience taught him: “the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by men of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.”

Further the authors at the Insider write:

But after a three-year experiment, it was clear the system was failing miserably. Everyone was equal, but the Pilgrims took little comfort in the fact they were starving to death equally.

In this season of bailing out businesess that ought to be allowed to sink or swim on their own we have a congress that is hell bent on ensuring that we all 'starve to death equally' during the time set aside for feasting. Enjoy that turkey and trimmings. It might be much harder to come by next year.

Show us the paper

It's a great question Joe The Farmer asks:

The question not being asked by the holders of power, who dismiss this as a rightwing conspiracy, is what's the downside of disclosing?

Really--what is the downside of disclosing? The longer Obama withholds his "Certificate of Live Birth" from the public the more concerned I get. Obama may be a man with a global view of citizenship but the Constitution he's about to swear he'll preserve, protect and defend still requires our presidents to be 'natural born' citizens. At some point we've got to decide how we're going to enforce that Constitutional provision or else it, and the rest of the document, is worthless.

If that wasn't bad

My state representative opines on the new Republican controlled Tennessee legislature:

"I think our friends across the aisle have some bad things in store for the people of Tennessee," said Old Hickory Rep. Mike Turner, who was elected [Democrat] caucus chairman.

• Like 600 billion 800 million dollars in illegal over the Copeland Cap spending?
  
• Like a 17 million dollar party bunker?
  
• Like Crutchfield, Ford, Ford, Bowers, Dixon, Briley & Cooper?
  
• Like stealing elections from fellow party member Kurita and making a mockery of the election process?
  
• Like propping up a Lt. Governor who pontificates to the point that, to paraphrase O. Ford, hasn't been hitting on nothing with most of us for some time?
  
• Like allowing junior high treatment of 'friends across the aisle' in committee meetings?
  
• Like using the Calendar and Rules Committee to kill legislation that did manage to get through the stacked against it committee system?
  
• Like refusing to require recorded votes in every committee to ensure cover for election time?
  
• Like creating a literal back room for deal making during recent renovations?
• Like ignoring a huge ethics issue with the Speaker and his lobbyist wife
• Like expending money for golf courses and college quads over classroom funding for K-12?
• Like letting Memphis legislators drive education policy for the whole state?
  

I'm sure others can quickly add to the list of abuses by the Democratically controlled legislature that were and have been bad for Tennesseans for some time. If the above weren't bad for Tennesseans---just what is?

How smart are they?

Great take on the Obama's hypocritical choice of Sidwell Friends for their daughters at Jay Greene's site. Turns out, according to education experts, Sidwell Friends is in horrible shape and is no place to send a child. Jay sums up a great post with:

Or maybe we should be worried. After all, the Obamas did pick this shockingly substandard school, even though they had the opportunity to go with the nation’s most lavishly funded and heavily unionized schools in the D.C. public system, so how smart can they be?

Equity of rights

Great quote in the December 2008 edition of the School Reform News:

"Americans insist on equality of opportunity in housing, employment, and public accommodations, yet we trample upon this right where it hurts us most--the raising and nurturing of our children," said Rabbi Israel Teitelbaum cofounder of Parents for Free Choice in Education...

In the meantime another family that can afford choice gets a free pass to use it:

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle “have every right” to send their children to public or private school, and no one should “criticize” their decision, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said in an interview with CNSNews.com on Monday at the National Press Club.

Got that? NO ONE should criticize their decision. But it's OK to hamper the efforts of poor families in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Washington DC and Nashville, TN to use vouchers and charters in order to raise and nurture their children as they determine is best for them.

No hope or change here.

UPDATE: They Obama's have chosen Sidwell Friends (again replicating the Clinton administration).

They will also be joining the grandchildren of Vice President Elect Joe Biden. In fact, Malia had told her parents she wanted to attend Sidwell because of her friendship with one of the grandchildren, according to sources familiar with the decision.

In selecting Sidwell, the Obamas have chosen a rigorous school where many of Washington's most prominent and moneyed families have sent their children. Vice President Gore moved his son, Albert Gore III, to Sidwell from St. Albans in the 1990s, and Washington Post Co. chairman Donald Graham sent his children there as well.

Ben Cunningham has the tuition numbers.

RIP: Marshall Fritz

A strong voice for children and their parents is gone. Marshall Fritz has passed according to his Separation of Church and State site.

He wisely advised that "Sunday School, Monday School—Neither is the Business of Government." He wrote, "some people think that the American "public school system" is broken so they try to fix it. The truth is that public schooling is not broken. Rather, it is succeeding in its main objective—strengthening government by undermining parents..." via Lisa Snell at Hawaii Reporter

Hat tip: Why Homeschool

On the same day

On the same day that homeschooling blogs are abuzz about the latest offensive and ignorant comments from Joy Behar of "The View" in which she called homeschoolers 'demented' we also get this report from the Hoover Institute. Here are some snips:

While home schooling may have particular appeal to celebrities, over the last decade families of all kinds have embraced the practice for widely varying reasons: no longer is home schooling exclusive to Christian fundamentalism and the countercultural Left. Along with growing acceptance of home schooling nationally has come increasing diversification of who home schools and of what home schooling actually means.
(snip)
By the 21st century, state laws were well established and uncontested, though nearly every year state legislators or judges, especially in the most permissive states, seek to increase regulations on home-schooling families in the name of accountability. Such initiatives nearly always fail due to the astonishing grass-roots organization and political mobilization of home schoolers.
(snip)
Home schooling is blending with other education movements to lead the way toward a 21st-century education matrix that is far more dynamic and adaptive than the schooling patterns of the past.

Again, as our new Tennessee Legislature starts working on their plans for education I want to encourage them to read this Hoover Institue article and craft and fund a public education system that isn't anchored to the old way of delivering education and embraces the new, more efficient and more customizable ways. The goal is not full employment of teachers, brick layers or bus drivers. The goal is to educate children. The how must fit the child.


Hat Tip Hoover Institute essay: Ben Cunningham

No room for failure

From CitizenNetMom:

The big problem for us is not the advanced students, though. It’s those who struggle to pass Algebra 1, and who will have loads of trouble with everything beyond that. There’s no room for failure, as repeating a class would require taking two math classes in the same year. (snip)

The bottom line is, today’s high school students have many fewer options than their parents did, and next year’s freshmen will have still fewer options than their older siblings did. There is no room for experimentation — they’re essentially picking a "major" for high school. Unlike college, there is no room for changing majors.

At 14, a student must choose a path for the rest of her life.

She has a lot more to say about the new tougher requirements I will encourage parents and legislators to read through it. I'll remind people that we've had Democrats in control of the House Education Committee for a good long time and that committee, which was Memphis heavy, was responsible for these standards. I can't explain why they thought this was a good idea when they clearly knew that too many of their students couldn't reliably maintain a B average to qualify for lottery scholarships.

Taxpayers, voters and parents should look toward the new Republican controlled Tennessee legislature and encourage them to seriously consider rolling back some of this. These new standards may look good on paper and in theory however, they will not improve the graduation rates. They will only increase the dropout rate as more and more students who didn't get Algebra I, partly because their basic arithmetic or reading skills were insufficient, get frustrated and leave.

It seems a good time to review just what our society can afford to provide in the way of education. It has got to be clear to nearly everyone that the sky is not the limit. Let's set some reasonable benchmarks and once they've mastered those skills let's free up students to move on with their lives outside of taxpayer supported government schooling in the workplace or further education or training.

Mapping Middle School

Based on the EffectiveSchooling.org chart MNPS Middle schools are looking pretty good.

Green with a dot = Exceptional
Green = Exceeds Standards
Yellow = Meets Standards

The Democrat Bus

AC Kleinheider at the Nashville Post asks:

Has (Republican Lt. Gov. Ron) Ramsey just thrown Rosalind Kurita under the bus?

Rosalind Kurita's problems are not the Republican Party's problem. It's the problem of the Democrat Party solely.

They were the ones that didn't groom anyone to take over the Lt. Gov. job before it became obvious Wilder was becoming incompetent. Anyone with sense, like Kurita, realized he was unfit to continue in the office and that wasn't good for the Democrat Party or, more importantly, the State of Tennessee. She did the right thing and she was rewarded for her brave move with the Speaker Pro Tempore job for two years.

Democrats were the ones who stole the election from Kurita as payback for not supporting Wilder.

Democrats owned and drove the bus that drove over Kurita.

It's their party and they can cry if they want to but don't come begging to Republicans for sympathy.

Judging the Judges

One of the most frustrating parts of being an informed voter is the lack of information regarding judges. Never having appeared in a courtroom, other than to be sworn in as a BOE member, I haven't had much opportunity to observe judges in action, so when it came time to vote for or retain judges, it's been a tough call. It's very difficult to find legitimate information on which to base a vote.

NewsChannel5's Phil Williams does voters another solid with his recent reports on local judges.

Yesterday it was Judge Gale Robinson. Yes, he is of the Nashville Robinson Funeral Home family which includes among others Muriel and Robb Robinson. The Memphis Ford family (John, Ophelia and the rest) and Nashville's own Robinson political family have found it very convenient to operate funeral parlors and have a second (or is that first) career in politics. Throw in a Garrett or two and ya gotta wonder: what is it about politics and funeral operators? I guess it's the ability to set your own hours.



The money quote:

"My first priority has always and will continue to be always my judicial duties," Robinson said, walking off.

Clearly this is not the case else the Judge wouldn't be moonlighting during the day while mere citizens, who don't dare raise a stink out of fear of retribution, are left to wait for the judge to grant them an audience.



Today it's Judge Gloria Dumas of the Environmental Court.








Her response after admitting that she has a tardiness problem:

"Am I saying that's my big old flaw? Yeah," she added. "If you're looking for perfect, you need to throw me out because I am not perfect."

No. We're not looking for perfect. We are looking for someone who'll actually do the job. If we're already paying her and another attorney to do her work--someone is expendable. Let's remember this come election time.




What I can't figure out is why the rest of the judges enable this activity and don't have a 'come to Jesus' meeting with these who aren't pulling their weight. What's in it for them that they would continue to cover for them?

Fully expected

The City Paper headline tells us: MNPS denies all three charter school applications. That was fully expected. Coulda written that headline months ago.

This is another reason to be thankful they'll be a Republican House and Senate in Tennessee. We can rewrite these charter school laws so that the school boards, which consider these public schools competitors, don't have the authority to approve or deny these applications in such a routine manner. Alan Coverstone (District 9) has the right idea. Let's approve them with provisions. Especially ones with track records of success like Smithson-Craighead and KIPP that want to expand. Typical protectionism. If you can't or won't improve your own job performance, make sure there are no other choices.

And here's the incredible truth that makes one wonder why, when one considers the lack in their own system, the MNPS BOE should have any say in judging a charter school's fitness:

Both Smithson-Craighead and KIPP Academy have met all benchmarks set by federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, despite serving populations of students considered by many to be high-risk. All of Smithson-Craighead’s students, and 94.3 percent of KIPP Academy’s, are considered economically disadvantaged by state Report Card data. LEAD just completed its first year of operation, so no Report Card data is available.