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The graduation dates for the 2009-2010 school year have been finalized. The dates are Monday, June 7, 2010, for H.E. Lackey, La Plata and North Point high schools. Westlake, Thomas Stone and McDonough high schools' graduations will be held on Tuesday, June 8, 2010. All graduations will be held at the Showplace Arena in Upper Marlboro, with the exception of North Point, which will be held at the school.
"Some of them object to my methodology." YES Mr. Mathews, and I must agree, I object also.
By Jay Mathews
Monday, July 13, 2009
Fifteen years ago, when I discovered that many good high schools prevented average students from taking demanding courses, I thought it was a fluke, a mistake that would soon be rectified.
I had spent much time inside schools that did the opposite. They worked hard to persuade students to take challenging classes and tests, such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge, so students would be ready for the shock of their first semester at college, which most average students attend. The results were good. Why didn't all schools do that?
I still don't have a satisfactory answer. It always comes up this time of year because of my annual rankings of public high schools for Newsweek, which is based on schools' efforts to challenge average kids as measured by participation in AP, IB and Cambridge tests.
Many school superintendents and principals who run schools that restrict access to those college-level courses and tests have disappointing results on the Newsweek list. Some of them object to my methodology. It is clear from my conversations with them that they are smart and compassionate people.
Read more HERE
School Violated Teen Girl's Rights, Supreme Court Rules
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 26, 2009
Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are "categorically distinct" from other efforts to combat illegal drugs.
Read more HERE.
The Board of Education's next work session is Monday, June 22, at the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building on Radio Station Road in La Plata. The public portion of the meeting begins at 6 p.m. with public forum. The meeting is televised live on Comcast Channel 96 and rebroadcast throughout the week. Program schedules for Channel 96 are available at www2.ccboe.com/publicinfo/channel96/schedule.cfm . The agenda and reports can be found on BoardDocs.
Public Hearing on Federal Stimulus Funding
Work Session
• FY 2010 Budget
• Discussion of dates to meet with Commissioners in the fall to discuss funding for the operating costs of the new high school
• Information Item: Code of Student Conduct/sexual offenses
• Information Item: Safety in schools
• Discussion on changing Board meeting dates for April and Sept., 2010 (April 13, 2010 is
NSBA and Sept. 14, 2010 is Election Day)
Action Item
• FY2010 Budget
• Policy #5117 – Bullying
• Policy #3411-Inventories: Furniture and Equipment
The Board of Education's next monthly meeting is Tuesday, June 9, at the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building on Radio Station Road in La Plata. The public portion of the meeting begins at 1 p.m. and recognition begins at 4:30 p.m. The meeting is televised live on Comcast Channel 96 and rebroadcast throughout the week. Program schedules for Channel 96 are available at www2.ccboe.com/publicinfo/channel96/schedule.cfm. The agenda and reports can be found on BoardDocs
Executive session 11:30 a.m.
Call to order 1 p.m.
La Plata High School's JROTC unit
Swearing-in of new Student Board member
Reports of officers/boards/committees
Superintendent's update
Correspondence/Board member updates
Action item
EACC/AFSME contract and signing
Reports of officers/boards/committees
Education Association of Charles County update
Student Board Member update
CCPS homeless student update
New high school
Adult education
Dual and concurrent enrollment
CIP update
2010 budget
Policy 3411, inventories: furniture and equipment
Policy 5117, bullying and harassment
Unfinished business
New business and future agenda items
New business contract award for Mt. Hope/Nanjemoy Elementary School kindergarten addition
Future agenda items
Recognition 4:15 p.m.
Ruth Ann Hall Awards
Students
Employees
Outstanding vice principal award
Outstanding support staff awards
Resolutions Charles County Teacher of the Year Janet Jones, reading resource teacher, General Smallwood Middle School; Employees' retirement; and Washington Post Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher award Samantha Shelton, Life Skills teacher, Milton M. Somers Middle School
Recognition of Charles County Teacher of the Year nominees Joy Thompson, language arts teacher, Milton M. Somers Middle School; and Brenda Wagner, Special Education teacher, William A. Diggs Elementary School
Recognition of Washington Post Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award nominees Maria Arevalo, language arts teacher, General Smallwood Middle School; Charna Brooks, third-grade teacher, William A. Diggs Elementary School; Nancy Burch, physical education teacher, Thomas Stone High School; Laura Kelly, art teacher, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Elementary School; and Deborah Taylor, mathematics teacher, Mattawoman Middle School
Public Forum 6 p.m.
Action items
Minutes
Personnel
Educational Facilities Master Plan
Out-of-county tuition fees
Policy 1000 series
Superintendent's redistricting recommendation
Adjournment
The Washington Post
Jay Mathews
June 1, 2009
It is hard for me to find a school leader with a track record for raising student achievement who does not admire almost everything Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is doing with the D.C. schools. Yeah, I said almost. One important item on her agenda is not so popular -- merit pay for teachers.
Rhee is right when she says that the standard way of assessing and compensating teachers is a mess. It drives talented people from the field or leads them to avoid teaching in the first place. It deprives principals of vital tools for improving schools. Rhee learned this the hard way, creating the New Teacher Project to recruit and train teachers for urban schools. That nonprofit organization is releasing today a study of 12 districts that backs Rhee's point -- administrators shrink from assessing the relative quality of their teachers and tend to give nearly everybody a good evaluation.
Read more HERE.
Md. Teen's Idea to Allow On-Campus Use at Lunch Faces Strong Opposition
By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 1, 2009
Juan Hendrix, an earth science teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, knows that when it comes to cellphone use in schools, looks can deceive.
"A classroom can appear quiet and orderly, but it may be abuzz with chatter," Hendrix said.
Text messaging has spawned an era of uninterrupted contact among friends, especially young people. Students often tap out silent conversations beneath their desks, even though most Washington area public schools forbid them to use cellphones on campus during school hours.
To defuse the conflict, a Montgomery County student leader has proposed a compromise: Let students text while they eat.
Read more HERE.
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 1, 2009
Forty-six states and the District of Columbia today will announce an effort to craft a single vision for what children should learn each year from kindergarten through high school graduation, an unprecedented step toward a uniform definition of success in American schools.
The push for common reading and math standards marks a turning point in a movement to judge U.S. children using one yardstick that reflects expectations set for students in countries around the world at a time of global competition. Today, each state decides what to teach in third-grade reading, fifth-grade math and every other class. Critics think some set a bar so that students can pass tests but, ultimately, are ill-prepared.
Led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the states, including Maryland and Virginia, are aiming to define a framework of content and skills that meet an overarching goal. When students get their high school diplomas, the coalition says, they should be ready to tackle college or a job. The benchmarks would be "internationally competitive."
Read more HERE.
By screening all teens, doctors hope to identify those with mental disorders
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Soon after her sister committed suicide, Caroline Downing started doing poorly at school. During math tests she would freeze up, and she found her mind wandering constantly. Officials at St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Potomac gently suggested that the high school sophomore get a mental health screening.
The idea of a psychiatric evaluation sent chills down the spine of Caroline's mother, Mathy Milling Downing, who believed that her younger daughter, Candace, had committed suicide because of an adverse reaction linked to a psychiatric drug -- the antidepressant Zoloft. Shortly after Candace's death, the Food and Drug Administration placed black-box warnings on several antidepressants to say they elevated suicidal thinking among some children. If Caroline were going to get the same kind of mental health care as Candace, Downing wanted no part of it.
Read more HERE.
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Thursday, May 7, 2009
ARTICLE St. Louis Post Dispatch
Publication Date: May 7, 2009
When the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics recently released its 2008 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth, the results were not pretty.
The survey of nearly 30,000 high school students nationwide found that 64 percent had cheated on a test in the past year (up from 60 percent two years earlier) and 38 percent had cheated more than once. More than a third had used the Internet to plagiarize. And lest they get credit for coming clean on the anonymous survey, which also tracked rising rates of teen lying and stealing, more than a quarter confessed to lying on at least one survey question.
Read more HERE
By Michael Birnbaum, Maria Glod
The Washington Post/ Loudounextra.com
May 19, 2009
A Loudoun County teacher became the focus of a congressional hearing today on restraining school children as government investigators reported that a child in her classroom at a Texas public school died seven years ago when she lay atop him after he refused to stay in his seat.
Dawn Marie Hamilton, a special education teacher at Park View High School in Sterling, was not criminally charged in the 2002 death of 14-year old Cedric Napoleon. But an administrative judge found the teacher used “excessive and unnecessary force,” according to Texas records, and upheld a decision to list her on a state registry of individuals found to have abused or neglected children.
Read more HERE.
Effects of Harm Can Linger, Report Finds
By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 11, 2009
Even though spasms of intense violence erupt on campuses occasionally and linger in the social consciousness, violence at schools across the country has been decreasing for a number of years.
That doesn't necessarily mean schools are safe havens. Consider:
-- Eighty-six percent of public schools in 2005-06 reported that one or more violent incidents, thefts of items valued at $10 or greater or other crimes had occurred -- a rate of 46 crimes per 1,000 enrolled students.
-- Almost a third of students ages 12 to 18 reported being bullied inside school.
-- Nearly a quarter of teenagers reported the presence of gangs at their schools.
Read more HERE.
By LINDSEY TANNER
The Associated Press
Friday, May 8, 2009; 5:24 PM
CHICAGO -- Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can "recover" from it _ most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy.
Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it's real.
Read more HERE.
The Board of Education's next monthly meeting is Tuesday, May 12, at the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building on Radio Station Road in La Plata. The public portion of the meeting begins at 1 p.m. and recognition begins at 4:30 p.m. The meeting is televised live on Comcast Channel 96 and rebroadcast throughout the week. Program schedules for Channel 96 are available at www2.ccboe.com/publicinfo/channel96/schedule.cfm. The agenda and reports can be found on BoardDocs
Executive session 12 p.m.
Call to order 1 p.m.
Pledge of Allegiance, Thomas Stone High School's JROTC unit
Reports of officers/boards/committees
Unfinished business
New business and future agenda items
Recognition 4:30 p.m.
Public Forum 6 p.m.
Action items
Adjournment
By Donna St. George
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 7, 2009
In Fairfax County, a teenage boy sent out a text message asking girls to send photos of their breasts. Word got out at his high school, police said, and when authorities tracked the teen down, they discovered a cache of naked images on his phone.
Thus began another investigation into "sexting" -- sending sexually explicit photos by cellphone -- and another deliberation about when adolescent impulsiveness and indiscretion become a serious criminal act. Some of the photos could qualify as child pornography, a felony in Virginia, police said.
Read more HERE.
By William Saletan
Slate.com
Posted Tuesday, May 5, 2009, at 9:11 AM ET
John McWhorter has attacked me.
Well, not really. He has actually written a very polite spanking of me in his blog at the New Republic. But I like to think of it as an attack, because coming from McWhorter, there's no higher compliment. I remember watching him give a talk on C-SPAN years ago. The subject was black underachievement and its politically correct apologists. It was like one of those action-movie scenes where the hero takes on 50 guys in hand-to-hand combat. He was fearless and funny and brutally incisive.
McWhorter believes in holding people to high standards. He despises excuse-making and wallowing in victimhood. I'm a huge fan of his argument and his attitude. As a prescription for underachievers, I think it's both the best medicine and the highest form of respect.
Read more HERE.
By LIBBY QUAID
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 5, 2009; 8:01 PM
BUNKER HILL, W.Va. -- Special education teacher Lynn Reichard has a problem with the federal No Child Left Behind law: Some of her kids cannot read, never mind pass its required state test.
Reichard told Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday that she works all year long to boost the self-esteem of mentally impaired students at Bunker Hill Elementary, only to see them fall apart over standardized tests.
"They feel so good about themselves, and then they look at a two-paragraph reading passage, and they know six words," Reichard said. "I have one child here that's a nonreader, and she's going to have to take the test, and she's going to cry.
"There's just got to be another answer for that," Reichard said.
Read more HERE.
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Mayra Avila is looking forward to her high school prom. She's also a college student taking government and English composition courses.
Avila, 18, isn't a Doogie Howser-esque superachiever. The West Potomac High School senior is among hundreds of thousands of teenagers getting a head start on an associate's or bachelor's degree -- and saving on tuition -- by taking college courses in high school.
Read more HERE.
Board of Education members participate in graduations as part of the academic procession, and along with the Superintendent confer diplomas to the graduating class.
If you wish to have your graduating senior presented their diploma by a particular board member, please contact that board member with the student's name and school as soon as possible.
The Texas State Board of Education is using its powers to ensure that textbooks give a nod to creationist theories
"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards."
Mark Twain wrote that in 1897, and Americans still quote it, with feeling. It comes to mind for many observers of a current battle over science education in Texas.
Read more about it HERE.
