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A Texas school district is going to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons in the classroom in an effort to protect against school shootings.

A tiny Texas district will allow teachers and staff members to carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings when classes begin this month, provided the gun-toting employees follow certain requirements.

The small community of Harrold in north Texas is a 30-minute drive from the Wilbarger County Sheriff’s Office, leaving students and teachers without protection, said David Thweatt, superintendent of the Harrold Independent School District. The lone campus of the 110-student district sits near a heavily traveled highway, which could make it a target, he argued.

To be able to carry a handgun in the school, the teacher would need extra training…

For employees to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations; and must ammunition designed to minimize the risk of ricocheting bullets.

I see their point about being far away from law enforcement, but I think hiring a police officer for the community would be a better idea than putting guns in the classroom.

Fortunately, the Daily Show looked at this issue last year with hilarious results…

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Matthew Yglesias has a great post that looks at the supposedly poor education systems in urban areas in the US.

His conclusion is one that I see everyday teaching here in Iowa…

All across the United States we have a problem with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds doing poorly in school. We also see kids from disadvantaged backgrounds overrepresented in urban school systems. Consequently, average results from city school systems tend to be below average. But when you use appropriate demographic controls you see that there’s huge city-to-city variation and also a huge amount being determined by the demographics.

From my experience, socio-economic status has a huge effect on how well a students does in school, as well as how prepared students are when they enter school. This is why early childhood education is so vital.

The goals of No Child Left Behind are admirable. However, currently, many students who enter school are already left behind because they have not had the exposure to the kinds of activities that encourage the development of language and reading skills.

In 2006, the Iowa legislature expanded early childhood education throughout the state. Research shows that children’s brains develop rapidly at this age and it just makes sense that we utilize this time in a child’s life to build a foundation for early literacy skills, as well as getting students “school ready.”

Expanding community nursing programs that help parents with parenting skills and emphasizing reading and language development in the home is another step that could help children who come from low socio-economic status. A nurse could make home visits once a month and provide patient education to parents and the child. Classes could be offered to teach skills parents need to help their children learn basic early literacy skills and develop language skills.

There is a huge window in the development of a child’s brain in the first 5 years of a child’s life. It only makes sense that as a society we structure education programs to get the full advantage of this rapid growth. We will see a huge return later in the child’s life for this investment.

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A high school in Boston has found a program that teaches math, business, and public speaking skills through entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneurship education is gaining popularity as a way to motivate students to master everything from math to public speaking. In the era of No Child Left Behind, it’s hard for many schools to make room for entrepreneurial classes in their schedules. But groups that promote these classes, particularly in urban settings, are convinced that a curriculum about creating, financing, and owning a business can also nudge up test scores and graduation rates.

At Fenway, a high-performing public school, educators saw the value so clearly that they made the demanding “Ventures” class a requirement. The course carries into senior year with career exploration and an internship. It’s one of many ways students here connect with the world beyond high school and practice the skills they’ll need there.

Ventures “is about the ability to open doors for yourself in the adult work world,” says Rosemary Sedgwick, who piloted the program a decade ago with funding from Adobe Systems and now is Fenway’s director of development. “It leaves them with that entrepreneurial spirit that they can go out and make things happen.”

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As a teacher with a Facebook profile and a blog, this story drew my interest.

Personal websites raise professional ethics issues.

The Washington Post (4/28, A1, Shapira) reports in a front-page story that some teachers’ Facebook profiles “can be overtly sarcastic or unintentionally unprofessional — or both.” And “the crudeness of some Facebook or MySpace teacher profiles, which are far, far away from sanitized websites ending in ‘.edu,’ prompts questions emblematic of our times: Do the risqué pages matter if teacher performance is not hindered and if students, parents and school officials don’t see them? At what point are these young teachers judged by the standards for public officials?” The Post notes that teachers in “Florida, Colorado, Tennessee and Massachusetts…have been removed or suspended for MySpace postings, and some teachers unions have begun warning members about racy personal websites.” In the D.C. area, “school officials say they have no policies concerning social networking pages or blogs kept by teachers. But they said that online improprieties would fall under general guidelines requiring proper behavior in and outside school and that sketchy websites would be handled case by case.”

It would really be a step in the wrong direction if schools adopt policies regulating the use of social network sites and personal blogs. It reminds me of some of the ridiculous things in teacher contracts years ago.

1905 teaching contract for Story County, Iowa

Teachers will be required to spend weekends in the community unless permission is granted by the Chairman of the Board.

Dancing, card playing and the theatre are works of the Devil that lead to gambling, immoral climate, and influence and will not be tolerated.

Any teacher who smokes cigarettes, uses liquor in any form, frequents a pool or public hall, or (for men) gets shaved in a barber shop, (or for women) bobbs (cuts) her hair, has dyed hair, wears short skirts (could not be any shorter than 2 inches above the ankles) and has undue use of cosmetics will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

Teachers will not marry or keep company with a man friend during the week except as an escort to church services. (The only man a woman teacher could be seen with was her father or her brother).

Loitering in ice cream parlors, drug stores, etc., is prohibited.

Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.

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High School students knowledge of financial literacy is on the decline as schools are failing to teach the most basic financial knowledge a students needs to succeed.

High school seniors, on average, answered correctly only 48.3 percent of questions about personal finance and economics, according to a nationwide survey released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve. That was even lower than the 52.4 percent in the previous survey in 2006 and marked the worst score out of the six surveys conducted so far.

With home foreclosures at record highs, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stressed in a speech that young people must sharpen their financial knowledge so they are in a better position to make sound investment decisions throughout their lives.

“The financial preparedness of our nation’s youth is essential to their well-being and of vital importance to our economic future,” Bernanke said at the Fed event on financial literacy.

“In light of the problems that have arisen in the subprime mortgage market, we are reminded of how critically important it is for individuals to become financially literate at an early age so that they are better prepared to make decisions and navigate an increasingly complex financial marketplace,” the Fed chairman added.

It is amazing that a student can graduate high school and not know how to balance a check or to even understand that concept of interest.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution. Students are required to take a one semester course in American Government (which is great), but then the other semester they should be taking a course to learn basic financial information.

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Richard Florida posted this story from the Wall Street Journal about the success of the education system in Finland…

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world’s C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they’re way ahead in math, science and reading — on track to keeping Finns among the world’s most productive …

Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it’s done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom …

The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master’s degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom. …

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. “In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs,” says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

In Finland, teachers have the freedom to actually teach and are able to be creative when planning lessons. This freedom makes teaching a desirable profession. This flexibility and respect of the teaching profession creates a much more desirable classroom for students to grow and learn. Outside of the classroom, the students also seem to have the respect and freedom to pursue their own interests.

In the United States the emphasis is put on standardized tests and accountability. In actuality, students aren’t able to learn one thing from a standardized test. The overbearing focus on testing infringes on a teacher’s freedom to actually teach and zaps the enjoyment out of learning that each student must develop.

Our priority needs to be on the growth of each student. As a teacher, my students possess many talents. We will be better off, if our education system hones these talents. This encouragement will spark the fire in many more students than a bubble circle ever could. Once immersed into learning, students will develop the creativity and problem solving skills needed to succeed.

Unfortunately today, we don’t give teachers the freedom to teach and student don’t develop the motivation to learn. We think of students simply as raw materials. We view students as what they are instead of what they can become. And that is is un-American.

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President Bush’s budget would freeze education spending, essentially cutting programs while expanding a controversial reading program and spending money on school vouchers.

The budget would add $300 million for Pell Grants for Kids, a new voucher program aimed at giving low-income students in struggling schools aid to help them switch to private schools. It also would provide $1 billion for Reading First, up from the $393 million that Congress appropriated for the current fiscal year. The reading program has been beset by allegations of conflicts of interest.

It seems the only increases in funding are going to two Rightwing pet projects, while the rest of the education system will suffer from no extra funding.

At the state level, the Iowa House approved a 4% increase in allowable growth for 2009-2010 school year.

House File 2140 would set allowable growth for the 2009-10 school year at 4 percent or $112.6 million in state aid and $45 million more from local property taxes due to increases in assessed valuation, according to an analysis by the Legislative Services Agency. The increase would boost the state average per pupil cost from $5,546 to $5,768 or $222.

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Here is a look at the the issues I am looking at when trying to decide which candidate to support for president.

I want a candidate for president that…

• is strongly against Free Trade and recognizes that NAFTA ships US jobs overseas and is a driving force behind our immigration problem.
• is in favor of universal health care
• sees the major flaws in NCLB and will drastically change the program or just get rid of it
• is committed to ending our addiction to foreign oil and sees renewable energy and green technologies as a way to create millions of jobs in the country
• sees Iraq as a distraction from fighting al Qaeda and dealing with terror threats around the world, will bring our troops home from Iraq ( the British withdrawal from Basra reduced violence in the city by 90%), and understands the only solution in Iraq is a diplomatic one

Check out Still Undecided Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

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T.M. Lindsey has an interesting story over at Iowa Independent about an event by Jonathon Kozol, an award winning author about our education system. Kozol had some truthful comments about the No Child Left Behind act…

Jonathan Kozol’s contributions to public education and role in exposing the educational inequities between the rich and poor have left big footprints in our nation’s public education narrative. Kozol, a 71-year-old Boston native, addressed a room full of educators, administrators and prospective educators at the Marriott Hotel in Coralville Tuesday. The event, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights Bookstore and The Iowa City Public School, was billed as a reading of Kozol’s new book, “Letters to a New Young Teacher,” but the real elephant in the room, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), could not be ignored.

“I have a theory about No Child Left Behind,” Kozol told more than 400 people who gathered to hear his reading. “I believe the right wing’s agenda underlying No Child Left Behind is not to help students on the bottom end of the spectrum, but to serve as more of a shaming ritual in the public spectrum to soften the ground for vouchers.”

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Ezra Klein tells why school vouchers don’t work…

white parents fleeing pockets of poverty is not an argument for school vouchers. What they’re fleeing is the poverty — which, at a certain density, dissolves just about any school. If everyone had a voucher, there would still be concentrated poverty in DC, and thus in its schools, and white parents would still move away so they could easily send their kids to other schools. What they’re seeking is economic segregation, not school choice. And the way you achieve that is move away from poor areas. Which is something that school vouchers would not, sadly, allow poor families to do.

Instead of school vouchers, we need to do something to end poverty.

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