Strollerderby : elementary schools

Bizarro News: Flaming Squirrel Sets Elementary School on Fire

Cole Gamble — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:30:00 GMT

This is going to be tough for the school to collect insurance on. I severely doubt the school district’s insurance policy includes, “Destruction by Act of Flaming Squirrel.”

Firefighters in Jones, Oklahoma say the probable cause for a 5 acre wildfire that triggered the evacuation of an elementary school came from a squirrel exploding into flames due to touching two power lines and then falling into a grassy field.

The elementary school children were evacuated to a local high school; none sustained any injuries.

Donations for the squirrel's bereaved family will be accepted at your nearest tree.

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Political Bullying in Elementary Schools

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:34:00 GMT

What would you do if you found out that a little girl was telling your child, “His name is Obama bin Laden” and, “It’s not Hilary—it’s Hitlery”? A writer on the blog Daily Kos, who is one of few Democrats in a Texan town, was faced with this dilemma when her eight-year-old daughter Abigail reported that one of her classmates was repeatedly making these comments. This was around the time that Abigail’s class was voting for president in the Scholastic presidential election.

Darcy writes, “I doubt if the little girl even knows who Osama bin Laden or Hitler are, but my kid does. She is upset about the comments, and I am stunned.”

Darcy’s husband wanted Abigail to learn to deal with the taunts herself, but Darcy ultimately decided to speak with Abigail’s teacher. The teacher, according to Darcy, “decided to use the incident as a teaching moment to address mudslinging.” (For what it’s worth, the mudslinging didn’t seem to help McCain in this third grade classroom: Obama won 17-5.)

I think Darcy did the right thing. No matter what your political affiliation is, that kind of hateful speech has no place in schools. By making mudslinging into a classroom dialogue, the teacher had a chance to teach the bullying girl and other students just what it means to call someone Hitler or bin Laden.

Do you think that hateful comments about political figures count as bullying? Was the mother right to go to the teacher with her concerns?

The Kids Have Voted!

No Child Left Behind Sets Impossible Goals

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:20:00 GMT

Yet another of the Bush administration’s chickens has come home to roost, this time in the arena of early education. The No Child Left Behind law has begun creating problems for schools that are not unlike the balloon payments dogging many homeowners.

This past year, more schools failed to meet the federal law’s testing requirements than ever before, in large part because, for many states, NCLB required relatively small improvements in the first few years, followed by gigantic leaps in the next few years.

In California, for instance, many schools were making good progress, increasing test scores by about 3 percent a year. But this year, these solid schools are required to up student performance by a whopping 11 percent; for most of them, it has proven impossible. One study estimated that every single elementary school in California would fail to meet the NCLB requirements by 2014, the year in which the law aims to have every American school achieve 100 percent proficiency in math and reading—a goal which many experts have long argued is impossible.

“And they’re asking for another 11 percent increase next year and the next, and that’s where I’m saying I just don’t know how,” said a California school principal (pictured). “I’m spending sleepless nights.”

Perhaps most worrisome, NCLB (unintentionally) mandates harsher punishments for schools in states with harder tests and higher academic standards; schools with lower standards, on the other hand, stand a better chance of meeting NCLB’s improvement requirements.

School administrators have been counting on Congress to change the law to reflect more realistic standards of achievement. But with war, environmental degradation, and economic disaster to contend with, it’s unlikely that early education laws will be seriously revisited anytime soon.

Photo: New York Times