Fighting Obesity
Should Kids Walk to School?
Over a generation ago, about half of the nation’s children walked to school. Today, that number is about 16 percent. However, many governmental entities and activists see the current situation as an opportunity to encourage kids to walk to school in order to fight obesity. But is this really a good idea?
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Closing Schools
Districts Need To Save Money
It is ironic that saving money is not an issue for poor school districts. For example, it is a waste of money to operate a half empty campus with declining enrollment. But instead of closing that school and transferring students to another low enrollment campus, area residents fight to keep them open.
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Playtime
Drug Testing for Extracurricular Activities
School districts across the country have sought meaningful ways to stem the rising tide of illicit drug use among kids. One particular idea that is now gaining traction are mandatory drug screenings for students involved in extracurricular programs such as athletics and other voluntary activities.
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Ending Punishment
Self-Esteem and Discipline
In the self-esteem movement, school districts removed all negativity from the school environment, which also meant eliminating discipline. Regardless of what type of misbehavior was involved, an administrator was apt to lavish a student with praise and a pep talk instead of punishing him even for violence.
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Construction Frenzy
The Bogus Overcrowded School Crisis
Growing school districts love overcrowded schools. Even though districts have already spent huge sums of money without having much to show for it in the quality of an education, an overcrowded school offers the opportunity to chase after more tax dollars. Sadly, the results are unnecessary expensive buildings.
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Dropout Factories
Schools that Specialize in Dropouts
Dropout factories are high schools in which at least 40 percent of freshmen do no graduate in four years. Researchers assert that 1 in 10 high schools in the nation are dropout factories. What causes these enormous dropout rates and what can be done to reverse this trend. And what role does money play?
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Disaster in Europe
Higher Education is a Mess
Higher education in Europe is a mess. Instead of earning a paycheck, too many college graduates get welfare checks. And the many recent graduates that do get a job end up doing menial labor such as food preparation. But many European leaders face enormous pressure when trying to fix the problem.
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Teacher Shortage Myth
A Bogus Story That Keeps Going
The school district that I graduated high school from is the fourth largest in the state of Texas. And that district had 6,875 applications for 850 openings. In fact, this country has plenty of unemployed teachers, especially the ones who have twenty-plus years of experience. So how has this myth gotten out of control?
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Dropouts Regret Decision
Many Cite Boredom as Reason
According to a recent study, many high school dropouts regretted their decision to leave school. Although one-third of them were already failing, six out of 10 students were actually passing their classes before they left school and they could have graduated. And many cited boredom as their reason.
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Secret in the Classroom
Kids Who Are Sex Offenders
There are many schools districts that have students in the classroom who are sex offenders. States require compulsory education but many policies are vague about dealing with students who are sex predators because they are still required to be in the classroom. And most districts don't have any provisions for that.
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Bad Substitute Teachers
A Lurking Problem in Schools
Although educators are often under the microscope by parents, administrators, and the local community, most substitute teachers do not receive the same kind of scrutiny. And their brevity within a single classroom makes them a bit elusive to the school system, which allows the miscreants to slip by.
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Gross Negligence
Kids Videotaped While Undressing
Some school districts are just asking for a lawsuit and the Overton County School Board is one such place. A storage room with a monitoring system was converted into a locker room but the cameras were never removed. So children between the ages of 10 through 14 were videotaped taking off their clothes.
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Creating Illiterates
Grading only on Content
It is now commonplace for schools to only grade essays solely for content instead of also penalizing punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Our education system could be graduating an entire generation of barely literate kids who are headed for disaster because of their incomprehensible written communication skills.
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Sham Graduation
Walking Across the Stage for No Diploma
For high school seniors who flunk out and are unable to participate in the graduation ceremony, nearly all schools across the country say tough luck. Unfortunately, there are a few schools that will allow flunkies to walk across the stage in a cap and gown for graduation even though they will not receive a diploma.
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Bilingual Education Failure
Kids Do Not Master Two Languages
There are so many well-intentioned people exclaiming the virtues of our schoolchildren learning two languages. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is happening in our schools with bilingual education. Instead of kids mastering two languages, they are walking away with an inadequate grasp of English.
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Bullying Teachers
Principal Threatens His Faculty
Principal John Burks of the New Braunfels Middle School is the kind of administrator that exemplifies the worst of our educational leadership. In one of his tirades to a group of faculty, he demanded that standardized test scores in science improve or that he would personally shoot each teacher.
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Dress Code Compromise
An Alternative to School Uniforms
Dress codes for schools represent a huge waste of time and effort for teachers and administrators to enforce. But if left unchecked, it will definitely cause distractions. Requiring uniforms have always faced fierce resistance from parents and students but there is common ground for a compromise.
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No Homework
But That Isn’t a Zero
Quite a few school districts are using a novel approach to the grading of homework. If a student does not turn in his or her assignments, the grade will be a 50 instead of a big fat zero. So in other words, if a kid doesn’t do squat and turns in absolutely nothing, then he or she automatically earns 50 points.
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Expensive Land
Education and Big Construction
Education bureaucrats love to build plenty of shiny new schools and expand existing campuses with expensive new buildings. And there is no such thing as a project that is too big or too expensive. And everybody benefits, like school personnel, politicians, and developers. That is everybody except the taxpayers.
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Teachers Caught Lying
Hundreds Involved in Scam
Educators paid a fee to enroll in a bogus school that they knew would off absolutely no coursework, instruction time, tests, or homework was involved. The teachers would simply receive a transcript claiming that they were awarded credit for a class that they really didn’t take.
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Rampant Cheating
Widespread Academic Dishonesty
Has cheating become an accepted norm of our education system? One annual survey from the “Who's Who Among American High School Students” revealed that 80 percent of high school students admitted to cheating while they were in school. In fact, 95 percent of these cheaters even admitted to never being caught.
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Caught in the Act
Sex in the Classroom
Students of the Crockett Middle School near Houston Texas certainly got an eyeful when they were sitting in class. When a teacher momentarily stepped out of the classroom, two eighth graders seized the moment and each other to participate in a sex act with the entire class looking on.
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Principal Arrested
Used Student Pictures for Porn
A miniscule number of educators have made far too many sensational headlines about their bad behavior. But this misconduct isn’t only limited to teachers. An elementary school principal in Florida was arrested for superimposing the faces of the young girls of his school on to images of adult nude women.
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Another Nuisance
Teachers Harassed By Teachers
Teachers already have a hard enough time maintaining discipline in the classroom but they have another pesky problem to deal with. Educators are sometimes hassled by their fellow faculty members who actually insist that they gloss over a student’s misconduct or some other behavioral issue.
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Another Beer Bash
Principal and Teacher Arrested
Beer and minors do not mix and it is against the law for anyone to contribute to the delinquency of a minor by offering alcoholic beverages to them. However, a high school principal and a middle school teacher provided kegs of beer to kids during a party and even charged them money for it.
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Perverted Educators
Peeping Toms in the Classrooms
A math teacher was arrested for having over a hundred “inappropriate” photographs of female students in the classroom and on campus who didn’t know that he had taken pictures of them. He also had shot some video footage as well plenty of digital images of girls taken at the local mall.
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Naked Teachers
Educator Fights to Keep Her Job
Tamara Hoover is an outstanding arts teacher. And being an artist, Hoover felt that it was absolutely innocuous to have her nude pictures posted on the Flickr.com web site. The photographs show her nakedness while doing routine daily activities such as taking a shower, getting dressed, lifting weights, and even in bed.
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Girly Shirts
Sexually Explicit Clothes at School
When it comes to clothing, school districts have always put teenage girls under the microscope. However, some girls have found a novel way to circumvent school dress codes while titillating the opposite sex without cleavage, short skirts, or whale tails. They simply wear t-shirts with blatantly sexual messages.
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A New Kindergarten
Playtime Out, Academics In
For much of the country, kindergarten has been entirely transformed. Gone are the days of finger painting, snack breaks and naptime. Today, the curriculum strictly centers on academics instead of playtime. Children are expected to learn something and be tested on it because they can actually fail kinder.
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Internet Safety
Should Schools Teach It?
When it comes to the safety and wellbeing of a child, the most import person is the parent. And it is irrelevant on how good a curriculum is or how articulate a speaker may be, it is the parent who sets the rule and boundaries on Internet usage as well as setting the foundation for behavior.
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Accelerated Education
Taking Challenging Curriculums
Some parents to want their children in programs like the Gifted and Talented and Advanced Placement (AP) in high school that allow students to take college level classes. However, the process to get a child enrolled in such programs is often filled with controversy and the subject of heated debates across the country.
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Billing School Districts
Charging for Remedial Education
Colleges and employers already know first hand that merely having a high school diploma is really an unknown variable. But there is an effective way to finally hold our school system directly accountable. Financially penalize school districts when one of their students has to take a remedial class in college.
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First Grader Punished
Suspended for Sexual Harassment
Can an elementary school actually suspend a first grader for three days because of sexual harassment? That’s what happened in Brockton Massachusetts. Instead of directly dealing with the mischievous behavior of a six year old, school officials went overboard in punishment.
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Earn It, Not Give It
Overboard on Self-Esteem
Do kids get too much lavish praise from parents and schools? Although experts debate whether or not kids are now more narcissistic, no one can deny that the the self-esteem movement that quickly took root in school districts across the country in the early 1990's went overboard. Some of the trends bordered on the ridiculous.
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Missing Teacher Meetings
Fined and Charged With a Crime
In an effort to get more parents involved in the education of their children, certain state legislatures have toyed around with the idea of actually charging people with a misdemeanor and slapping them with a $500 fine for missing parent-teacher conferences. But would that really turn people into better parents?
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Dual Immersion
Bilingual Education Run Amok
Perhaps the zaniest bilingual education proposal is a classroom of half English speaking students and half Spanish speaking students and teach the class in both languages. The purpose would be to produce children who would be literate in both languages, except that bilingual programs are already a dismal failure.
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Student Murdered
More Teacher/Student Sex
18 year old Sean Powell, a troubled teen, was in the midst of a steamy illicit affair with his 30 year old married teacher, Erin McLean. After learning that his teacher wife of 11 years was romantically involved with a high school dropout, McLean's husband Eric angrily confronted Powell with a shotgun and shot him dead.
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Pair of Distractions
A School Bans Cleavage
The Arlington school board in Texas amended their student dress code to explicitly ban the clothes worn by girls that display cleavage. How to exactly define teenage cleavage remains to be a bit tricky but the definition will probably have to fall along the lines of “you’ll know it when you see it.”
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Losing Your Job
A Teacher's Date With A Porn Star
During the "Bubba the Love Sponge" show on Sirius satellite radio, Jaison Biagini won a contest in which he thought it was the dream of a lifetime. The prize was an all expense paid trip to Florida that included a date with a porn star. But since Biagini was also a high school teacher, the contest cost him his job.
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Teachers and the Net
The Past is Only a Click Away
School districts are discovering the graphic youthful indiscretions of the college years of newly graduated teachers by a simple search of the Internet; and they are definitely getting quite an eyeful. What may have been carefree fun of photos and explicit journals is now coming back to haunt educators.
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Costly Superintendents
New Scam Hitting School Districts
The biggest scam hitting school districts (and the taxpayers who fund such boondoggles) is the new wave of scandalously expensive superintendents. In the past, an incompetent bureaucrat could quietly ruin a school district in relative obscurity. Now an over-priced administrator can do the same thing.
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Teacher Assaulted
Confiscating a Student’s iPod
Frank Burd, a 60-year-old teacher at Germantown High School in Philadelphia PA observed a 17-year-old student with an iPod. Since having an iPod violated district policy, Burd confronted the student and confiscated it. That student and another violently assaulted the teacher leaving him with two broken bones.
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Parental Involvement
Helping Your Child Succeed
Teachers insist that parents need to be involved in their child’s education. Students end up doing their homework, turning in their required assignments, and preparing for tests. Additionally, the more frequently and more intensely they study produces much better test scores and far higher grades.
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Firing Superintendents
The Cost To Buy Out Contracts
Getting rid of a lousy superintendent is problematic at best and inherently cost prohibitive. Nearly all of these administrators usually have an ironclad legal document that specifically stipulates the gargantuan price of getting fired before the expiration of their contract. And it is the taxpayer who has to pay for it.
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School Vouchers
What’s all the Hullabaloo?
The National Education Association argues against any voucher plan. They insist vouchers are bad because “it is driven by ideologues… not by teachers and other educators” and it rests on “the big lie… that public education has failed.” If public education isn’t failing, then I would like to hear their definition of “success”.
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Topless Teacher
Another Educator Scandal
Melissa Moss has earned an infamous moniker as the “topless teacher” at the high school she taught at in the state of Missouri. And yes, she did do something stupid that cost the young teacher her job. And as the name suggests, it had something to do with her being topless for a young male student.
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Perverted Coach
Coach Marries 16 Year Old Girl
Windy Hager, a freshman in Brunswick High School in North Carolina, had tremendous enthusiasm for track and field so high school seemed to be the perfect place for her to indulge in her passion for the sport. And that is where 38-year old Brenton Wuchae, a track coach for the school, stepped into the picture.
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Public Relations
Schools Don’t Need Advertising
In the business world, if you offer a good product, people want it. It is no different in education. Catchy slogans and slick posters may give the impression of an excellent education but it won’t take long for parents to realize that nothing has been done to transform dismal failing schools into high performing ones.
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Excused Absences
No Excuse for Missing Assignments
Teachers now have to explain to their students that they still have to “make up” the assignments they missed while they were absent. These kids honestly believe that an “excused” absence also excuses them from turning in any work that was due during their time away. They also think it also includes exams.
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Grades Going Online
Parents and Teachers in Cyberspace
Online access for parents to view their children’s grades and schoolwork is becoming quite commonplace in many school districts. Test scores, assignments, absences, and notes from teachers are now at the fingertips for the parents that want to be involved in the academic progress of their children.
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No Teacher Appreciation
Educators and the Six Phases
Bad bosses, terrible work environments, and crummy disincentives are prevalent in just about every type of employment in the private sector. And to top it off, there is also no recognition for hard work. Unfortunately, educators are in no way exempt from the cruelties that plague free enterprise.
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Deficient in English
Bilingual Programs are Failing
The consensus is that  bilingual education has never worked. Students can spend all twelve grades in bilingual programs but never really become proficient in English. The outcome is a group of people who are condemned to a lifetime of poverty because being barely literate severely limits employment opportunities.
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Perky T*ts
Teacher in Hot Water for Comment
Musto, a 44 years old middle school history teacher was playfully bantering with one of his female students. In the course of their conversation, the teacher blurted out to the 13 year old girl in front of a roomful of her classmates that she had “nice, perky t*ts”. A firestorm quickly ensued that reckless comment.
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Herding Cats
Elementary Students and Self-control
If a student doesn’t want to exercise self-control or adhere to the rules of conduct, then there is only so much more that an educator can do beyond ordinary discipline. Unfortunately, some administrators would rather blame the teacher even though he or she has absolutely no control over the situation.
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Media Incites Kids
Students Walk Out of Classrooms
Unlike the rest of country, San Antonio Texas was relatively quiet while other cites with large Hispanic populations demonstrated in the streets about the illegal immigration debate. That is until the local newspaper got involved. After a bit of encouragement, kids did walk out of classes in a number of schools.
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Less Homework
The Slacking Off Of Education
Compared to their international peers, American high school students have far less homework. Recent research has proved that this harsh reality contradicts the popularly held belief that kids are saddled with too much homework. Not only do students have less, some kids have absolutely no homework.
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Multiculturalism
Will It Help Hispanics Graduate?
Can multicultural curriculums really help Hispanic children overcome the language barrier and allow them to fit in better in our education system? And if a student can be made to feel more comfortable in an environment that respects his or her heritage, then can learning be more effective for them?
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End of Homework?
The Quandary of Teachers
A rising number of teachers assign little or no homework at all because most of their students refuse to do them. Unfortunately, it is the teachers who will get punished by their principal for giving their students a zero for turning in no homework. As a result, the learning experience is greatly declining.
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Up in Smoke
Principal Caught Smoking
A high school principal in Rhode Island was smoking on campus which violated state law and district policy. A student who observed the incident snapped a picture of her lighting up and then posted it on his web site. The principal then suspended the student after he refused to remove the photograph.
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Banning iPods
Students Use Them to Cheat
First came the ban on cell phones especially when text messaging became the next craze, it was easy for students to transmit answers to their classmates during a test. The next ban is the iPod. Digital media players provide an excellent medium for academic dishonesty and a tech savvy generation is exploiting it.
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Teacher Resigns
Used Teeth to Remove Girl's Garter
Brett Coogle is a high school teacher who taught English in Louisville Kentucky. Unfortunately, he made a bad decision that ruined his career. During the prom, he stuck his head almost all the way up a girl’s prom dress and pulled down the student’s garter with his teeth. He resigned shortly afterwards.
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Baring Too Much
Dress Codes for Teachers
School districts are now beginning to enforce dress codes for their faculty and staff. Do such restrictions for professionals seem to border on the tawdry and the absurd? After all, teachers are adults and professionals so they should already know better when it comes to professionalism. Or do they?
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Shaking Rear Ends
Cheerleaders Get Suspended
Cheerleaders were suspended after arguing with their vice-principal about a risqué cheerleading routine. The girls are now shocked that violating school policy and flipping off an administrator while using profane language got them suspended from school. And their parents were just as belligerent as their kids.
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Hot for Teacher
Female Educators and Minors
So what is going on with young attractive female teachers having sex with teenage boys? After all, it wasn't all that long ago that it was natural to assume that only men were the perverts. Well, times have changed as school districts face the embarrassing dilemma of their female faculty having sex with young boys.
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Teacher Sex Scandals
Parents Need to Intervene
An emerging scenario that is becoming all too familiar in this country is male teenagers who are having sex with young female teachers. Sadly, some parents were aware of the relationships but didn't do anything about it even though there are instances of the outcome leading to murder and prison.
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Dumb Down Standards
A Principal Puts it in Writing
The principal of a high school in East Harlem of New York City gave a stern warning to his teachers to "dumb down their curriculums so that more students can pass. The memo to his faculty caused quite an uproar with city hall and now the U.S. Department of Education wants him to clarify his statements.
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Pipelining Certification
Not Everybody Can Teach
There is a belief that anybody with a college degree can teach. Plenty of educators admit that this kind of attitude is commonplace and that they encounter it everywhere in which too many people think that teachers are not as intelligent or as competent as people in other professions.
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Student Health
Schools and Good Intentions
Certain lawmakers seem resolute on using the state legislature to establish decent health habits on a student population. They want equate a students’ physical health with their academic performance but what role does the government have in ensuring the health of its children?
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Manhunt
The Lack of Male Teachers
Out of the three million teachers in this country, only 21 percent of them are male. And more strikingly is when elementary schools are taken into account, that percentage plummets to only 9 percent. Our education system would like to see more of a male presence so can this trend be reversed?
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Overpriced Playgrounds
Bureaucratic Price Gouging Reigns
How much money does it cost to install a playground? Millions of families have placed playground equipment in their backyards and nearly all of them fought hard to stick to a budget. However, when it comes my school district, they spent $107,808 to install $8,500 worth of equipment.
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High School Dropouts
It Takes More than Money
High school dropout rates in the United States are pretty dismal. And that is raising concern among policymakers, the private sector, and especially among educators. Of course the natural solution is that our education system needs more money but is that really the answer or is there more to it than cold hard cash?
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Incompetent Teachers
The Need to Fire Bad Educators
When savvy administrators decide that they can do without the dead weight of bad teachers, it is next to impossible to get rid of them. Unions and arcane governmental regulations allow bad educators to remain on the payroll indefinitely even if they are sitting in a jail cell.
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Save Our Schools
Broken Tax Collection Schemes
Instead of raising taxes, the local appraisal district simply raises the value of your property so that more tax revenues can be generated. As a result, unscrupulous politicians can now insist that they did not raise any taxes in any shape or form but still reap the additional tax revenues.
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Disrespecting Teachers
Parents are Out of Control
Teachers often feel that too many parents are out of control. Instead of behaving as mature adults who are truly concerned about their children’s education, a number of parents are now openly hostile and downright vulgar and aggressive when they are having a discussion with their child’s teacher.
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Teacher Bonuses
Are Incentives a Good Idea?
A hardworking diligent teacher should be recognized for their effort and rewarded in a tangible way. So why not reward the good educators with a bonus. And cold hard cash is perhaps one of the best ways to encourage the better teachers to remain in their profession. But are these financial incentives a good idea?
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Don’t Play Tag
Or My Parents Might Sue You
Out of fear of liability, elementary schools have slowly begun to curb many of the childhood games that have been played for generations like touch football and even tag. It was bound to happen because bureaucratic governmental entities like public schools make easy targets for trial lawyers.
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$209.52 Claim
Over $68,000 in Attorney’s Fees
Many school districts have played fast and loose with their faculty's contractual obligations by requiring them to work outside of the expiration of their contract. In one district, a teacher took a $209 claim to court. And after the district spent $68,000 in attorney's fees, they lost but they are still appealing the case.
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Two Football Stadiums?
Wasteful Educational Spending
When I opened up my mailbox, I found a political brochure promoting passage of a school bond for the school district I live in. And in it, I found convoluted logic explaining the urgent need for a second football stadium because parents don't want their kids playing in the Saturday afternoon heat.
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Teaching Kids at Home
In Defense of Home Schooling
Critics portray the average home-schooling family in very unflattering terms even though they know very little why parents choose this path. Home schoolers believe that the purpose of school is to educate and prepare them for their future lives as adults; not for radical social experimentation and indoctrination.
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Standardized Testing
Has it Failed or Succeeded?
Is No Child Left Behind (NCLB) a failure? Standardized testing has had its supporters as well as it critics but too few people want to examine the big picture. Before standardized testing, there were plenty of lousy schools. And after standardized testing, there are still plenty of lousy schools.
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Lights Out
Teacher Caught in Sex Act
Female teacher sex scandals usually involve the police obtaining phone wiretaps, text messages, and emails. So when interrogated by investigators, educators often confess because of the evidence. But the sex crime at Westfield High School was different because the teacher was caught in the act.
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Blaming Teachers
Principals Not Enforcing Discipline
One frustration for an educator is that they are required to enforce discipline on behavior that they have absolutely no control over. Although teachers do need to have more authority in the classroom, it is disturbing that an educator can be held responsible for inappropriate conduct that they cannot control.
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The 65 Percent Rule
Lower Taxes and a Good Education
Too many people across the country feel that a quality education can only occur inside the confines of a shiny brand new and outrageously expensive building. So if a classroom is not constructed of reinforced concrete and is more than twenty years old, then a child must be getting a lousy education.
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Vocational Programs Decline
The Disarray of our Future Trades
High school vocational education in the United States has always experienced quite a rocky history. Unfortunately, much of our educational leadership oftentimes refuses to address one very serious question. How many students will not go to college? And what kind of programs are available for the ones who aren't going?
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Failure to Verify
Criminal in the Classroom
In the city I live in, school districts have employed teachers who have been convicted of sex and drug crimes and other criminal acts. The districts did not properly perform a thorough background check or did not pursue any additional research when the checks found obvious red flags.
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Bump and Grind
The End of School Dances
The tradition of schools hosting dances is slowly coming to an end because of a type of dirty dancing. School officials are uncomfortable whenever a guy begins jamming his front side up against the girl’s backside. Some girls like to bend over while their dance partner continues to “grind” his loins into her buttocks.
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GRRRRR
Another Teacher Sex Scandal
Rebecca Dawn Bogard is an attractive 27 year old high school teacher in Biloxi Mississippi. The vanity license plate of her jaguar says GRRRRR. This young educator had also developed a rapport with a 15 year old male student in her classroom. But you already know how this story is going to end.
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Going Topless
Cheerleading Coach Strips Down
A 19 year old high school football coaching assistant threw a party at his house. He invited a 19 year old cheerleading coach and a number of teenagers who were students at their high school. During all the revelry, the cheerleading coach and a 15 year old cheerleader went topless in front of the camera.
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