Open thread: the late great assignment

Query submitted for your approval: Do you accept late work from students? If so, how much, how often, and at what consequence?

What is your district policy on this?

Inquiring minds want to know....

There are no words.

That late great author Douglas Adams once said, "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

My colleagues in the special education department were supposed to get me all the IEPs for my students who have one last Friday. I just got another one today, and several were emailed, dated 11:59 pm, on Friday evening.

So, nearly half of the kids in my regular classes have IEPs that allow them to turn in work late.

All their work. All the time.

Some of these kids are seventeen and eighteen years old.

Discuss. I'll be back after I wash my mouth out with soap.

Well, certainly, let's make an education the last priority!

I received a royal summons to attend to a counselor when he was actually in the building in between his numerous workshops. He wanted to talk to me about one of our students. Seems the young lady has overextended herself-- has taken on a bunch of leadership positions and extra-curricular activities, and is feeling very stressed. As the counselor recounted the list to me, it certainly WAS formidable.

The counselor asked the young lady if there wasn't anything she could cut back on, and she really didn't want to give any of it up. But here's the punchline: the kiddo was most concerned about my class, and basically wanted to be excused from doing most of my assignments for the next six weeks so that she could fulfill all her other activities, but didn't actually want to approach me herself (I wonder why?). So instead, she thought it would be okay if the counselor talked to me for her, and the counselor asked if I couldn't somehow do something to lessen the load.

I'm thinking about presenting a lesson on the concept of "opportunity cost" and prioritizing.

Open thread: Sounds "questionable" to me...

A friend of mine has a daughter who is looking for a teaching job next year, partly due to this policy: Teachers in her high school have been instructed to allow students to retake tests repeatedly until they pass them, no matter how many times it takes. The district doesn't want any students failing.

I doubt that ANY district WANTS to see students failing. But where is there ever accountability in this kind of set-up?

What do you think?

Holiday hunger

A school district in Ohio is keeping its lunch lines open during the holiday break to make sure that needy students still have access to at least one hot meal a day during the week.

A school district in Ohio says the economy is so tight it has kept its cafeterias open during Christmas break to provide hot lunches for needy students.

It's the first time North College Hill School district outside Cincinnati has kept its lunch lines going through the holiday break.
Officials say two-thirds of the district's 1,600 students are economically disadvantaged, up from fewer than one in 10 a decade ago.

The national School Nutrition Association says almost 80 percent of the schools it surveyed are reporting an increase in the number of free lunches served this year.

What does it mean when our society has descended to this point? True, there are no doubt some of these students who could be fed if the adults in their lives made feeding their children a priority over their own entertainment-- and I am speaking as someone who knows personally people who do wrongheaded things like this consistently-- but kids should not suffer hunger as a consequence of the decisions of their parents.

In this time of giving, please don't forget to support your local food pantry as well.

Winners NEVER cheat (or at least they never get caught)

Sadly, for those of us who work with kids, this really isn't a surprise.

In the past year, 30 percent of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64 percent have cheated on a test, according to a new, large-scale survey suggesting that Americans are too apathetic about ethical standards. Educators reacting to the findings questioned any suggestion that today's young people are less honest than previous generations, but several agreed that intensified pressures are prompting many students to cut corners.

"The competition is greater, the pressures on kids have increased dramatically," said Mel Riddle of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "They have opportunities their predecessors didn't have (to cheat). The temptation is greater."

The Josephson Institute, a Los Angeles-based ethics institute, surveyed 29,760 students at 100 randomly selected high schools nationwide, both public and private. All students in the selected schools were given the survey in class; their anonymity was assured.

Michael Josephson, the institute's founder and president, said he was most dismayed by the findings about theft. The survey found that 35 percent of boys and 26 percent of girls — 30 percent overall — acknowledged stealing from a store within the past year. One-fifth said they stole something from a friend; 23 percent said they stole something from a parent or other relative. "What is the social cost of that — not to mention the implication for the next generation of mortgage brokers?" Josephson remarked in an interview. "In a society drenched with cynicism, young people can look at it and say 'Why shouldn't we? Everyone else does it.'"

Other findings from the survey:

_Cheating in school is rampant and getting worse. Sixty-four percent of students cheated on a test in the past year and 38 percent did so two or more times, up from 60 percent and 35 percent in a 2006 survey.

_Thirty-six percent said they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment, up from 33 percent in 2004.

_Forty-two percent said they sometimes lie to save money — 49 percent of the boys and 36 percent of the girls.

Despite such responses, 93 percent of the students said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character, and 77 percent affirmed that "when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know."

Nijmie Dzurinko, executive director of the Philadelphia Student Union, said the findings were not at all reflective of the inner-city students she works with as an advocate for better curriculum and school funding. "A lot of people like to blame society's problems on young people, without recognizing that young people aren't making the decisions about what's happening in society," said Dzurinko, 32. "They're very easy to scapegoat."

Peter Anderson, principal of Andover High School in Andover, Mass., said he and his colleagues had detected very little cheating on tests or Internet-based plagiarism. He has, however, noticed an uptick in students sharing homework in unauthorized ways. "This generation is leading incredibly busy lives — involved in athletics, clubs, so many with part-time jobs, and — for seniors — an incredibly demanding and anxiety-producing college search," he offered as an explanation.

Riddle, who for four decades was a high school teacher and principal in northern Virginia, agreed that more pressure could lead to more cheating, yet spoke in defense of today's students. "I would take these students over other generations," he said. "I found them to be more responsive, more rewarding to work with, more appreciative of support that adults give them. We have to create situations where it's easy for kids to do the right things," he added. "We need to create classrooms where learning takes on more importance than having the right answer."

On Long Island, an alliance of school superintendents and college presidents recently embarked on a campaign to draw attention to academic integrity problems and to crack down on plagiarism and cheating. Roberta Gerold, superintendent of the Middle Country School District and a leader of the campaign, said parents and school officials need to be more diligent — for example, emphasizing to students the distinctions between original and borrowed work.

"You can reinforce the character trait of integrity," she said. "We overload kids these days, and they look for ways to survive. ... It's a flaw in our system that whatever we are doing as educators allows this to continue."

Josephson contended that most Americans are too blase about ethical shortcomings among young people and in society at large. "Adults are not taking this very seriously," he said. "The schools are not doing even the most moderate thing. ... They don't want to know. There's a pervasive apathy." Josephson also addressed the argument that today's youth are no less honest than their predecessors.

"In the end, the question is not whether things are worse, but whether they are bad enough to mobilize concern and concerted action," he said.

"What we need to learn from these survey results is that our moral infrastructure is unsound and in serious need of repair. This is not a time to lament and whine but to take thoughtful, positive actions."

Although even St. Augustine complained about the behavior and morality of his students in his Confessions, the need to reinforce moral behavior is more pressing than ever in a world in which torture is justified, in which lying and obscuring the truth is considered being smart and in which being honest when not forced to be is considered to be foolish and naive. Witness Marion Jones asking President Bush for a pardon, as just a small example.

Cheating and stealing are all too easy today, and making excuses based upon how busy young people are is, to put it bluntly, a crock of crap.

My most frustrating experiences as a teacher have been when parents have justified or even been complicit in encouraging their children to avail themselves of these kind of morally indefensible practices. Thankfully, it hasn't happened very often. Most parents have reacted very supportively when contacted about their children's occasional unethical choices.

But schools cannot teach morality and character development alone, especially in a world in which every instructional moment is often focused on passing a standardized test at the end of the year. However, schools can and should practice absolute vigilance and enforce no tolerance for these kinds of behaviors, regardless of what reaction parents have. If we want our students to develop backbones, we need to grow them first for ourselves.

Standing up for what is right is never expedient.

Perhaps this is why drunk drivers get slaps on the wrist

This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Rose Harn peers out at the world with one working eye, her arms curled tightly against her shriveled body. A rag under her chin catches her drool.

In the two decades since Harn was left brain-damaged and paralyzed by a 16-year-old driver, her husband has taken her to numerous Mothers Against Drunk Driving events in Idaho as an object lesson in the consequences of drinking and driving.

But that was before MADD removed Harn as a volunteer at its booth at a state fair last month amid complaints that the sight of her was too disturbing.

The Harns have filed a discrimination complaint with the Idaho Human Rights Commission against MADD and the company that operated the fair. MADD is taking a closer look at its practice of bringing accident victims to public events. And the incident has stirred up townspeople in this community of 50,000, situated in a sugar beet- and onion-growing region 20 miles from Boise.

"People with all kinds of disabilities, disfigurements and challenges have the right to be at public events, no matter how queasy someone may be," the Idaho Press-Tribune in Nampa railed in an editorial.

Exactly what happened at the fair is in dispute, and the state agency is investigating. MADD, for its part, said it feared trouble at the fair and acted out of concern for Harn's safety.

But Mike Harn said MADD should have let his wife be seen.

"This is reality. This is what happens when someone who has been drinking and driving hits someone," he said. "This is what's left. This is shattered lives."

In 1986, his wife was left blind in one eye, paralyzed on her right side and unable to speak after a teenager who had been drinking ran a stop sign and plowed into her car. The crash nearly severed her brain stem, putting her in a coma for about 18 months.

The 58-year-old mother of three lives on a wheeled bed. Because she can no longer swallow, she relies on a feeding tube inserted in her abdomen. According to her husband, she is aware of most of what is going on around her, blinking once for yes, moving her head slowly from side to side for no.

Since the accident, Mike Harn, 64, has arranged for his wife to appear at numerous MADD events, including about a dozen state and county fairs by his count.

Rose Harn has also been wheeled in many times at court-ordered classes for people convicted of drunken driving, where her husband tells of how the other driver got just 90 days in jail for reckless driving.

At MADD's request, the Harns went to the Western Idaho Fair on Aug. 19 to volunteer. Less than an hour later, a fair employee asked them to leave because of objections that Rose Harn was "too graphic" and that her husband had put her on display, Mike Harn said. He refused to go.

The next day, Miren Aburusa, executive director of MADD Idaho, dropped Harn as a volunteer at the fair.

"The comments that people were making about Rose, I think were horrible. If that was the main issue, I would have said, `Too bad. We support our volunteers,'" Aburusa said. But "I was worried that the sheriff was going to show up. I didn't want to send Rose out there. I did not want to send them into a riot."

Aburusa also e-mailed county officials an apology "for the problems and inconvenience our booth has caused you."

Harn has since cut ties with MADD.

Aburusa said she has heard conflicting accounts of whether a fair employee actually told Rose Harn to leave. Rich Wright, a spokesman for Ada County, which oversees the fair, said: "It would be surprising to us if this indeed did happen." An attorney for Spectra Productions, the company that operated the fair, refused to comment.

But fairgoer Richard Cirelli said he was standing nearby when a female fair employee approached the Harns. "I remember her saying something about getting lots of phone calls because Rose was offensive," Cirelli said. "That was the word she used. It just hit me wrong."

In a statement on the Idaho chapter's Web site, MADD's national office said: "We are taking a closer look at how presentations by volunteers that include victim/survivors, are carried out in the best interest of the family and the public."

If the sight of Harn makes people uncomfortable, that is the point, said Dicksie Luke of Court Referral Services, a business that arranges appearances by her at court-ordered traffic-safety courses for offenders.

"They need to see Rose to understand," Luke said.

Someone who drinks and drives and then kills someone commits murder. No one makes you pour alcohol down your throat, much less get behind the wheel of a car.

As you can see, I have no sympathy for this "I couldn't help it," defense you often hear coming out of the mouths of those who, through a cascade of delusional at best decisions, have taken the life of someone with a deadly object known as a car.

If people think this is offensive, how much more offensive is having this kind of life imposed upon you because of someone else's criminal stupidity and irresponsibility?

What's really irresponsible is the punishment for the person who assaulted this woman.

For shame.

The problem with The Parent Trap

So as I was waiting, as I always do, for people to get their acts together to get ready to go to church, I was watching the remake of The Parent Trap on TV. It's a cute story. I'm sure you know it, either through the Hayley Mills 60s-era movie or through the Lindsay Lohan 90s-era remake.

There's just one problem. I don't like the choices the parents make.

Am I the only person who finds it deeply troubling that two people marry in haste, produce twins, and then decide, rather than putting the needs of their children first, to then separate their identical twins, move them to separate continents, and then never disclose to their children that they have a sibling (much less an identical twin)? That they never discuss their other parent with their child? I find this idea incredibly cruel. Why can't they pull it together for their infants? Why can't they be patient and try to weather the inevitable adjustments that all new spouses and new parents go through? And yet the parents aren't portayed as immature, selfish jerks. They're portrayed as wonderful parents.

Except for that whole denying-your-child-her-family part.

So, if we suspend our disdain over that one tiny problem, it's a cute little story. But people who would really do this are hardly parents-of-the-year. Just like the mother and father in Mary Poppins who farm their kids out to a succession of nannies while pursuing their own interests. But that's a post for another day.

Andrew Speaker: I don't want to. I don't care. I'm smarter than you. You can't make me.

And speaking of lawyers, here is an outstanding example of the type of behavior that we all see on a daily basis. Andrew Speaker is the first person to be forcibly quarantined by the federal government since 1963, and it looks like he deserves it. Please note the differences in the way this story has been played in the last few days and today. From the Kansas City Star. Note his comments that I have placed in boldface, which appeared in the news yesterday:

The case of a jet-setting tuberculosis patient might soon shift from the hospital wards to the courts. The patient, Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta personal injury attorney, could sue the federal government for being quarantined on the basis of federal regulations that some scholars see as unconstitutional.

Or Speaker could be sued by fellow airline passengers, especially if any caught the disease from him - which some legal scholars say is much more likely.

"He may be personally liable if someone contracts TB" from being near him on his recent flights to and from Europe, said Peter Jacobson, a University of Michigan professor of public health law. "I can see a jury coming down very hard on someone like that who willfully ignored advice not to travel."

Speaker flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon after being advised by health officials not to make the trip because he had TB. Then, while he was in Rome, U.S. health officials told him to stay put because further tests showed he had an even more dangerous, drug-resistant type of TB than previously thought.

The 31-year-old newlywed disregarded those instructions, taking commercial jets to Prague and then Montreal in an attempt to sneak back into the United States.

In an interview earlier this week with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Speaker said he declined to report to Italian health officials because he believed the only lifesaving care for his condition was available in the U.S.

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the newspaper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

Yeah, and the not-leaving-the-country thing, and the not-flying thing, and the pulling-your-narcissistic-head-out-of-your-arse thing. Except for that.

Now today, we hear that his new father-in-law WORKS for the CDC specializing in infectious diseases including TB. Dad-in-law is stating that he never encouraged his new son-in-law to fly. And Mr. Speaker, Esquire, after careful lawyerly consideration, is now saying he's sorry for scaring everyone on his flights, and besides, nobody REALLY REALLY REALLY told him he couldn't jet off to Europe:

An Atlanta attorney quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to his fellow plane passengers in an interview aired Friday, and said he was told he wasn't contagious or a threat to anyone.

"I feel awful," Andrew Speaker said, speaking through a mask with ABC's "Good Morning America" at his hospital room in Denver. "I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way.

"I don't expect those people to ever forgive me. I just hope they understand that I truly never meant them any harm."

Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all knew he had TB before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was told that he wasn't contagious or a danger to anyone. Officials said they would rather he didn't fly but didn't forbid it, he said.

His father, also a lawyer, taped that meeting, he said.

"My father said, 'OK, now are you saying, prefer not to go on the trip because he's a risk to anybody, or are you simply saying that to cover yourself?' And they said, we have to tell you that to cover ourself, but he's not a risk."

Speaker, his new wife and her 8-year-old daughter were already in Europe when the CDC contacted him and told him to turn himself in immediately at a clinic there and not take another commercial flight.

Speaker said he felt as if the CDC had suddenly "abandoned him." He said he believed if he didn't get to the specialized clinic in Denver, he would die.

"Before I left, I knew that it was made clear to me, that in order to fight this, I had one shot, and that was going to be in Denver," he said. If doctors in Europe tried to treat him and it went wrong, he said, "it's very real that I could have died there."

Even though U.S. officials had put Speaker on a warning list, he caught a flight to Montreal and then drove across the U.S. border on May 24 at Champlain, N.Y. A border inspector who checked him disregarded a computer warning to stop Speaker, officials said Thursday.

The unidentified inspector later said the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely "discretionary," officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation.

The inspector ran Speaker's passport through a computer, and a warning — including instructions to hold the traveler, don a protective mask in dealing with him, and telephone health authorities — popped up, officials said. About a minute later, Speaker was instead cleared to continue on his journey, according to officials familiar with the records. The inspector has since been removed from border duty.

Colleen Kelley, president of the union that represents customs and border agents, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said "public health issues were not receiving adequate attention and training" within the agency.

The next day, Speaker became the first infected person to be quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963.

He was flown by medical transport Thursday to National Jewish Medical and Research Center, where doctors put him in an isolation room where he will be treated with oral and intravenous antibiotics.

Wow. Poor him. Victimized by the CDC. "Abandoned" is a good word, too, very laden with emotional meaning. Like a big-eyed little puppy painted on velvet. A puppy that can give you a debilitating and potentially fatal disease as you breathe recycled air in a big metal tube with him for eight hours.

Who are these people who disregard any concern for anyone else but themselves? Where is a feeling of obligation to the community? And where can we find some border agents who can actually take warnings seriously? I for one certainly feel more safe now that that one agent has been removed from duty. I'm sure that'll solve the problem.

Should teen mothers be held to truancy standards?

Well, here's an interesting dilemma:

A 16-year-old student who claims in a lawsuit that her school district discriminated against her because she is a teen mother has missed 211 days of school over the last four years, according to officials in the Harrisburg area school district.

That was the number given by the Central Dauphin School District in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The motion was filed Thursday in federal court.

The girl, identified in her lawsuit only as A.C., claims that the school district discriminates against her because she is a teen mother. She has asked the court to stop the district from pursuing truancy charges against her and her mother, identified in the lawsuit as C.B.

Instead, the girl claims that her absences should be excused because she takes them only when she needs to take her son, now 2, to the doctor, or because she doesn't have available child care.

But according to school district records, A.C. has shown "a pattern of absenteeism even prior to her pregnancy or birth of the child."

For instance, the defendants claim A.C. missed 37 days of school in the 2002-03 school year -- before she became pregnant. The next year, she missed 42 days.

In 2004-05, the year her son was born, A.C. missed 1001/2 days, including 17 that were unexcused, the district contends.

The school district filed truancy charges against A.C. four times and against her mother five times.

Somehow, I think there are some confused priorities here. This young woman has a child for which she is responsible. At the very least, doesn't she owe him an educated mother who can provide the minimum of support? I have a young lady this year who demonstrates very similar patterns in terms of attendance. There are very few students who can manage to learn anything in class when they are not actually in class. My student will probably have her credits revoked in a hearing in a few weeks-- although it's already a done deal, becuase she is not actually passing any classes. And our school district actually provides day-care for our students.

So what's important here: the education or the credential? Are schools just drop-in centers, and are state laws regarding attendance just unnecessary hindrances? Like it or not, this young lady still has not learned that there are consequences for her actions.

If taking care of her son makes school attendance impossible, perhaps she should try to get her GED and move on to the next stage of her life.