Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA

Apparently, they did fire her butt.

June 12, 2008 - Headline: School rallies around dismissed Watts teacher deemed too 'Afro-centric.' Photo: One of those close-in shots the Los Angeles Times is famous for that doesn't allow you to see the size of the "protest."

The teacher isn't black and she wasn't fired for Afro-centrism. The students shown in the picture are black, which is hardly indicative of the school population.

Only the idiot paper of record for Los Angeles would think it a good thing that 60 students rallied on the campus for an activist teacher who was fired. You don't even have to visit GreatSchools.net to guess the David Starr Johnson High School rates between a 1 and a 3 for poor academic record. The school, located in Watts, is 79% Hispanic and 20% Black, some 80% of which participate in, or are eligible for, a free lunch program. We're talking poverty here. And not the kind of poverty you can easily pin on historical mistreatment or prejudice.

What we're talking about is hijacking the classroom for political activism. This is a letter written by the teacher that is posted at Vivirlatino. You make the judgement call.

I am being fired because I am trying to ensure that my curriculum is relevant to my students' daily lived experiences, and in the process, create a space for them to be critical of Eurocentric society and curricula that only serve to reinforce their dehumanization, subjugation, and oppression.

Many of you have been forwarding messages about the Arizona bill that seeks to end Raza Studies and MEChA, and while my situation is not as large scale, it is still an attack on the quality, culturally-relevant education Students of Color deserve.

I have been harassed by administration since last school year for my alleged encouragement of "militancy" among students. Last year there was a group of students, called the Watts Student Union, who began organizing themselves and created a list of demands they presented to the school and district. The administration did not think students were capable (smart enough?) of organizing themselves and articulating their demands on their own, so another colleague and I were accused of being the real "masterminds" behind their work.

This year, administration has continued their vendetta against me. I have been observed in the classroom and evaluated by administration over a dozen times (almost twice a month) this school year, whereas in comparison, most teachers are observed and evaluated 1-3 times per school year. The evaluations claim that I am creating "militancy" within students, promoting my personal political beliefs, and presenting a biased view of the curriculum. It has also been implied that I have been teaching students "how to protest."

Three weeks ago, things began escalating when I was again observed, and in his evaluation, the administrator accused me of "brainwashing" my students and "forcing extremist views" on them. The class had been reading a 3-page excerpt of the Autobiography of Malcolm X (an LAUSD-approved text, of which we have several class sets in our school bookroom), in which Malcolm describes the first time he conked his hair...My contract is being terminated because according to the principal, I am "indoctrinating students with anti-Semitism and Afrocentrism."

The anti-Semitism accusation comes solely from the fact that I have an Intifada poster hanging in my classroom (a symbol of support for a free Palestine), and the Afrocentrism accusation comes from the fact my culturally-relevant curriculum reflects the demographics of my students, though I am surprised I am not being accused of Raza-centrism as well.

What is missing from the Los Angeles Times article is that the Los Angeles Unified School District is one of the worst in the country. In New York, they, at least, have standards set by Regents. In Los Angeles, schools like these are poverty pits where underperforming students are cycled through the system without any attempt to instill an education.

In David Starr Johnson High School, this is how they tested in 2006-2007:
( % age performing at, or above, grade level)

English-Language Arts = 13.0%
Mathematics = 3.0%
Science = 8.0%
History-Social Science = 6.0%
And that is on the California standards test. Link
Number of students = 1979

Teachers with Full Credentials in 2006-2007 = 69
Teachers Without Full Credentials = 35
Teachers Teaching Outside Subject Area of Competence = 72

When a student learns how to protest but can't make change for a dollar working in a fast food restaurant, it's a tragedy. Because a newspaper of record finds the activist good copy and failing schools boring, is why such schools persist year after year. Decade after decade.

The new Superintendent of schools is a retired Three-star vice Admiral, not a former chairman of the Democrat party. Charging administrators who do not report sexual misconduct in schools, reassigning those who fail to investigate, and firing an activist teacher are welcome signs of change.
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Interview with the teacher, Karen Salazar, and Rodolfo Acuna, Professor emeritus of Chicano Studies at California State University at Northridge. He is the author of 21 books including “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” and has been a social activist for 50 years.

Beaufort, SOUTH CAROLINA

The only stories guaranteed to be more absurd than those coming out of Colorado are those from Beaufort, South Carolina.

Feb 21, 2008 - Tuesday the Beaufort County School District offered a $300,000 settlement to the eighth victim of Philip Underwood-Sheppard. To date, the school board has paid out $4.6 million to seven victims, only $200,000 paid for by insurers.

State law limits any settlement award to a single person from a public entity to $300,000 in a liability case, so we naturally asked - dozens of times - "What made the school district liable for such huge payouts?" Entries

Spending even more money
Without acknowledging that Underwood-Sheppard had a prior history of sexual abuse or an undisclosed criminal record before his conviction and sentencing, the school board is now prepared to pay for extensive background checks. And the newspaper is happy to support the idea in this editorial

Background checks for all employees aren't too extreme, and their costs are not prohibitive: $21,000 a year for the online check program, an initial cost of $40,000 for another and $11,000 a year. In a district that's asking taxpayers for $162 million for new schools and improvements, it's a drop in the bucket, and we certainly can afford more to protect our children.

This stunning endorsement includes no investigation of what other school districts pay for background checks. There are no probing questions about the necessity to pay that much money for 2400 teachers to check state and national databases that normally charge $50 for the information. How many teachers have been arrested in other comparable districts and how much do their security procedures cost?

No inquiring mind at that newspaper wants to know why a school board who paid out $4.6 of taxpayer money should be trusted with $162 million for new schools built for a district with declining enrollment. And, except for the Island Packet, a newspaper we admire, there is no curiosity about what actions made the school district liable for such extraordinary payouts.

LATEST UPDATE May 6 - The Beaufort School Board voted 9-0 to pay $563,500 out of the school district's budget to pay the eighth victim of Philip Underwood-Sheppard.

Reading from a prepared statement at a school board meeting, board Chairman Fred Washington Jr. said the district chose to settle with the eighth victim immediately to avoid a protracted legal dispute that would cost taxpayers money and prevent the victim from moving on.

Tom Holloway, the lawyer for the victim said,

"I'm pleased the district acknowledged their fault in the matter," he said.

"This is the eighth case, and I think that we've all learned a lot about the dangers of pedophiles in the schools, and by resolving the cases the way they did, I know the district is acknowledging their responsibility to these families."

Another victim is considering a lawsuit against the school district, said Holloway, who is representing the man.
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TT -Now if only the Beaufort-Gazette would ask why the school district was liable for the millions they have paid out instead of flogging the stupidity that the newest settlement "will not require a tax increase."

No Excuses

OPINION

In "When Trusted Men Fail Us; Excuses Do, Too," an editorial in the Tampa Tribune Tom Jackson did not miss the connection between New York governor Eliot Spitzer's sex problems and the sentencing of Pasco Middle School band teacher Michael Black, 28.

Black was sentenced to 22 years for sex with a 13-year-old student. "Behavior," he said, "described in sanitized court documents as "lewd and lascivious battery."

Good reading.
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TT entry for Black. After prison, Black will be on strict sexual offender probation for 10 years. Who will also be a registered sex offender for life.

Sexual Exploitation

We very much doubt that teachers read this blog. They seem to live in a fortress of self-denial, besieged by false accusations. It might be sobering, however, and instructional, if teacher training classes focused on the cost of "misconduct" and sexual exploitation.

Today, a 38-year-old former social studies teacher was designated a Level 2 sex offender. He pleaded guilty to having oral sex with a 16-year-old male student. Sexual contact between the two occurred three times at different hours of the day. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail - not prison.

He will be on the registry for life. Entry

Reality Check

Sex with students is rarely "romantic" or "an affair" as many Harlequin Romance-smitten headline writers are apt to call it.

Sex with students is sordid and manipulative and even a starry-eyed reporter would have a hard time reading the Underlying Facts and Circumstances document for Rebecca Bogard (found at this news story) and not call it was it is - sexual exploitation.

Exploitation defined:

"To exploit someone is to make use of him or her for one's own ends by playing on a weakness or vulnerability. Those with power have the inherent potential to exploit those without power. A manipulative educator can exploit a student's respect, innocence, naivete, need for affection, insecurity, or low self-concept." - Robert J. Shoop, "Sexual Exploitation in Schools: How to Spot It and Stop It." p 7

Most people recognize that paying starving wages to an illegal alien is exploiting his vulnerability and fear of deportation. When the aid worker in Africa holds out the offer of food in exchange for sex, it's the same bargain. When a teacher has sex with a student the educator has the same defense and delusion.

Many of these educators think that they were the ones being taken advantage of, as one teacher who sent us two long e-mails this week seems to believe. Posters, mostly students and family members who defend popular teachers, frequently say that the teenager (age 17, 18, 16, 15, 14, whatever) threw herself at the teacher. A pedophile feels the same about a six-year-old because they find the child seductive, not faulting their own twisted mental processes that this should be so for him.

Twenty-something, thirty-something, forty-something teachers aren't suitable sexual partners for schoolchildren. Period. That they should think so and act on the impulse isn't a mental disorder. It's a lack of self-control, an almost total absence of moral values, mixed with a heady taste of authority. Once caught, they refer to sex crimes with minors as "mistakes." So does the pedophile.

Mistakes are what children do when they touch hot stoves because they lack experience or information. Educators know that sex with students is illegal. There is not a single teacher in this country who hasn't been informed of this fact. Not one. They just don't care.

When a grown man walks into a courtroom and hopes for probation after having been convicted of five statutory rape and two assault charges, it means that our laws and the promised consequences have no deterrent effect. The girl was 13-years-old. He has another trial scheduled in July for sex with a 16-year-old. For each rape charge he can expect to serve two years except - of course - if the judge decides that he will serve the sentences concurrently or if he gets time off for good behavior. Or if he gets an early parole. A good lawyer will assure him that it is unlikely that he will do more than a year and a half.

If you planned, actively planned, to commit a sex offense, you could do no worse than become a teacher. Rarely is anyone afforded such easy access to children without supervision, have such a tolerant employer as school districts who will allow you to resign at the first sign of trouble or just not renew a contract, which will allow you to misbehave in as many as four or five schools before you are arrested. When you are caught, a union-supplied lawyer will defend you at no expense to yourself, and archaic and insane labor laws mean that even if you are convicted, you might not lose your license and livelihood.

As the DirectTV woman says in the ad, "How sweet is that?"

Lawrence, KANSAS

The pschobabble testimony at the sentencing trial of Meredith Kane continues.

She's the 24-year-old Lawrence, Kansas teacher who had sex with a 15-year-old boy. Kane was arrested in March and pleaded guilty in July. In August she was re-arrested for contact with the boy. In October, the campaign began to establish that Kane AND the boy were both bi-polar. Being bi-polar inhibited her judgement. The psychologist could help the boy, too.

You won't believe the latest from the sentencing trial.

It would all be laughable if it wasn't such a tragic involvement of the student in the teacher's defense by adults who should have adult-appropriated skills themselves.

They ought to be ashamed.

Rant of the Day

Check out the three four arrest stories below.

Maybe it is nostalgia, but remember when an arrest was sufficient grounds to fire a teacher because even being arrested was a character issue?

Now it's endless court rounds, paid vacation for the teacher in the form of paid administrative leave - thank you, taxpayer - while a teachers union-supplied lawyer fights the application of the law, followed by a ridiculously low sentence if the court finds the teacher guilty.

Even then the teacher can't be fired because drugs and alcohol are addictive which makes the teacher disabled. So, following drug or alcohol therapy (and under the Americans with Disabilities Act, you can get paid while in therapy - thank you, U.S. taxpayers) they are allowed to continue to teach.

Fine lesson for children. Because it doesn't matter what lessons you instill in a child in the home. They find life lessons in school.

From Khartoum

Dec 3, 2007 - Teddy bear row teacher Gillian Gibbons has been pardoned by the Sudanese Government and was released this morning.

Yes, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TEDDY BEAR????

TT interviewed him in Khartoum last night over a phone smuggled in by a sympathetic guard.

Mohammed, the bear, wondered what kind of frivolous media would raise a storm of protest over the jailing of a single teacher when hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Sudanese remain in camps - some for over three years. Constantly hectored by Janjaweed, they wait for international intervention that won't come, only fake sympathy from self-righteous, self-serving, useless organizations that raise far more money for their own benefit than they do for others.

It is, he said, most unfortunate that refugees have the bad luck to be championed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) who has never actually done anything about any crisis except continually inflate the numbers in order to justify even more fund raising for projects the expenditures for which they are never audited. It is sad to him that this hyperinflation does much to discredit the reality of the misery of those who flee violence. It, he points out, also serves to divert much-needed attention to solving the problem.

He's glad the teacher has the backing of a sane government. And he is sincerely glad that the teacher wasn't a Rwandan who needed the media intervention and U.N. assistance. Or a Cambodian, for that matter.

TT - There were, at last count, 3,550 articles on the pardon of the teacher.

OUCH Dec 6 - Alan Ferguson of The Vancouver Providence in "Uproar over a stuffed teddy bear drowns out the agony of Darfur" summed it up best:

It says a lot about us that we can obsess over a slow-witted teacher and a stuffed bear -- while covering our ears to the shrieks of women and children being raped and burned alive.

Mental Health Exams

After today's stories you have to wonder if what schools should be doing is psychological testing to determine the mental health of the people they employ.

Opinion

We are not going to comment on the British teacher who was arrested in the Sudan and the teddy bear who, doubtless, won't be given 40 lashes either.

We would like to go on record saying that we like teddy bears. And the media outrage seems excessive in the scale of things in the world.

And we would like to remind readers of the Beanie Bear lawsuit.