Without the gender bias along with forced and socially uncomfortable interaction, online tech schools may be the wave of the future for women trying to get into the technology field.  In my opinion the best possible way to learn about technology is actively using the latest and greatest available to you.  This is often times not possible in major universities.  They take years to develop a curriculum and invest money following the technological plan developed along the way and then stick to it.  This sort of inflexibility is not present in schools run in the evolving technological world.

In the end it is still up to the individual student to figure out what is right for them and should be researched thoroughly before putting any money into it.

Counter terrorism training was one of the most interesting things that the school teaches and possibly one of the areas we need the most new people trained for.  Thanks to the bang up job of stirring up trouble all over the world the Bush Administration has made this one of the most necessary and understaffed fields in the government.  We need people who can analyze data, recognize trends, speak foreign languages and even possibly in the field for counter terrorism and intelligence and intelligence careers.  Are you ready to do these things only with an online degree? No, but it is certainly a place to start getting your education.

Whether you wish to go into the active duty, reserve, guard or into private protection in the ever growing private security services you can get an online military degree through them too.  Their advanced degree programs look like they would be ideal for people already in service looking for a promotion or those nearing the end of their service but wanting to maintain employment in similar fields.

In the end their training looks complete and comprehensive for this niche job market.  They offer bachelors degrees in intelligence management, terrorism and counterterrorism studies, management of personal protection.  Masters of Science are available in intelligence management, terrorism and counterterrorism studies, management of personal protection.  Last but not least they have a doctorate program in strategic security.  With faculty that are tradecraft experts from organizations such as the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service along with convenient online classes this is a course of study that at the very least will be highly interesting.

First off, public schools carry the title “public school” because they were opened to support public interests.  They exist to teach what is in the public’s best interest, not whatever some parents want them to teach.  If they choose to air President Obama‘s speech or any other speech, then it is because the powers that be believe it is in the interest of the public good.  Intentionally pulling your children away from school because of your politics or alleged morals should constitute a crime and probably does in many places (interfering with operations of a public agency or neglect in one form or another). If you don’t want your kids to hear this message home school them.  If that notion doesn’t fit your schedule, too fucking bad! Public schools are educational institutions not baby sitters that parents can dictate terms to.

So you think you have a right to pull your kids any time you want to for any reason, listen up you don’t.  Schooling is compulsory in every state (up until a certain age) in either a public, private, or home schooling environment.  If you don’t agree with what is being taught you have the right to change the setting of your child’s learning, but you do not have a legal right to disrupt their education on a whim.  Despite a long standing custom in many districts to allow parents to dictate what information a child receives, you once again have no legal right to do this and it is long past time that school districts tell parents who make this or that demand to go fuck themselves.  Excluding kids from a presidential speech, health related subjects, or science classes makes about as much sense allowing a parent to exclude a student from math and science classes because she is a girl and won’t need those subjects in order to make babies, or to take it a step further to keep your boy from reading poetry or taking music class because it might make them gay. Stop the stupidity.

I say again public schools are there to teach what is in the best interest of the public.  If you disagree with what is being taught either for moral or political reasons, then you have two legitimate options as a parent, take them out of public school permanently or discuss your own beliefs with them before and afterward.  Surely your reasons for disagreeing with whatever is being taught aren’t so thinly veiled in nonsense that they can’t stand up to discussion. (or are they?) It doesn’t matter what the subject is, public schools are charged with the task of presenting generally accepted facts and content that will further the communities interests.  The task of a parent, whether they disagree with the information presented or not, is twofold.  First, they must do everything in their power to make sure their kids can pass the tests on the presented information, thereby getting good grades and all that other happy horseshit that means they will go to good colleges, get good jobs and live happily ever after.  Secondly, parents are tasked to explain their disagreements with any presented information and pass along the values as they see believe in.  If you want your kids to hate and fear Barack Obama as you do, then listen to the speech and tell them what was wrong with it and why he will destroy everything you believe in.  If don’t want them to have sex tell them why you feel that way rather than keeping them from knowledge that can keep them from getting knocked up or catching a disease when they finally decide to disobey you.  If you want them to believe in your creation story of choice rather than supported science teach them about your religion and how faith lets them accept both your ideology and the information society believes they should know.  Do not do a disservice to your kids by keeping them from either the education they receive at school or the education you should be taking the time to impart.

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Loudoun Times

Herndon looks at anti-worker measures

By Gregg MacDonald
Source: Loudoun Times-Mirror
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15 2008

The Town of Herndon is again considering measures to further hinder day-laborers from congregating in certain areas of the town.

Herndon already strictly enforces zoning regulations that prohibit worker assembly sites on land not zoned accordingly.

On Oct. 7, Town Attorney Richard Kaufman made four recommendations to the Herndon Town Council based upon a Sept. 9 memo that suggested, among other ideas, the hiring of security guards at the town’s expense.

Kaufman outlined that particular suggestion, saying the town would “pay for, control and operate the program.”

“This would provide order and definition,” he surmised.

The majority of the council vocally opposed the idea, which, according to the Sept. 9 memo, could cost up to $156,000 a year.

Councilman Dave Kirby remarked that he preferred measures that would cost taxpayers the least amount of money. “That’s my first objective,” he stated.

Kaufman also suggested that the town recognize an unofficial site along Alabama Drive Park, where laborers gather, as an official hiring site. This would allow the town to enforce its now-defunct anti-solicitation ordinance.

Kaufman said that by recognizing the site and putting up signs disallowing congregation in other venues, this measure could at least “control,” if not “solve” the day laborer issue.

Councilman Dennis Husch commented: “I won’t support any initiative that uses public funds to abet solicitation of illegal workers.”

Kirby added that a sanctioned site “would be a magnet for more day laborers,” and Vice Mayor Connie Hutchinson called the idea “a last resort.”

Kaufman’s suggestion of establishing an official hiring site, potentially outside of town limits, also was not well received.

The proposal that seemed to garner the most interest within the council is implementing educational objectives and requiring the use of federal I-9 forms, which employers use to verify employees’ identity and establish that workers are eligible to accept employment in the United States.

Employers are required to have their workers fill out the form upon being hired. Kaufman said implementing this program would “enable the town to ask the federal government to enforce federal law.”

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Single-sex classes eyed for middle schools – EagleTribune.com, North Andover, MA

Single-sex classes eyed for middle schools Laboy says separating boys and girls will help learning
By Mark E. Vogler
mvogler@eagletribune.com

LAWRENCE — Some classrooms in the Lawrence Public Schools system could be all-boy or all-girl when a new school year begins next fall.

Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy acknowledged that possibility last night while briefing School Committee members on his plans to assemble a special task force on the subject.

“Over the past two years, we have been watching the research and discussing the possibility of creating an option for single sex classrooms at our middle schools,” Laboy wrote in a cover letter to a package he submitted. “Based on the current research and a grass-roots interest in moving in this direction, I would like to create a task force to review the research and bring forward recommendations for a possible implementation of this model for the 2009-2010 school year.”

Laboy said at least one city middle school he would not name has already requested single-sex classrooms.

Laboy stressed that the task force will only be “an open discussion” and not automatically lead to all-boy and all-girl classes.

He plans to include two School Committee members on a panel of eight to 12, people which would begin its study early next year.

The single-sex class would be aimed at grades five to eight, focusing on boys within that grade level.

“There’s been some concerns about adolescent male boys being left behind academically,” Laboy said after the meeting. “A lot of it has to do with distractions they have at that age level. … My hope is that we can have an honest conversation about this issue.”

Laboy told committee members he would like to create a small learning lab that would use an eighth-grade class as a case study. He noted concerns about the drop-out rate of male students which he believes can be traced back to a loss of interest in class work at that grade level.

School Committee member James Vittorioso told the committee that he recommended to school administrators to consider classes for just boys several years ago after noticing a disinterest among boys he taught in a math class.

But Vittorioso expressed dismay that nobody in the Lawrence public schools administration took his recommendation seriously.

“I find it incredulous that a School Committee member brought this up three years (ago) and now it’s being acted upon,” Vittorioso said.

Laboy confirmed that Vittorioso had made the recommendation several years ago, but said others had also called for it. Laboy said he would be glad to include Vittorioso on the task force.

Laboy provided each member with a package of literature on the topic.

The findings of some studies show evidence of higher academic achievements, classrooms that are more conducive to learning and decreased discipline problems.

www.kansascity.com | 11/01/2008 | Enthusiasm like this can’t be confined to the stands

Enthusiasm like this can’t be confined to the stands
By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star
Raymore-Peculiar High School cheerleader Kaylee Young (foreground) finally got one of the things she wanted most during the last home game of the season, Thursday’s game against Belton High School.
JOHN SLEEZER
Raymore-Peculiar High School cheerleader Kaylee Young (foreground) finally got one of the things she wanted most during the last home game of the season, Thursday’s game against Belton High School.
Seeing his daughter Kaylee among the Raymore-Peculiar High School cheerleaders on Thursday was an emotional experience for David Young, who drove 14 hours to be there.

Kaylee Young, a cheerleader for the Raymore-Peculiar High School Panthers, kept glancing toward the stands during the first quarter of Thursday night’s football game.

Her mom was sitting there. But where was her dad? This was the night he finally was supposed to see her cheer. It was her first year on the squad, and Thursday’s game was the final home game of the regular season.

Then midway through the second quarter, David Young arrived. He had spent the past three months trimming trees and removing stumps in hurricane-ravaged south Louisiana.

Kaylee, 16, looked up and saw him standing beside her mother. She pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips as if to say, “You’re late, mister.”

But she couldn’t hold the scowl. Her face broke into a smile, and David Young’s eyes filled with tears.

He’d had mixed emotions when he first heard about Kaylee wanting to be a cheerleader. Hopefully, things had changed since his school days when it came to students like Kaylee.

“When I was a kid,” he said, “people pointed fingers.”

Kaylee Young has Down syndrome. For years, she sat with her parents in the stands at football and basketball games. Mainly, Kaylee watched her older sister, Chloe, who had been a cheerleader since middle school.

Kaylee loved seeing Chloe and the other girls do the routines and pyramids, waving pompoms and dancing to the pep band under Friday night lights as the crowd cheered.

And that was as far as it went — until the start of this school year, when Kaylee was sitting in class and an announcement about cheerleading tryouts came over the school’s intercom.

Kaylee, without talking to anyone, went to the office and asked for a tryout form.

At first, her mother, Kathleen Young, didn’t know what to think. Kaylee, a junior, takes some mainstream classes but spends part of her day in special education.

Kathleen had watched Chloe for years and knew the memory, precision and physicality demanded by cheerleading.

“Oh, you don’t want to be a cheerleader,” she told Kaylee. “You want to be in the stands with me.”

But, as Kathleen would say later, “Kaylee wasn’t hearing any of that.”

Kaylee told Chloe what she wanted to do.

“I thought it was great … sort of like she wanted to carry on a family tradition,” said Chloe, a senior who is graduating at semester and who had decided not to cheer this year.

Cassidy, a younger sister, plays volleyball.

So Chloe talked to Melinda Young, the cheerleading coach, who then talked to the school’s athletic director and football coach, Tom Kruse.

At a meeting with Kaylee’s special-education teacher, they decided that Kaylee could hold a special spot on the squad. She would, though, have to try out like other girls because cheerleading at big high schools can be as competitive as sports.

Not all parents understood at first.

“We got some complaints that Kaylee took a spot that should have gone to someone more deserving,” said Young, the cheerleading coach. “They all know now, and everyone seems to be fine with it.”

Same for the other cheerleaders.

“No resentment,” Christina DeCarlo said. “We all love Kaylee.”

There are special rules. Kaylee doesn’t travel to road games. For safety, she doesn’t do stunts or tumbling or participate in pyramids and other complex routines.

The plan started bumpy. At an early pep rally, the squad took the floor for a somewhat

Kaylee’s coach, watching through the viewfinder of a camera, thought: “Who is that in the back?”

Kaylee.

She was supposed to watch from the side, but she thought she was needed.

The coach asked afterward if she had fun. Kaylee looked worried, like maybe she had done something wrong. Then she smiled and nodded.

“You did great,” Young told her.

Now, as football season winds down, Kathleen Young said Kaylee seems different. She’s less shy, more confident.

“I think she feels like she’s living more of a typical high-school lifestyle,” Kathleen said.

Example: At the football game on Oct. 3, the whole cheerleading squad joined Kaylee in singing “Happy Birthday” to her boyfriend. Before the song was over, the crowd had joined in.

A cool breeze whips across the football field just before kickoff at Ray-Pec’s game against Belton.

The crowd pours in. The band takes the field and drumbeats fill the air. The loudspeaker blares.

“Here come your Raymore-Peculiar Panthers!”

This is Kaylee Young’s favorite time. She gets to hold the rope that is connected to a big banner that the team blasts through.

On this windy night, the banner acts like a sail and nearly lifts Kaylee off the ground.

Later, on the track in front of the packed grandstand, she cheers with the others as the Panthers score four quick touchdowns.

At halftime, the cheerleaders get a short break, and Kaylee makes her way to her parents.

Her dad, who had arrived in town earlier in the week, extends his arms to her. She shakes her head.

“I got three minutes,” she tells him.

Before the game ends, David, wearing a Grandview Tree Service jacket, has to leave to make business calls. He will head back to Louisiana late that night or early Friday morning.

It is a great night for Raymore-Peculiar football. The weather is perfect, and in front of a packed house the Panthers doubled up next-door rival Belton 56-28.

But the best part for Kaylee — her dad made a 14-hour drive to get there.

“My dad finally got to be here to see me. I love him so much.”

The Oakland Press: The best place for news in and around Oakland County

Ex-dropouts attribute success to alternative high schools
Story Tools

Saturday, November 1, 2008 7:39 AM EDT

By DIANA DILLABER MURRAY
Of The Oakland Press

Former dropouts gave credit to alternative high schools Friday for providing a sense of belonging and individual academic help that has made them successful in school.

Several students at an Oa k land Dropout Prevention Summit Friday morning told of their heartaches and successes and praised principals and tea chers from Niles Alternative High School in Troy, Walled Lake Community High School and Ferndale’s high school completion program. In Oakland County, the combined dropout rate is 9 percent. Statewide, 21,000 students drop out annually.

Chelsea Hotchkin, 17, told the packed audience she just didn’t fit in at her former large high school. She would pretend to be sick to stay home.

“I went to Walled Lake Community High School. I had heard bad things about it. But they were like a family. They welcomed you. Now I am a mentor and an ambassador.

“I never before passed a class,” Chelsea said. Now she plans to go to Wayne State University and major in chemistry.

“When I saw my first report card, I started crying. It was my first A.

“My parents were so proud of me, they bought me a car,” she said.

Marlana Krolicki, Oakland Schools consultant, organized the countywide event and Robert Martin, a consultant in school quality, introduced the student panel.

Representatives from all of Oakland County’s 28 school districts attended the summit.

Also there to give advice on how to make high schools more welcoming were Southfield and Berkley students from Tri-County Educational Center, and Oakland County students who attend the Michigan Youth Challenge Academy in Battle Creek — a military-type alternative school open to 300 students.

Students told of ending up in alternative schools because of a death of a loved one, problems at home, bullying or harassment at school, pregnancy, not caring, getting into fights, truancy, wanting to be with friends, helping out with family, being bored or wanting a job and independence.

Besides a sense of belonging, the alternative schools provided one-on-one help, counseling, encouragement and work at their own level. Almost all students plan on going to college.

Erica Quick, 19, of Walled Lake, who dropped out and moved to Florida and got a job at age 15, now gets As and Bs at Community High and plans on attending college.

Tommy Yousif’s father died in 2005. In three years, he earned only eight credits. At Niles, he earned eight the first year.

“All the teachers are the best. They care about you.”

Sable Haney, 18, of Troy, who went to Niles after she got pregnant with her 2-year-old, will graduate in January. Shaun Asmar, 16, of Wixom, now gets As and Bs.

Shawna Graves, 16, of Clawson, struggled at five high schools and earned no credits before Niles. Tre Johnson, 17, of Troy, had been to three districts, missed classes and had falling grades. At Niles, he bonded with teachers for the first time.

It was a long, tough road that led Samantha Freeman, 24, of Detroit, to Ferndale’s adult education and her current success in school. She received a standing ovation

Students Get Bilingual

“A different language is a different vision of life.” – Federico Fellini

At Susan B. English School second language has always been a little hard to come by. Sure, there were a couple times that Spanish was taught for half a semester, but never has second language been so widely learned at SBE until now. No longer is Spanish the only option, almost any language is now within a student’s reach. If you want to learn Chinese it’s just as easy as saying so. As students from jr. high to high school delve into their Rosetta Stone classes one might wonder, what is all the hype about, why even learn a second langue in the first place?

Here are the facts: English is not the most spoken langue in the world. According to the CIA World Fact Book only 5.6% of the world’s total population speaks English as their primary language. In the end, even if you count the portion of the population who speaks English as their second or third language, well over four-fifths of the world’s population can speak or understand English. It is widely known that people in America tend to have a defeatist attitude when it comes to learning another language. Most see that knowing English alone is enough, but what they don’t know is that it creates several limitations. Knowing only one language can stunt educational development, hamper communication and thinking abilities which limit full appreciation and comprehsion for the world in which we live. Learning a second language can help earn better respect and value for other peoples’ cultures and ideas. Additionally, learning a new language can be a very good personal, professional, social and economic choice.

So what languages are students learning at SBE to gain perspective on the world around them? Pretty much everything from good old Spanish to the difficult-to-master German and all the others between. Some are even taking the hardest languages to master such as Chinese and Japanese and a few are sticking with the Romantic Languages of Italy and France. When you ask around you will find that more than three-fourths of the High School is engrossed within the struggles and rewards of language learning. With the Rosetta Stone program as their guide, students are able to work in several different language learning areas like using pictures to help different words and phrases stick while being able to use the software’s unique voice recognition program that helps students better their language accent.

So far it’s been a rough start for some and a second year for others. Some are taking it because they have no choice and others because they truly want to get in touch with people and places not their own. Whatever their reasons, one thing stands clear, students at SBE have opened a new door this year for bigger and better things to come.

Post 18 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

When did we quit teaching history in school? I find it all well and good that schools invest in teaching kids new technologies, but if this is what we get by skimping elsewhere, I may have to make some revisions to my thoughts on how education dollars are spent.

On the other hand I think the point is well made, we did let Nazi Germany and communist USSR, because the Olympics are supposed to be about people, not politics.