Friday, April 20, 2012

Mother Outraged After Kindergartner Forced to Sit in Class With Poopy Pants

Sounds like a teacher who hates little kids. Perhaps she should get a job in a bar

A Missouri mother is seeking school policy reform after her kindergartner had an accident in class and was humiliatingly forced to sit in her own waste for an extended duration of time.

The 6-year-old daughter of Lisa Skidmore from Washburn was in class where the teacher had given students an opportunity to use the restroom before a testing period during which they would not be able to leave the room. While the test was in session, the little girl said she had to go but teacher said no. Unfortunately, she couldn’t hold it long enough and pooped her pants.

Skidmore said when she picked up her daughter, she still was covered in diarrhea. Skidmore said the teacher didn’t excused her daughter from the class nor did she clean her up. The little girl was forced to wait out the testing period and for her mother to come get her. In some act of benevolence, the teacher did provide the child with a plastic trash bag to wrap around herself.

“You don’t even treat a dog that way,” Skidmore said disgusted with how the situation was handeled.
Mo. Kindergartner Forced to Sit in Poop After Having an Accident in Class, Teacher Refused to Let Her Go

The girl’s father said, “If any parent sent their kid to school with crappy pants, those parents would be facing with criminal charges. I believe that with all my heart.”

Although the family is not pressing charges, they are seeking some reform on the school’s part for when a child expresses an emergency bathroom situation. The superintendent of the school told KY3 that he disagreed with how the situation was handled and has expressed to teachers how incidents such as this should be taken care of — or prevented — in the future.

The news anchor explained the school was in the process of taking a state standardized test when the incident occurred. Although the testing did not apply to children at this level, the kindergarten teacher was holding to the strict testing guidelines to prepare the children for what they would be met with in the future.

SOURCE





New Online Library Program in Tampa Bay Elementary Schools Includes Gruesome Content

While many Americans love TV shows depicting the gruesome ins-and-outs of crime fighting, such as “Law and Order” or “Dexter,” there seems to be one overriding consensus about the content features on those shows – it’s not for kids. So imagine the shock of some Tampa Bay parents when their children came home spouting details about murder, and with ready access to autopsy photos.

According to Tampa Bay Online, the culprit for this mass epidemic of children being exposed to highly adult material is a website called myOn, which purports to offer a “virtual library” experience in lieu of a visit to a physical library. Along with offering books or information, myOn includes navigational tools that students can use to browse by interest. So far, so harmless, but the absence of a filtering mechanism which can keep kids away from age-inappropriate material has some parents crying foul.

After all, one wouldn’t want a seven-year-old who just wanted to look up technology learning instead about autopsy procedure, and being privy to grisly photos involved in the subject.  As one parent put it, “Are we teaching our children to be medical examiners in elementary school? I don’t think so.”

The response of school district officials has been, understandably, somewhat mixed. Some teachers cite concerns about intellectual freedom, and point out that some children want to dissect a frog at early ages, so dissecting a human corpse might not be that far off. Others defend myOn for offering the same information that would be available in your standard order public library, just with fewer of the natural barriers to entry involved in such places. Still others admit that the content is inappropriate for children, but are uneasy about how to go about the process of censoring the material:

“I don’t want this to outweigh the positive information here,” one teacher said. “And that’s that 2,200 titles are in the homes of Hillsborough County school kids. These include houses that don’t have many books now.”

Tampa Bay Online also quotes myOn officials, who defend the product by pointing out that much of the material does come with grade level guidelines.

SOURCE




British government  Minister: admit students on 'potential' rather than grades

This is a perfectly reasonable proposition  --- DEPENDING on how "potential" is assessed.  High scores on an IQ test or something like the American SAT would be an excellent way of detecting potential

Bright students from poor-performing schools should be admitted to university with worse A-level results than other pupils, a minister claimed today.  Academics should look beyond raw A-level grades to select pupils by their “potential” to succeed in higher education, said David Willetts, the Universities Minister.

He also suggested that rising numbers of poorly-qualified students should be given a “foundation year” – before the start of their full degree course – to enable them to catch up.

In a speech, Mr Willetts denied charges of “social engineering” but insisted a “serious sorting exercise” was needed to ensure the university admissions system was based on “genuine meritocracy”.

The comments came as the Government announced that a record total of around £900m would be spent in 2012/13 on reforms designed to boost access to university – up by £100m in just three years.

Last month, figures showed the majority of universities belonging to the elite Russell Group admitted fewer pupils from state schools and the most deprived backgrounds in 2010/11.

Amid unprecedented demand for university places, academics insisted that many bright students failed to apply or fell short of tough entry requirements.

In a speech in London, Mr Willetts called for a “renewed push to ensure that universities are broadening participation and improving access” as a pay-off for allowing institutions to charge up to £9,000 in tuition fees this year.

“What we all want to see is not social engineering – and certainly not quotas – but quite simply genuine meritocracy," he said. "Because entry to our universities is a competitive process, with more applicants than there are places, there has to be a serious sorting exercise."

Mr Willetts added that admissions “can be based on more than just A-level results, by looking at all the information that indicates the potential of an individual to succeed”. “The aim is that those who can perform best at any given university are selected for it,” he said.

“We now spend a lot of money trying to overcome the barriers which might stop those who are perhaps at weaker schools or in low participation neighbourhoods going to university.”

A study last year found that almost 23 per cent of universities were planning to make “lower offers” to candidates from poor backgrounds starting in 2012 – up from 18 per cent in 2011.

Addressing the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Mr Willetts said that central Government and individual universities were preparing to spend £900m in 2012/13 on programmes designed to widen access. He said a “systematic assessment” of these programmes would be carried out to discover “what works and what is less effective”.

Speaking afterwards, he backed programmes run by many Russell Group universities in which academics mentor bright pupils from poor-performing schools throughout their A-levels.

He also praised a scheme run by King’s College London that gives bright students with poor A-levels a “foundation year” to prepare them for the demands of a full-time medicine degree course.

“We know, at the end of the day, that their chances of getting a good medical degree are as good as those who turn up with three As,” he said.

SOURCE

No comments: