I remember how it was -- JR
Tuesday, November 02, 2021
Civil rights leader blasts McAuliffe's race-based teacher plan, calls it 'racist,' 'insulting'
A civil rights leader and Virginia parent activists condemned Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe for emphasizing the race of teachers in Virginia's public school system and lamenting that more teachers are white while roughly half of Virginia public school students are not.
"It is explicitly and implicitly a racist approach to education," Bob Woodson, a civil rights veteran and president of The Woodson Center, told Fox News on Monday.
"We got to work hard to diversify our teacher base," McAuliffe had said at a campaign event in Manassas Sunday. "Fifty percent of our students are students of color; 80% of the teachers are white, so what I’m going to do for you — we’ll be the first state in America. If you go teach in Virginia for five years in a high-demand area — that could be geographic, it could be course work — we will pay room, board, tuition, any college, any university or any HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] here in Virginia."
Woodson condemned this idea as insulting and racist.
"The assumption is that in order to recruit more Black teachers that you’ve got to subsidize candidates in order for them to teach, they’re not offering this to white candidates," the civil rights veteran said, adding that this assumes that Black students "need subsidies to teach."
"It’s really insulting, too," he said. "Why is he talking about providing special assistance to teachers, candidates, and then talking about HBCUs? That's more than a [racist] dog whistle — that's a dog megaphone.
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Child, 6, allegedly asks mum if she was ‘born evil’ because she’s white
A US woman told a school board she pulled her daughter from the public school system after the young girl asked if she was “born evil” because she’s white.
The unidentified woman, from Virginia, claimed her six-year-old daughter asked her the question after she returned home from school one day, Fox News reports.
The mum blamed former Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Eric Williams; his successor, Dr. Scott Ziegler, and the school board for the alleged slur which she said took place during a history lesson.
“We had specifically moved them out of LCPS due to the swift and uncompromising political agenda of Superintendents Williams, Ziegler, and the school board had forced upon us,” she said at the board meeting on October 26.
“First, it was in the early spring of 2020 when my six-year-old somberly came to me and asked me if she was born evil because she was a white person. “Something she learned in a history lesson at school.”
The woman’s comments has since sparked a massive debate online with some questioning the validity of her claim.
“If that happened to your child, why do you need to read from a script? That story would be etched in stone on my heart,” one person Tweeted.
“100 per cent chance that a six-year-old didn’t learn that in history class,” wrote another.
While addressing the board, the mum continued: “Then, you kept the schools closed for a year-and-a-half, despite the science indicating it was safe for kids to return.”
“Now, you’ve covered up a rape, and arrested, humiliated, and falsely accused parents of being domestic terrorists.”
Loudoun County has faced national attention and condemnation in recent weeks over accusations it covered up a sexual assault report, as well as continued battles over critical race theory curriculum in classes.
Parents are calling for resignations from Superintendent Scott Ziegler and the entire school board over the alleged cover-up.
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Australia: Experts give controversial ‘hippie school’ top marks
I don't generally put much faith in "experts but I see that John Hattie approves of this unusual school. Hattie is a formidable data analyst so I think the story below is interesting. Whether such a school would work in a less affluent area is a question
Jason Wong gets two types of reactions when he tells people his three daughters attend Lindfield Learning Village, an unorthodox public school on Sydney’s north shore. “That hippie school?” some say, sceptically. “That school that’s doing amazing, progressive stuff?” say others.
LLV, as it’s known, is in high demand; when it opened in a fortress-like former UTS campus 2019, it had a 3000-strong waiting list. Some parents tried to enrol their unborn children, attracted by its abandonment of old-school traditions, such as uniforms, detentions and timetables.
P&C president at Lindfield Learning Village Jason Wong with his wife Teresa and daughters Ella (black t-shirt) Bree (white dress) and Lucy (pink dress).
P&C president at Lindfield Learning Village Jason Wong with his wife Teresa and daughters Ella (black t-shirt) Bree (white dress) and Lucy (pink dress).CREDIT:RHETT WYMAN
But others, including some educators, are dubious. They worry Lindfield - a government-run school - is relying on what they call faddish, untested ideas such as basing learning on a child’s stage rather than their age, replacing normal subjects with student-driven projects, and putting pupils in charge of their own learning.
“[We have been] unlearning what school is, shedding those assumptions that we bring as educators to what school has to have,” principal Stephanie McConnell said last year.
In February, One Nation MP Mark Latham called for the Lindfield experiment to end and its teaching to be “normalised” after photos showed ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Stop Killer Cops’ had been written on butchers paper during a brainstorming session about what the students already knew about key moments in recent Indigenous history.
But a new report by two eminent education academics, commissioned by the NSW Department of Education in the wake of the February furore, praises Lindfield as “an impressive school” and a “high achievement place of learning” that carefully tracks its students’ progress, acknowledges when it needs to change tack and could teach other schools a thing or two.
COVID-19 stopped Professor John Hattie and Tim O’Leary, both from the University of Melbourne, from travelling to Lindfield to see its brutalist architecture, the grand piano in the indoor play area, or the students, aged from kindergarten to year 12, mingle in the downstairs café.
Nor were they asked to investigate the February incident. Their brief was teaching and learning, and they were given access to all the school’s information, ranging from NAPLAN data and meeting agendas to the system that tracks each child’s progress.
“It was very impressive,” said Professor Hattie. “What impressed us was the evidence they had on what was working and what was not, and what was going to work and what wasn’t.”
Many in the education sector are still working out how to use data effectively in the classroom, but Professor Hattie said Lindfield’s system of collecting examples of student work, tracking progress against the NSW standards and curriculum, and taking feedback from students “actually stunned us,” he said. “I’ve never seen a better system.”
One of the school’s strengths was its ability to assess itself, and jettison anything that was not working. “Not every kid achieves brilliantly every day, but [teachers at Lindfield] were able to pick out those kids and subjects, and focus on them,” said Professor Hattie.
“I’ve done enough of these [reviews to know] they don’t always work out as well as this one. To say they’re perfect is not true, but they told us before we found out where they needed to grow.”
The report also found Lindfield’s NAPLAN results were comparable with similar schools, and its attendance and student satisfaction were higher than average. However, it could improve in numeracy.
Mr Latham said the report looked encouraging. “But generally we would expect Lindfield students, in the highest socio-economic area in the state, to get good school results and strong opportunities in life,” he said. “My main concern is not to have racist comments and police vilification hanging from the ceiling of a 5-6 classroom.”
Mr Wong said the February furore felt like “an attack on our ability to make decisions about what school to send our kids to,” he said. The parents threw their support behind the teachers and principal, filling the corridors with messages of support.
Parents have read the report and are “pretty chuffed,” Mr Wong said. “It wasn’t surprising for me. It was pretty spot on. We took a bit of a risk as parents sending our kids to this school, and although we don’t really need a report to tell us how the school is going, it’s always nice to have that validated by an external authority.
“The way most of us gauge the success of the school is feedback from our kids. I’ve got a year 9, a year 2 and a kindy; they all love going to school. They have an environment in which they want to learn.”
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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