I remember how it was -- JR
Wednesday, February 02, 2022
Bridgewater College shooting leaves two officers dead; suspect in custody
It'S Hard To Imagine why A Stupid Kid would Blow Up His Future like This. Maybe he was high on something
A 27-year-old man opened fire at Bridgewater College in Virginia on Tuesday afternoon, killing one police officer and one campus safety officer, according to authorities.
The two officers were responding to a report of a suspicious person near Memorial Hall on Bridgewater's campus when the suspect opened fire, striking and killing both of them.
Alexander Wyatt Campbell fled the scene but was apprehended on an island in the North River about half an hour later.
The liberal arts college, which is home to about 1,500 students, issued a shelter-in-place order that lasted about three hours as police cleared campus buildings.
Bridgewater College President David Bushman identified the deceased as campus police officer John Painter and safety officer J.J. Jefferson in a letter to the school community.
"These officers were close friends, known to many of us as the 'dynamic duo,'" Bushman wrote.
"John was J.J.’s best man in his wedding this year. They were beloved by students, faculty and staff. I hurt for their families and loved ones, as I know we all do."
Campbell, the suspect, also had a non-life-threatening gunshot wound but was treated at a hospital and is now being held at the Rockingham County Jail without bond. He is facing four felonies, including two counts of capital murder.
Multiple guns were discovered on Bridgewater's campus as law enforcement retraced Campbell's steps.
Caleb Needle, a senior at Bridgewater College, told WSHV that he was in class when he heard three or four loud bangs outside and everyone dropped to the floor.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin ordered the U.S. and Virginia flags to be flown at half-staff on Wednesday in honor of the two slain officers.
Several other universities around the country are dealing with threats to their campuses this week.
UCLA canceled in-person classes Tuesday after a mass shooting threat. Multiple historically black colleges and universities reported bomb threats on Monday.
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Ronald Reagan’s favorite Chicago School continues to thrive despite the odds
While education standards in most K-12 schools across America have fallen gradually for several decades, the pace accelerated in recent years due to racial equity initiatives. The stated goal of these initiatives can often be summed up as the elimination of racial disparities between races, especially between blacks and whites. However, this goal is far from noble, and the immorality in this quest to achieve racial equity lies in the belief that lowering standards for blacks is the way forward. But how can stigmatizing blacks as inferiors inspire them to reach great heights?
There is a school on the West Side of Chicago in the middle of the violence and poverty that wholeheartedly rejects this lowly view of blacks. Since 1969, Providence St. Mel School has pursued academic rigor and, in 2019, the school sent the entire senior class to colleges on academic scholarships.
"Providence St. Mel is a private independent school on the West Side of Chicago — used to be a Catholic school," Ervin said. "In 1978, the archdiocese was going to close the school because of low enrollment, but the principal at the time, Mr. Paul J. Adams III, said he was going to keep it open, and he kept it open. He's kept it open now for 44 years as a private independent school."
When Adams was named principal in 1972, he enacted strict rules that made gang association, drugs, gambling, graffiti, stealing and fighting grounds for expulsion. This zero tolerance policy cleared the way for academics to be the sole focus for all students.
"We do not lower standards," Ervin continued. "Many of our students also receive college scholarship dollars, and many of our students are accepted to the top 50 colleges in the country."
"One of your biggest early supporters early on was President Ronald Reagan. Can you tell us about that a little bit?" the pastor asked.
"President Reagan visited the school in the early '80s, 1982, I believe. Because he heard about the success of the school, he wanted to come and visit," Ervin said.
President Ronald Reagan was so impressed he returned for a second visit in 1983 where he was pleased that 44% of the recent graduates wanted to pursue a science-related career.
Of the school, Reagan was later quoted saying: "Poet Tennyson said, ‘I dipt into the future, as far as the human eye could see, Saw a Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.’ Well, Providence St. Mel has looked into the future and seen what a wonder it is … So, let us pray that Providence-St. Mel will be a shining example to schools all across this country. The future isn't something to fear, and today's problems can be tomorrow's victories, and that working together, there isn't anything that we can't do."
Reagan would have been pleased to learn that the school has not backed off its mission to this day.
"Another thing that I don't want to gloss over: 100% of y'all students get scholarships or go to college," the pastor said.
"Providence St. Mel is located on the West Side of Chicago in East Garfield Park, one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city. Murder and crime rate is very high. Violence is definitely prevalent in the neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods," Ervin answered. "Our students, when they get to Providence St. Mel, they know they're safe because the school looks like a castle on the outside and it feels like a castle on the inside … And we make sure that we don't have any foolishness going on inside the school, and our students are safe from the time they walk in that building until they get in their car with their parents or if they have to walk to the bus stop."
"For over 40 years, y'all been doing a great job, making sure that students go to college, making sure that students meet the standards," the pastor said. "You're not lowering any standards just to give students a quick fix, but you all keep the discipline intact, the parents involved."
The tragedy of it all is that today’s racial equity educators failed to see what Reagan saw: a school model that proved that blacks could succeed no matter what background they came from. Instead, they chose to see blacks as inferiors and America is paying the price for that.
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Many lessons to learn in improving Australian education
Australia’s low ranking in education performance is one of the greatest dangers to our long-term national prosperity as we enter a new skills-based industrial revolution.
This national danger has triggered much-needed efforts to reform curriculums. But the NSW Productivity Commissioner Peter Achterstraat’s research reveals an even deeper problem: our systems of recruiting and training teachers are simply not working and he recommends fundamental change.
The Achterstraat plan concentrates on NSW but the teacher recruiting and training mistakes he isolates are duplicated around the nation.
The Achterstraat conclusions were publicised last year but over the new year break the NSW commissioner sent me a personal copy of his massive document entitled “rebooting the economy”. And to make sure I understood what was happening he highlighted key sentences!
And while I was looking at the education sections that dominate Achterstraat’s 370-page productivity document, across my desk came an article from Malcolm Elliott, the president of the Australian Primary Principals Association. Elliott was criticising NAPLAN but the thrust of his remarks showed that those at the top of the teaching profession do not recognise the validity of Achterstraat’s warning.
Accordingly, we are headed for a nation-changing debate that will determine our future. I hope both major political parties address the education crisis at the next federal election.
Around the nation many parents don’t have Achterstraat’s research but recognise that something is wrong in the way their children are being taught the basics.
Some are paying large sums to buy dwellings in selected catchment areas so they can send their children to a government school that they believe has attracted excellent teachers who excel in teaching the basics – reading, writing, science and mathematics. Others with the same view send their children to selected private schools.
Achterstraat does not make detailed evaluation of curriculum issues but says NSW needs to redesign and modernise its curriculum, providing strong foundations for lifeline learning. It needs to cut “inessential teacher workloads” so teachers can focus on the core of their jobs: teaching our children.
The NSW experience shows that simply spending money on education does not solve the problem.
Federal and state governments increased spending on each NSW student by 22 per cent in the decade to 2018-19 but not only did NSW performance decline but states like Victoria, where less money was spent, performed better than NSW.
The proportion of NSW students failing to achieve minimum standards across the three PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) domains has risen from 32 per cent in 2006 to 42 per cent in 2018. Achterstraat believes these bad educational outcomes are surface manifestations of fundamental flaws in teacher recruiting and training.
He emphasises that the quality of our schooling system ultimately rests on the quality of classroom instruction by our teachers and school leaders. Learning is usually determined by how teaching is delivered in classrooms and how the curriculum is conveyed to students.
I isolate some of the areas where Achterstraat says the system is failing and then summarise some of the Achterstraat solutions which would revolutionise Australia’s teacher recruitment and training. The faults:
* Australia has introduced waves of reform demanding that new teachers must meet increased academic requirements to enter initial teacher education programs.
But these more onerous and longer qualifications for new teachers have unintentionally raised barriers for talented people entering the profession.
Worse, the evidence suggests that the educational gains from longer teaching pathways are minimal or even nil.
* Some teachers realise that they are poorly suited to teaching only upon entering the classroom and extra university training delays this discovery. The messages from their bad experience adversely impacts teacher recruitment.
* Like any other worker, a teacher cannot improve “without setting goals, striving to achieve them and receiving insightful, regular and constructive feedback plus correctional help”. But currently goals and benchmarks are often poorly defined, making it very difficult to identify relevant evidence and measure performance against them. A teacher with relatively low-performing students may be driving strong improvement while a teacher with high performing students may not be contributing much to their performance.
* Australia is not matching the world in high-performing education systems to supplement standardised teaching, with indicators that help show what teachers and schools are contributing to student learning growth.
* In many areas of Australia, including NSW, teacher standards and teacher accreditation has seen weak implementation and there is only a loose link between creditation and teacher effectiveness. It becomes difficult to identify relevant evidence and measure performance against them.
The solutions:
* Given the teacher entry system is not working as planned, it needs to be reviewed to make it less onerous, but identifying better teaching prospects and broadening the source of quality teachers with employment-based teaching pathways.
* Systems of classroom observations including peer-to-peer and supervisor observations need to be implemented.
* A separate set of aims should be established for school principals that reflect their unique role and makes them accountable for improving school teaching. They must report annually on the implementation of these performance measures.
Australia’s problem is that we have a substantial number of teachers who have not been trained along these lines and will vigorously oppose it.
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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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