Somebody Please Cast Megan Fox In the Movie

Let's face it: stories of teachers seducing students have been so common in recent years that it's hardly news anymore. Heck, even hot 20-something teacher-babes seducing boys has gotten routine. So how does one make this news these days? Well, Indiana teacher Brooke Biggs has found a way:

SOUTH BEND, Ind.---- A teacher and coach was charged with child seduction after authorities said she made sexual advances toward a 16-year-old girl.

Brooke M. Biggs was formally charged Friday in St. Joseph Superior Court with two counts of felony child seduction following her arrest Thursday. She was released from St. Joseph County Jail on $2,000 cash bond Friday.
***
Investigators found Biggs and the girl had exchanged thousands of text messages including some with references to ''making out,'' and Biggs later admitted to police that she had been on a bed with the girl, kissing, the affidavit alleged. The girl later told police that Biggs had kissed and fondled her in August during a visit to her home while her parents were away, the document said.

Wouldn't you know it, the girls at the school all say she was a way cool teacher:

"She's my favorite teacher," 8th grade Grissom student Aundraya Leemreis told WSBT.
***
"Both my daughters like her very much," said Candace Brown. "They respect her and look up to her."

"Miss Biggs is a great teacher and I trust her," another parent said.

"She's a lot of fun," said Grissom 8th grader Aundraya Leemreis.

Is Our District Officials Learning?

Nahhh. They're letting the teachers unions call the shots (again). In this case that means shutting down the DC school voucher program that gives a handfull of kids the chance to escape the District's notoriously shitty public schools:

The groundbreaking federal voucher program that enables nearly 2,000 D.C. children to attend private schools is facing an uncertain future in the Democrat-controlled Congress and may well be heading into its final year of operation, according to officials and supporters of the program.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said this week that she is working on a plan to phase out the controversial D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first in the country to provide federal money for vouchers. Norton said she wants to proceed in a way that will not harm recipients. But she added that she regarded the program, narrowly approved in 2004 for five years by the then-Republican majority, as on its last legs.

"We have to protect the children, who are the truly innocent victims here," said Norton, who like many Democrats opposes vouchers as a threat to public school systems. "But I can tell you that the Democratic Congress is not about to extend this program."

Most Democrats have traditionally opposed vouchers as a threat to the stability of public schools. The possible demise of the D.C. program is one more sign of the new directions K-12 education reform might soon take as a result of the 2008 election.

So this is about protecting the kids, huh? Well, let's talk to some of parents whose kids are in the program:

Parents of scholarship recipients offer high praise for the program, crediting it with changing the direction of their children's lives. Patricia William, whose son Fransoir, 11, is a sixth-grader at Sacred Heart, a Catholic school in Northwest, said his growth has been striking.

"He's been developed in many ways, intellectually, emotionally and in his values," she said. "I couldn't ask for anything better."

Wendy Cunningham said her daughter Jordan, who will be a senior, has thrived since entering Georgetown Day School two years ago and has had access to opportunities that likely would not be available otherwise. This summer, Cunningham said, Jordan will enter summer programs at Catholic University and San Francisco State.

"Other people should have the same opportunity and choices," said Cunningham, who supplements the voucher money with other funds to make the school's $26,000 tuition.

Fuck, we can't have that, now can we?

Randy Is a Sex Criminal AND He Has Cooties

Does this look like a sexual predator to you? According to Prince William County Schools, this seven year-old is a sexual harasser whose transgressions have merited calling in the police.

The Washington Post has the latest episode of anti-sexual harassment zero-tolerance insanity:

In his seven years, Randy Castro has been an aspiring soccer player, an accomplished Lego architect and a Royal Ranger at his Pentecostal church. He also, according to his elementary school record, sexually harassed a first-grade classmate.

During recess at his Woodbridge school one day in November, when he was 6, he said, he smacked the classmate's bottom. The girl told the teacher. The teacher took Randy to the principal, who told him such behavior was inappropriate. School officials wrote an incident report calling it "Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive," which will remain on his student record permanently.

Then, as Randy sat in the principal's office, they called the police.

"I thought they were going to take me to prison," Randy said recently. "I was scared."

This is no isolated incident either. There has been a veritable boom in these kind of cases in recent years:

Randy is only one of many children to be dealt with harshly as schools across the country grapple with enforcing new zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies and the fear of litigation.

The Virginia Department of Education reported that 255 elementary students were suspended last year for offensive sexual touching, or "improper physical contact against a student." In Maryland, 166 elementary school children were suspended last year for sexual harassment, including three preschoolers, 16 kindergartners and 22 first-graders, according to the State Department of Education. Statistics for the District were not available.

In 2006, a kindergartner in Hagerstown, Md., was accused of sexual harassment after pinching a female classmate's buttocks. A 4-year-old in Texas was given an in-school suspension after a teacher's aide accused him of sexual harassment for pressing his face into her breasts when he hugged her.

I'm just glad these rules weren't in place when I was going to school. If that were the case, I'd just be getting out of prison now ...

The Coming Crisis in Student Loans

The private market in student loans has played a critical role in financing higher education for millions of Americans. For an undergraduate, the maximum federal loan is $3,500 per year. The private loan market made up the difference between the $3,500 and tuition, which could be $40K. With the private loan market dead, expect headlines in August about this issue.

Yet, in perfectly bad timing, Congress passed and Bush signed on 9/27/07 the ironically named College Cost Reduction Act.It took away subsidies for student loans generated by private lenders. The market reaction has been fierce and does not help students. The biggest lenders-- Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo et al-- have dropped out of the market completely. The DOE keeps repeating its mantra that 2,000 banks provide private student loans, (and I was surprised at the sloppy WSJ reporting that repeated that lie) but my interviews with actors in the sector say that it is closer to 30 and dropping quickly. The DOE counts every firm that ever registered and the leadership there is in spin mode about having a hand in the coming crisis that they caused. They are also trying to get new jobs before the administration changes hands so no one is focusing on anything except their resumes.

Mark my words: August will = headlines about the student loan crisis. The sad thing is that the government sees it coming but will do nothing about it.

Should Sex Offenders Not Be Eligible for Student Aid?

Rep. Ric Keller (R) of Florida thinks most definitely that they should not.

''This is the most insane waste of taxpayer money that I have seen in my eight years in Congress,'' said Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., who is pushing to stop the practice. ''It is a national embarrassment that we are wasting taxpayer dollars for pedophiles and rapists to take college courses while hardworking young people from lower-class families are flipping hamburgers to pay for college.''

[Fact check: federal student aid that goes to sex offenders has zero effect on what hamburger flippers or any other American can receive in aid; it is not a zero sum game and everyone is eligible.]

Rep. Keller has introduced a bill that would ban sex offenders from receiving Pell grants, which is the form of aid available to low-income students and is especially helpful to them because it is a grant, not a loan. People convicted of drug offenses are already banned from accessing student loans under similar punishment logic. Murderers are still free to seek government aid.

IMHO, a convicted criminal's pursuit of higher education is a good thing and not an outrage that should be banned de facto by denying student aid. What is the goal here? Permanent outcast status for sex and drug offenders or rehabilitation and a path to stability and re-entry into society?

The Anti-Lou Dobbs Lobby Continues Its Work to Put Lou In His Grave

What would Lou Dobbs have to say about this?

In a classroom at a private school in Annapolis, migrant worker Gerardo Reyes-Chavez addressed students who were about the age he was when he first began to work, asking whether they would leave Annapolis to labor in a foreign country.[...]

Reyes-Chavez, a 30-year-old native of Mexico and a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group fighting for the rights of migrant workers, spoke to students in grades 7 through 12 last week as part of the Key School's in-depth study of migrant farm laborers.

Students assumed roles in a hypothetical agricultural cooperative to learn about the marketplace. Another assignment had them on their hands and knees outside, harvesting clover with strict instructions to clear dirt from the stems. The exercises were supported by more traditional study that involved reading and writing about migrant workers.

The lesson seems pretty stupid to me, but it has two qualities that keep me from criticizing it too much. The school is private, not public, and it aggravates the hell out of the far-right, immigration restrictionists.

Supply & Demand, Supply & Demand, Supply & Demand

If only our members of Congress could grasp the concept. Introducing a new House bill designed to lower the cost of a college education....by spending $97 billion dollars in aid for students and schools.

The steep price of a college education was targeted yesterday as the House overwhelmingly approved a massive bill that would hold colleges and universities accountable for rising costs, authorize billions of dollars in aid to students and schools, and give families more consumer information. [...]

The measure would authorize Congress to provide some $97 billion over the next five years for programs that aid students and schools, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate from December.

Despite decades of federal funding, the price of tuition has continued to rise sharply and it's becoming increasingly out-of-reach for average families, lawmakers said.

It's pretty simple. As long as we keep telling everyone that they need to go to college, and as long as we keep subsidizing that education with generous loans, we will never "solve" the problem of rising tuition costs. Lots of people want to go to college. Getting the money to pay for that college is pretty simple and cheap. Therefore, schools will continue up their prices and spend like crazy when they know they have a wildly increasing revenue source. Both from guaranteed tuition payments, and straight-up payments from the state and federal governments. If you really want to cheapen college prices, abolish state schools and get rid of government sponsored loans and force every student who needs assistance to go to a private lender or a private charity.

But who wants to do something hard like that? Politically that's a losing play. Shit, it's not even in a playbook. No, it's a lot eaiser for them to continue this whole charade that makes college cheaper for white, middle-class families off the backs of poor brown people, because that's really what our politicians are doing.

Full article here. Previous stuff from us on tuition inflation here and here.

Good News For [Censored], Bad News For The [Censored]

Not fair! Why should my life-altering decision have consequences? So say some pregnant high school students from Denver:

Teen mothers-to-be attending a Denver high school are asking for at least four weeks maternity leave, saying they don't want to be penalized for absences while healing and bonding with their new babies, The Denver Post reports.

The current policy at East High School requires new mothers to return to school the day after they are discharged from the hospital or be penalized for unexcused absences, the paper said.

Next, the article gives Head ['s opinion]:

"My initial reaction is if we are punishing girls like that, that is unacceptable," Nicole Head, one of the counselors who brought the matter to the school board last month, told The Post. "We've got to do something."

Punishing? Are you kidding me? Listen, I'm all for a new mother taking some time off work or school to care for the newborn. But calling it "punishment" just because there are negative consequences is fucking insane. What about the other students who practice safe sex or abstinence and still have to attend class every day and do homework every night? As if the current structure of the welfare state doesn't encourage teen pregnancy enough already, now new teen mothers might also get a month off school with no strings attached? Unbelievable...

In addition, this is yet one more issue that could be a non-issue were it not for the government monopoly on schools and the complete lack of consumer choice. The last sentence of the article states that the Denver Public Schools do not have a set policy for student maternity leave, and it's up to the individual schools. Therefore it's possible that some public schools in the Denver area have policies more friendly to new moms. If students or parents had any choice in education, the mothers could simply choose a different school. (Given the high costs involved with having a baby, the private school option will not be feasible in many cases.)

Even so, I find it extremely unfair to more responsible high school students for mothers to get time off school with no consequences.

Story here.

U.S. Special Education Laws Let Cho Go Murderous

Westfield High School in Centreville made special accomodations to help Cho succeed in class.

He graduated with a grade point average of 3.52 in an honors program, and scored 540 verbal and 620 math on his SATs.

These scores were the basis of his admission to Virginia Tech. But what Tech did not know was that Cho had not been graded on class participation because he was in special ed, and federal law prohibits high schools from passing on this info to colleges. In addition, Virginia Tech does not require letters of recommendation, a personal essay or personal interviews in its admissions procedures.

V Tech had no knowledge of the accomodations given to Cho and let him in based on his GPA and SAT scores. Their bad. I would expect that a taxpayer-funded institution at least requires recommendations and an interivew. But...

V Tech did not know that Cho was completely unable to speak in class and had been excused from class participation because his dysfunction was classified as a disability, and so it was it illegal to report that under federal law.

Then, at VT, he wrote murderous papers and the only one who called him out is lesbian radical poet Nikki Giovanni.

Colorado School Bans Being a Kid

Now I've heard everything.

An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.

"It causes a lot of conflict on the playground," said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.

Running games are still allowed as long as students don't chase each other, she said.

Wow. Good thing the kids didn't complain about having to take tests or the school would ban that too. If kids can't practice tag they will fail miserably at the much more important schoolyard game, hide-and-go-get-it.

More on anti-American, tag-haters here.

George Washington: Nation's Most Expensive School

As a graduate student at a rival private university in Washington D.C. I often slip into a Seinfeldian like question of what’s the deal with George Washington. Obviously it's paying the most expensive undergraduate tuition in the country to go to a school ranked 54th nationally. Just how much will it set back an incoming freshman in 2007 per year? $50, 630. Part of this the University says is because of its relatively small endowment of $1 billion in comparison with Princeton’s $13 billion, but perhaps it is because of GW's aggressive growth plan in NW, which in 20 years hopes to expand the university’s size by 2.5 million square feet in accordance with D.C. zoning policies. Hey, as long as they have rich kids too stupid to go the Georgetown and to stuck up to attend a state university, good for them.

Monday Morning Reading

At first glance, it could be a typical silly news story about kids skipping school. But the Rocky Mountain News buries the real lede 11 paragraphs deep.

Overall average attendance in DPS increased slightly this past school year, to 89.2 percent from 88.8 percent, the report found.

But it said that was largely because more students were faithfully showing up in charter schools.

Traditional DPS schools saw a slight attendance drop, according to the analysis.

Charter schools typically have a special emphasis and are run by independent groups of parents or others under school board contract.

Leave it to the Episcopal clergy to be the first to give this a go..

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.

She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim.

Good-bye zero tolerance in schools? Probably not, but I guess a correction is due. And what was this kid thinking? Whatever happened to baseball?

Always Do What Your Teacher Tells You

Just be prepared to be punished when you do.

School officials on Monday suspended a 14-year-old boy who said he had to urinate in a bottle after his science teacher refused to let him use the restroom.

[Ellipsis]

[Student Michael] Patterson said he went into a corner of the classroom on Tuesday and urinated into an empty Gatorade bottle after his teacher repeatedly refused to give him a pass to use the restroom and threatened to have him suspended if he left the classroom.

"He said, 'Do what you got to do,"' Patterson said. "I said, 'I've got a bottle' and he said, 'Go in the corner.' So I just handled my business."

How'd the teacher come out of this? He was put on paid leave, naturally, and is being transferred to another public school. I'm sure this guy can eppext eggspecked extetp expect a transfer, too.

Unexpected News of the Day: Hot Teeny-Boppers Attract Attention in Workplaces Usually Filled with 40-year Old Slobs

The Denver Post reports:

Teen jobs beset by unwanted advances
Youngsters are more likely to be harassed and less likely to know what to do. But feds are filing lawsuits and educating workers.

As millions of American teenagers venture into the workplace for the summer, an increasing number are facing sexual harassment on the job - ranging from lewd comments to sexual assaults - by co-workers, managers and even customers.

Teen workers - partly because of their youth, inexperience and low workplace status - experience higher levels of sexual harassment than adults, say federal investigators, lawyers and experts. And teen victims often are reluctant to report harassment.

Although I didn't rely on statistics, interviews or facts from organizations with acronyms; I did do a similar study in my office last week during Take Your Child to Work Day. It involved a lot of leering and winking...and I gave a lot of advice like, "Stay away from mid-west women." And, "Never trust a lady who will not let you remove her socks while fucking." Come to think of it, I didn't really learn anything or even study much, but I did scare a lot of children, and when you really stop and reflect, isn't that all that matters?

And I can't forget, my new favorite pick-up line...

One mother found out from her daughter that she had been sexually harassed by a store manager and a co-worker. At one point a rebuffed co-worker put his hands around her neck and said, "What would your boyfriend do if I snapped your neck?" When the case was settled, her daughter was awarded $111,250.

Expensive yes, but a quarter of the time I bet that works. Full article here.

I Couldn't Post this Fast Enough

Just when you thought teacher unions couldn't repulse you more than they already do, they throw shit like this out there.[emphasis mine]

The head of the Baltimore Teachers Union called the city school system's contract proposal for teachers and aides "insulting, degrading and downright disrespectful" last night as about 40 union members rallied outside a school board meeting and accused the board of failing to negotiate in good faith.

[...]

"These negotiations have been an insult to us," said Marietta English, co-president of the union. "What they're asking is ridiculous."

At the rally, she led chants of "enough is enough." She compared the system's treatment of teachers to the way slaves were treated, saying, "What happened on the plantation when the slaves had enough?"

Well, not only were slaves not paid and beaten at their masters call; and let's not forget that they were called slaves because they weren't free, you know, to make any choices about their life. They also worked during the summer months...picking cotton in sweltering heat, again, against their will and with out compensation. But never mind all that, being asked to work an extra 55 minutes a day (one of the sticking points in the negotiation) is tantamount to American slavery. Great analogy.

What else are they all fired up about?

English said she is also furious about the involuntary transfers of several teachers and aides at five schools being run under a new partnership with Towson University.

Towson officials said that about 60 teachers at the five schools -- four in Cherry Hill and one in Morrell Park -- have been asked to transfer or are volunteering to go to other schools next year because they are not meeting Towson's goals for reform.

In arguments regrading improving our schools, the ability and current lack of ability to fire underperforming teachers is often dismissed as something that would prove to be a minor improvement. I'm not sure about that. But what I do know, is that the unions always choose those battles to fight the hardest.

Full article here.

Men Today Less Likely to Finish College Than Their Fathers Were, A New American Low

Liberal pundits and politicians make an issue of income disparity in the US. A lot of the disparity is irrelevant, as when Sergey Brin and Larry Page became billionaires by creating Google, that didn't take money out of the pockets of the janitor in the hotel, yet it created more disparity. Liberals don't understand this, and the more people succeed at the top, the more they cite disparity as a pressing social issue.

But there is a real social issue and it is called: having higher education matters. Bachelor's degree holders make 75% more than high school graduates. Yet, for the first time in American history, male Americans are attaining college degrees at a lesser rate than their fathers did. It might shock you, but only 35% of Americans today have an Associate's degree or higher. From a WSJ article:

"This is the first generation of American-born men who don't have substantially more education than their fathers' generation," says Lawrence Katz, a Harvard University labor economist. American women do have more schooling than their mothers, but that's not sufficient to offset what's going on with men.

As to US higher ed supremacy, we used to be first but now,

The latest Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show more than a dozen countries have equaled or surpassed the benchmark achieved by the U.S. in 1991 -- and six have a higher share of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. [Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Korea and Sweden.]

Q: Why aren't more people getting degrees when that is the clear path to financial success? I don't know, but it just about 100% explains income disparity.

It's Time to Ban Schools

For the children of course. Fox News reports, you cringe.

A small South Carolina town was rocked by accusations Wednesday that a 23-year-old middle school teacher used her classroom — and other locations — to have sex with at least five male students.

[ellipsis]

Ward, who is married, allegedly had sexual encounters with the 14- and 15-year-old boys at various locations, including in the school, a motel, a park and behind a restaurant, from December to through February, according to arrest warrants.

Behind a restaurant? These teachers just can not get enough of the teenage cock. Full article here.

And They Heard My Head Smash The Keyboard

I'm curious. What is the point of a college newspaper? Is it the first stop for aspiring journalist? Or is it more of a covering for your shitty, college apartment bathroom floor, providing the benefit of bathroom reading of last resort and absorbent of vomit and urine. Cause that's how I remember my college paper. Don't get me wrong, I love the silly sex columns as much as the next sophomore gal. Ooooh...my boyfriend won't go down on me, what's the deal with that? I can't have an orgasm, is something the matter with me? Your vagina looks like a bear trap; and yes, you ARE a defective human being, overlooked on God's assembly line of sex parts.

I only ask this question because college papers do tend to publish (and I use that word as loosely as possible) a decent amount of drug related articles, and in my never-ending attempt to continue to break down the exact same drug article time and time again for your benefit, I find myself reading way too many college papers online. Sometimes you get good ones but -- more often than not -- they are nothing more than disturbing arrangements of words that end up toting the standard government line. In my mind I see a college paper as a chance to get out there without the repercussions you might face in real world journalism, carrying with it the same joys and advantages of blogging. But I guess most of these papers are nothing more than a requirement or a chore for their writers, and that's a shame.

See here for the most recent example that got me thinking, and here from one of my all time favorites. The second link is to an old post of mine and the article link within is dead. However, the whore who wrote it post-edited the article, so I'm keeping the link to my post. If you want to see her new article, missing some of her lies and mischaracterations go here.

NEA Puts Hit Out on Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs takes a giant shit on the proverbial elephant in the room while speaking at an education reform conference this past week in Texas.

I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

At various pauses, the audience applauded enthusiastically. Dell sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap.

Gee, that might effect business a bit Steve

"Apple just lost some business in this state, I'm sure," Jobs said.

Good for him. I don't know a lot about the guy so I can't say if he typically makes free-market arguments in public. No matter what though, it does take some balls for a CEO of a major technology company to come out publicly against the powerful teacher unions; so I give him all the credit in the world.

Some related thoughts here, from the guy who started in all, courtesy of a Reason interview in 2005 with Milton Friedman.