Right Wing Nation

When I first read this (hat tip to Education Wonks), I was more incredulous than aghast:

Indianapolis - For months it’s been a well-kept secret. But now Warren Township Schools confirm a disturbing case of sex in the classroom. The illicit activity has parents concerned and a district at a loss for words.

Shop class gives students a chance to learn outside of the book. But at Warren Township’s Raymond Park Middle School, two students engaged in illicit acts in view of goggled eyes.

13 Investigates was tipped off by a disturbed resident who writes:

“…during school hours in a classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse…at least ten students were witnesses. No disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher… All teachers were told to keep quiet.”

I couldn’t imagine how a teacher could be in the same room and not notice that two students were having sex — in the classroom. But then I remembered my sixth grade teacher, and all was made clear.

He was in his mid-60s and he always had a “cold.” He also always had a flask of “cold medicine” in his vest pocket (teachers wore suits back then, you know). He started chugging on his “cold medicine” almost as soon as the day began, and by ten in the morning, he was nodding off. On and off, passing out for a while, coming to, then chugging some more and passing out again, all day long, every day. Around lunch time, he’d have to go out to his car to refill his flask with “cold medicine.”

I realized then that this story isn’t nearly as incredible as I initially thought.

Thomas Sowell:

Not even in our education system are logic and evidence the touchstones. Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues.

Read the whole thing.

Joanne Jacobs’s book, Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds, is now available in paperback.

Our School follows the principal, teachers and students at Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high school that turns underachievers — most come from low-income Mexican immigrant families — into serious students. The charter school’s educational philosophy is: Work your butt off. Students aren’t told they’re wonderful. Teachers tell them they’re capable of improving, which turns out to be true. All graduates in the first three classes have been admitted to college; 81 percent remain on track to earn a four-year degree.

Weird fact: The publisher insisted I take “charter” out of the subtitle for the hardcover; they put “charter” back in for the paperback. Apparently, charter schools are now fashionable.

Our School isn’t written for wonks. Readers tell me it’s a page-turner. The book received excellent reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Post, Sacramento Bee and others.

The book is in some, but not all, book stores and is available through Amazon. (I’ve got the links on my blog, joannejacobs.com, and on ourschoolbook.com.)

After 19 years as a San Jose Mercury News editorial writer and Knight Ridder columnist, I quit in 2001 to write Our School, freelance and start an education blog, joannejacobs.com, which now averages more than 1,000 visitors a day.

With all the despair about educating “left behind” kids, I think people need to learn that it’s possible to make a difference.

Sincerely,

Joanne Jacobs

Reviews
“Joanne Jacobs’s Our School, a vivid account of the creation and first years of a charter high school in San Jose, Calif., . . . reads like a novel whose characters are both stereotypical and improbable. . . But this isn’t fiction. The challenges are real, the stakes high, the lessons important — and the achievements extraordinary.”
– Henry Miller, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 2005

“Our School (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2005) is eye-opening, chilling and inspiring. Up-close and personal, it follows the lives of the students, parents and faculty who had faith that they could break free and succeed.”
– Daniel Weintraub, Sacramento Bee, Nov. 20, 2005

“Our School is wonderfully written and wonderfully informative. I cannot think of another book that provides such a close and honest look at a successful charter school serving immigrant kids in grave danger of striking out in American life. The fascinating story that Joanne Jacobs tells zips along like a good novel, but it also delivers an important and optimistic message to educators who want to rescue kids.”
–Abigail Thernstrom, co-author of No Excuses and America in Black and White

“Our School at once illustrates the possibilities and the challenges of urban education. But it’s the former that makes it an exciting and important book.”
– Andrew J. Rotherham, New York Post, Jan. 29, 2006

“Joanne Jacobs has written a ground-breaking book about the most interesting, and potentially important, change in American schooling in the last 15 years.”

–Jay Mathews, Washington Post education columnist, author of Harvard Schmarvard, Escalante, and Class Struggle

“Our School is today’s Up the Down Staircase. It’s not often a book about my profession gets it right.”
–Robert Wright, teacher, Morrill Middle School, San Jose, California

“DCP is enthusiastically experimental. When something’s not working (e.g., trying to teach algebra when kids don’t know fractions), they try something else. As Jacobs tells the story of DCP’s amazingly committed teachers and their (mostly) courageous students, even hardcore opponents of charter schools may soften.”
– Publishers Weekly

Interested? Click the book image below to buy it from Amazon:

of why an all-powerful, unaccountable SCOTUS is dangerous — and shouldn’t be supported by any liberal.

One hundred and fifty years ago today, the SCOTUS handed down the Dred Scott decision. You know, the decision that blacks were not US citizens and could not file suit in federal courts, and that territories could not outlaw slavery. You know, by the SCOTUS, that body that liberals claim protects liberties, that SCOTUS.

More about the decision here.

Check out the latest Carnival of Education.

Comment or trackback, as long as you link to here.