Number 2 Pencil

Is that a burrito in your pocket, or are you pissed off about your math grades?

Yeesh.

It wasn’t a gun that caused police to lock down Marshall Junior High School in Clovis. It was a burrito. Police locked the school down after a citizen saw a student walking into school with a long, skinny object wrapped in a white cloth. He thought it was a gun and called police.

Officers searched for the student while the school was on lockdown. But the student came forward first, admitting he had what they were looking for – a two-and-a-half-foot-long burrito. The student had taken the burrito, wrapped in foil and a white cloth, to present in a culinary career class. It was loaded – with meat and beans.

Police called the incident a good exercise for all of the officers who responded to the school. One observer joked that with the right combination of ingredients, the burrito could have been a deadly weapon.

That's not a joke in my household, thanks to my fiance's love for jambalaya, burritos, and spicy chicken wings. And did I mention we have only one bathroom?

Souped-up hogs meet souped-up brains

Eggheads try to convince the public that being super-smart isn't mutually exclusive with being cool:

Avery is an egghead who isn't your stereotypical blockhead. Which explains why Avery, who rides a '59 red-and-white Harley and is blessed with an IQ between 134 and 150 — that's higher than 98 percent of the population — wants to break the notion that hog lovers and intellectuals are mutually exclusive beings.

On Saturday, members of Mensa will square off against easy riders who belong to the Estero River Chapter of ABATE, a motorcycle rights group, in the Ninth Annual Brainers vs. Bikers trivia contest. "It's a cross between 'Jeopardy!' and 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'" says Avery, the 42-year-old owner of Hurricane Cycle bike shop in San Carlos Park and president of the Southwest Florida Mensa chapter.

Letting kids skip the exams

The question of boycotting state exams is being posed in New York state:

Ryan Ficano, 10, and his fourth-grade classmates at Center Street Elementary School are scheduled to take a state-mandated math test next week. Ryan, who boycotted the state’s English language arts test in February, hasn’t decided whether to take the test, his mother, Carli Ficano, said Thursday night...

Ficano was one of eight parents who met at the Center Street school to talk with administrators and teachers about required testing and the philosophy of mandated exams. Her discussion with Ryan would include teachers’ favorable and neutral opinions of the tests, she said, and that it would be OK not to take the test this year if he chose.

Center Street's principal has asked parents who oppose the testing to take their concerns to the state legislator instead of allowing their kids to boycott (which could certainly hurt the school standing.)

What's more important, the teacher or the curriculum?

In Education Week, Anthony Ralston shares his opinions on the real scandal in American mathematics education:

...all the arguments in recent years about curricula and calculators are virtually irrelevant when compared with the single greatest challenge facing American school mathematics: how to do something about the steady decline over the past half-century of the intellectual abilities of those who teach math in our schools...

It is a scandal that so little attention has been paid to attracting better-qualified math teachers to American schools. What can be done?

Instead of all the time and energy spent on arguing about curriculum and related matters, mathematicians and mathematics educators should devote their energies to making the case that those we attract to elementary and secondary mathematics teaching need to be as intellectually able as those attracted to law, medicine, and, yes, the academic world.

Expect some angry replies from education majors soon. Meanwhile, the link to this article was circulated on Bill Evers's listserv, with commentary from Bill: "The author is right that there is a scarcity of qualified math teachers. He is wrong in his attacks on accountability testing and direct instruction (although like anything else these can be done poorly). He should consider targeted boosts in pay scales for science, math, and special ed teachers."

And speaking of such boosts:

"We must treat our teachers like the professionals they are," U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told more than 300 educators and others attending the Milken Family Foundation National Education Conference today in Washington, D.C. "That means we must reward teachers who make real progress closing the achievement gap in the most challenging classrooms"...

To address the problem, President Bush has proposed a new $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund, Spellings said. The fund will provide states with money to reward teachers who take the toughest jobs and achieve real results. Spellings noted that, according to a recent study by the bipartisan Teaching Commission, 76 percent of Americans and 77 percent of public school teachers supported incentive pay.

Support for NCLB

Support for NCLB in the Mercury News:

For five years, California's attempt to fix failing schools was confused and in disarray. But the federal No Child Left Behind Act has a timetable and sanctions that hold the state's feet to the fire, and this has forced California to make a long-overdue change. State officials now have adopted an academically focused school-improvement method that should work to rescue failing schools. The state and its school districts need to persist in this effort.

Authors Bill Evers and Lance Izumi are of the "schools benefit from facing a takeover" mindset, which is anathema to educrats who'd like schools to remain immune to outside criticism, much less dismantling. For an example of such educrats, Martin West and Paul Peterson suggest the NEA ($ubscription required), using a comparison that is sure to make the union see red:

The National Education Association, its affiliates in 10 states, and a ragbag of school districts have just filed a federal lawsuit alleging that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is an unfunded mandate. If the NEA's complaints sound hauntingly familiar, it's because Americans have heard them before -- 40 years ago, when Southern segregationists did their best to evade the desegregation requirements of Lyndon Johnson's original law offering federal aid for education.

Then, recalcitrant school districts complained about an unfunded mandate. Then, they objected that the dollars did not cover the full cost of desegregating their schools. Now, resistance comes from those who claim to represent public-school employees. Now, as much as then, the resistance is woefully misguided.

Ouch.

Learning a lesson about kindergarten topics

Wizbang's got the scoop on an interesting story making the rounds in Massachusetts (and now, the Internet):

For David Parker, the first alarm went off in January, when his 5-year-old son came home from his kindergarten class at Lexington's Joseph Estabrook School with a bag of books promoting diversity. Inside were books about foreign cultures and traditions, along with food recipes. There was also a copy of ''Who's In a Family?" by Robert Skutch, which depicts different kinds of families, including same-sex couples raising children.

The book's contents concerned Parker and prompted him to begin a series of e-mail exchanges with school officials on the subject that culminated in a meeting Wednesday night with Estabrook's principal and district director of instruction. The meeting ended with Parker's arrest after he refused to leave the school, and the Lexington man spent the night in jail.

The charge is trespassing. Wizbang asks the question:

...what I think is the bigger issue is getting ignored. Whether or not you agree with Mr. Parker's beliefs, the fundamental question is this: are his demands that he be notified about what material is being taught to his son about a clearly controversial issue unreasonable? I think not...Right or wrong, he certainly has the right to make his stand.

And I really can't blame the schools too much. For too long, they've taken on more and more of the responsibilities that parents have abrogated over the years. It's understandable that some of them might view those additional obligations as their natural right, and feel that a parent who is intruding into "their" turf is in the wrong.

But the parent isn't. The school is. And they need to wake up to that fact damned fast. They are entrusted with the EDUCATION of our children, not their GUARDIANSHIP. "In loco parentis" is a very limited concept, and in no way should be construed to be superior to parental rights. If they want to override a parent's wishes in regards to a child, they better be ready to go to court -- not simply wave regulations around and call up the cops to back them up.

At this point, Mr. Parker is now forbidden to step foot on school grounds; I certainly hope he withdraws his child from that school system while this injunction is still in order. I'm also interested in seeing whether the school can back up the claim that teaching kindergarteners about alternative lifestyles is both necessary and not dependent on parental permission (as sexuality/sex education classes would be).

It's also interesting to look at this in the context of the kindergarten standards that were discussed earlier this week. Do any of my Devoted Readers think family structures should be a topic of classroom discussion for kids that young?

News of the Weird roundup

If you spend over $1400 on Girl Scout Cookies, it's time to admit you have a problem.

There's a reason that sex crime laws are often broadly written - to catch the offenders who prefer, um, unusual means of sexual contact.

A prank gone wrong. Personally, I don't think it was that bad an idea for a joke. And I think this is a GREAT idea for a joke, although it should be for people who are (a) your very close friends and (b) not employed by a school district.

Some of Salem's witches are all in a tizzy.

Trekkies: The last group that it's okay to smear via stereotype?

Comments

Comments are down again, and I'm not sure why. I haven't changed anything in the templates lately. It might just be an issue with Verve.

Update: They seem to be operational now.

Raising the bar for kindergarteners

What basic skills do kids need when entering kindergarten? And do American youngsters possess those skills?

Despite a national trend that shows more children are attending preschool, it appears that fewer children are starting kindergarten with the basic skills needed to get them off to a good start.

Kindergarten teacher Susan Ginsburg laments the fact that a growing number of pupils entering her class don't know how to write their own names. "And some of them can write the names, but they don't know the letters," said Ginsburg, who teaches at Hall School in Lincolnwood and who has been a kindergarten teacher for 20 years.

"I've seen a downward progression over the last 10 years," Ginsburg said.

The rest of the short article is equally anecdotal, but it's still disheartening to hear teachers explain that maybe parents just don't have the time to spend with their kids anymore. If not when the child needs to learn to read and speak and dress themselves, then when?

This article, on the other hand, suggests parents are becoming too concerned with kindergarten readiness, and that part of the problem could lie in rising standards:

The decision [of when to start kindergarten] is much more complicated these days because of increased academic standards and an innate sense that parents want their child to be able to succeed. Moms and dads must mull factors such as birth month, personality traits and gender in an attempt to make sure their kids are up to the task of the first year of public school.

Being "ready" for kindergarten doesn't constitute what it used to mean, either. Remember the old poem, "All I ever needed to know, I learned in kindergarten," which espoused simple pleasures like naps, snacks and friendly socialization? Well, that could be changed to "All I ever needed to know I learned in pre-K class, because kindergarten just got tougher." These days, kids are expected to learn how to read, do basic math functions, have decent handwriting and essentially complete what used to be a first-grade curriculum in kindergarten, which makes it all the more critical that kids are ready.

I'm out of my league here, because I know next to nothing about this topic, but there's a whole website devoted to it, with lots of links, articles, and other resources. And I'd love to know what my Devoted Readers think.

Understanding the numbers

There's an abundance of standardized tests these days, and an equal abundance of confusion from test-wise, results-foolish districts that aren't quite sure how to use all that data. A town-gown collaboration aims to correct that, as Boston school district employees and Harvard faculty and students team up to write the book on using assessments wisely:

Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning will be published by the Harvard Education Press in November. All royalties from the book will go to the education school to work with the 58,300-student Boston public schools. The book grew out of a yearlong workshop designed to help the district’s teachers and administrators learn ways of making more productive use of student test results and other data.

Experts say the book’s partnership between researchers and educators could help bridge the gaps that exist between testing and instruction...

At the start of the school year, educators often describe feeling overwhelmed by the amount of data and where to dive in...So the workshop and the forthcoming book are structured around an “improvement cycle,” with the tools to use at each step along the way.

While the process might look different in different schools, the cycle helps educators: identify patterns in data; choose key issues to investigate; dig deeper into multiple data sources; agree on a problem and explore its causes; examine current classroom practices; draw up a plan to change those practices; carry out that plan; and then assess the results of those actions.

The perils of bad test items

The Education Wonks link to a NYT article summarizing serious problems with standardized test items:

Beware the perils of ambiguity. It is a mantra that is increasingly pertinent to tests in mathematics and science. The two fields might seem immune from imprecision. But in mathematics, for example, today's tests assess more than a student's ability to do "naked computation," as Cathy Seeley, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, puts it. In many places, calculators have rendered meaningless the testing of basic computational tasks. Instead, more questions test students' comprehension in real-world contexts. A triangle is a corner garden bed. A rectangular object intersected by a line is a juice box, with a straw. A sloped line on a graph represents a year's worth of payments to the power company.

With these scenarios come variables, and mathematicians and scientists from British Columbia to Boston spend much time picking apart the questions, particularly in online discussion groups. If students are asked how many seeds can be planted in the surface area of a triangular garden, do you put seeds in the corners where there isn't room for plants to take root? What about relevant considerations like seasonality of utility bills or position of the planets? Multiple-choice questions, with no place to show your work and thinking, make such realities more vexing.

These realities should vex everyone who thinks that a lengthy word problem is always more suitable than a simple computation. Word problems certainly have more face validity, and their champions claim they engage students in a way that straightforward computational items do not. But there's a lot more squiggle room in talking about a triangular flower bed than in talking about a triangle.

Field testing, of the type described below, is crucial:

Once questions are written, they are typically reviewed by multiple groups that include test writers, teachers, editors, statisticians and content specialists. And then most developers test the questions on real students in real exam settings. In field testing, statisticians may discover that most top-scoring students selected answer "d" when answer "c" was deemed correct. What made "d" so appealing to the advanced students? Could a flaw in the question have led them to arrive at an equally correct answer? In most cases, the incongruity is a red flag, prompting developers to discard the question.

Any organization that goes live without field testing, especially those who use innovative items, is asking for trouble. But even field testing doesn't catch everything.

I disagree, though, that the situation is always better when multiple-choice items are removed. Yes, multiple-choice items that are poorly-written can confuse students if there is more than one right answer, or no right answer. But all answers must be scored, and it's quite possible that the time and expense needed to create a scoring rubric to account for all possible answers on an open-ended item is more than what's needed to create and field-test a decent-sized pool of MCQ's.

There's a nice list of pros and cons for various item types here. Note that for every type except multiple-choice, scoring becomes more time-consuming, more challenging, or both.

If you're really interested in writing some good multiple-choice items, you can't do better than this set of guidelines, "Constructing Written Test Questions for the Basic and Clinical Sciences," by Case and Swanson. The booklet is tailored to medical science items, but the techniques could be easily adapted to other fields.

slamming headfirst into reality

Devoted Reader Terry W sends along a brilliant example of the inflated self-esteem of the college student slamming headfirst into the cold hard reality of real life:

The world of a college journalism intern is not glamorous. It's not exciting, and it isn't fun. It is a true test of skills and stamina, and above all, it makes you wonder if you really want to do what you thought you always wanted to do. Last week, I was flatly rejected by SPIN magazine for a summer internship in New York City...

The rejection e-mail from SPIN also welcomed "questions regarding my decision." Naturally, I was a little more than curious. I was, and am, heartbroken, and like any heartbreak, I needed a reason. I asked politely, and received no response. A week later, I sent another e-mail, asking a little less politely, and a little more aggressively. This time I got an answer.

After telling me the delay in correspondence was because they had "fallen a bit behind in the creation of the next issue," I was told that being "snippy" to a prospective employer was "unbelievably off-putting," even if they had already decided not to give me the job. I went home and cried until I passed out, then woke up and cried some more. Then I thought about what the second rejection e-mail really said...

...being "snippy" and being direct are two very different things. He said he would answer questions, and I took him up on the offer. When he didn't reply, I asked again. I wasn't mean or rude, just to-the-point. If he didn't have time to answer my first question, he wouldn't have time to read any unnecessary formalities. I had a question, and I wanted an answer. That's all.

Don't miss the part where she says she used a "creative" font on her resume so that she'd stand out. Spin is a national magazine that probably gets thousands of applicants for its 2-3 internships each season. Yet this young lady had already set up housekeeping in NYC under the assumption that she and her creative resume were a shoo-in.

I shouldn't mock; I'm sure I was this dumb, once. Thank God I don't have a newspaper article like this to read ten years from now, and cringe.

Coddling the Millennials

Hoo-boy.

Local colleges are rushing to build high-tech classrooms and plush dormitories for a new breed of students who grew up with the Internet and were pampered by parents. Xavier University is planning a new campus quadrangle with high-tech classrooms and a ritzy residence hall to oblige what school officials call the "Baby on Board" generation or the "Millennials" coming of age at the turn of the millennium.

"Their parents posted 'Baby on Board' signs in their cars. They have been protected as children. Their free time was replaced by organized activities and structured programs. They have a high need for achievement and attention," said Xavier spokeswoman Kelly Leon. She said this generation prefers learning from hands-on experience, craves technology-generated education, and feels comfortable working in teams.

"Millennial students do not learn in the traditional ways of 50, 30 or even 10 years ago," said Xavier President Michael Graham. "We need to adapt our campus to their needs and changing times."

"Feels comfortable working in teams", eh? I'm going to have be pretty impressed by their subsequent adult accomplishments to be convinced that this is not just another way of saying that these Millennials are incapable of (a) cracking open real books and (b) pursuing solitary research without having their hands held.

[NKU President James Votruba says] "Today's youngsters have lived with high-technology from video arcades to cell phones, and many have their own computers. At home, most have not shared a bedroom and many have not shared a bathroom. When they come to college, they expect the same creature comforts. That puts pressure on all colleges because there is competition for these students."

Guess what? I hadn't ever shared a bathroom or a bedroom when I went to college, nor had I ever lived without central AC. Did that stop USC from putting me, an Honors College student, into an all-female dorm with hall bathrooms and no AC whatsoever? No, it did not. Did USC assume that I would do the work I was capable of with or without these creature comforts, and that some point I would have to learn to deal with a little adversity anyway? Yes, yes they did. Would I have been laughed out of housing had I gone to them and demanded more upscale surroundings for my spoiled little freshman self? Yes, I would have - and rightfully so. I wasn't there to be pampered.

I thought we were sending kids to college these days so that they could broaden their horizons, and learn something about the outside world, and be in a multicultural environment where they learn how other people think and act and live. But now colleges are spending like crazy to give every incoming freshman a upper-middle-class 90210 environment? What the heck is that?

Some universities have the money to turn every dorm into a miniature Trump Tower, and if the alumni are fine with it, more power to them. There's also nothing wrong with updating the technology for the classroom, especially if the subject matter demands it. But universities should be asking themselves if they want the kinds of students who choose their institution of higher learning based on whether or not they might have to share a bathroom - or a DSL line - for a year or two.

A note to all those Millennials who demand the same private bathrooms and vegetarian meals that they got at home: College dorms are supposed to be yucky for the same reason that your parents aren't supposed to wait on you hand and foot when you're a teen - it's so that you eventually want to grow up and move out and take care of your own precious self. College is something you leave for something better. And unlike at home, you won't get to hang around for years for free if you get hooked on those comfy dorm rooms.

I can't prove that it's the colleges with mystery meat in the dining hall and plenty of scunge in the hall bathrooms that have the highest percentage of students graduating in four years or less, but I have my suspicions.

Who you calling flightless waterfowl?

You hear complaints that people dress too sloppily in airports these days, but look what happens when you put on your shinest tuxedo to fly:

Two traveling penguins from Seaworld in San Diego went through regular airport screening at Denver International Airport recently. Here, Pat and Penny are removed from their carry-on case so they can walk through the metal detector.

(Via Michelle Malkin.)

Too few teachers spoil the lessons

The Education Intelligence Agency reports that teachers are the majority of education employees in the US - but just barely.

The ranks of the “non-teachers” include every other public school employee: instructional aides, school staff (principals, assistant principals, librarians, school secretaries), other staff (bus drivers, custodians, security personnel, food service workers), district staff (officials, administrators, instruction coordinators) and employees that work at county or state education agencies.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia had fewer teachers than non-teachers in their public education work force in 2001. That’s up from 12 states in 1998 and 7 states in 1995. In 1969-70, the percentage of the workforce who were teachers was 60%. In 2001, it was 50.8%. It is highly likely that today, in 2005, the United States employs more non-teachers than teachers in its public
education system

I've always complained that low academic performance was the result of bad teaching, but now it seems more appropriate to say no teaching. If a school district has more vice-principals, secretaries, and administrators than it does teachers, no wonder the hard work of conveying the 3R's doesn't get done.

NCLB opinions

The Arizona Capital Times calls them "revolts"...

The first salvos of a long-threatened attack on President Bush’s signature education law now have been launched in what amounts to a grassroots rebellion against the No Child Left Behind [NCLB] Act. Simmering frustrations from state and local officials over the 2002 law’s costs, testing requirements and penalties have erupted into open conflict with the Utah Legislature voting April 19 to challenge obedience to the federal law, and the nation’s largest teachers’ union filing suit against the act in federal court April 20. The state of Connecticut is preparing a separate lawsuit seeking full funding of NCLB’s provisions.

Recent efforts by Bush education officials to head off a backlash failed to stop this week’s challenges to the law, which Congress passed with bipartisan support to close education gaps between rich and poor, white and minority students...

...while Chester Finn calls them "tantrums":

Dozens of states are throwing toddler-style tantrums about the rules and expectations of the No Child Left Behind Act - notable among them Connecticut, which plans to sue the federal government on grounds that the law is an "unfunded mandate."

The Bush administration's olive branch is a pledge of a "new, common-sense approach" to compliance and "additional flexibility" on testing and accountability for states that have made progress on NCLB's goal: closing the gap between the academic achievement of poor and minority students and their wealthier, whiter fellow students.

Does this new flexibility mean that adult interests will again trump the needs of children? It's looking that way.

Diane Ravitch looks for the compromise in the Wall Street Journal ($ubscription required), and reminds readers that the reasons underlying the need for the act haven't disappeared:

The critics of NCLB think that it was modeled on education reforms in Texas and that it sprang full-blown from the brow of President Bush. They think they can undermine NCLB if only they can expose shortcomings in Texas's schools. But NCLB is not going away because it is the product of many years of bipartisan demands for changes in the role of the federal government, especially in meeting its responsibilities to poor children...

NCLB will not come up for renewal until 2007. Until then, there will be griping by those who don't like the new federal role in education and those who don't want to see children tested every year. But it seems safe to predict that the next renewal will strengthen the law rather than weaken it. After all, annual testing is hardly a new idea in American education. Not just reading, math and science, but history too is likely to become part of the NCLB mandate for testing.

What is valuable about the law is its insistence that districts measure their progress in helping the children who can't meet state standards. Raising achievement across the board will be hard -- but it is not mission impossible.

Sticking to her knitting

Not only do I disgree with this Austin school's zero tolerance policy...

Our yarn -- pun intended -- began Wednesday when Mariel Polter, 12, an all-A student in seventh grade at Kealing Middle School, dragged out her purple plastic knitting needles in class to do some knitting. Mariel had just finished up her TAKS test early. So she figured she'd busy herself and kill some time creatively...

Well, the teacher in Mariel's classroom wasn't laughing...about it, apparently. Because he got on the phone to Mom to tell her that her daughter had brought knitting needles to school. See, the knitting needles were considered potentially dangerous weapons under the school's zero-tolerance policy.

...I think knitting is a skill that should be taught in school and assessed on the TAKS. That way even if you don't learn to read Shakespeare, or balance your checkbook, you can still clothe yourself (and others) in nifty sweaters and shawls.

I'm just suprised she didn't say, "under your lifestyle"

Reporter Linda Seebach sends this one along for the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" file:

Seventh-grader Bailey Pierce, hand pressed against her heart, was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance when the voice over the intercom said something that stopped her cold. "One nation, under 'your belief system.' "

Bailey said that guidance counselor Margo Lucero substituted the phrase for "under God" while leading the morning pledge at Everitt Middle School on Wednesday...

"It was completely inappropriate," Jefferson County School District Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said. "We completely believe any teacher or student has the right to follow their individual conscience, however, when leading children, you adhere to the Pledge of Allegiance."

Lucero said she didn't intend to be offensive but rather wanted to mark the sixth anniversary of the Columbine High School slayings by evoking a sense of tolerance.

What about tolerance for the Pledge as it was originally written? Or about teaching children that, in the US, the "with liberty and justice for all" spirit applies even to those who leave out the "under God" part, so that the Pledge itself doesn't need to be changed to be more "tolerant"?

Update: I stand corrected (so stop filling up my comment section in correcting me, y'all). As originally written, the Pledge did not include the words, "under God." So I fall back on my second argument, that the liberty and justice for all part is still the most important, and introduce a third argument, which is that "your belief system" is just a goofy phrase.

Drumming up trouble

Another school district misses the point of the First Amendment:

A New Britain High School drum major has enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut after he was disciplined for posting a profanity-laced entry in an online journal. Daniel Gostin, 18, a senior, was stripped of his drum major position, given an in-school suspension and barred from participating in music-related extracurricular activities and performances for the remainder of the year.

Lori Rifkin, an ACLU lawyer who represents Gostin, says the school's actions violate his free-speech rights. In a letter to schools Superintendent Doris Kurtz on Wednesday, she asked that Gostin be reinstated as drum major, his disciplinary record be expunged and that he resume participating in musical activities. The posting "contained no threats nor did it contain any other statements which would interfere with the ability of school administrators to maintain order and discipline at the school," Rifkin wrote.

A teenager rants on a personal webpage about aggravations with the school, and gets punished for it two months after the fact. Unbelievable.

(Via Fark.com.)

A boon for some, a bust for others

This is a classic example of a school trying to please everyone, and completely devaluing grades in the process:

Two months off and good grades to boot.

That's the bottom line for students in the Crosby-Ironton School District, where classes were interrupted for nearly two months this semester during an ugly 39-day teachers' strike.

Superintendent Linda Lawrie, carrying out her school board's wishes to make the final weeks of the school year run smoothly, told teachers in a memo this month that she "will assume that all students will receive" A's or B's this semester.

By giving everyone the high grades, Superintendent Lawrie has ensured that the grades will be pretty much meaningless. She cites a pretty inflammatory rationale for this decision, too.

The superintendent said she also was concerned that some teachers might penalize students whose parents opposed the union's position on the issues that led to the strike. She said that before the strike, some teachers did just that, giving some students grades lower than what they deserved. She wouldn't say how widespread that was or identify individual cases, but said "We had a lot of parents complain about that."

Not surprisingly, teachers and their representatives hotly deny this.

(Via Devoted Reader Erin.)

A safety net - or an easy way out?

Kentucky school districts aren't having the best of luck with their secondary GED programs:

Diane Akers, director of pupil personnel, said it became an option this year [to start a secondary GED program] when legislators agreed to allow school districts to offer a secondary GED to try to slow the dropout rate. State standards mandate that students may participate only if they are at least 16 years old, two years behind and achieve a set score on standardized tests to ensure they have the ability to finish the program.

Akers said one problem with the secondary GED was the cost. The district examined two companies that offer a program, both of which had a one-time licensing fee of $5,000, plus fees for each student taking it ranging from $50 to $65...A larger problem, said Akers, is what appears to be a lack of success of students entering the secondary GED program in other districts.

Somerset High School purchased one of the more expensive programs, she said, but it is not going well so far. "They had five students enrolled initially in their program," Akers said. "I spoke to a gentleman that's running the program. ... As of Monday, they had one student still in the program. The student was arrested over the weekend and they're not sure he'll be allowed to come back into the school."

The secondary GED program has had its critics from the start, who say that giving students the option to go right into a GED without being out of school a year doesn't help the students as much as it helps the schools, who don't have to count those students as drop-outs.

Patron saint of the kitties

I think this is pretty cool:

When he was a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI often delivered sermons at the German-language church in Campasanto Teutonico near St. Peter's Basilica, but his most heartfelt talks may have been the ones he gave after celebrating Mass.

"I went with him once," said Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University. "Afterwards, he went into the old cemetery behind the church. It was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. He visited the cats whenever he visited the church. His love for cats is quite famous."

He now has an email address. Maybe I should send him the Carnival of the Cats links for his web surfing pleasure.

Kittypalooza

The dogwoods are in bloom and the stray cats are overflowing the intake center - it must be springtime.

This is what you see when you open a cage that has four hyper kittens in it:

Spring (that's her moniker) investigates the goods on the counter:

Of course her name is Snowball. What else would it be? Sweet as sugar, deaf as a post.

"This is my summer haircut, thank you. Stop laughing at me!"

Yes, that's a crib.

"What's that? You say I'm beautiful? Tell me something else I don't know."

So far, this kitten's nameless. "Whiskers" comes to mind.

I tried taking some photos of myself with the various kittens. Some photos...

...came out better than others.

Yes, he turned around and got in a nice eyeball lick in that photo.

I don't want to hear about it, thank you

Another school confronts a free speech issue - or is it?

Two Winona High School students have found themselves in hot water with school officials. Why? Because after Carrie Rethlefsen attended a performance of the play "The Vagina Monologues" last month, she and Emily Nixon wore buttons to school that read: "I [heart] My Vagina."

School leaders said that the pin is inappropriate and that the discomfort it causes trumps the girls' right to free speech. The girls disagree. And despite repeated threats of suspension and expulsion, Rethlefsen has continued to wear her button.

The girls claim the buttons provoke discussion about women's rights, and are perfectly happy that some boys plan to wear "I Support Your Vagina" buttons, but let's be honest. There are going to be much more racy buttons appearing out there, and it'll be interesting to see how the school deals with this - obviously, not all speech is protected under the First Amendment, and schools can certainly ban pins/t-shirts that discuss body parts.

It'll also be interesting to see whether another situation like this will develop when buttons like, "My Penis is Better Than Your Vagina" and "Shut Up About Your Vagina," inevitably emerge.

An outrageous offense, part 2

The case of the Columbus high school violence cover-up continues to horrify, although it's not getting nearly enough national attention.

Michelle Malkin has new information about how everyone except the principal is getting away with a slap on the wrist:

The principal is scheduled to be fired, but the assistant vice principals who allegedly participated in the cover-up are getting away with a slap on the wrist: 10-day suspensions and "sensitivity training" courses. Meanwhile, it looks like education dimwits in the area are going to exploit the crime to drum up diversity dollars under the guise of convening a "violence summit."

Meanwhile, it turns out that these despicable "educators" who advised the girl's father not to call the police, lest the news media get hold of this, also failed to summon a nurse to give the girl any sort of first aid. I suppose that, too, would have caused too much additional embarassment for the girl? The administrators of Mifflin High School also apparently didn't even stick around for the cops to arrive.

The school district apparently thinks a training video and extra security is the answer to this problem. I'd suggest the changes start with not hiring corrupt administrators who see a bleeding and dazed victim as a problem to cover up, rather than a student who desperately needs help. There's enough wrong with soon-to-be-ex principal Regina Crenshaw and her underlings that a Blockbusters' full of videos couldn't fix them.

Local talk show host Glenn Beck has been covering the story, and scored a brutal interview with Columbus mayor Michael Coleman. A Clear Voice has the summary, and Mike at Ohio for Blackwell has the audio tape.

One particular lowlight of the interview:

Glenn Beck was finally able to get Michael B. Coleman, the mayor of Columbus, Ohio on the phone today. (After he tried to back out of his promise to call in two days ago.) The conversation was quite interesting and perhaps indicative of why Columbus has such a problem with their school system.

Glenn attempted to talk to Coleman about the school board’s decision to keep the assistant principals on, and Coleman talked about the criminal side of the investigation and said that he was not allowed to reveal anything about it while it was open, but he was sure everything would be taken care of. Glenn kept trying to steer him back to the subject of the school board and their actions towards the assistant principals and Coleman kept insisting that he couldn’t talk about an open police investigation. About the only thing he said about the schools was that they had paid policemen there and that he, the mayor, had no control or influence over what the school board did.

The best part of the interview was when Glenn attempted to ask him a question, “Doesn’t it offend you as a man….” He didn’t get a chance to finish, but I’m assuming the end of that question was something like, “that the schools would allow something like this to happen to a girl and then do nothing to the people who allowed it to go on.” However, he didn’t get a chance because Coleman interrupted him with “Are you attacking my manhood?”

Yeah, Mayor Coleman, this is all about you. The rape victim in your city's schools is just, you know, a tangential part of the case. We should be paying much more attention to your manhood (and how you supposedly send all your kids to private schools). How such an asshat got elected, I'll never know, but let's hope Ohio voters give him the boot as soon as possible.

I still have optimism, but perhaps Maxed Out Mama's thoughts are more accurate:

I'll give you my guess. This boys will not be convicted of any criminal charges. There will not be enough evidence; the testimony (said quietly behind closed doors) will be that the word was that this girl was known for giving blowjobs to boys. Those involved will say they thought she was consenting. Those witnessing it will agree. Not one of all the boys involved said anything to school authorities. Not one. They don't know the difference between right and wrong, consenting and enforced acts. If they haven't participated themselves they have all heard about such acts before.

Nor will there be much support in the community for prosecuting them. I am the child of a public school teacher, and I have heard it all before.

If kids don't learn that sexual activity in certain contexts is flat wrong because it is dangerous, they don't know by instinct.

And they certainly don't learn it when the clueless adminstrators who are supposed to be taking care of their students think of nothing but making themselves look good, or when egotistical mayors can't put themselves and their insecurities aside for two minutes to try and help someone who was wronged.

A carnival in spring

Life outside the blogosphere is a little rough for me right now, and I totally forgot to submit anything to this week's Carnival of Education. You, on the other hand, should head on over there immediately and check it out. It just keeps getting better.

It takes a masters to build a safe bathroom?

I can't believe I wasted those six years getting a Ph.D. in something so dull, so logical, so patriarchal as quantitative psychology, when I could have gone to San Francisco and done a masters degree like this:

M.A. Student Bios/Projects

Bryan Burgess received a B.F.A. from the North Carolina School of the Arts. An activist artist, Bryan’s thesis is an exploration of theater methods used to challenge gender binaries and gender oppression. Bryan’s goal is to develop a theater model that can be used as an organizing tool for cross-identity alliance building. Bryan is currently working with People in Search of Safe Restrooms (PISSR) and the Transgender Law Center on their campaign for safe bathroom access and is the events coordinator for New College’s Activism & Social Change program.

Shauna Jo Gunderson received her B.A. from New College of California majoring in Literature and Women's Studies. Shauna’s areas of interest and inquiry include Latin America; indigenous resistance to imperialism; the invention of a history outside of oppression; Helene Cixous; "political" poetry; and explorations of femininity spacious enough to include masculinity. She is a member of a collective that works on the promotion of Fair Trade flowers, water problems, women's issues, and the indigenous fight against oil development in the Amazon. Shauna currently works for a non-profit that specializes in sex & HIV education.

Heidi Misken received a B.A. from UC Berkeley; she majored in American Studies with a focus on "Race, Gender, & Sexuality in Film." For her New College of California graduate thesis project, Heidi is organizing Fluid, a community for people who don’t fit neatly into the sex, gender, and sexual orientation binaries: www.groups.yahoo.com/group/SFFluid. At the moment, Heidi is heavily involved in developing the SF chapter of Fluid, in working to open Fluid up to folks who don’t fit into conventional categories of race and ethnicity, and in creating academic theory that addresses the fluidity of sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity.

When Bryan finds those safe restrooms he's looking for, he'll have to let me know if a masters degree from the New College of California is fit to be anything other than a substitute for toilet paper. After all, NCoC says right on their history page that they're proud to still be alternative after 30 years, even though many other alternative-wannabe schools have "retreated or collapsed" since then. Isn't that a bit like saying, "By God, we're proud to still be selling sardine-flavored ice cream, even though every other company that did so has gone bankrupt!" ?

Matt Rosenberg is suitably impressed by the whole thing.

Statistics term of the day: probabilities

Bet you thought I'd forgotten all about this, didn't you?

Let's talk probabilities, but first, let's talk about why they matter. Probability is a way of connecting populations with samples. Knowing the population distributions gives you some idea of what a sample will look like; if you walk into a room with 10 black cats and 1 white cat, and grab a cat at random, the probability is high that the cat will be black. Probabilities thus form a link between populations and samples, a link that we'll come back later when we're going in the opposite direction. When we grab a cat from a room and it's a white cat, what inference can we make about the population of the room? That's where inferential statistics come in, and it's the probability link between samples and populations that allow us to make such inferences.

We'll save a lot of the heavy stuff for later and just talk about the basic terms today. The probability of a given outcome, in a situation in which more than one outcome is possible, is the fraction:

probability of X = (outcomes that are X) / (total number of possible outcomes)

This fraction or proportion is easy to calculate, and easy to understand. If you roll a fair six-sided die, the probability that it will show a 4 is 1/6, or .16. (Here, 1/6 is the fraction, and .16 is the proportion. To get percentage form, you'd need to multiply .16 by 100 to get 16%. All forms are okay, but the proportion form is most often used.) If there are 8 cats in a room, and only two are black, your probability of one cat at random being non-black is 6/8, or .75. It's also correct to phrase this question as, "What proportion of the cats in the room are non-black?"

Notice that I've been tossing the phrase "at random" in here quite a bit. That's because the formula above depends on the assumption that the die is fair, or that the coin you're tossing is fair, or that you are choosing cats in a random fashion. The formula above assumes that each observation in the population has an equal chance of being chosen, and that if you're taking more than one observation at a time, there's a constant probability of each selection.

If a room has two black cats and 10 white ones, and I choose a cat at random, then the probability of choosing one black is 2/12, or .16. But if all the white cats are being quite loud, and I allow their persistent meows to sway me into choosing them, then the .16 probability won't be accurate, because my choices won't be completely random.

Another thing to consider when sampling is whether or not you are replacing observations in the population. If I reach into a cabinet that has 10 cans of tuna-flavored cat food and 5 cans of chicken-flavored, the probabilities are:

P(randomly choosing one can of tuna) = 10/15 or .67
P(randomly choosing one can of chicken) = 5/15 or .33

But suppose I reach in, select one can, then reach in and select another can. The probability of the second can now depends on what I took out on the first random draw, because I'm now sampling without replacement. If my first can is tuna, there are then 9 tuna and 5 chicken cans remaining, and my probabilities on the next random selection are:

P(randomly choosing one can of tuna) = 9/14 or .64
P(randomly choosing one can of chicken) = 5/14 or .35

The probability of choosing tuna just decreased from before (because we're short one) and the probability of choosing chicken just increased (because the 5 chicken cans are now a larger proportion of the population). However, if I sample with replacement - I select a can, then put it back, then select another can - then the probabilities stay constant.

Some students are more equal than others

I have to agree with Lee on this one - a school that wants to make sure that only certain student groups can wear political/sexual t-shirts is a school that is mightily confused about free speech:

A student-led effort to oppose homophobia at Homewood-Flossmoor High School may have backfired Tuesday when hundreds of students donned shirts with Christian and anti-gay slogans. Student activists who wore shirts emblazoned with the words "gay? fine by me" said they were outnumbered by peers wearing hateful messages and were targeted for harassment...

Students estimated more than 100 students wore anti-homophobia shirts, and more than 200 students wore shirts that listed "Crimes committed against God." The crimes included the elimination of school prayer and separation of church and state, but did not include anything about homosexuality.

Other male students wrote slogans on white T-shirts such as "I hate gay people" and "Gay? Not fine by me (unless you're a lesbian)" and "Gay? More chicks for me," students said.

The school's reaction? Three guesses, and the first two don't count:

Students...claimed teachers were reprimanded for distributing shirts with Christian messages...The event's organizers got permission Tuesday from the student council to recognize the school's gay support group as a club. Club status will allow the group to hold the T-shirt day next year without opposition, Norby said.

Everyone at school needs a lesson on the First Amendment (as it applies to freedom of speech and freedom of religion). Then the school should decide whether to honor everyone's right to their opinion (on a t-shirt), or no one's.

Oh, and they need to assign Animal Farm as required reading, too.

Requiring the pledge

The pendulum swings back: Now students are fighting for the Pledge of Allegiance to be made mandatory once again.

A child of two immigrants is leading a charge in the General Assembly to require our children in state schools to recite the Pledge of Allegiance...Apex [NC] sophomore, Julian Quesada is on a mission, pushing lawmakers to pass legislation that would require students to recite the pledge. "I think it will instill in their minds a sense of national self preservation which I think might be lacking in this country as a whole in the youth of America."

Quesada has no shortage of patriotism. He is a first generation American taught to honor his country from his Costa Rican father and Argentinean mother, Adriana Quesada. "We've always instilled in him, both our boys, you don't take things for granted. This is a privilege to live here."

This fascinating sentence is included: "If the law passes...if the pledge goes against your religious beliefs, the law [will be] structured that those students would have a choice." Which is going to start up the whole "Under God" brouhaha again, but I suppose that's unavoidable.

(Via Dissecting Leftism.)

Malls: Babysitters for the 21st Century

Now here's an interesting concept (that is most likely a losing battle, too, but oh well):

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) - Every kid knows hanging out with Mom or Dad can be kind of a drag. Kids who want to spend time at the Pheasant Lane Mall on Friday or Saturday nights might not have a choice. In response to recent "disorderly and disruptive" incidents, mall security two weeks ago started distributing fliers outlining the mall's "general code of conduct," according to mall Manager Ginny Szymanski.

From 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, mall security guards now stand outside two entrances to make sure anyone under 16 has a parent or someone over 21 with them....

If kids are found to be disrupting the mall's business, Szymanski said they will be escorted to the command center to call a parent to pick them up.

Am I sympathetic to the kids here? Not really, but it's mainly because I certainly didn't hang out in malls alone while I was under driving age. My parents didn't consider the malls to be a safe or appropriate place for me to hang out without supervision, but many parents do.

Hopefully, those parents will make smarter statements to the press than this mom:

"I feel as though if I want to drop my kids off, I should. They're responsible," said Leann Newcomb of Lowell, Mass., who was shopping Monday with her 15-year-old daughter, Ashley...

Szymanski said the mall doesn't have a gang problem, but that people with certain attire - such as long chains that fall below the knee or studded dog or wrist collars, all of which can be used as weapons, she said - will be asked to remove them. If they don't comply, they will be asked to leave the mall, she said.

Leann Newcomb questioned the rule. "They sell that stuff," said Newcomb. "How are they going to tell the kids after they buy that stuff not to wear it? Isn't that a violation of your constitutional rights?"

Ha ha ha ha! Oh, wait, was she serious? Does she really believe that (a) because she considers her kids to be responsible, she should be allowed to let them roam without supervision anywhere they like, and (b) they have a constitutional right to wear outrageous clothing anywhere they like?

Sheesh.

A cure for senioritis

The more I hear about this idea, the more I like it - getting rid of senioritis:

Governors in at least nine states are pushing broad-based initiatives to overhaul the senior year of high school. They say the second half of the year in particular wastes students' time and taxpayers' money. "Senioritis" often appears toward the middle of the year, when many students have met graduation requirements and take largely electives...

Among programs already in place:

• In Virginia, seniors can get up to one semester of industry-specific technical training tuition-free.
• In Texas, students in a pilot program at 10 high schools across the state can earn in five years a high school diploma and an associate's degree...
• In North Carolina, the state has increased graduation requirements in English and math...

Anything sounds better than forcing talented students to mark time, or requiring that techie students wait six months before getting started. Some students - I was one - need that entire senior year to mature and do some scholastic exploration, but some will be ready to get the heck out, and should have the chance to do so.

DePaul: Where only the students can be right

DePaul University is apparently a school in which deans can demand that professors never insist they're right. Adjunct professor Thomas Klocek taught in the university's School of New Learning in relative anonymity, until the day he decided to challenge some pro-Palestinian students (not his) in a short verbal debate that took place outside of class. He quickly found himself asked to cancel his winter 2005 classes and surrender his much-needed health insurance.

You can read more about the story, and the context in which it took place, here, but the part that catches my eye is the reason for Klocek's lawsuit. He was ostensibly disciplined for his conduct (for an alleged "obscene gesture" at said students). But then he recieved a letter from his boss, dean Susanne Dumbleton, that contained these sentences:

“No students anywhere should ever have to be concerned they will be verbally attacked for their religious belief or their ethnicity,” Dumbleton wrote. “No one should ever use the role of teacher to demean the ideas of others or insist on the absoluteness of an opinion, much less press erroneous assertions.”

Emphasis mine. And if you read that second sentence to mean that, under Dumbleton's watch, professors cannot insist that they are right about something, and a student is wrong, you are correct. This is demented "progressive" educrat-speak at its finest. This flagrant violation of Klocek's free speech has lawyers who specialize in First Amendment and free-speech issues itching to attack DePaul with lawsuits, as well it should.

(From LGF, some of whose readers note that emails to the university are going unanswered. I'm just doing my part to spread this appalling story - which is not new, but keeps getting worse - to the blogosphere. Additional coverage at CruxMag, Roger Simon, Friends of Micronesia, FreeRepublic, ChronWatch, Minion of the Great Satan, Students for Academic Freedom, and Solomonia.)

Update: Linda Seebach sends along reams (megapixels?) of coverage from the Rocky Mountain News archived here, here, here, and here.

Paying to get in, paying to get out

Is a graduation fee just another punch with which college and professional students should learn to roll? Or is it extortion?

About 75 St. Louis University students lined the hallway outside of the president’s office this morning to protest a graduation fee they first learned about last week. Students are most upset about being notified just weeks before graduation that they would have to pay the fee in order to get their diplomas. They say the university should have told them months in advance.

The university originally set the fees at $75 for graduating seniors and $100 for medical and law students. But in response to student complaints, administrators reduced the fee on Monday to $50 for everyone.

I remember having to pay a fee to submit my dissertation to the graduate school, which seemed in essence like a graduation fee. But then, I knew the deal well in advance, rather than a couple of weeks before my dissertation was due in.

An argument for testing

Op-ed writer Brent Staples says in the NYTimes what I have been saying on this blog for quite some time:

The same civil rights groups that sing hosannas to Brown have been curiously muted - and occasionally even hostile - to No Child Left Behind. But the groups have mainly been missing from the debate...Why are civil rights groups standing on the sidelines instead of fighting to ensure that this law succeeds? The reasons are numerous and complex...

[one of the reasons is the] antitesting argument. Civil rights activists commonly embrace the popular but erroneous view that the reading and math tests associated with No Child Left Behind are culturally biased or unfair to minority children. Paradoxically, those who hold this view are often middle- and upper-class African-Americans who have law degrees and Ph.D.'s, which require rigorous tests and high achievement.

The simple achievement tests required under the law are essential to the objective of closing the education gap. By arguing that these tests are inappropriate and culturally biased, these members of the liberal black elite have unwittingly embraced the worst stereotypes about the poor. They have also given cover to politicians who believe that the achievement gap can never be closed and that minority children can never reach the levels attained by their white, affluent counterparts.

In other words, the claim that tests of basic reading and math skills are biased against all minorities is itself a bigoted and racist argument. For some reason I've never understood, many of those who oppose testing unthinkingly stand behind a notion that the KKK would be proud to claim as their own: that multiple-choice questions are somehow innately impossible for non-white students to solve.

Smarter testing opponents will claim that the test is fine but the use of it is not, or that the differential impact of the test scores is the problem. Sometimes, this argument is correct, but even these critics stop too soon in the logical process. If a graduation exam does in fact have a differential impact for minority students (fewer of them pass, so fewer graduate), one must go beyond the scores and ask why. Too many critics merely suggest removing the tests, as opposing to eradicating the problems that cause minority students to perform poorly. Too many critics assume that everything must be wrong with the tests, and nothing wrong with the teaching.

Getting it right or wrong

Parents march against the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning):

Shelley Anderson keeps photocopies of her oldest son's test scores from the past six years in a black folder crammed with statistics about the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. "I dislike what this is doing for our children. I think it's setting them up for failure," she said Monday. "It's teaching them to think inside the box. I have three children, and they're distinct individuals."

Anderson brought the black folder with her from Spokane to Olympia, where she took part in a protest against the WASL, which is being given to students across the state this week.

I don't doubt her children are individuals. However, it's hard to understand why requiring fourth-graders to read on this level, or requiring seventh-graders to comprehend math on this level, is "setting them up for failure."

As expected, many of the complaints are that students who do well in classes do poorly on the exam, which leads one to wonder why parents aren't protesting ineffective classroom scholarship or inflated grading schemes. But at least one parent compares the WASL scores to other test scores:

Anderson pointed to the scores of her oldest son, Bill. He failed the math sections of the WASL in fourth and seventh grade but passed the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in sixth and ninth grades with above-average marks.

Bill Anderson, 15, noted that students receive partial credit for following the right procedure in the math section, even if they answer with the wrong number. "It's not set up to test you on what you know; it tests you on how you think," he said.

According to this website, partial credit scoring is indeed used on the ITBS. While that's all well and good, it's wrong to say that partial credit scoring is testing "how you think," while all-or-none scoring is only testing "what you know." If you don't know how to think your way through the problem, you won't know the answer. And if you don't get the right final answer, there's obviously a step missing in your thought processes.

I don't think partial-credit scoring is a bad thing, but it's just plain to silly to say that it's qualitatively different, and better, than right-or-wrong scoring. Partial-credit just makes it easier for the judges to see where someone went wrong (which is why partial-credit scoring is often used in the classroom environment), and it makes it easier for students who don't know how to arrive at the final answer to gain at least some credit for a not-totally-wrong answer, which is why it would be more popular with people who oppose standardized testing.

Get ready, get set, get naked

An amusing brouhaha at an Illinois high school:

A veteran Oak Forest High School teacher has received a written reprimand for telling students last week they could earn extra credit if they took part in a "Get Naked Day" in his classroom. The comments were an unfortunate, tongue-in-cheek effort by English teacher Bob Burt to get his students interested in an upcoming lesson, Bremen High School District 228 Supt. Richard Mitchell said.

Burt never intended for the students in a senior writing class to get naked but merely wanted them to wear loose-fitting pants and flip-flops as part of a lesson based around the 1989 movie "My Left Foot," Mitchell said. However, he said Burt did not make it clear to the students that his reference to "Get Naked Day" was a joke when he announced it April 6.

At least three boys told their parents that nig