“Sexual abuse, gore, racism, bullying rampant on Australian school Facebook pages”

Taken from: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sexual-abuse-gore-racism-bullying-rampant-on-australian-school-facebook-pages/story-e6frg6n6-1226514669372

November 12, 2012

STUDENTS at almost 500 schools are running Facebook sites dedicated to humiliating their peers as more and more children are forced to carry the incessant burden of cyber-bullying outside the school gates.

A News Ltd investigation of more than 4800 Australian primary and high schools has revealed more than 10 per cent have a Facebook page on which students are taunting each other and teachers with abusive language and offensive pictures.

Many of the posts are too offensive to reprint, but include graphic sexual discussion of students and teachers, shocking gore photos of suicide and accident victims, underage girls labelled “sluts”, male teachers named as pedophiles and references to Nazism. The majority of pages – many which carry the school’s full name and logo – contain homophobic, racist and misogynist jokes and drug references. Some of the most insidious pages, typically called “burn books” or “goss pages”, name and tag students in vicious rumours, which are then “liked” and shared around other students’ social networks.

One of the most shocking pages, from a school in Queensland, features gory photos of suicide and accident victims and a horrific picture of a battered child with an accompanying “joke” about domestic violence, all alongside references to the school and photos of the campus. Also on the page, which has accrued more than 760 fans since being launched in late August, is a photograph of a baby with a gun to its head with the caption “one like = one baby shot”, and a cartoon advocating methamphetamine use.

Another school page, from NSW, names a teacher as a “child molester” and calls another a “c***”, while students who have posted complaints have been abused with homophobic slurs.

A page from WA featured a photograph of a male teacher and female students overlaid with the logo of a pornography website, accompanied by snide comments joking that he was a pedophile.

The page, which accrued more than 600 fans since its launch in mid September, also featured photographs of students fighting, jokes about female Year 7s being “sluts” and arguments between students using extremely offensive language, all underneath the school’s official logo.

That page has since been deleted, but two others using the school’s name still exist.

One principal admitted his school had little control over what students did on the internet outside of school hours. ”You can block all these things on our intranet and they can’t do it at school but they have their own ways from home,” he said. But another principal added: “If students make threats over Facebook we are going to deal with them … as if it were an incident in the schoolyard.”

Cyber-bullying expert Dr Barbara Spears, from the University of South Australia, said “liking” nasty Facebook posts was the new face of schoolyard bullying. ”Clearly, `liking’ such pages contributes to the ongoing humiliation of others, and bystanders – those who contribute to bullying by not doing anything about it – are actively supporting it,” she said. Studies suggest 15 to 30 per cent of children are bullied at school, and around 10 per cent have been cyber bullied. Dr Spears said bullying was not shifting from the schoolyard to the screen, but “expanding” there. Constant access to technology meant “there is no escape”, she said.

Child psychologist and National Centre Against Bullying founder Michael Carr-Gregg said traditional playground bullies were taking their warfare online. ”What we’re finding now is that a lot of these kids are using the technology to literally make other people’s lives hell and the burn books are a really good example of this because so many people see it,” he said. Dr Carr-Gregg said vulnerable children could not brush off that kind of humiliation. ”For them, they’ve already got depression or they’ve already got anxiety so the gun is already loaded and the cyberbullying, the burn book, simply pulls the trigger,” he said.

The most serious forms of cyber bullying can attract stalking, harrassment or defamation charges. And it is illegal to use a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence under federal law, but a Federal Police spokeswoman said no minor had ever been charged. She said parents should try to deal with cyber-bullying through schools and only go to police as a last resort.Dr Carr-Gregg said too few people were charged over their heinous online behaviour. ”Some of these burn books can result in young people harming themselves so I don’t think the law is up to scratch,” he said. ”I think we need a social norm that says this type of behaviour is unacceptable and it needs to be enforced.”

WORST OF THE WORST

Examples of depravity on Australian schools’ Facebook pages

• Photo of a baby with a gun to its head, a photo of a battered child, gory pictures of suicide and accident victims, graphic pornography (QLD)
• Photo of a male teacher with female students captioned that he is a pedophile (WA)
  
• Male teachers pictured and captioned as “child molester” and “raper” (NSW)
  
• Messages telling students to kill themselves (NSW)
  
• Students threatening to rape other students (NSW)
  
• Female student named as having an affair with a teacher (NSW)
  
• Female student named as having AIDS (QLD)
  
• School classrooms pictured and captioned as “rape dungeons” (WA)
  
• Male student named as having had sex with goats (SA)
  
• Graphic sexual discussions about a female teacher (SA)
  
• Female teacher called “slut” and “hooker” (WA)
  
• Student with a speech impediment pictured and teased (SA)
  
• Black male student pictured and called a “n****r” (WA)
  
• Page with a profile picture that reads “kill yourselves” (QLD)
  
• Pictures of Hitler and references to Nazism (NSW)
  
• Praise for students who egged a teacher’s car (VIC)
  
• Message to students about a particular teacher: “spit on her shoes and s*** on her face” (VIC)

“Pakistan seminary raid finds students held in abusive conditions”

Taken from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/pakistan-madrasas-abuse.html

December 13, 2011

REPORTING FROM ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN, AND NEW DELHI — Police rescued approximately 50 students late Monday from an Islamic seminary in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, several of whom were reportedly chained in a basement, denied food and pressured to join the Taliban.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the students, who ranged in age from around 12 to 50, were subjected to such treatment. But police, who conducted the raid after getting tipped off by neighbors, told local media that some of the young men were drug addicts sent there by parents unaware of the horrible conditions.

Video footage showed boys and men restrained by heavy chains on their ankles. Other shots showed several celebrating after being set free.

At least two staff members at the Madrasa Zakarya seminary were arrested, although the leader of the facility in Karachi’s Sohrab Goth neighborhood reportedly escaped. Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has ordered an investigation.Government statistics suggest there are over 15,000 madrasas, or Islamic seminaries, in Pakistan educating some 2 million students. Most parents who send their children to madrasas, some of which have a reputation for fomenting extremism, do so because they generally cost less than other schools, provide meals and have teachers who show up.

Nazish Brohi, a sociologist and women’s rights activist in Karachi, said corporal punishment and abuse occur in mainstream schools as well as madrasas, even though it’s illegal. “The problem is that all efforts at regulating madrasas have failed,” she said, adding that the government isn’t very strong on oversight over all sorts of institutions.

While there’s been some slight improvement in madrasa oversight — largely focused on trying to prevent them from sending their students to Afghanistan or Pakistani tribal areas to become fighters — it hasn’t extended to the curriculum or the quality of education students receive at the institutions, experts said.

“This isn’t the first time they’ve found students chained, although it may be the first time it’s been running live on TV,” Brohi said. “My concern, with the shock and horror of this case, is that people will focus on this one incident rather than the wider issue of oversight.”

“20 Students Now Accused in L.I. Case on Cheating”

Taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/education/more-students-charged-in-long-island-sat-cheating-case.html?ref=education&pagewanted=all

November 22, 2011

Schools do not write the SAT or administer it. But when school officials at Great Neck North High School suspected that students were cheating on the exam, their investigation led prosecutors down a trail that has resulted in criminal charges against 20 students and calls for widespread test reform. Bernard Kaplan, the principal of Great Neck North, said he believed cheating was pervasive. “I think it’s widespread across the country,” he said Tuesday. “We were the school that stood up to it.”

On Tuesday, Nassau County prosecutors accused 13 students from five schools of accepting payment or paying others to take the SAT and ACT between 2008 and 2011. Eleven students turned themselves in; two are expected to do so next week, prosecutors said. The arrests, coming two months after seven other Nassau students were accused of cheating on the tests, seemed to underscore the district attorney’s assertion that security measures for the tests, administered by ACT Inc. and the Educational Testing Service, are inadequate, leading to widespread cheating.

“When this cheating scandal was first reported, E.T.S. said that this was an isolated incident, and that the SAT was secure,” Kathleen M. Rice, the Nassau County district attorney, said in a news conference. “I’m glad to know, now, that E.T.S. appreciates that this is a larger problem.”

The investigation began when administrators at Great Neck North looked into student rumors. Their focus soon fell on students who had registered to take the tests outside the district, and those whose scores and grades showed a disparity. They turned over the details to prosecutors, who opened a broad examination.

In September, prosecutors accused Sam Eshaghoff, 19, of impersonating six students, including a girl, to take tests for them. Officials allege that students paid Mr. Eshaghoff up to $3,500 per test for scores ranking as high as the 97th percentile. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The arrests on Tuesday included three people accused of accepting payment to take tests and eight who the authorities say paid impersonators to take tests for them. One student has declined to surrender. Those accused of fraudulently taking tests face felony charges of scheming to defraud, as well as misdemeanor charges of falsifying business records and criminal impersonation.

Among those charged with taking the tests for others on Tuesday were Joshua Chefec, 20, now a senior at Tulane, and Michael Pomerantz, 18, both of whom attended Great Neck North; Adam Justin, 19, a graduate of North Shore Hebrew Academy and a student at Indiana University; and George Trane, 19, a graduate of Great Neck South who now attends SUNY Stony Brook. Officials said Mr. Pomerantz, citing a medical condition, told them he would surrender Monday; the others turned themselves in Tuesday morning.

Of the students charged with paying to have the test taken for them, five were from Great Neck North, two from North Shore Hebrew Academy High School and one from Roslyn High School.

Because those accused of paying test takers were 19 or under and face only misdemeanor charges, their identities will not be made public, a spokesman for Ms. Rice said.

Matin Emanou, Mr. Eshaghoff’s lawyer, as well as the lawyers representing the latest students arrested, have argued that their clients are not guilty, and that the situation should be handled by the schools, not in the courts. “While no one condones cheating, we have a school system that is separate and apart from the criminal justice system, and we have that for good reason,” said Brian Griffin, a Nassau County lawyer representing Mr. Chefec, who was accused of taking the test for others. Mr. Griffin said his client was not part of a “ring,” but was rather accused of having taken two tests for one student. “It’s not a systematic scheme to defraud when you’re alleged to have acted with one person,” he said.

Gerard McCloskey, a Nassau lawyer who represents a student who is charged with paying someone to take the test and who is still in high school, said, “My feeling is that it should be handled administratively by the College Board and the school board, not criminally, especially when the county is experiencing budget issues and resources are limited to begin with.” The College Board owns the SAT.

Ms. Rice argued that impersonating others, creating fake IDs, paying significant sums of money and submitting fraudulent scores to colleges — in a highly competitive college admissions landscape — warranted attention from her office. “This is a crime,” she said. “Make no mistake, as the system stands now, hard-working students are taking a back seat to the cheaters.” She said her office had no evidence that parents were aware of the payments.

At a State Senate meeting on Oct. 24, legislators and school officials accused the College Board and Educational Testing Service of having lax security and a system that failed to punish cheats. Currently, if a score is suspect, E.T.S. investigates. If cheating is uncovered, the score is canceled and the student is permitted to get a refund and take the test again. Neither the student’s high school nor any college is notified.

Educational Testing Service has said that a New York law prohibits the company from releasing information about cheating. Prosecutors say the law simply prohibits disclosure of the investigation: Once cheating has been proven, they maintain, the testing service has full authority to report the outcome to third parties. Prosecutors and legislators have said that the law should be re-examined and that proven cheats should face consequences.

At first, the testing service took the position that impersonations and cheating were isolated. Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, took a different tack at the October hearing, and said the board had hired the firm led by Louis J. Freeh, a former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to investigate security measures.

Nassau prosecutors investigated 40 students in total. They were hamstrung, Ms. Rice said, by a statute of limitations and poor document retention by the testing service and its vendors. “This is a system begging for security enhancements, reform to ensure disclosure of cheating to high schools, and better data retention by E.T.S. and ACT Inc. to ensure cheating cases can be properly investigated,” Ms. Rice said.

“High schools offer money for grades”

Apparently school is no longer about the passion of learning; it’s about making money. 

Taken from: http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_news/va_beach/high-schools-offers-money-for-grades?hpt=us_bn5

November 7, 2011

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - A new incentive in Virginia Beach rewards students and teachers with cash for good grades on advanced placement exams. ”I think we’re trying to build an incentive for students to take on some of this rigorous work,” Advanced Placement Chemistry teacher Patty Cook said.

At Salem High School , Cook has more AP students this year than last. ”They really come away with some great experience,” Cook said. The rigorous course gives students a glimpse at college level work. And this year there is an extra bonus for students and teachers. Salem High School has teamed up with theNational Math and Science Initiative . Through a privately backed grant, students received $100 for every three, four or five they earn on an Advanced Placement exam. Teachers are paid as well.

AP exams are scored on a scale of one through five. A three and above usually exempts students from having to take the class in college. ”These corporations have helped pay for this grant. They obviously have a need for these kinds of workers,” Cook said. The cash incentive covers the cost of the Advanced Placement exam, leaving students with likely no more than $20.

Beyond the small incentive, Cook said the real payoff is the additional training she receives as a teacher and the new supplies every student, AP or not, will now have access to. ”We have a budget that I can use yearly and so I can acquire things slowly. But this was great, it gave us a lot all at once,” Cook said.

Salem High School received the grant because it serves many military families. Other recipient schools in Virginia Beach include, Kellam and Green Run high Schools. Five schools on the peninsula are recipients as well.

“Dealing with gay students, bullying in very different ways”

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/12/us/minneapolis-bullying-schools/index.html

October 12, 2011

Minneapolis (CNN) – Jared Pettingill’s parents wanted a safe place for their son to attend school where he wouldn’t be harassed for being gay. They found that place in the Minneapolis Public School district. ”It’s just been really accepting in my experience,” says Jared, a high school junior. He says he’s “never really dealt with bullying issues” in middle school or high school. ”The amount of positive reaction to LGBT issues is really amazing.”

Minneapolis Public School administrators admit that by no means has bullying been eradicated from their schools. However, they firmly believe that they are leading the way in creating a safe environment for all students. In January, the school board unanimously passed a unique resolution instructing administrators to track bullying incidents related to the harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. The measure also requires all staff to be trained on LGBT issues. It injects LGBT topics into the curriculum, which includes adding an LGBT component to sex ed. They will eventually add an elective high school course on LGBT history.

Just a few miles away, another Minneapolis-area school district has attracted national attention for its policy that deals with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students much differently.

Neutral or not?

The Anoka-Hennepin School District, just outside the Twin Cities, made headlines in recent years after seven students committed suicide in 2009 and 2010. Parents and friends say four of those students were either gay, perceived to be gay or questioning their sexuality. They say, at least two of them were bullied because of their sexuality. The school district says there is no evidence that the suicides were linked to bullying.

Nevertheless, it stirred public debate over the school’s sexual orientation curriculum policy. The district’s curriculum policy, adopted in 2009, bars teachers from taking a position on homosexuality in the classroom and says such matters are best addressed outside of school. It’s become known as the neutrality policy. Anoka-Hennepin, which encompasses the Twin Cities’ northwestern suburbs and is the state’s largest school district, is the only Minnesota school district known to have such a policy.

In July, gay rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a group of students challenging the neutrality policy. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights told CNN that the lawsuit is currently in mediation. While the school district refrained from commenting on specifics in the lawsuit, it issued a statement in July noting that “Anoka-Hennepin has been recognized as a pro-active leader in the state of Minneosta on bullying prevention.” The school district is also in the middle of a federal investigation into “allegations of harassment and discrimination in the Anoka-Hennepin School District based on sex, including peer-on-peer harassment based on not conforming to gender stereotypes,” according to a district memo.

Superintendent Dennis Carlson says the neutrality policy — which has attracted just as many local supporters as it has critics to heated school board meetings — is a reasonable response to a divided community. ”It’s a diverse community,” Carlson told CNN earlier this year, “and what we’re trying to do, what I’m trying to do as a superintendent, is walk down the middle of the road.” The school district has a separate, comprehensive bullying prohibition policy, and Carlson said there is no link between the suicides and bullying. ”We have no evidence that bullying or harassment took place in any of those cases,” the superintendent said. Carlson emphasized students need to report bullying, and he acknowledged “gay students in our district struggle with bullying and harassment on a daily basis.”

Damon Fietek, 16, knows that all too well. He says he was a target for bullies because his father, a middle school teacher in the Anoka-Hennepin school district, is gay.

Damon’s story

Jefferson Fietek had adopted Damon just before he started high school. The bullying began immediately. Damon Fietek, pictured with his father Jefferson, says he’s been a target for bullies because his dad is gay. ”It upsets me a great deal,” says Fietek, a middle school theater teacher. “For him, being a kid from the foster system … I was just really upset that he wasn’t being allowed to celebrate the fact that he had a family now.”

Damon said the harassment went on for a full year before he even told his dad. ”Students would say stuff to me…like ‘Hey, did your dad rape you last night?’ You know, just make those kinds of jokes at me,” Damon said. The bullying wasn’t just directed at him. He says it was a general hostility toward people who are — or are perceived to be — LGBT or who come from homes where a family member may be LGBT. ”I pulled him out of [that school],” Fietek said.

Damon now attends another school in the Anoka-Hennepin district with smaller class sizes. He says he hasn’t had any problems. Fietek, an adviser to his school’s Gay Straight Alliance, says when he first started working at the school, several teachers suggested he keep his sexuality to himself for his own job security. He decided it didn’t make sense to keep quiet. Risking his job is a gamble he says he has to take because the issue is too important. ”I just compare it to what these kids’ personal stories are, and they’ve got stories far worse than anything that’s happening to me,” Fietek said.

In his adviser role, Fietek says he receives phone calls, texts and Facebook messages several times a week from students who feel like they are at a dead end because of bullying or uncertainty regarding their sexuality. Fietek believes the school district’s neutrality policy has indirectly taken the side of the bullies by not supporting these kids. ”Some of the things we’ve put in place [have] just created a scary environment,” Fietek said.

Making it better

James C. Burroughs II used to bully kids when he was in school, calling other boys “gay” for no particular reason. Jared Pettingill says he hasn’t experienced any bullying at his Minneapolis high school ”If you did something on the athletic field that wasn’t masculine or manly, you’d use the term ‘that’s gay’ or the ‘f’ word — the other ‘f’ word,” Burroughs recalled.

Today, Burroughs is the director of Minneapolis School District’s Office of Equity and Diversity, which seeks to “integrate equity, diversity, and inclusion into all aspects” of the school district. Burroughs says his past is why he believes so passionately in putting an end to bullying, particularly of students who are perceived to be gay. ”What’s important for me is acknowledging that that happened and making it better for another generation of students,” Burroughs said.

The Minneapolis School District has taken many steps to address the issue of bullying LGBT students, including training its staff on tracking bullying of these students, injecting LGBT topics into the curriculum, hosting an “Out4Good” LGBT support program, and implementing a bullying prevention curriculum called Second Step. ”It’s very special,” Burroughs said. “I think we’re a national leader when it comes to making sure that students and families in the school system K-12 are being treated and valued equally amongst all students.” Anti-bullying curriculum is woven into subjects like math, history and literature throughout each day, and staff from the teachers to the bus drivers are trained on how to create role play scenarios, says coordinator Julie Young-Burns. Ultimately it comes down to how each teacher feels they’re best able to infuse the lessons into their already planned lessons on other topics, she says.

High school junior Jared Pettingill says he notices bits and pieces of an LGBT inclusive curriculum on a regular basis. ”In my English class right now, at the end of the year we’re gonna be reading a book called ‘Giovanni’s Room,’ which is all about a bisexual character living in Paris, and it hinges on a lot of his relationships,” he said. ” And there are a couple of other books like that that deal with lesbianism.”

His parents support the school’s proactive stance in teaching tolerance and offering support of LGBT students like their son. However, they say any policy is ultimately “a piece of paper” that won’t work unless the message is embraced by everyone.”It is our public officials, it’s our media, it is each of us individually saying it’s not OK to be hurtful to somebody else,” said Marie Pettingill.”Whether its LGBT or other issues kids experience, they should be able to be safe, and we shouldn’t have to even think that we have to talk about that. Kids should be safe.”

“Rick Scott to Liberal Arts Majors: Drop Dead”

Taken from: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/512axW/motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/rick-scott-liberal-arts-majors-drop-dead-anthropology

October 11, 2011

Florida’s unpopular tea party governor, Rick Scott, wants more of the state’s youths to pick up college degrees… but only if the degrees are useful to corporations and don’t teach students to question social norms. “You know what? They need to get education in areas where they can get jobs,” Scott told a right-wing radio host Monday morning. He continued:

“You know, we don’t need a lot more anthropologists in the state. It’s a great degree if people want to get it, but we don’t need them here. I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering, math degrees. That’s what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on. Those type of degrees. So when they get out of school, they can get a job.”

It’s no idle sound bite. The governor, an ex-corporate CEO with a checkered business past, is pushing a plan that would all but kill liberal arts and social sciences at the Sunshine State’s public universities—and he’s got support from the Legislature’s psychology-hatin’ GOP majority. He explained the strategy Monday in a separate interview with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

Scott said Monday that he hopes to shift more funding to science, technology, engineering and math departments, the so-called “STEM” disciplines. The big losers: Programs like psychology and anthropology and potentially schools like New College in Sarasota that emphasize a liberal arts curriculum.

“If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take that money to create jobs,” Scott said. “So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state.”

“Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

Aside from his picking on Margaret Mead, Scott’s reasoning could attract a lot of Floridians; after all, both political parties have reduced their platforms to “Where are the jobs?” shoutfests, assuming that life will be hunky dory once Motorola starts interviewing conveyor-belt widget assemblers again. But if Scott thinks that state colleges should only offer free-market-friendly majors, he’s been sleeping in class. First, he ignores a host of recent research that shows college majors don’t matter as much in graduates’ long-term earning power as is often assumed. Second, “soft” subjects like anthropology (and philosophy, and history, and psychology, and English) serve their students pretty darn well: Take a look at the surprising list of notable Americans who majored in them… including Dubya, Carly Fiorina, Clarence Thomas, Billy Graham, and Ronald Reagan. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better marketer or brand specialist than an anthro major.

None of that should matter, anyway. Is a degree’s intrinsic value really reducible to its marketability? Just a few blocks from the governor’s mansion, the Florida State University anthropology department—already ravaged by cuts and unable to admit new students—is fighting for its life by reminding visitors that anthropology is not only cost-effective and desirable on the job market, it’s morally satisfying, too. “The Anthropology Department educates students about the lack of biological support for the race concept and challenges the racist ideas that have led to inequality and exploitation,” the department’s website states. Hard to put a pricetag on a lesson like that.

That, in the end, is perhaps why Scott’s really out to kill anthropology and the liberal arts: As opposed to conservative-friendly disciplines like economics and business management, liberal arts produce more culturally aware and progressive citizens, inclined to challenge ossified social conventions and injustices. Eliminate cultural and social sciences from public colleges, and you’ll ultimately produce fewer community organizers, poets, and critics; you’ll probably churn out more Rotarians, Junior Leaguers, and Republican donors.

At the end of his radio spiel Monday, Scott said he was open to other folks’ ideas. “If anybody has any ideas where they see waste, they see fraud, they see any problems in where the state spends its money, let me know,” he told listeners.

Well, Governor, you could start by paying as much for health insurance as your lowliest employees do. Or you could stop paying for unnecessary drug tests on the poorest and neediest Floridians. Or, if you really want to cut out waste from the state universities’ budgets, you could eliminate some football programs instead of anthropology departments. As I’ve laid out for you below, it’d save a hell of a lot more money:

“Schools Scrapping ID Cards Color-Coded by Test Scores”

Taken from: http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-color-coded-id-cards-test-scores,0,5659545.story?hpt=us_bn7

October 7, 2011

LA PALMA, Calif. (KTLA) — School district leaders are eliminating programs at two Orange County high schools that color code student ID cards based on test scores.

At Kennedy High School in La Palma, students currently carry school IDs in one of three colors based on their performance on the California Standards Tests, plus a spiral-bound homework planner covered in a matching color. White signifies lower scores, gold signifies a higher level of achievement and improvement and black is the best all-around, signifying advanced test scores in all subjects.

High ranking color cards give students free admission to athletic events, as well as discounts to school dances and at local businesses. While low ranking card colors require students to stand in a separate cafeteria lunch line and come with no benefits.

But school district officials announced late Thursday afternoon that they have decided to eliminate the color-coding system, turning instead to uniform ID cards and notebooks, and lunch line privileges for all students. The district said in a statement: “We believe it is important to acknowledge and celebrate our students’ successes. The incentive programs at two… campuses were implemented with the best intentions. Yet, we recognize that innovative programs sometimes have unintended consequences that may impact some of our students.”

KTLA spoke to parents and students about the color-coded ID cards. ”It’s segregation between the students, and that’s wrong,” one parent told KTLA.

Students were somewhat divided on the issue. ”I care about my grades and my test scores, and I care about my future, and whenever I get called stupid it puts me down, and it makes me not even want to try,” student Shalie Chudomelka said. ”I think it’s bad,” student David Butler echoed. “I do feel discriminated about it.”

But not everyone felt that the system was all bad. ”If we abolish the gold card system, do we have to abolish sports?” student Alexander Jimenez said, defending the program. “They have varsity, they have frosh-soph. It’s a meritocracy. People are rewarded based on their performance.”

Still, an educational psychologist who specializes in student motivation called the system “one of the worst ideas ever.” UC Irvine assistant professor Anne Marie Conley told the OC Register that the three-tiered system stigmatizes the most academically vulnerable kids — underprivileged minorities, poor students and English learners.

Ben Carpenter, principal at Cypress High School, which now has a similar system, defended the program. He said there was nothing discriminatory about it. ”It’s not based on anything other than how hard you work to learn the material in the classroom and how well you’ve performed in this classroom,” Carpenter told the OC Register. According to Carpenter, the practice is no different than more traditional displays of achievement such as honor roll, letterman jackets, honor cords at graduation, honor societies, even students walking around school hallways carrying textbooks for honors and college-level Advanced Placement courses.

The California Department of Education told the Register on Tuesday that any program revealing information about how well a student has performed on state tests is a violation of the student’s privacy and should be terminated.

“Alabama Immigration Law: Justice Department Asks Federal Appeals Court To Block Enforcement Of Measure”

Thank you, DOJ, for taking a stand in Alabama. It’s about time!

Taken from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/07/alabama-immigration-law-j_n_1000086.html

October 7, 2011

ATLANTA — The federal government asked an appeals court Friday to halt the Alabama immigration law considered by many the toughest in the U.S., saying it could have dire diplomatic consequences abroad, invites discrimination and merely forces illegal immigrants into neighboring states. The motion, filed in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, claimed Alabama’s new law is “highly likely to expose persons lawfully in the United States, including school children, to new difficulties in routine dealings.”

A federal judge earlier upheld two key provisions in the law that allow authorities to question people suspected of being in the country illegally and hold them without bond, and let officials check the immigration status of students in public schools. Those measures have already taken effect and will remain in effect while the appeals court weighs the Justice Department’s request. The provisions help make the Alabama law stricter than similar laws passed in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia. Federal judges in those states have blocked all or parts of those measures.

Immigration became a hot issue in Alabama over the past decade as the state’s Hispanic population grew by 145 percent to about 185,600. While the group still represents only about 4 percent of the population, some counties in north Alabama have large Spanish-speaking communities and schools where most of the students are Hispanic.

Alabama Republicans have long sought to clamp down on illegal immigration and passed the law earlier this year after gaining control of the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley signed it, saying it was vital to protect the jobs of legal residents.

The measure has already had an immediate impact.

Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home from school. Some towns and urban areas have also reported a sudden exodus of Hispanics, some of whom told officials they planned to leave the state to avoid trouble with the law.

The appeal said parts of the new law conflict with federal guidelines. Requiring police officers to report people who are suspected of being in the country illegally, it said, “unnecessarily diverts resources from federal enforcement priorities and precludes state and local officials from working in true cooperation with federal officials.”

It also said the attempt to drive illegal immigrants “off the grid” would negatively impact diplomatic relations with foreign countries and disrupt immigration policy across the nation. ”Other states and their citizens are poorly served by the Alabama policy, which seeks to drive aliens from Alabama rather than achieve cooperation with the federal government to resolve a national problem,” it said.