Recently in policy news Category

Yes, it's just one of those days... From Mr.Rogers to Gray Rape and Teacher-Student Sex.

I'm looking at two particular Broadsheet pieces in Salon.

First is this clip:

 I find the comments on this one more interesting than the predictable outraged feminist rant.

Yeah, it's a terrible thing that rape happens and it is rape, but women and men who avoid getting drunk at parties probably don't put themselves in the high-risk category for possible rape or accusations of rape. (And, yeah, it probably should apply to men as well as women.) As one letter writer wrote, it's the same reason most of us learn to park in well-lit garages. You aren't at fault when you get attacked, but you can minimize the risk. Duh.

But the comments on this piece get even more interesting, include some thoughts on how poor communication skills often create misunderstanding between the genders; how certain rape studies have colored our subsequent coverage of the issue; and the different interpretations between men and women looking at the same conclusions.

If you're interested, here's the original Los Angeles Times op-ed piece by Heather McDonald. (As for the crisis hotline situation, I found in college that most of the calls I took were either student depression or some guy with a fetish for feet. No lie.) I don't know if I agree with everything she says, but here is the latest DOJ report on acquaintance rape on college campuses.

Salon's Broadsheet also goes after a report on teacher-boy sex that aired on ABC News this week.That was the topic of criticism on Broadsheet, but here's the ABC News overview story.

(Side note: I have now watched, ripped, uploaded and posted a video. I have the competency of an 8-year-old girl.)  

The reporter makes the point I would: Why are we worried about fingerprinting? If we really wanted to address the issue, wouldn't we combine such a massive effort with some type of psychological testing? Another "duh" from me. The possibility that a teacher is going to make a poor decision of such magnitude is not going to be revealed by a fingerprint registry, although I have given credit to TEA for noting that, at least, a registry guarantees a person's criminal record will travel with her from school district to school district... via a centralized DPS database.

Obviously, the difference equated between male and female teachers on this issue could certainly lead me down another rabbit trail. I know it's wrong to say it -- I don't excuse it -- but the younger the victim, the creepier it gets for me.

Input or output? Republicans can't seem to decide which end they want to control on the education front.

It seems to me -- and it made a great deal of sense at the time when I heard an eon ago -- that the philosophy of this generation of Republican leadership in Texas was to tell schools what they expected to see in results and leave it to the schools to determine the best way to meet those goals.

A hundred years or so ago in Texas in the Age of Meno ... or so it seems... we were talking about outcome-based education. What should all students know? What standards should they meet? That's the state's job. How do we get there? What expectations and curriculum do we need to meet that goal? That's the district's job. Or so I thought. Maybe I don't have it straight in my mind. 

Because it seems to me that the Legislature and the Texas Education Agency just can't keep their hands off local school districts.You set an expectation for fiscal responsibility for school districts and even a rating system; then you have to go in and muck around with that half-baked 65 percent proposal. You set standards for math and science achievement, but then that's not enough, and you have to require 4 years of math and science on a diploma... and tell kids with a "basic" diploma they can't get into college. Where does it end?

The latest is The Commissioner's proposal for tailored diploma plan. I think the research is truly there for a getting a child on a particular path towards a goal as early as possible in high school. I remember sitting down with my parents and my counselor in ninth grade and mapping out a path... that would eventually be replaced about three more times once I took my first journalism class.  I'm sure it's good that children start to see where they need to go at the age of 14.... so you're not paying for four different majors in college.

Maybe my own high school experience gets in the way. Unlike The Commissioner -- who has spoken openly about his unhappy high school experience being pigeonholed into vocational education -- I had a great time in high school. Okay, I wasn't the prom queen. But I took second-year science and dabbled in the debate team and served as a band officer and ... yeah... even quit my job as editor of my high school newspaper my senior year when my work with Key Club got to be more than I could handle.

Somehow the whole "this way to your diploma" just smacks of tracking to me. Like being pigeonholed into DECA, told your future is best-served stacking boxes or something. But I recognize that's just my personal feelings getting involved.The bigger picture on this -- the policy picture on this -- is whose responsibility should this be?  

Under the outcomes-based education framework, I would assume that this diploma path should be driven at the local level. And maybe it would be the state's job to give districts a strong nudge towards the research, create a diploma label and provide a good marketing campaign for schools to use.

Instead, we have the state in our classrooms again. And if that's going to be the case, let's just say it. The Republicans .... acting just like Democrats... can't keep their hands off education because they don't trust schools to do their job. And instead of setting out expectations and achievement levels for schools and school districts to reach, they're going to reach in and do the counselors' job for them.