Grading Public Schools: Accurate Assessment or Hype?

A new trend appears to be sweeping some public school districts despite the alarm by a handful of parents. Yoga has recently been introduced into several school systems nationwide, allowing students to stretch, breathe, and focus their bodies and minds during a busy school day. While many tout the new program as a healthy way for students of all ages to gain additional fitness benefits, some are concerned that the religion attached to the movements violates the separation of church and state in public schools.

Introducing Yoga to California Students

One school district that has fully embraced the health benefits of yoga in public schools is Encinitas Union School District in North San Diego County, California. The North County Times reports that the yoga program has been going strong in some district schools over the past three years. Thanks to a $533,000 grant from the K.P. Jois USA Foundation this year, the program has expanded throughout the district.

The publication reports that approximately half the schools in Encinitas now offer yoga instruction for 30 to 40 minutes twice a week. Yoga joins other enrichment programs offered in the district, including music, reading, and gardening. The additional classes serve a dual purpose: instructing students in new subjects while freeing up teacher time for planning and other duties.

The schools, which claim to have removed all religious references from their yoga program, assert that the yoga sessions provide valuable physical fitness to students. Yoga is

In the efforts to ramp up the public education system in the United States, new national standards have been proposed to be the next logical step. In the past, standards were left up to individual states, which created huge variances in what and how children were taught. It also created disparities when it came to preparing students for higher education. Something had to be done, educators and lawmakers decided. Hence, common core standards were born.

What are Common Core Standards?

Common core standards were developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Standards were developed with input from educators and administrators from around the country. The standards focus on English Language Arts and Mathematics, but standards span across other core subjects taught in public schools from kindergarten to 12^th grade. Common core standards are now in place for pre-kindergarten instruction to ensure every student is fully prepared to enter public school.

According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative website, the standards are designed to provide students with the appropriate knowledge and skills throughout their K-12 education. Key features of the core standards initiative include:

• Easy to understand and consistent
• Build on current standards for individual states
• Are competitive with standards in other top-performing countries
• Line up with current expectations for college and the workforce
• Include rigorous content and knowledge application
• Are evidence-based for easy assessment

U.S. News and World Report states that these common

As states struggle to find ways to improve academic performance in their public schools and obtain waivers to the pending No Child Left Behind benchmarks, one state has come up with a controversial method for setting student standards. The new benchmarks will be broken down into categories that primarily run along ethnic lines. This leaves some ethnic groups, such as white and Asian students, held to a much higher standard than minority groups like black, Hispanic, and Native American students. As one might expect, this new policy has raised the ire of parents, students, educators, and civil rights groups.

The New Benchmarks

The Examiner reports that the Florida State Board of Education has proposed setting academic benchmarks in math and reading according to the following subgroups:

Proficiency rating for reading by 2018 –

• Asians 90%
• Whites 88%
• Native Americans 82%
• Hispanics 81%
• African Americans 74%

Proficiency rating for mathematics by 2018 –

• Asians 92%
• Whites 86%
• Native Americans 81%
• Hispanics 80%
• African Americans 74%

According to the Daily Caller, students with disabilities, those learning English as a second language and economically disadvantaged students will be left out of the new benchmarks completely. While this is the short-term goal proposed by the state board, members quickly point out that the long-term goal is to have 100 percent proficiency in all subgroups for math and reading by the 2022-2023 school year. That long-term goal hasn’t smoothed the feathers of many who were significantly ruffled after hearing the breakdown of the subgroups for the six-year

Presidential election season is in full swing, and the yard signs, bumper stickers, and campaign buttons prove it. Paraphernalia is one way Americans show their support for their favorite candidate, but as one high school student in Philadelphia found out, public support of a candidate doesn’t always go as planned. This student got more than she bargained for when she wore a pink Romney-Ryan t-shirt to school. She was publically humiliated and harassed for her choice – not by fellow students, but by her own teacher.

The Samantha Pawlucy Story

Samantha Pawlucy is a sophomore at Charles Carroll High School in the Philadelphia area. Pawlucy decided to wear her Romney-Ryan t-shirt to class on “dress-down” day when the shirt fit within the parameters of the school dress code. It was a daring thing to do in a community with one Republican for every six Democrats. However, Pawlucy had no idea just how traumatic the response to her attire would be.

Pawlucy’s geometry teacher, Lynette Gaymon, called attention to Pawlucy’s shirt during class. According to a report in the Examiner, Gaymon told Pawlucy to remove the shirt. When Pawlucy refused, Gaymon compared the wearing of that shirt to Gaymon coming to school sporting a Ku Klux Klan t-shirt. She explained that Charles Carroll High School was a “democratic” school, and then told Pawlucy to leave her classroom.

In this video, an attorney comes down hard on the teacher who was accused of bullying Samantha.