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Welcome to Delhi Charter School, in Delhi, Louisiana, a school of 600 students that does not believe its female students have a right to education free from discrimination. According to its Student Pregnancy Policy, the school has a right to not only force testing upon girls, but to send them to a physician of the school administration’s choice. A positive test result, or failure to take the test at all, means administrators can forbid a girl from taking classes and force her to pursue a course of home study if she wishes to continue her education with the school.

ACLU



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2012 01:35AM by RgrF.

[www.delhicharterschool.org]

Reads like a focused 'at risk student' school. Many such schools have exceptional agreement requirements. Note that the suing parents signed the above attached agreement. So did their daughter.

Oh, and to further inflame your liberal sensitivities... Corporal Punishment ! OMG !!!

Yeah, well, spanking teenage girls works for some people.

Charter schools can't force people into agreements that violate basic civil rights. Discrimination against pregnant teens is a big problem all across the country (California has the second highest rate of teen pregnancy, how is your state doing Roger?)

Washington voters have rejected charter schools 3 times already and now Bill Gates has gotten them on the ballot again. Hoping the 4th time is a big FAIL.

Bobby Jindal is psycho. Before he's through, Louisiana is going to really be screwed. He's been coming up to Arkansas stirring up the Teabaggers and it looks like the Arkansas legislature will probably go nuts after November.

Lemon-
FWIW, Charter School definitions may vary from state to state.

And no.. I don't structurally agree with elements of the agreement. Charter schools have been a big problem in Ohio, because many of them are set up by people who have no clue how to educate children, and no clue how to run a school. And.. fail. The 'for profit' schools are some of the worst in my state.

Unfortunately Charter Schools are a symptom of a large issue... Many parents are dissatisfied with the intellectual industrial sausage factory approach that exists in many public school systems, and want alternatives to help their children have a good future.

The theory, of course, is that competition from Charter Schools will 'improve' the general public schools. The reality, however, is that the quality of a school is primarily dependent on the quality of the parents and the students. Motivated and involved parents can make even a lackluster school shine. The corrolary, of course, is that disassociated parents and students can make a school filled with motivated genius teachers look like a disaster area.

I don't have a solution to these problems on a structural basis. I think the magnet and charter school systems are a functional way to get those motivated students out of the rest of the failing herd and into possible success environments.

Watching the Cuyahoga County Science Fair finals last year, I noted that while a number of the first prize winners were from expensive private schools, a large population of them were from 'Magnet' schools in the Cleveland school system. So I know it can work.

I wonder if the Magnet and Charter schools are a way that US education set up a similar educational system to many other nations, where students are channeled as they go along, and focus some into college and others into vocations.

I wouldn't blur magnet and charter schools that way.

Magnet schools were originally another way to achieve racial desegregation of schools, but they've expanded in mission since the 60's.
A particular charter school may have a similar mission to a magnet school, but magnet schools are operated the same way as other public schools, whereas charter schools are allowed to use public money but operate outside the usual regulations and norms of public schools.

I say to parents - go public or go private. Public schools are in a constant state of reform, we will of course keep working on that as public will permits.
Allowing private concerns to take public money with reduced accountability is a bad idea. And of course we've seen the results of charter schools, mediocre at best.

Lemon Drop-

I agree that public funding without accountability is a bad thing. As noted.
Most Magnet schools, at least in NE Ohio, are speciality schools. again, each state, and often each city, has different definitions, laws, and rules.

However, your comment of 'go public or private' smacks of 'let them eat cake'. Many parents cannot afford private schooling. And those students are then 'lost' in the educational system.

In our case we went to a private school to educate our learning difference student, because the public system was not helping him. I would love to be able to use my property taxes to fund his private schooling, but cannot.

I'll posit the following:

Educational Failure is a Public Safety and Public Health issue, and needs to be treated as such. I would be willing to believe that educational failure is a higher root cause of the death of young black males in urban cities than anything else.

Where we disagree is in charter schools being the answer (not to be confused with magnet schools - this is the same in every state.)

I think there are some circumstances where charter schools make sense but in general the evidence so far is that they aren't more effective than regular public schools when they are held to the same standards as regular public schools about who can get in or kicked out and that there is a set of assessments of student achievement that are common to both the regular public schools and charter schools.

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Lemon Drop
Where we disagree is in charter schools being the answer (not to be confused with magnet schools - this is the same in every state.)

Oh, no disagreement. Charter schools were a unique idea, but the execution showed that they are generally a failure. In most cases because the reason people started the schools was either opportunistic greed or some religious bias. A classic case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

RE: inner city schools

We need more non-white teachers. I found this very surprising, but there are fewer non-white teachers in the US now than there were during segregation. White teachers and administrators are more likely to refer non-white students to special ed, to recommend them for suspension and expulsion, and less likely to refer them to gifted programs or into pre-college courses. We need more men too!!
Public school teaching has become the world of young white women who as a group were not stellar students themselves. 75% women, 83% white.
(I hate to even say that as a person with tremendous respect for teachers, but its a truth that needs to be acknowledged.)
Maybe just being aware of this can help lead to change.

(and this awareness came to us courtesy of NCLB, with its massive amounts of disagreggated student data. )

Lemon-
No argument. Also no incentive. Starting teacher pay is a small step up from McDonald's. AFTER 6 YEARS of college ! (MA required in many states for certification). Try paying $120K of student loans on a starting teacher salary.

Not to mention layoffs are done on a seniority basis, so the kids lose their jobs quite regularly. And eventuall say 'screw it' and move into the private sector in order to pay off those student loans. The union-driven seniority system is quite probably the primary reason teacher populations are at the level you mentioned.

If I said it's raining today I think you'd blame the unions, cbelt. What do unions have to do with a nearly all white, female workforce??

Without unions we'd have nearly all part-time, no benefits teachers, a la community college, because that's much cheaper than full time with benefits. I'd hate to see the work force that would bring.

I'd say now the issue is more lack of available jobs, not starting salary.
Last estimate I saw was 350,000 teaching jobs eliminated since the recession started.

Funny how people will ignore women's basic humanity under the guise of 'discipline'.

I guess teenage boys doing the impregnating don't get punished at all. Shocker.

I hate to be so corny as to use the term "War On Women". But I do have to wonder at what point it became not only acceptable, but highly desired, to go after women's reproductive rights on every front possible?


Why don't we just cut to the chase and begin honor murdering these @#$%&?

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"You can believe me because I never lie and I'm always right."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2012 12:17PM by $tevie.

Read about more nuttiness in some Louisiana schools:

[www.motherjones.com]

And just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons, my (un) educated guess is that this school's administrators are not atheist liberals!
(Is that too obvious to mention?)

Also another good reason to keep the boys and the girls in separate schools. Worked for me. My kids seemed to spend a lot of intellectual and emotional capital on relationship management.

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$tevie
I hate to be so corny as to use the term "War On Women". But I do have to wonder at what point it became not only acceptable, but highly desired, to go after women's reproductive rights on every front possible?


Why don't we just cut to the chase and begin honor murdering these @#$%&?

This school's policy is downright creepy. What's next, virginity testing?

Sooner or later some private Muslim school will use public voucher money to teach kids the virtues of Sharia law - unless they systematically deny Muslim schools the waivers they are going to hand out to private Christians schools like candy. If they don't give waivers to Muslims schools like Christian schools it will be a huge lawsuit waiting to happen. If they do give Muslim schools the waivers for vouchers and public money is used to teach kids the virtues of Sharia law then the Tea Partiers will go nuts. It's going to be a mess.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2012 12:59PM by Ted King.

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cbelt3
[www.delhicharterschool.org]

Reads like a focused 'at risk student' school. Many such schools have exceptional agreement requirements. Note that the suing parents signed the above attached agreement. So did their daughter.

Oh, and to further inflame your liberal sensitivities... Corporal Punishment ! OMG !!!

I'm betting that the 'agreement' was signed at the metaphorical barrel of a gun. They were likely told, "this is your only school choice, etc..." .

Re: corporal punishment...Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

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cbelt3
Also another good reason to keep the boys and the girls in separate schools. Worked for me. My kids seemed to spend a lot of intellectual and emotional capital on relationship management.

Learn it in high school or learn it later, they all eventually have to know how to deal with relationships. Considering the mess some people were that I have known who came out of those separate school environments, that approach is no general cure. It may work for some, definitely does not work for all.

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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Not MRF? Learn something new everyday!

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Dennis S
Read about more nuttiness in some Louisiana schools:

[www.motherjones.com]

Ugh. And Romney's education platform is...vouchers. Interesting article that was linked from the one above:



" The top schools [] have just a handful of slots open....Far more openings are available at smaller, less prestigious religious schools, including some that are just a few years old and others that have struggled to attract tuition-paying students.

The school willing to accept the most voucher students — 314 — is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

....At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains "what God made" on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution. "We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children," Carrier said."
[www.motherjones.com]


Your tax dollars at work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2012 02:12PM by Lemon Drop.

And Grace's quote: "New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library" brings up this problem with religious schools: in Arkansas, and I'm sure elsewhere, there are a handful of religious "academies" that kick butt in high school football. They win most of the district championships because they can "recruit" players. I don't know the distances allowed, but they actively seek the best players around and build fantastic teams on the order of college teams. They may have libraries - I don't know - but I have to wonder about the quality of their education.

If they want to do that with private money - go for it. Free country and all. But with tax dollars - no. That's the voucher problem (well one of the many problems. )

I don't think it's OK for them to whip up on public schools, regardless of the funding. If they want to use the players that attend from the local district like the other schools, fine. For them to be able to recruit from a much wider area is not OK. It never gets anywhere in the legislature because of all the religious representatives.

So you want to tell private schools where their students have to live? How would that work?

No. I don't think their football teams should recruit from a much larger geographic area and play the same tournaments (playoffs) that public schools do who have to settle on the kids that live right around the town. The Christian schools send recruiters to a huge area with little oversight to sign up the cream of the crop football players. Their main goal in this is to win state championships consistently.

I don't have a problem with this. Teen pregnancy is a problem, and its contagious. The more teen moms you have a a given school, the more "accepted" it will be. Why not offer a school for pregnant girls, where you can add parenting to the cirriculum?

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San Antonio, TX (in the old city)

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

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Rolando
I don't have a problem with this. Teen pregnancy is a problem, and its contagious. The more teen moms you have a a given school, the more "accepted" it will be. Why not offer a school for pregnant girls, where you can add parenting to the cirriculum?

Should there be any similar shunning, exclusion, discrimination or discouragement from education for the fathers of these babies? Is fathering a baby while a teen contagious?

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Lemon Drop

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Rolando
I don't have a problem with this. Teen pregnancy is a problem, and its contagious. The more teen moms you have a a given school, the more "accepted" it will be. Why not offer a school for pregnant girls, where you can add parenting to the cirriculum?

Should there be any similar shunning, exclusion, discrimination or discouragement from education for the fathers of these babies? Is fathering a baby while a teen contagious?

To judge from looking at NFL, MLB or NBA rosters, it could be.

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Dennis S
Bobby Jindal is psycho. Before he's through, Louisiana is going to really be screwed.

^ This.

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2012 07:33PM by PeterB.

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PeterB

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Dennis S
Bobby Jindal is psycho. Before he's through, Louisiana is going to really be screwed.

^ This.

Louisiana has had worse.

BTW, fathering a child is extremely contagious. Those boys need to be in single sex campuses as well!

---

San Antonio, TX (in the old city)

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt (1918)




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2012 11:41PM by Rolando.

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Rolando

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PeterB

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Dennis S
Bobby Jindal is psycho. Before he's through, Louisiana is going to really be screwed.

^ This.

Louisiana has had worse.

Huey P. Long had his positives, as well as negatives. Bobby J. hasn't done anything positive since taking office.

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

I have heard in my old school, where, when girls got pregnant, they went to "stay with their aunt", they now have baby showers...at school.