For the record, not gonna happen to a homeschool student:

This is what happens when you deal with a bureaucracy, a lifeless emotionless, brainless entity that can only apply rules and regulations without common sense, context or logic. How ridiculous.

Here’s a kid who actually looks to his father for help when he needs it, and the school punishes him for it.

Hat Tip: Breitbart

I think this might have been an assignment I actually turned in on time. Make a protest sign for an issue or against an issue, and bring it to school. This should end well:

It was an assignment for history class–to make a protest sign for or against an issue, and Melanie said she chose illegal immigration. Her sign read, “If you love our nation, stop illegal immigration.” Somehow, Melanie said the sign got passed around lunch and angered a group of Latino students.

Don’t these students know that Latinos getting angry at an illegal immigration sign is, like, reverse racism or something. I think they are stereotyping themselves somehow.

So, in the spirit of academia and free speech, they decided to not only beat the crap out of Melanie, but threaten to rape her also:

“I didn’t know any of these people,” she said. One young, she claimed, jumped on her back and he put her in a choke hold. “We have brick walls in the middle school and he slammed my face on the bricks.”

Melanie said a group of boys also threatened to rape and kill her.

Of course, since a high school is filled with people trained to teach your children better than you, and since we know that schools are there to protect children, you can rest assured in the knowledge that the school would handle this situation.

Eventually, the boys let her go and when she went for help, she was ordered back to class, and told she could not call her parents, she said.

Well, yeah. Isn’t that what you would do? If not, you are obviously not educated enough to handle complex issues like this. (Is my sarcasm coming across thick enough? This is print, so I have to lay it on pretty thick…)

So, here’s my questions? Will these kids be brought up on hate crime charges? This was obviously racially motivated.

And have the students been suspended pending review? Will Al Sharpton march for young Melanie, or the Latinos who assaulted her?

And why would you assign such a stupid assignment for history class?

Hat Tip: Wizbang

UPDATE:

Via KLTV 7:

Charges are being filed against 13 year old Melanie Bowers by Athens ISD through the Henderson County District Attorney’s office for filing a false report, said AISD officials today.

Bowers claimed earlier this week that she was beaten and threatened - with killing and rape, no less - by a group of students at Athens ISD last Friday, for creating a protest sign saying, “If you love our nation, stop illegal immigration.”

After Melanie’s accusations, administrators reviewed school survellience videotape of the incident - which, instead of showing students beating or attacking her, showed Bowers scratching herself on her arms, face, and neck, and walking through the halls of the school calmly long after she claimed the incident happened.

After Melanie’s parents were presented with that information and the video, the school confronted Melanie, and she admitted that she made the story up.

What a stupid thing to do. This girl needs to be severely punished.

Charter schools are still publically funded, and therefore, not allowed to endorse or promote religion, let alone facilitate religous activities. But a substitute teacher says the “Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights” is an Islamic school, which “shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.”

Katherine Kersten of the Star Tribure broke the story:

Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”

Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”

“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”

Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. “When I arrived, I was told ‘after school we have Islamic Studies,’ and I might have to stay for hall duty,” Getz said. “The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one — the board said the kids were studying the Qu’ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other.”

After school, Getz’s fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day — buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over.

The state has visited the school three times - in five years.

Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs

And officials say if he hadn’t acted when he did, the students’ injuries would have been much worse:

Rolling downhill in a bus with his screaming classmates and no driver, a fast-acting 11-year-old jumped behind the wheel Monday and steered the bus into a pillar, stopping it from careening out of control.

The bus sits against a pillar it hit after an 11-year-old student took the wheel as it began to roll.

Some children jumped out the side door and rolled into the street. The driver, Michael Weir, had stopped for fuel and was in the station’s restroom when the bus started to roll with 27 children aboard.

Fifteen children suffered minor injuries and were treated at hospitals and released. The boy who stopped the bus likely saved the children from worse injuries, authorities said.

“This kid did some quick thinking,” said Larry Gray, a fire department spokesman.

(Source)

First thing I thought was, “Why is he stopping for gas when he is driving kids?” I guess that is not only unusual but illegal:

State law prohibits bus drivers from leaving their vehicles at any time when students are on board and drivers are not allowed to stop for gas during their route, said Scott Blake, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education.

Yet another headline that you will not see associated with homeschooling.

Remember, your children should be in school, taught by people qualified to provide the education your son or daughter deserves, even when it includes a beatdown from their classmates.

A Delta High School teacher who allegedly gave his students permission to beat a classmate who was late for class has been charged with child abuse.

Brian Havel, 22, was teaching English at the school March 14 when the boy arrived after class started.

“In his class, the disciplinary process was X amount of sit-ups or push-ups in a certain amount of time. He either wouldn’t or couldn’t complete them,” Delta interim Police Chief Roger Christian said of the punished student.

The boy’s classmates volunteered to administer an alternate punishment.

“The class made a suggestion that if he couldn’t finish, we ought to be able to punch him, and (Havel) agreed. So 10 to 15 students got to hit him,” Christian said.

Havel has resigned and is no longer at the school, said Delta principal Delaine Hudson. Havel couldn’t be reached for comment.

This clown is now facing child abuse charges. But at least he was qualified to teach, right?

I thought it would be interesting to look at a few quotes from people involved in the much-discussed California homeschooling court case.

According to Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles, the most important role teachers play is observing children to make sure that they are safe.

Heimov said her organization’s chief concern was not the quality of the children’s education, but their “being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety.”

Ongoing safety? In the eyes of this government bureaucrat, it is safer to take a child out of their home and put them in a government school. Which is interesting when you consider the following: (more…)

A California court has ordered a couple to put their children back into California’s public school. The couple had been homeschooling the children:

The sweeping February 29th ruling says that California law requires “persons between the ages of six and eighteen” to be in “public full-time day school,” or a “private full-time day school” or “instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught”.

The two youngest of Phillip and Mary Long’s eight children must be enrolled in a state approved school. Phillip Long told WorldNetDaily, “We just don’t want them teaching our children. They teach things that are totally contrary to what we believe. They put questions in our children’s minds we don’t feel they’re ready for.”

He’s exactly right. Case in point, California Democratic Sen. Alan Lowenthal has proposed a bill that will allow the school to promote communism. No, you read that right, and the bill actually mentions Communism by name:

(1) The Civic Center Act requires the governing body of a school district to grant the use of school property, when an alternative location is not available, to nonprofit organizations, and clubs or associations organized to promote youth and school activities. Existing law also prohibits an individual, society, group, or organization from using school property for the commission of any act intended to further a program or movement the purpose of which is to accomplish the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the state by force, violence, or other unlawful means.

This bill would permit the school board to require the furnishing of information as it deems necessary to determine that the use of school property for which application is made would not violate that provision. This bill would also delete provisions regarding a person who intends to use school property on behalf of an organization to deliver a statement, signed under penalty of perjury, that the organization is not a Communist action organization or Communist front organization required to be registered with the Attorney General of the United States or does not, to the best of that person’s knowledge, advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the State of California by force, violence, or other unlawful means.

(2) Under existing law, a permanent or classified school employee, or a classified community college employee may be dismissed from employment for specified causes, including, but not limited to, commission of a felony.

This bill would delete provisions that a permanent or classified school employee, or a classified community college employee may be dismissed from employment if he or she is a knowing member of the Communist Party.

(3) Existing law prohibits a teacher from giving instruction and prohibits a school district from sponsoring any activity that reflects adversely upon a person because of his or her race, sex, color, creed, handicap, national origin, or ancestry.

This bill would delete provisions that prohibit a teacher giving instruction in a school or on property belonging to an agency included in the public school system from teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism. The bill would also delete provisions that a teacher may be dismissed from employment if he or she teaches communism in that way.

(4) Under existing law, a public employee is required to answer, under oath, specified questions, including, but not limited to, knowing membership in an organization advocating the forceful or violent overthrow of the government of the United States or of any state. This bill would delete these provisions. The bill would also delete related findings and declarations by the Legislature regarding communism and the Communist Party.

But no praying. That might upset someone’s parents.

I guess you have to be qualified and sanctioned by the state before you can indoctrinate children into Communism. And you can’t advocate overthrowing the government to children without a college degree.

What the Hell is going on in California?

Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs

Imagine you are sitting in your college class, just eight days after the Northern Illinois University shooting, when the following happens:

An armed man who burst into a classroom at Elizabeth City State University was role-playing in an emergency response drill, but neither the students nor assistant professor Jingbin Wang knew that.“I was prepared to die at that moment,” Wang said Tuesday.

I would think so. It would be terrifying. Now consider this: The man was a campus security officer, and the drill was planned by the university, but they didn’t tell the class or the class’s teacher about it.

The Friday drill, in which a mock gunman threatened panicked students in the American foreign policy class with death, prompted university officials to apologize this week to Wang and offer counseling to faculty and students.

Anthony Brown, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the university was testing its response to shootings of the sort that have shaken campuses around the country. “The intent was not to frighten them but to test our system and also to test the response of the security that was on campus and the people that were notified,” Brown said.

Good job running drills on this kind of thing, but come on. How could you not inform the class and the teacher? That seems like something that is kind of hard to forget.

It sounds like a good drill.

The intruder instructed Wang to close the door and then ordered the seven students to line up along the wall. Wang said the man told them that he had been kicked out of school and that he needed a lung transplant.

At one point, Wang said, the man threatened to kill the student who had the lowest grade point average. Wang offered to let him sit in his class, he said, but the man rejected attempts at negotiation.

Wang said some students thought the gun was fake, but they were not sure. “I was the guy who was feeling the gun on my back,” he said.

After about 10 minutes, the class heard people talking outside the door, and campus police rushed in and subdued the man.

But Wang said, “Even after this was over, nobody explained it.” Nobody explained it to the other classes either. Students in other classes barricaded themselves in classrooms and were ready to jump out of windows to get away. Some were texting their parents.

How do you set something like this up and not tell those involved that it is going to happen?

Vikki Reyes has had it with Locke High, the school her daughters attend in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She walked in on class one day and recalls “the place was just like a zoo!” Students had taken control, while the teacher sat quietly with a book.

Frank Wells has also had it with Locke High. When he became principal he says gangs ruled the campus. He tried to turn things around but ran into a “brick wall” of resistance from the school district and teachers union.

Locke seemed destined to languish in high crime and low test scores until Wells, Reyes, and many reform-minded teachers joined with a maverick named Steve Barr in an attempt to break free from the status quo. Their battle is just one example of the charter school education revolt that’s erupting across the nation.

Look at this:

“If you are not passing more than 65 percent of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities, and you are setting your students up for failure, which, in turn, limits your success as a professional.”

This is from a memo a New York City principal sent to his teachers. What is the message he is sending here? I’ll tell you what it says to me.

If you are not making your classes easy enough for these kids, if you are making things to difficult for them, then you are doing the children wrong. You cannot expect them to rise up to your level, you must drop down to their level. If you don’t, you will have to fail them and that won’t make you look like a good teacher.

This is what teaching to the test does to the public education system. This is one of the unintended consequences of No Child Left behind.

Now why would a teacher lower their standards just to pass a student? Here’s 3,000 reasons:

Teachers at the school stand to receive $3,000 bonuses if their school improves.

Democrats usually bow before the NEA and espouse the greatness that can be found in governmentment schools, if they had just a little more money. But now there is a movment on the Democrats side for education reform. And It’s about time:

On November 19, the group held an event in which U.S. Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) stressed the importance of parental choice and innovation in education. Clyburn, the House Majority Whip and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, supports both charter schools and tax credits for middle-class families.

At an earlier event held by the group, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed “alarming dropout rates” and the dangers of a “monopoly” filled with failing schools. “We must explore options,” he said. “Every option for every American child so that every child might have the high-quality education they deserve in their lifetime…We need more competition in the system.”

Finally, the Democrats are starting to come around. It’s no surprise that it is being started by two black representatives. On average, black Americans support the idea of school choice:

The NAACP needs to listen more to the African-American community. A 2002 public opinion poll, conducted by the Joint Center for Political Economic Studies (based in Washington, DC.) showed 57 percent of African-Americans support school choice. More importantly, 67 per cent of Black households with children and 70 per cent of African-Americans ages 26-35 are school choice supporters.

Hopefully this will be something that takes off.

Liberty is not only dead in Maryland, they’re defiling the corpse too.

Two months into the school year, more than 2,000 students in this suburban county outside the nation’s capital had yet to get the shots they needed to attend class. So the school system decided it was through playing nice.

Parents in Prince George’s County have been ordered to appear at a special court hearing Saturday where they will be given a choice: Get their children vaccinated on the spot or risk up to 10 days in jail and fines.

It is one of the strongest efforts made by a U.S. school system to ensure its youngsters receive their shots.

Prince George’s County school officials and prosecutors said parents have been duly warned about the need for vaccinations over the past year. They said the goal isn’t to throw parents in jail but to protect public health and get kids who have been barred from school back to class.

“How can you in good conscience allow your child to miss school and their education for no particular reason?” said John White, spokesman for the 132,000-student school system. [source]

For me, the question is, “how in good conscience can you throw parents in jail for choosing not to vaccinate their children?”

It seem like the mentality here is that the citizens of this county are like cattle owned by the government rather than independent people with rights and liberties guaranteed by our constitution. The school has every right to not allow children to attend classes if they haven’t been vaccinated, but to threaten the parents with jail time is a bold leap over the line.