“While Rome burns, the Department of Education fiddles with bulletin boards.”
—David Pecoraro, a teacher at Beach Channel High School in Queens, New York, referring to a superintendent’s memo about school bulletin boards. The memo appeared the same week a student rammed another student’s head into a glass trophy case.
“That’s how we were brought up. We’re rednecks.”
—Suzzanne Bowen, a senior at Opportunity High School in Bradenton, Florida, explaining why she habitually wears a Confederate flag shirt at the 70 percent minority charter school.
“There’s not a lot positive about this situation.”
—Jeff Ferguson, a chemistry and physics teacher at Smithfield-Selma High School in Smithfield, North Carolina, after being suspended for a classroom experiment that caused 13 students to vomit after drinking large amounts of milk.
“Dinosaurs are not assessed on the ISATs, so they had to go.”
—Debra LeBlanc, principal of Burr Ridge Middle School in Illinois, explaining why classes on the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests have squeezed out parts of the traditional curriculum.
