Web Watch

Ah, the end of the school year. After all the testing bubbles are filled in, it's time for students to relax and enjoy class trips and special milestone events. At least, that's the theory.

A high school teacher in Chicago finds himself at the center of firestorm after posting vitriolic comments about his students and colleagues on his blog. In writing about his work at Fenger High School, one of Chicago’s worst-performing schools, the teacher described his students as “criminals” given to lewd behavior and referred to their parents as “project” dwellers. He also wrote disparagingly of his co-workers, remarking on “union-minimum” teachers and security officers whose “loyalty is to the hood, not the school.” Titled “Fast Times At Regnef High,” the blog was anonymous, but the author leaked information about it to a few colleagues. Shortly thereafter, students began flooding it with angry comments and threats, and the teacher who is believed to be the blogger reportedly stopped coming to school out of fear for his safety. Nor is he expected back any time soon. “He’s lost credibility,” said Fenger Principal William Johnson. “He lost the faith and trust of his students.” On a more hopeful note, Johnson said the blog has brought the school community together and incited it to address its problems.

Whatever your opinion on illegal immigration, it's hard not feel sympathy for Amadou Ly, a Harlem high-schooler who’s facing deportation.

Surprise, surprise: Preliminary data from the U.S. Department of Education reveals that wealthier areas tend to have an easier time attracting qualified teachers. For the 2004-05 school year, 93 percent of core-subject classes in affluent schools were headed by a teacher who met the definition of “highly qualified” under the No Child Left Behind Act, compared to 87 percent of classes in low-income schools. On the other hand, the numbers have improved at a slightly quicker pace for low-income schools than for schools as a whole. Under NCLB, all teachers in core subjects are supposed to be “highly qualified”—generally meaning they have state certification and have demonstrated subject-area mastery—by the end of this school year. However, the education department says it will grant extensions to states that have made a “good faith effort.” Some see the 100 percent goal as pie in the sky. “We’ll never catch up,” lamented Nevada Schools Superintendent Keith Rheault. “When you hire 3,000 new teachers a year, you can’t get them all highly qualified.’’ Sixty-eight percent of teachers in Nevada met the requirements last year.

But then, neither is losing school attendance-based state money. And some parents in the Los Angeles Unified School District are more than a little bugged over a policy change in the district that allows children to come to school with nits in their hair. The old policy required that any child with head lice be sent home and not allowed back in class until his or her hair was free of both lice and nits, or lice eggs. But the scrupulous policy kept many kids out of school for days or weeks. The new policy, adopted this year, allows students to return to school once they have been treated—even if some nits remain in their hair. Dr. Kimberly Uyeda, the school's director of student medical services, argues that the eggs are not infectious and can't jump from one student to another. But concerned parents—who have met with district officials twice already over this issue—aren't buying it. Some think administrators have an interest in keeping as many kids in the classroom as possible to ensure the district gets all of its attendance-based funding. "If you're absent, they can't make money off of you," said parent Elena Diona. School officials flatly deny that state funding is a factor in the new lice policy. "We certainly wouldn't [increase enrollment] through head lice," Uyeda said. Unless lice attendance qualifies for funding, that is.

Considering it's the embodiment of the standards movement, the No Child Left Behind Act can sometimes seem curiously lax. Among the signature provisions of the law—one trumpeted by President Bush—is the requirement that schools report student test scores by racial subgroup. But it turns out that many schools have been able to elude that inconvenience. A loophole in NCLB lets them disregard the scores of racial groups that are considered too small to be statistically significant—a measurement determined by state education leaders. Nearly two dozen states have been granted widely varying group-exemption thresholds by the U.S. Department of Education. As a result, the test scores of 1.9 million students nationwide—including those of roughly 10 percent of Hispanics and blacks students—aren't being broken out by race. "It's terrible," said an African American high school student in New York City whose scores were excluded. "We're part of America. We make up America, too. We should be counted as part of America."

Unfortunately, textbook inadequacies are also a part of America. A Chicago Tribune investigation has found that, in Illinois, nearly 80 percent of the districts surveyed are using textbooks that are out-of-date, or at least eight years old. Twenty-two percent of the districts are working with books that are at least 15 years old. The report attributes the problem in part to overreliance on unstable local funding for book purchases. In any case, it hasn't been easy on teachers. Examples of tomes currently in play include a high school contemporary history text that ends amid the Reagan administration and an elementary-level science book that doesn't account for more than 40 of Jupiter's moons. The Tribune also found that many schools were systematically relying on duct tape and rubber bands to hold aging books together. "Duct tape is our friend; it's our Band-Aid," admitted one district superintendent.

The text of a poem was the subject of a school-based legal battle in Reno, Nevada. A federal judge there granted 9th grader Jacob Behymer-Smith permission to recite W.H. Auden's "The More Loving One" at the state's upcoming poetry-reading competition, over the protestations of his own school. Officials at Coral Academy of Science, a Reno charter school serving grades 6-9, wanted to keep Behymer-Smith from reading the poem because it includes the words "hell" and "damn." The judge, however, wasn't moved by their concerns. He ruled that, in the context of the reading, "the language sought to be censured cannot even remotely cause a disruption of the educational mission." Behymer-Smith, who had chosen the poem from a list provided by the National Endowment of the Arts, sounded bewildered by the ordeal. "It was really stressful," he said. "I didn't know what poem to practice. I'm only 14 years old, and I had to go and sit on that witness stand."

Some parents of kids at Worthington Elementary School, in Inglewood, California, are more than bewildered by the principal's decision to impose a high-level lockdown during the region's student walkouts protesting immigration legislation. Restrictions were so severe that some Worthington students, who did not participate in the walkouts, were prohibited from accessing restrooms, and had to use buckets placed in classrooms instead. If such a precaution seems extreme, that's because it was. The principal, Angie Marquez, had apparently misread the district's handbook and ordered the wrong kind of lockdown. Inglewood district officials say it was an honest mistake. "When there's a nuclear attack, that's when the buckets are used," affirmed Tim Brown, district director of operations.

Speaking of honest mistakes, a charter school in Ogden, Utah, thought it had hit the jackpot when it booked Jon Stewart to appear at its annual fund-raiser gala. The DaVinci Academy sold 700 tickets at $50 a pop for the April 20 event. Then school officials discovered that they had landed not Jon Stewart of The Daily Show but Jon A. Stewart, a part-time professional wrestler and former motivational speaker from Chicago. "I thought it was a little elaborate for me," admitted the wrestler, who insists he had asked the school whether they had the right person. The school canceled the Jon Stewart appearance, and plans to showcase local performing groups instead. "It's not about the celebrities," said Debbie Legge, president of the school's board of directors. "It's about kids and helping them get a good education." Which makes you wonder why they didn't just let Jon A. Stewart do his thing.