Hicks on McGinley: Laugh of the Day

The paper has gone whole hog to protect Superintendent McGinley's position in the Charleston County School District. Mayor Riley is beating down the doors of individual school board members in an attempt to save his protege. The editorial page laments the potential loss of a great superintendent, and the news articles point out how costly her buyout would be.

Nevertheless, Brian Hicks takes the prize for the most outrageous sentence in his impassioned defensive column.

To wit, "McGinley has never been a politician."

What's Wrong with Cursive Writing Instruction?

Wait till the edublob hears about this one.

The South Carolina senate balked at requiring the teaching of cursive writing because that would cost the state $27.6 million.

Say, what? 

As Sen. Ray Cleary, R-Murrells Inlet, said, that's ridiculous, since every elementary school teacher should know how to write in cursive.

"How much is it to put a banner across a classroom, give them a pad of paper and say, 'We're cursive writing today?' It seems to me that's a defensive item," he said.

Why, $25 million for instructional materials and $5 million for travel for teacher training, according to the state budget office. Now it admits there may have been a miscalculation. 

Ya think?

CCSD Solicits Input from Downtown Constituents? Maybe

Amazing but true.

The downtown schools (District 20) planning committee for the Charleston County School District has scheduled its community input meeting for Sunday, February 2nd. You can't make this stuff up.

What's that you say? Perhaps something is scheduled for that day that just might keep most of the community at home.

I wonder what that could be.

Common Core Concerns from Washington Post Blog

As one commenter puts it in Valerie Strauss's blog, the following Common Core instruction from Student Achievement Partners attempts to teach students to read passages as they are presented in the context of standardized testing. Is that the goal of teaching?

   "Imagine learning about the Gettysburg Address without a mention of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, or why President Abraham Lincoln had traveled to Pennsylvania to make the speech. That’s the way a Common Core State Standards “exemplar for instruction” — from a company founded by three main Core authors — says it should be taught to ninth and 10th graders.
   The unit — “A Close Reading of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address“ — is designed for students to do a “close reading” of the address “with text-dependent questions” — but without historical context. Teachers are given a detailed 29-page script of how to teach the unit, with the following explanation:

 'The idea here is to plunge students into an independent encounter with this short text. Refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset. It may make sense to notify students that the short text is thought to be difficult and they are not expected to understand it fully on a first reading — that they can expect to struggle. Some students may be frustrated, but all students need practice in doing their best to stay with something they do not initially understand. This close reading approach forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all students as they seek to comprehend Lincoln’s address.' [italics mine]

The last statement presupposes that students of varied backgrounds socially, economically, ethnically, and racially will be tabula rasa, that is, blank slates in their knowledge. Now I will admit occasionally encountering a student seemingly fitting that category; however, to assume that will be the case with an entire class, no matter how homogeneous, is absurd. To put such a statement into written teaching materials as an exemplar reveals the utter stupidity of the writers and calls into question the validity of all 29 pages!

In fact, a teacher following these instructions will be making the playing field even more unfair for the least privileged students in the class. The statement also reveals the basic weakness of reading sections on standardized tests. E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum does more to level that field than any misguided attempt to teach in a knowledge vacuum.

CCSD's McGinley Tone Deaf on Burke's Heritage

Burke High/Middle School, under cover of Executive Session, when its community cannot hear or comment, will be turned into a training center for daycare workers under the guise of "tech" classes.

We can't make this idiotic stuff up! The Charleston County School Superintendent and her lackeys on the CCSD Board of Trustees are so out of touch with the history of education in the county that they think this is a good idea!

The Burke community has begged for years for high-tech classes to be offered at the facility. McGinley instead shuffles a few students over to the Rivers campus so that she can justify forbidding the Charter School for Math and Science from using most of Rivers building. Now she wants to renovate unused space in a pre-"earthquake-proof" building for a massive daycare center so that Burke students can be on the spot to train for low-wage careers as daycare workers. Can anyone say "maids"? Plenty of space for these Pre-K programs already exists in fully renovated buildings.

And she calls this "tech." This is what we get with a Broad graduate from Philadelphia.

How long will it take the community to stop listening to her NAACP lackeys (presumably supporting this development) and demand the superintendent's resignation?

And who's going to call her on the legality of discussing this policy in secret session?

School Bureaucrats Compile Meaningless Statistics, Again

The State of South Carolina is touting that its Class of  2012 broke the record in "scholarship" money awarded by a total rising above $ 1 billion.

If you want to know why the statistic is meaningless, read the article carefully or go back to some of my previous postings. This craziness goes on every fall.

How much time and effort that could be directed productively is wasted on such drivel?

CCSD? You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

One hot topic across the nation is the idea of performance pay for teachers. Does anyone dispute that a great teacher can make more of a difference in a child's learning than an IPAD or a brand-spanking-new classroom? Of course, the devil is in the details: how does a school district or principal measure teacher performance fairly when so many variables affect student achievement? Educrats from Arne Duncan to Mick Zais are struggling with implementing such programs.

But wait! Superintendent Nancy McGinley of the Charleston County School District has a totally new answer for them: instead of performance pay for teachers, CCSD proposes performance pay for administrators!

Brilliant thinking outside the box, Superintendent! Why hasn't anyone else thought of this approach; after all, it seems so obvious. She even managed to persuade the majority of CCSD Board members to vote for this plan. Unfortunately, only 43 directors can be "incentivized" in this fashion, but it's a start.

Let the peons (excuse me, teachers) do all the work improving student achievement; then let their masters (oops, inhabitants of the Taj Mahal) reap the results! What could be fairer? Why didn't Arne Duncan think of this? Maybe McGinley should be Secretary of Education instead.

As I said, you can't make this stuff up.

Dump Feckless Fraser First, CCSD

Seriously. Seriously? Charleston County School District Board of Trustees member Cindy Bohn Coats wants to hire a parliamentarian to referee future Board meetings?

Coats should focus on the core problem: Chris Fraser's ineptness in chairing a meeting.

Dump Feckless Fraser first. Maybe he can gracefully resign so that someone effective takes over.

Charter, Magnet--What's the Difference?

I kid you not.

Wednesday's print edition of the P&C contained an editorial congratulating the Charleston County School Board for voting to continue free transportation for charter school students in the district. There's one glaring problem.

The CCSD Board didn't vote on a proposal to continue free transportion to charter schools. In fact, CCSD does not now, nor has it ever, provided free transportation to charter schools.

You can't make this stuff up.

Here the P&C prides itself on covering the news in local  and surrounding school districts, yet the editorial writer doesn't know the difference between a magnet and a charter school! This slip, corrected hastily Wednesday morning in the on-line version, reveals an abysmal ignorance on important issues. We have claimed for years that the reporters merely parrot what the district (i.e., superintendent) hands them.

Now we have proof.

Tea Partier Replacement a Rubber Stamp for McGinley

After months of dilly-dallying over the selection of a replacement for elected CCSD Board of Trustees member Mary Ann Taylor, who resigned in disgust last November, our Charleston County legislative delegation labored mightily and brought forth a mouse. A mouse that claimed "tea party" credentials, you know, as a mover and shaker. Our delegation looked for someone compatible with Taylor's views. Right. Chip Campsen and friends should be ashamed.

Brian Thomas, with his meek vote to support the unpublicized sale of part of the Memminger property (exactly which part only Michael Bobby and McGinley know), has shown his true colors--as a wimp.

Mary Ann Taylor should be even more disgusted. So should all taxpayers and residents of Charleston County. The Superintendent now has a safe majority of 5 to 3 made up of trusting lackeys to do as she pleases.

Thomas plans to run for election next time around. You know what to do.

SC's Stupidity Rides Again on Tax "System"

Was ever a law passed that so clearly was ultra-idiotic from the very beginning, one that almost immediately began to show its stupidity to the rest of the world?

No, I'm not writing of prohibition, although it does come in a close second.

Of course, it's the idiotic property tax relief "system" put into place by the South Carolina state legislature in 2006. From now until the turkey is repealed, we will be trying to fix it and its repercussions.

See Legislature Considers Reassessment Cap in Tuesday's P&C

"Business groups, real estate sellers and those who bought property after 2006 have complained loudly that the new system is unfair.

"Under the proposed legislation, only new construction would be taxed at full value, creating another subset of aggrieved taxpayers.

"The legislation also would make an estimated $44 million in annual revenue disappear from local government, county and school district budgets statewide, the Board of Economic Advisors has estimated.

"The result would be a shifting of some property taxes back to current home and business owners, constraints on the budgets of local schools and governments, or both."

Sounds great, doesn't it? So great, it's hard to believe the CCSD School Board didn't create it.

CCSD's Selling Potential Millions for $350,000

When will the national media pick up on the idiocies perpetrated by the Charleston County School Board? Surely not all school boards can be this dumb, or should I say self-serving?

Such was my reaction to Sunday's article on the potential creation of a special tax zone for the Beach Company to develop a large portion of Johns Island. See the blithely-headlined School District Would See Immediate Gain.

For $350,000 (probably the yearly cost of Superintendent McGinley's transportation) economically-challenged Board members such as Ruth Jordan are willing to forgo forever millions of future tax dollars from property taxes on this major development by one of Charleston's most well-connected development companies. On the other hand, Board member Chris Fraser's remarks are simply disingenuous: he's looking out for his own term on the Board, not the interests of taxpayers.

You can't make this stuff up fast enough to keep pace with its escalating stupidity.

Never mind that such tax zones are supposed to provide incentives to redevelop blighted areas instead of providing an easy way for developers to pay back loans to develop pristine land. Such a zone presupposes that, without tax breaks, a large portion of Johns Island would never be developed. Yeah, right.

It's a sweet deal for the Beach Company. As the reporter explains, "Imagine you're building a house, and the government agrees not only to loan you funding for construction, but allows you to pay it back with money you would have otherwise paid in property taxes." Apparently, Jordan and Fraser find the county's schools to be so well-funded that increased property tax totals are unnecessary.

We can understand why the City Council might be interested in seeing the Beach Company pay for infrastructure, but the position of members of the CCSD hierarchy is untenable.

The rest of the taxpayers of Charleston County should rise up in revolt before the School Board sells its soul for a mere $350,000.

CCSD Board Disdains the Poor--Again

Scurrying around the halls of the Taj Mahal at 75 Calhoun these days are minions planning the Charleston County School District's next building program. Much hand-wringing has ensued over its inability to continue alternative financing, the method for its program reaching its completion in 2010. How to get the millions? How to get the millions? Scylla and Charybdis appear on the radar screen.

In the vernacular, that's a rock and a hard place. The school district actually must put the question to the (gasp!) voters. Let's see, which would the voters prefer? [See School Board Weighs Finance Options in Thursday's P&C.]

That master of understatement, Michael Bobby, the district's chief financial officer is quoted as saying, "'The fact that we have to be on the ballot with the building program presents some real challenges and considerations.'" No kidding! The two options on the table? " a bond referendum or a sales tax increase."

Incredible as it may seem to the sane, the Board leans toward putting a sales tax on the ballot "which would be accompanied by a reduction in property taxes."

See, cynically the educrats and the majority of Board members think that people who don't own property (the poor) also don't vote. Therefore, the way to sugarcoat a tax increase is to promise the most likely voters a decrease in property taxes. Didn't the state of South Carolina just do that? Isn't it in trouble already by attempting to finance through falling sales tax revenues? Where will this madness end?

At least Chris Collins spoke up for the poor, knowing full well that the burden of financing through sales taxes falls most heavily on them. No one else seems to care or understands the issue. Chair Ruth Jordan opened her mouth to prove that she needs to take Economics 101, making the economically-illiterate statement (regarding an increase in the sales tax) that ""We all bear the same burden. . . It's the most fair way.'"

Painful, isn't it?

I need to create a new label: super-idiocies.