Progress. You have identified a problem–the laws as written are stopping you from being effective in educating and protecting ALL the children over whom you are given responsibility..
Laws need to be changed.

Parents aren’t held accountable. Why should they? Everything is YOUR fault.
Laws need to be changed.

Yep, when a child can stop you from teaching, he thinks he has won; when he stops you from moving the bus, he realizes he has lost.

You don’t have the law behind you. All my problems are behind me.

What is it, half of all teachers quit after the first year?
Noble aspirations coming into contact with reality yield frustration.

David for laws reflecting reality,
just to see how it would work for a change

This is where change of placement comes to mind.
(Outer Mongolia also comes to mind)

At some point the rights of the other students who are being robbed of educational opportunities have to be weighed in.

The ones who make the decision are not the ones trying to teach or have their children taught because such children tend to magically be in somebody else’s class.

I was driving at a middle school which is no longer open (and not in north end, lest you wonder) and several of the would-be riders decided to dance, scream, curse, strike others–just for the fun of it. I circled back around onto the bus ramp and explained to the dean that I could safely carry all but seven but I could not safely move down the road with that seven on that bus.

The dean explained the principal never took anybody off the bus no matter how bad it got.

“Well, we’re gonna sit here a while because it is illegal for me to try to drive in what I KNOW is an unsafe manner.”

The principal came on, looked at how they were behaveing, took off ten (the last three had been marginal but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, she wasn’t). She explained they weren’t riding any bus for the next ten days.

“How are we going to get home?”

“You just made that YOUR problem. Now get off his bus.”

It was amazing how much better the rest acted after that and it was safer for the majority who hadn’t done a thing wrong and deserved to be treated better.

I knew one driver who just gave up because they told her to roll no matter what the sweetlings did, then they fired her when she complied.

David thinking adults should act like grown-ups

How do you identify adequate progress for the student who can finally sit at her desk without disrupting everyone in the room. She learned to do this in April. No, she doesn’t take meds and she never will. It’s the parent’s choice.

How do you identify progress in a child that has stopped having major meltdowns every day because the air conditioner is making a squeaking noise? Now she melts down when someone uses the pencil sharpener. Yes, she takes the FCAT.

How do you teach a kid who can’t stay awake because he was up past midnight?

How do you teach a homeless child his address?

Which concept if more important?
a. It is wrong to hit people
b. Author’s purpose in writing poetry

Excess in anything is always a problem–even excessive moderation.

Since government is intertwined with public education, it MUST be involved.

The question is one of what kind of involvement will improve education (not necessarily the educational institutions, but education itself) and what will hurt it? (here’s a good education question: Should the previous sentence end in a period or a question mark? food for thought)

What works, what doesn’t?

What could work but isn’t being done?

What did work but has been abandoned?

How could what is being done and is working be improved?

How can we verify each part is working?

How can we verify what failed or didn’t work as effectively as possible?

Why are educators often unable to educate politicians?

David knowing educational concepts go in and out of favor and are seldom tested beforehand or noted for efectiveness afterward

The 691 tests would be only for this district? Or are you saying administering the various tests in this district would cost $15,000,000?

David considering getting into test creation

Teachers do not get to pick their students. Some of these “students” are anything but students – should we then evaluate PARENTS on their ability to make their children conform to a classroom environment? When does governance and the Nanny State end and a little personal responsibility begin?

All this bill will do is add cost, and it will fail to make any improvement over the process. Who will suffer for this? The Children that actually need education, the Teachers that will be paced in an untenable position, and Society at large for a new crop of underachieving slackers joining the criminal class.

When “parents” act like parents, children learn.

What people like you don’t realize is that a bill like this that is supposedly going to help our children will actually in up doing more harm than good. In our county alone, 691 new tests would have to be created at a cost of about 15 million dollars. This would come out to about a 5% cut in the district’s already slim budget. Where do you think this money would come from? Who knows what programs and extracurricular activities would be cut?

You say that you support this so that the incompetent teachers can be reprimanded or removed from our schools. What you don’t realize is that 60% of the high school teachers in the state of Florida would not make learning gains as defined by the state. Do you really believe that there are that many incompetent teachers out there? What would end up happening would be that a lot of quality teachers would be out of a job and there teaching certificates wouldn’t be renewed. So in other words, they couldn’t teach anywhere in the state of Florida. The next thing that would take place is that a lot of young teachers would be scared away from this profession. Remember there are always two sides to every story. I just hope that everybody thoroughly goes through the facts before they just jump on board. Things aren’t always what they seem.