At the Schoolhouse Gate

Cell Phone Cheating Invalidates AP Exams

School test scores canceled after cheating probe

ASSOCIATED PRESS

6:01 p.m. July 7, 2008

MISSION VIEJO – At least 300 high school students in Orange County must retake their advanced placement exams after national test administrators found some of them cheated.

Dan Sullivan, principal at Trabuco Hills High School, sent a letter to parents dated July 1, saying the College Board and Educational Testing Service canceled students' test scores after finding “a number of students” cheated on a statistics exam. The letter was reported Monday by the Orange County Register.

Read it here.

Cheating(?) and Facebook

[cross-posted at Educational Insanity]

I sure would like to know more about this story. The way CNN reports it makes it all seem harmless to me. What's wrong with a little digital ingenuity and the creation of an online study group?

Virtual Schools: Godsend of Illegal Taxpayer Expense?

Do virtual schools amount to little more than home schooling at taxpayer expense? 

That's the question being debated in Wisconsin where the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Wisconsin Virtual Academy violated laws governing charter schools, open enrollment and teacher licensure. As a result of the ruling, millions of taxpayer dollars were withheld.  It is unclear if the state's Supreme Court will hear the case, but in the meantime, the state's legislative bodies are taking on the matter.  Interesting stuff!

Never, ever praise Columbine

A teacher in Wisconsin has been arrested for allegedly posting an anonymous blog comment praising the 1999 Columbine (CO) High School shootings. The police captain views the teacher's comments as a legitimate threat.

An F for vulgarity, an A for free speech

[cross-posted at Dangerously Irrelevant]

There has been both good commentary and handwringing in the education blogosphere over the recent decision in A.B. v. State (Ind.App.2007). For example, see the following:

• Tim Stahmer
• Dave Sherman
• Wesley Fryer
• Mark van ‘t Hooft

For those of you who are interested, here’s my response to Dave Sherman:

Dave, please see

http://tinyurl.com/2abg58

and my online presentation at

http://tinyurl.com/2ynpvz

In the case you cite, A.B. v. State (Ind.App.2007), the Greencastle Middle School student posted the following message on MySpace:

Hey you piece of greencastle sh-t. What the f-ck do you think of me [now] that you can['t] control me? Huh? Ha ha ha guess what I'll wear my f-cking piercings all day long and to school and you can['t] do sh-t about it! Ha ha f-cking ha! Stupid bastard! Oh and kudos to whomever made this ( [I'm] pretty sure I know who). Get a background.

Here's what the court said:

A.B. openly criticizes Gobert's imposed school policy on decorative body piercings and forcefully indicates her displeasure with it. While we have little regard for A.B.'s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech. Addressing a state actor, the thrust of A.B.'s expression focuses on explicitly opposing Gobert's action in enforcing a certain school policy.

The court also found insufficient harm to result from A.B.'s speech

the State failed to produce any evidence that A.B.'s expression inflicted particularized harm analogous to tortuous injury on readily identifiable private interests as required to rebut A.B.'s claim of political speech.

One of the key aspects of libel is that you have to prove harm to your reputation. It appears that the court in this case viewed this as a student spouting off on a school policy issue, which was well within her rights, and found insufficient harm to the principal's reputation to warrant a finding of libel.

Dave, you say that you're worried about this happening to you. Is this any different than a post that said, "I disagree with Mr. Sherman's policy on piercings? Who does he think he is? He can't control me. I'm going to do whatever I want and there's nothing he can do about it. I hate you, Mr. Sherman."?

As you know, you need to have a thick skin when you're a principal!

Finally, I’ll close with some quotes. My favorite school law quote of all time is the one from the Barnette case:

• Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive. - Pres. John F. Kennedy
• If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. - Pres. George Washington
• That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes. - West Virginia v. Barnette (1943)
• If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. - Noam Chomsky

Feds can't make up their mind regarding Internet filtering

In case you haven't been following the issue, the federal government can't make up its mind regarding Internet filtering. On the one hand, government attorneys vigorously argued for Internet filtering mechanisms as part of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004:

A library's use of filtering software to block material covered by CIPA is constitutional. The district court itself found that filtering software is a reasonably effective way to block pornographic material, and that such material falls outside of a public library's traditional collection boundaries. The district court's finding that filtering software erroneously blocks some constitutionally protected speech does not undermine the reasonableness of their use. (see http://tinyurl.com/2omvsp)

In contrast, federal attorneys have attacked software filters as burdensome and ineffective in their attempts to defend the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which keeps getting blocked by federal courts:

The court of appeals also erred in holding that filtering software is a sufficient alternative to COPA's mandatory screening requirement. Filtering software is not nearly as effective as COPA's screening requirement in shielding minors from commercial domestic pornography on the Web. Filtering software is voluntary, while COPA's screening requirement is mandatory. Filtering software also blocks some sites that are not harmful; it fails to block some sites that are harmful; it can be expensive for parents to purchase; and it quickly becomes outdated. Congress also did not view mandatory screening and blocking software as an either or choice. It mandated screening and encouraged the use of blocking software as well. That combined approach is far more effective than the use of voluntary blocking software alone. (see http://tinyurl.com/322qnc)

Huh?

OpEd: Legal obligations re: technology

Someone recently sent me the following quote from a school administrator (regarding legal concerns related to technology initiatives):

The school district is legally obligated to protect our students from the outside. It is not legally obligated to prepare them for the outside.

Ouch.

On its face, this statement gives precedence to legal concerns over whatever moral, professional, and/or ethical responsibilities schools have to prepare students for their future. This statement elevates CYA thinking over social justice concerns about technology access/usage and workforce preparation for disadvantaged students. This statement is reactive, not proactive, at a time when we desperately need forward-thinking school leaders.

Since when did schools not have a legal and societal mandate to provide an adequate education for students? As Kagan notes, every state’s constitution requires the state to provide its children with an ‘adequate’ education. Every community expects its local schools to prepare kids to be competent, functional adults in American society. How well do you think the ‘we don’t have a legal obligation to prepare your children for the world’ argument is going to play with parents and politicians?

We can reasonably disagree about the qualitative definition of what constitutes an ‘adequate education’ (e.g., we’ve seen this play out in both the school funding and special education arenas). But as people become increasingly aware that the Internet and digital technologies are necessary requirements for most adults’ productive lives and careers, this administrator’s statement that technology doesn’t fall under schools’ legally-required mandate to provide an adequate education for students is going to become increasingly unpalatable.