How messed up is that?

George Mason University just elected a drag queen as Homecoming queen

George Mason University senior Ryan Allen dresses in drag and doesn't mind being called a queen — homecoming queen, to be exact. Allen, who is gay and performs in drag at nightclubs in the region, said he entered the homecoming contest as a joke, competing as Reann Ballslee, his drag queen persona.

Granted, in 1974 one of my fraternity brothers was elected homecoming queen. We were so proud. But what kind of a school has homecoming in February?

Algebra

Teaching is apparently not just a low paying job, but a low skill job.

A Sacramento Superior Court judge Friday blocked a controversial state plan requiring that all California eighth-graders be tested in algebra.

Uh, why?

...approximately one-third of the state's middle-school Algebra I teachers are either underprepared or teach out-of-field...

So, your college educated math teachers aren't conversant with algebra? Guys, this is a field that's not exactly trembling with new discoveries.

Meeting the mandate would require the state to hire 3,000 more qualified teachers and offer substantial additional training to 1,000 underprepared math instructors.

O'Connell's staff has estimated that the requirement would cost $3.1 billion at a time when the state is slashing even larger amounts from its budget as a result of the economy.

Well, not really, because you'll save a similar amount when you fire the unqualified teachers. And math teachers not prepared to go beyond multiplication tables aren't really math teachers, are they? More like baby sitters. But then I forget, NEA membership is a lifetime meal ticket.

Boo!

Can you believe school officials trying to outlaw booing at high school sporting events? Damn! I hadn't realized that the "positive-reinforcement, every-child-is-special" movement had even dumbed down sports.

Gosh! Don't want those high school jocks to get their feelings hurt! I mean, if they did, they might take out their frustration on smaller kids!

The organization that oversees high school sports in Washington is considering rules for fans that could ban booing and offensive chants.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association has not made an official ruling, but has discussed guidelines to crack down on negative conduct, a spokesman said.

It reminds me of the Kurt Vonnegut story "Harrison Bergeron". Here's the intro:

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Standards of Learning

A series of articles at the Wall Street Journal [1, 2, 3]recently discussed our current infatuation with "No Child Left Behind", and how so many, unequipped for it, are being pushed into colleges.

Today in our local paper they more or less illustrate the point taken to its local extreme. On our Virginia Standards of Learning test, kids with dyslexia, unable to figure out the words on the page, have the teachers read the passage to them, and then they answer the multiple choice questions.

In a small classroom at Magruder Elementary School in York County, Marquis Mayo hunched over a reading worksheet, pencil in hand. The fourth-grader listened as teacher Alexis Swanson read aloud the story on the worksheet. Swanson then read aloud questions about the main character, testing whether Marquis understood what she heard and could answer questions about the story.

This is how Marquis studies reading. It's also how teachers test her knowledge. She has a disability that makes translating letters and punctuation into words and sentences difficult. It's as though they are a secret code she struggles to unlock.

But the disability does not keep her from taking exams, such as the state-required Standards of Learning tests that all public school students take each year. Marquis' special education learning plan allows teachers to read aloud passages and questions on tests.

But last fall, the U.S. Department of Education tightened the rules for reading aloud to students. Only students with serious vision problems and those like Marquis, who have a disability that keeps them from decoding text, can be read to on state reading tests.

The change means hundreds of special education students in local public schools who have other disabilities must learn new ways to take the SOL tests. Teachers are scrambling to re-evaluate students' learning plans to see if they still qualify for the read-aloud tool.

I'm sorry folks, but that isn't reading. Call it "verbal comprehension" or something if you want, but it's not reading. You are testing whether the child can understand the words coming from the mouth, not the symbols on the page.

Though, with technological innovation, it may be that long-term this won't matter. There are already programs that will take words on a page and read it back. Mostly these are for the blind, but there's no reason a dyslexic person couldn't use these too. But, it's not reading.