Tag Archives: Public Education

American #Precariat: #HigherEd edition | #LostGeneration on Blog#42

This article is the second in my series on America’s new social class, the precariat Continue reading American #Precariat: #HigherEd edition | #LostGeneration on Blog#42

California Parents Complain: SexEd Textbook ‘Equivalent To Pornography’ | ThinkProgress

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A California school district has agreed to temporarily shelve a ninth grade sex education textbook after parents complained it included material that’s inappropriate for teenagers, including information about masturbation, orgasms, and erotic touch. The parents asking for the removal of Your Health Today have compared the book to porn.

Continue reading California Parents Complain: SexEd Textbook ‘Equivalent To Pornography’ | ThinkProgress

Faces of Neoliberalism: The War on Teachers | PartII

By Ryan Grim and Joy Resmovits

August 4, 2014

WASHINGTON — Every day throughout the summer of 2006, seemingly without end, things just kept getting worse for Washington Republicans. Iraq was spiraling out of control, President George W. Bush was at the depth of his unpopularity. Congressional Republicans were mired in scandal. One was even caught sending dirty instant messages to young boys.

What followed was the Democratic wave of 2006, which handed Congress to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, followed by a second wave ridden by Barack Obama into the White House. Pundits talked about the end of the Republican Party, or at best, a permanent rump status.

Continue reading Faces of Neoliberalism: The War on Teachers | PartII

Seclusion and Physical Restraint Legal in most US Public Schools

by Heather Vogell, ProPublica, June 19, 2014, 5 a.m.

Carson Luke, who is autistic, was 10 years old when public school staff members crushed his hand in a door while trying to close him in a seclusion room at the Southeastern Cooperative Education Program’s Deep Creek facility in Chesapeake, Va., three years ago. (Photos courtesy of the Luke Family)

Sometimes, Carson later told his mother, workers would run the fan to make him stop yelling. A thick metal door with lockswhich they threw, clank-clank-clank separated the autistic boy from the rest of the decrepit building in Chesapeake, Virginia, just south of Norfolk.

But such limits don’t apply to public schools.

 Definitions and Terms

  • Restraints are any holds in which a student’s ability to move their head, torso, arms or legs are limited.
  • “Mechanical” restraints use something like straps, handcuffs or bungee cords to do the restraining.
  • “Seclusion” refers to situations in which a student is confined against their will in a room they are prevented from leaving — often with a locked door. This is different from a “time out” in which a student is separated from others to allow him or her a chance to calm down. Link

Continue reading Seclusion and Physical Restraint Legal in most US Public Schools