drjamesarnold.com

    Are you defined by a test?  If you were born before 1985, chances are the answer is no.  If, on the other hand, you were born after that date you and your public education experience are data points on an administrator’s school or district or state data wall responding to the policies enacted by the No Child Left Untested law.  Notice I said public education.  In spite of the inanity in the name of accountability imposed upon students in public education, no such laws or requirements have been extended to the 7% of students, give or take a percentage point, in private or religious schools.       Let’s pause for a moment to listen for the outcry from the teachers, parents and politicians over the omission of that 7%  from the mandates and benefits of standardized testing and accountability…oh my...I can’t hear their poor, weak untested voices, can you?     Right now your child in public...

This speech was originally given at the 2010 graduation ceremony for W.H. Shaw High School, and has been printed in several venues since that time.  I believe the information remains relevant and bears repetition. Graduates, parents, students, faculty, families, and honored guests – Welcome to our celebration of the culmination of the secondary school education of the Class of 2010 – the thirty second class to graduate from William Henry Shaw High School.  Parents, together we have gotten them through high school but after tonight they are yours – we will implement a strict no return policy.  I understand that several of you are offering a take one, get one free special at the end of tonight’s program. Seniors, I would like to introduce you to Tiger.  Tiger, as his name implies, is a small stuffed tiger that belongs to my grandson Justin.  Justin is 4, and Tiger goes everywhere Justin goes - to school, on visits, to naptime and espec...

This article was originally published in the Fall 2012 edition of JOLLE - UGA by the author. Rotten to the (Common) Core     I must state from the outset that I am innately suspicious of the underlying motives or educational benefits of any initiative – Common Core included -  supported by the Governor that instituted austerity cuts in 2003, led Georgia to be one of the only states to use teacher furloughs to balance the state budget and consistently under funded public education in order to promote quality fishing.     Common Core is a standardized national curriculum.  Why is this problematic?  From an historical context, a centralized school curriculum serves the goals of totalitarian states.  It’s also illegal.  The General Education Provisions Act, the Department of Education Organization Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act all forbid or protect against the USDOE sticking its nose into the cur...

Public education is in the midst of a perceptual crisis. The public-school-as-smorgasbord proponents, the privatization faction, the voucher believers, the private school crowd, and the transformers—those small but vocal minorities who insist that every public school is mediocre at best and that students do not stand a chance in today’s competitive market after graduation from these dumbed-down anti-God institutions that are little more than attendance monitors for minority students—all proclaim loudly their way is better and will lead to the miraculous and marvelous reinvention of our failed system of public education. Choice seems to be a constant theme in these insistent complaints that public education has failed us and that our way of life, our political system, and our form of government are at risk because we cannot educate every child to the point he or she can have a seamless entry from secondary school into work or college.  Baloney. My personal belief is that segregati...

    Remember how wonderful it was when we were told Georgia won the second round of the Race To The Top sweepstakes?  The application submitted by then-Governor Perdue and his team, amended from the first application that was almost but not quite good enough, had been amended to include the results of a survey that nobody remembered taking AND in meeting the USDOE guidelines and our lucky state was about to receive $400 million dollars and a little change.  The first announcement after the award was that about $200 million – around ½ - was to be reserved for “administrative costs.”  Most of the other money was to go to the 26 or so volunteer districts around the state that would pilot programs for the rest of Georgia school districts.  Among these pilot programs were the Teacher Evaluation Measure (TEM) and the Leader Evaluation Measure (LEM).  Both evaluation measures must, in accordance with the RTTT guidelines, tie a percentage of the evalu...

http://www.drjamesarnold.com A version of this article appeared in the February 2012 AJC “Get Schooled” blog.   This, with minor changes, is an updated version. Everyone is Failing and It’s All Your Fault…..           Drug abuse education, alcohol abuse education, parenting, character ed, special ed, gender equity, environmental ed, women’s studies, African – American education, school breakfast, school lunch, daily attendance, computer education, multi-cultural ed, ESL (ELL, ESOL), teen pregnancy, Jump Start, Even Start, Head Start, Prime Start, Bright from the Start, Kindergarten, Pre-K, alternative ed, stranger/danger, anti-smoking ed, mandated reporting, CPR training, defibrillator training, anaphylactic shock recognition training, inclusion, internet ed, distance learning, Tech Prep, School to Work, Gifted and Talented, at-risk programs, keyboarding, dropout prevention, gang education, homeless ed, service learning, gu...