Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Notes from the Underground Parent

What's a Parent to Do?
The Underground Parent. http://undergroundp arent.blogspot. com/
This October, students in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 across the state of Washington will be administered the Healthy Youth Survey. This survey is administered without parent knowledge and consent. The kinds of questions asked on these surveys are invasive, intrusive, offensive, inappropriate, and highly suggestive for impressionable youngsters.

Here are a few questions from the survey.
During the past 30 days, on how many days did you smoke cigarettes?
During the past 30 days, on how many days did you drink a glass, can, or bottle of alcohol (beer, wine, wine coolers, hard liquor)?
During the past 30 days, on how many days did you use marijuana or hashish (grass, hash, pot)?Have you ever seriously thought about killing yourself?

More information and links to copies of past surveys may be found at
The Underground Parent. http://undergroundp arent.blogspot. com/

Please share this information with other parents and parent groups (PTA).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If a student admits to drug use they are ineligible for special education services (NCLB), unless they agree to treatment at a drug center.

In one district, students went to a 3 week academy and in one activity were required to sit in the laps of male counselors where students were told to admit to any crimes they had committed in the past.

Some of the students admitted to smoking pot. This amounted to an 8week incarceration in an Eastern Washington treatment center where parents were required to pay for treatment before students could receive special services.

The result - these new 9th grade students were involuntarily put in an alternative school without any instruction.

The students remained at this school for no more than a year and received no credits despite attending school.

Some of the students did have identified learning disabilities. In one case, an autistic boy had runaway to Oregon for several months. Two of the boys had attempted suicide. Another boy had committed suicide.

Although these crimes were exposed at length to numerous officials, no action was ever taken against the administrators. I hold the entire system at fault and completely responsible for its insincere attempt at ethics and civility.

Later during the year, the student had a confrontation with the counselor. The result was a 2 week suspension from school with the counselor accusing the student of smoking cigarettes off campus. When clearly the incident occurred off school grounds. The result of the suspension resulted in automatic expulsion.

If communities wish to prevent senseless adolescent violence, then they should consider what a lifetime of failure in school does to children. Much like in Colorado, there is a strong current of growing anti-sentiment among students, especially when efforts from community members to counsel children take on strong religious overtones.

The numbers of failing students in Washington State are simply too large to be ignored.

Without whistleblower protection, Washington state employees are jeopardizing their careers every time they report a crime. The WEA should take note. Your elected leaders have absolutely no shame.

Anonymous said...

Officials who hide behind their religion and turn their backs on 14 year old dropouts who have to resort to drugs and prostitution just to buy pizza and pay rent don't deserve my praise, nor should they get reelected.

dan dempsey said...

For some of us we owe an element of our success to schooling.

Unfortunately for many people, they are successful inspite of their school experience.

Anonymous said...

Successful despite school. That is a myth. Humans are dependent on education, the difference of course is whether we choose to be educated by a public school teacher, an employer, our parents, or through our peers.

The current ethics of mainstream America believes it is more advantageous to ignore their failures. This will result in a huge disparity in our society and one that is not much different from post-apartheid South Africa. Downtown LA looks not much different from Mexico City and it is not uncommon to find large blocks where only Spanish is spoken. 70% of my school is Latino and the number of EL speakers in the past two years has climbed over 100%. So much for border control.

But do you know that despite our API going up two years in a row mainly because many of our students were educated in Tijuana, our district still did not meet AYP. I think screw the Feds, screw NCLB, screw Title I. Bush and his band of ponydoffers want that money so bad, let them eat it, I hope it gives them indigestion...

Let me use South Africa as an example of using curriculum that fails to teach the majority of their children and where the US will no doubt go (which is to hell in a bonfire...)

Presently, the SA public education system is in pieces and suffers from severe teacher and textbook shortages due to some very flawed and corrupt practices.

Indeed our failure rates, which we know already are inaccurate because of their source, are close to South Africas.

For starters, roughly half their enrolled university freshmen fail to complete their first year. Sounds very similiar to our universities.

One difference is a fifth of their population is currently infected with AIDS and in South Africa 71% of all deaths for persons between 15 and 49 are related to AIDS.

These statistics are not some odd coincidence especially when you examine the source of the policies more closely.

US textbook and teaching methods are very similiar to those found in South Africa, the Netherlands, and in Brittany of all places. Some researchers include Germany, but I don't because unlike the US, Germany has a pipeline for ensuring students graduate with a career and military service is compulsory.

I might have believed Bergeson was sincere, except she took her sweet time making sure she got it right and things still aren't right. Dear TB, you are not a God.

The primary difference that I see here are that Latinos for the most part are a law-abiding, with middle-class values. They're angry, but they still believe in the Democratic process. Latinos are trying to understand American two party politics which is not at all transparent because media coverage doesn't cover the real story. Case in point - our VP debate the other night was a horrendous use of airtime. If Palin and Biden are the best candidates our parties can provide, then they need more competition.

I think its about time for another political party that is connected to the labor movement and worker's rights, because Latinos and minorities in general do not have enough representation in government. What working class families need is an education system that works. The entire idea behind merit pay is ridiculous - it'll just be used to line the pockets of friends.