High School News

A federal district judge has blocked a Pennsylvania school district from enforcing its ban against breast cancer-awareness bracelets that refer to “boobies,” saying the ban is likely unconstitutional under U.S. Supreme Court precedents on student speech.

The rubber bracelets, sponsored by the nonprofit Keep A Breast Foundation of Carlsbad, Calif., feature slogans such as “I ♥ Boobies ” and “Check y♥urself .” They are meant to facilitate discussion about breast cancer and breast health.

The Easton Area School District banned the bracelets last fall. Officials at Easton Area Middle School believed the reference to “boobies” was vulgar and inappropriate for middle school students, and the bracelets would encourage students to repeat the phrase in other contexts.

Two students who were suspended for defying the prohibition challenged it in court through their parents as a violation of their First Amendment free-speech rights.

U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin said in her April 12 opinion in H. v. Easton Area School District that the bracelets cannot be considered lewd or vulgar under the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Bethel School District v. Fraser, which gave schools the authority to punish lewd student speech.

“The bracelets are intended to be and they can reasonably be viewed as speech designed to raise awareness of breast cancer and to reduce stigma associated with openly discussing breast health,” the judge said.

The judge said school officials gave differing justifications for the ban, and even used the word “boobies” in an announcement to students about the restriction.

“This supports a conclusion that the school did not actually consider the word ‘boobies’ to be vulgar,” she said.

Also, the school district did not present evidence that the bracelets substantially disrupted school, which would have permitted the restriction under the high court’s 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

“At the time of the ban, the school had at most a general fear of disruption,” the judge said.

This Associated Press story discusses the case as well as challenges to bans on such bracelets in other school districts across the country.

The U.S. Department of Education has proposed new regulations on the privacy of educational records, meant to safeguard student data but also to guarantee that states may share data to help judge the effectiveness of school improvement efforts.

The proposed regulations under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 were published April 8 in the Federal Register.

Education Week‘s Sarah D. Sparks discusses the details of the proposed rules and the sharing of student data in a post this week on her blog, Inside School Research.

Sarah also discusses some of the other steps the Education Department is taking, such as the establishment of a chief privacy officer. The department’s release is here.

I wanted to highlight a couple of other provisions in the proposed FERPA regulations.

Under the proposed rules, the department would define “education program” for the first time as any program principally engaged in the provision of education. The proposed rules point out that some early childhood, special education, and adult education programs are run not by state or local educational authorities, but by other agencies, such as state human resources departments, which often oversee Head Start programs.

Another provision involves student identification badges. The proposed rules say parents could not use their right to opt out of making public their child’s directory information to excuse the child from having to wear a school ID badge.

“The secretary [of education] believes … that the need for schools and college campuses to implement measures to ensure the safety and security of students is of the utmost importance and that FERPA should not be used as an impediment to achieving student safety,” the proposal states.

Comments on the proposed regulations are due by May 23.

Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, says lawmakers have to look longer into the future when making budget decisions and not spend all the state’s reserves on schools.SALEM — A key budget committee agreed today to spend $5.7 billion in state aid on Oregon’s public schools for the next two years, setting the stage for a vote in the full Senate.

The spending level is about the same as schools are getting now and less than what they got two years ago. School districts say they will be forced to lay off hundreds of teachers, grow class sizes and shorten school years as a result.

The Joint Ways and Means Committee approved two school funding bills. One sets aside just under $5.6 billion from general fund and lottery dollars. The other taps a special reserve fund for another $100 million, but requires districts to use it for smaller class sizes and to add days to the school year.

Although this was a critical vote to get the school budget moving, the debate over how much to spend on schools is far from over. A contingent of House Democrats wants to take more money from the Education Stability Fund to boost spending on schools.

Committee co-chairman Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, said he and other budget negotiators struggled with how much to dip into the state’s reserves. Oregon’s economy remains uncertain, which means the state may end up with less money than it expects in years to come, Richardson said.

“The challenge we faced was not only trying to deal with the budget for the next years, but also the governor has asked us to look at the next 10 years,” he said.

The school budget bills now go the Senate for a vote, possibly on Tuesday.

Harry Esteve

So far I have not written much about what I do here at K¹². I am an instructional designer. This is like being an engineer, taking the material that is content, from wonderful experts like Dr. Dan Franck, and designing the best way to deliver this in our K¹² products. We have a wonderful team of instructional designers, like Jeff Pitcher with whom I have worked in developing virtual labs and videos, who are expert at doing this. For a moment, I am going to let you into our “instructional labs” to talk about science labs.

Since we first began making courses, a core belief that online learning does not mean 100% online instruction guided our approach to labs. Throughout our curriculum, you I am sure find that hands-on labs rule! We have gone to great lengths to design labs that can be done in many places and in many ways and help learners understand the fundamentals and wonder of science. I believe that for most students, hands on experiences are by far best!

But lets be honest. I remember being a student—I just wanted to SURVIVE the labs. Even though I was a teacher for 17 years, I will admit that when I was a student, I just wanted to get the lab done. That was MY purpose in doing the lab! So how can we help you get past that? More and more in our courses, especially in high school, you will see that we have introduced two exciting pieces: lab videos, and virtual labs.

Lab videos are meant to help ease the pain of assembling an apparatus and working through a procedure. In some cases, we show you lab results as well. One of the most important people in working through science labs was always my lab partner. I could check with them to see if I understood the lab properly, or if we were mutually lost. Our lab videos in a sense are your lab partner. They will not tell you everything that you want to know, nor do they do the lab for you, but they are there as well designed guides and yes, the voice in most is yours truly .

Virtual labs are also items that we have been adding in great numbers as of late, with over 30 new ones planned for our Fall 2011 courses. These are meant to fit into our lessons — they are not the lessons themselves. They are great data collection suites, designed to allow for authentic data gathering in a lab. Be careful—though they may LOOK like simulations, they actually are more like the real world where the results of experiments vary, and sometimes, if you do the lab incorrectly and break something, you will have to begin again! Sometimes, they allow us to help you work with apparatuses that you would not normally be able to receive in a home learning environment, such as large microphones, big sound tubes and momentum tracks. Most of the time, they are meant to help you understand the most important pieces of a lab, and make it easier to master the most important concepts.

If you are fortunate, you may already be taking a science course where lab videos and virtual labs are already appearing. By Fall, in most of our high school courses you will see many of these, as we are creating 19 lab videos and even more virtual labs! If you want a preview of how this all works together and actually have some fun building a little motor for yourself, I will be appearing with some other talented K¹² employees at the Philadelphia Science Festival, on April 16. At that time, you can build a motor, watch a video to help you, and play with our virtual lab where you can build an even fancier electric motor!  Hopefully I will see you there! If you cant make it, then you can help me do my job better by answering the following question: which of our K¹² labs that you have done have you liked the best? I look forward to hearing your stories and to seeing some of you on April 16th—motor on!