Corporal Punishment in America!?! Discipline in American Schools!?!?

[Mike]

Here are a couple of thoughts concerning the need to extend the concept of the
CIRLCE OF COURAGE....beyond schools that work with just "troubled kids"


U.S.: Corporal Punishment and Paddling
Statistics by State and Race
Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools
2006-2007 School Year: data released March, 2008

In the 2006-2007 school year, 223,190 school children in the U.S. were subjected to physical punishment. This is a significant drop of almost 18%, continuing a steady trend from the early 1980's.

State Number of Students Hit Percentage of Total Students

Alabama 33,716 4.5
Arkansas 22,314 4.7
Arizona 16 < 0.0
Colorado 8 < 0.0
Florida 7,185 .3
Georgia 18,249 1.1
Idaho 111 .04
Indiana 577 .05
Kansas 50 .01
Kentucky 2,209 .3
Louisiana 11,080 1.7
Missouri 5,159 .6
Mississippi 38,131 7.5
North Carolina 2,705 .2
New Mexico 705 .2
Ohio 672 .04
Oklahoma 14,828 2.3
South Carolina 1,409 .2
Tennessee 14,868 1.5
Texas 49,197 1.1
Wyoming 0 0

The 10 worst states, by percentage of students struck
by educators in the 2006-2007 school year:

Rank State Percentage

1 Mississippi 7.5
2 Arkansas 4.7
3 Alabama 4.5
4 Oklahoma 2.3
5 Louisiana 1.7
6 Tennessee 1.5
7 Texas 1.1
8 Georgia 1.1
9 Missouri .6
10 Florida .3

Notes:

African-American students comprise 17% of all public school students in the U.S., but are 36% of those who have corporal punishment inflicted on them, more than twice the rate of white students.

Almost 40% of all the cases of corporal punishment occur in just two states: Texas and Mississippi, and if we add Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, these five states account for almost three quarters of all the nation’s school paddlings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Students Struck Each Year in U.S. Public Schools


YEAR # WHITE % # BLACK % TOT. KIDS HIT %
1976 992,675 65 447,314 29 1,521,896 3.5
1978 940,467 65 411,271 29 1,438,317 3.4
1980 901,032 64 403,386 29 1,408,303 3.4
1982 no statistical projection was made this year
1984 852,427 64 374,315 28 1,332,317 3.3
1986 659,224 60 345,411 31 1,099,731 2.7
1988 549,572 61 255,296 28 898,370 2.2
1990 346,488 56 208,543 34 613,760 1.5
1992 295,050 53 215,684 39 555,531 1.3
1994 256,363 54 182,394 39 470,683 1.1
1997 241,406 53 178,114 39 457,754 1.0
1998 199,572 55 135,523 37 365,058 0.8
2000 181,689 53 132,065 39 342,038 0.7
2003 159,446 53 115,819 38 301,016 0.6
2004 143,002 53 104,627 38 272,028 0.57
2006 119,339 53 79,613 36 223,190 0.46


Interesting what data we tend to be looking at in America....and what data
is never mentioned!!!!

What do you make of this..... check out the "disagragated data" concerning who gets
hit the most....... hmmmmmmmm....

http://www.stophitting.com/index.php?page=statesbanning

[Mike]

SCHOOL CHOICE....... SOME CONCERNS........

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-education/2008/07/28/school-expels-k...

School Expels Kids for Less Than a 3.0 GPA

July 28, 2008 03:18 PM ET | Lucia Graves

Matthew Nuti is a top debater on his school's Model United Nations team, a starting player in junior varsity football, and a spirited member of the yearbook staff. He also has a 2.8 GPA, and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology—which tops our list for America's Best High Schools—has called for his expulsion.

Nuti, who just finished 10th grade, was just one of five students expelled under the school's new policy, according to the Washington Post. It was last year that "TJ," a highly selective public magnet school in suburban Washington, D.C., first decided to require that all students have a 3.0 GPA—a B average—to continue at the school. But implementation is a different thing.

"I thought they wouldn't actually try to remove me from the school," Nuti told the Post. The school's verdict was particularly surprising since Nuti earned top marks on the Virginia state Standards of Learning exams, and his middle school GPA, when TJ admitted him in 2006, was nothing other than a 2.8! (The school is purportedly moving to require a 3.0 GPA for admission, too.)

It's a peculiar policy for a public high school, though TJ is by no means an ordinary place (for instance, its class of 2007 has an average SAT score of 2155, on a 2400 scale). Still a number of instructors, including the teacher who gave Nuti his worst mark—a D—say they're troubled by the new rule. And the implications for grade inflation are clear.

It also raises the question: When is a student's GPA too low? And is it really an accurate reflection of a student's educational experience?

As we begin down the road to "break up" the public school system and move toward new models....

well....some food for thought.......

be well...mike