The Good, the Bad, and the Dumb

 Update:  Roosevelt's Jazz Band comes in second place in the Essentially Ellington competition in NYC, ahead of  New World School of the Arts and behind Dillard Center for the Arts.

Note: both the other two high schools are in Florida are magnet arts schools, RHS is a regular comprehensive.  

Congrats to all those great musicians at RHS!

Great article in the Times this morning about almost-Superintendent Banda.  Makes me think the Board picked the right person at the right time for this district.   

I note that the Times is also trying to push this A+Washington initiative.  LEV has a full-court press at their website.  There is nothing wrong with various groups joining together to push for better education but what they are saying is nothing new:

• great teachers
• flexibility
• more data and tools to collect it
• early education

Their "reports" are sketchy.  One is a survey result paper.  One is about costs (without saying how to pay for all this).

A+Washington circles back to the Excellent Schools Now coalition which also has a vague website.  There are no names of people attached to these groups, just organizations and business groups.  If you wanted to ask their leadership questions, well, there isn't any visible.  There's no one to call but you can sign up as a supporter.

It's an odd thing for this many groups to want to look like a big, organized group when it's a collection of random information on a website.

Still waiting with crossed fingers for the results of the Essentially Ellington contest in NYC.  Will update as I see them come in.

UPDATE:  Roosevelt in top three for EE competition.  Good job!

And finally, last night we went to Magnuson Park at twilight and watched that big, fat moon come up over the Cascades.  It was gorgeous and, even for someone married almost 29 years, very romantic.  Then I read that the state of Tennessee is considering a "gateway sexual activity" bill.  From Time:

The controversial measure is intended to curb teen pregnancy and is an offshoot of the state’s growing abstinence-based sex education program.

At the heart of the matter, most of the controversy stems from the “gateway sexual activity” line, which remains vague and was not clearly defined before the bill went to vote. Some detractors argue that it could unreasonably punish teachers for allowing students to cuddle, hold hands or even hug, whether in the halls between classes or at a school dance.

While critics say that abstinence-based sexual education doesn’t do as good a job preventing teen pregnancy as comprehensive sex ed programs, at least one study has shown that abstinence-based programs can delay sex among teens. And supporters of the bill say that Tennessee schools have to do something; as local media outlet WMC-TV reported:

According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex. That’s higher than the national average.

Clearly, Tennessee has a problem.  The whole country has a problem.  But telling kids they cannot hold hands at a dance is not going to solve it.  

Just like in education, we should look to other countries.  How come they don't have as high teen pregnancies rates?  

What is interesting is I think we are a highly over-sexualized country per our media and yet, we act like kids will remain/are innocents.  

Did you see Rhinanna on SNL last night?  Pretty disgusting but that's who the young girls want to be like.  Have you seen the glorification that is MTV's Teen Mom (personally, I think all the young people in the show come off badly but that's me).  Have you seen Dance Moms and the kind of dancing that used to be reserved for music videos and NFL cheerleaders now being taught to 6-year olds?  

Mostly, the ball is in the court of parents.  You have to decide what your child sees and when.  You have to decide whether you want to talk about what they see in the media and at their school.  And, of course, you have to decide what you will say (or say) about sex and sexuality to your child.  

But if you don't, someone else will fill that void.