Balancing Accountability With Love

There are a few who believe that the key to academic success, and life success, is based on the quality of relationship building. In today's world of parsed words, where we are not honest with ourselves, it should not be surprising that the quality of relationships is lacking. We could call it love, we could call it trust, we could call it quality relationships, but we can't call it something it isn't and get the results we say we want.


Thanks to The Gradebook, we have this article from the St. Pete Times:


Tampa Just Elementary intensely tracks students' FCAT progress so it can improve with them. - St. Petersburg Times:

"'High expectations are just critical, critical,' McManus says while passing out research articles at the start of a weekly meeting with her leadership team."

Along with those high expectations, dealing with reality has been addressed:

No more promoting third-graders who can't read. No more putting up with bad teachers. No more complaining about how hard it is to teach children who come to school unprepared, or tired, or hungry.

Using my usual mocking, sarcastic attitude towards the public education system, I have said before that the FCAT scores must not be easy for the school systems to manipulate, unlike the grades the systems can directly manipulate with grade curves, extra points for bringing in paper supplies and inflated GPA's.

I should have known there were other ways to skin a cat. While Ms. McManus is working hard at developing high expectations, which is a necessary ingredient to success, here comes a legislative proposal to keep the victimization of America going strong:


Note: I have removed the political party name from the below title so that it is not a distraction.

[Someone]take aim at third grade retention, and then some#comments:

"Heller’s bill would open the door for additional exemptions for students with unusual circumstances, such as “physical or emotional trauma resulting in test anxiety” or “unusual test anxiety, especially when it arises from being threatened with retention.”"