This. At my youngest son's school there is no awarding of credits for AP in math, English, or sciences, only history, foreign language, and electives. They use their own math and writing placement test to determine placement. They do use them for some merit money determinations. So having DE, AP, or both makes one more likely to be offered merit aid. It does not shorten one's time to graduation. But college classes taken at another college or university were eligible for transfer for credit. This college also does not allow CLEP either.

You.win.the.internet!!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂 And you are not wrong!

A sentencing date has been established for April 5. I hope he gets 20 years. But I don't think getting the max is common when there isn't a previous conviction. The point system would indicate 10-15. My concern is for the youngest two M's. If he only gets 10 and has to serve 85%, then he is out in 8.5 years. And those last two would still be in the age range at which he molested his sisters. The eldest two M's would be adults. Given his established history, I feel like he needs to be in prison longer. But I know that isn't how it works. The judge can only do what is within the guidelines, and ideally the State of Arkansas is supposed to step in and protect the kids by investigating and not allowing unsupervised visits, no going to their home, no living in the home, taking custody from Anna if she doesn't abide by the rules. But we all know the system is pretty darn broken. Here is the article. https://www.nwahomepage.com/josh-duggar-trial/sentencing-date-set-for-josh-duggar/

Oy vey!!! It is terrifying out there!!!!

Well, that is nearly always the case for high performing schools, and normally, high performing schools are backed by money, community, and influence so they can "buck the system" or the trends so much more easily than our rural, poor schools. Seriously, if legislation like that came to Michigan, my rural school district would role over, play dead, and the teachers who would have zero backing from the community would just assign Little House on the Prairie in high school English all the while continuing to look for non teaching jobs that come with health insurance benefits. This kind of crap always hits and hurts the havenots more than it does the haves. Here they would just entirely scrap all AP and DE.

I turned mine into a quilting/sewing space only to end up mentoring to teams through NASA Student Launch and Battle of the Rockets, and 10 teams through The American Rocketry Challenge so now it houses a mountain of rockets and aerospace parts. So my original intent was overrun. What do you think would be the most practical? Would a work out room remain dedicated to that cause, and used a lot, of would a game room be used more often?

Glad to hear that. I am still trying to figure out how the proposed legislation in Florida is supposed to work with AP and DE World History. Like I said. The mass exodus in education will continue until there isn't even the pretense of engaging with academics, just large warehouses of minors for the purposes of providing babysitting for working parents. I mean, one could teach math. Math would be so easy to keep devoid of controversy and "divisiveness". But so many parents hate math and don't think their darlings should have to learn algebra or geometry or word problems or......so I am not sure what could be offered at the high school level. Maybe a whole year of 'Introduction to Making Change at the 7-11".

No joke! The Deja Vu place used to have a billboard on I-75 near Flint that was quite the eye popper. Thankfully, they must have run out of advertising money because it is no longer there.

I think you have to pretend there was no history except 1950's Leave it to Beaver, and let everyone fail the exam. I don't know any way to NOT violate that stupid law.

Those things are off limits here per the influence of the local IFB and similar churches on the school board. Content is constantly being censured, eliminated, changed to fit very puritanical views. Unfortunately, this is a small.community, low population so once it becomes okay for parents to dictate content and you have even a small group of vocal extremists, they have a tendency to win due to the complacency of others. My husband and I have attended school board meetings before and were totally disrespected because people know we homeschooled. Apparently, that means we aren't allowed to care at all about the students of our community. 😡

I always think issues like these are "follow the dollars" situations. They frustrate the stuffing out of me.

Our fundamentalists locally are very extreme. One of the pastors actually told the school.board that for high school literature, why don't they just read and discuss Little House on the Prairie! And when the police wanted to have school assembly about the dangers of drinking and driving, the Temperance League local chapter protested and got it canceled because they were angry that the police would not condemn all alcohol consumption across the board. Basically, if the police would not say it is a sin to drink, it wad not acceptable. So when I say fundie, I mean extreme. We have a LOT of extremism here. I should have explained that better.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I am really loving Sid!!

LOL, I was just thinking that I have one adult child who as a teen, would have looked at all 600 prompts if they had been in p.s., and would have pulled out the just right one to " push my buttons", even if it was never assigned or discussed, and would have hinted that they had to write about it even if that was not true. I learned quickly to deal rather like "Mr. Spock" with that kid. I am so glad that one matured out of that characteristic.

I think that depends on what the student is going to major in. Seriously. Nursing, Pre-Med, Psychology, History, Art History, Anthropology? Ya, don't send them to college for that if they cannot handle discussing the nitty gritty of sex and issues related to it. It is not appropriate to expect content to be dumbed down because adults want to be clinical psychologists but can't handle discussing sex abuse in their undergraduate studies. Many of these majors require coverage of this content from year one going forward.

This. In years past, when I subbed at the local high school, I subbed in DE and AP classes. The books for DE were dictated by the college. However, it was very easy to assign the content according to dealing with 15, 16, 17 year olds. The syllabus might say, "write X number of short answer/long answer/essays off X number of prompts" followed.by a grading rubric, but it didn't say exactly which prompts out of a sea of prompts provided for each unit of subject matter. I never once had a lesson plan in which I thought a teacher assigned an inappropriate prompt. Now would the tee-totaling, local fundies have thought some of it was inappropriate? For darn sure. They might have a cow these days about a writing prompt about the drinking and driving, and not leaving your drink (alcoholic or not) unattended, and what not because how dare we insinuate that a teen might go to a party or a restaurant with a bar. But we are headed for a one way ticket to zero education if we allow public education to be dictated by one set of extremist, religious beliefs. I am sure the KKK family was not happy about the coverage of WWII in Western Civ. But too bad! The people, through the federal and state government, have a right to say "Anti Semitism and Fascism is bad. Bad. Always bad." The function of p.s. is to educate the citizenry for proper involvement in citizenship across the board, not to perpetuate specific religious beliefs. I think this is lost on many parents who honestly expect the school to function as an extension of their own home and church. That is a hard no. We simply cannot judge a teacher for being provided x resources and books by the college for a college class, and for students being required to use those books. It is appropriate for the school district to have the curriculum committee look at the DE options and evaluate those course syllabi and books, then choose what their school will offer. It is then the responsibility of parents to not sign their kids up for classes they think are over the line. If something inappropriate is assigned, there are ways to deal with it, however, I think the assignment needs to be egregiously inappropriate in order to require action because these are college classes meant to cover adult content. So if the teacher did not assign one of the really concerning sex writing prompts, I think that the parents in that community need to calm down. Instead, use the fact that these prompts exist and are in the text, to discuss family morality at home, to discuss how to advocate for oneself, to develop and defend personal boundaries while remaining calm and professional.

Yes, very much this these days. And it shows when these students enter college and the workforce. There is a gap there for those that had the watered down content vs. the regular course. Our local school district got threatened by both the CC and Uni they have DE through with their programs being pulled because of the relentless push of parents and principals on teachers to dumb it down, not fail anyone, etc. They have almost zero APs these days. So if they lose DE, there is nothing available for the top 25%-30% of the student body. Schoolcraft Community College here in Michigan offers some really decent online DE. It seems like their instructors have really thought it out well, and some are 100% only online instructors with a lot of experience. When some area parents wanted to pull their high schoolers due to lack of covid protocols and the dwindling number of academic offerings for their kids, I pointed them to Schoolcraft online (way too far to commute and especially on our winter side roads) and said they could "homeschool" this way submitting both the ps. transcript for their 1st two years of high school, plus their college transcripts. But, they have to pay out of pocket because this school is nor contracted locally for DE. Thus, it ends up being a haves/have nots once again. The haves could make it happen for their kids. The have nots, once more, stuck with crap. Makes my heart break and my brain twitch.

In our area, the CC or university does not send professors. Instead an unqualified high school teacher is micro managed to provide the content from the university. So the quality of coursework is variable in quality (those resources, texts, exams, and content are dictated) based on the high school teachers' abilities. And given the sheer number who do not pass the AP exams for their AP classes, I can say it has become more of the same watering down that we have come to expect of public schools. This same district, when I was in high school, the DE was "drive yourself to the university" so no watering down. When I was 15, I began living with my aunt and uncle in their town outside Flint, so I could take DE from the University of Michigan, Flint. I was rarely M-F back at home on my high school campus, mostly just for required assemblies, and standardized tests. However, if those things conflicted with my college class schedule, I could file a form to opt out. So surrounded by an adult environment, I can say that I was exposed to a lot of sex, drugs, and rock n roll, LOL...the very things my parents' fundie church was having a cow over. I was fine though. And since I was headed eventually to a university with a conservatory like music department, and a very hippy humanities department, it was a good environment for me to get my feet wet.

Dmmelter, I 100% agree. I do feel that DE on high school campus really blurs things, and if parents have their way, will result in watered down content. I left for college, a university with a conservatory quality music department, at 16. I had been advocating for myself and my education since 14. So it is hard for me to imagine having a parent attempt to micromanage the content of adult classes. It would be better for parents who are against adult content for their teens to not use DE at all. Since we homeschooled, our kids had DE on the college campus.

Michigan was down to 1400 ish cases per day for Friday, Saturday, Sunday - reported on Monday. If we get it below 1000 a day, I may wear my KN95 to get a haircut so long as none of the local schools or churches sport an outbreak.

I question if 50 k'ers with one adult and no aide can be educated well within the parameters of public education. Parochial schools have far more leeway. They cannot be the "test case" for what works in the p.s. I am talking about elementary aged. I taught in a Lutheran K-8 for many years. We were not allowed more than 28 per class room, and numerous studies produced by Lutheran Universities showed that maximum adult to child ratio for teaching academics was 17, and for every child added after that, achievement went down. At 29, it was simply unacceptable. But, due to budgets, many schools still operated at 30 per classroom. However, that was the limit. Good teachers made it work. Regardless of the rare "we had 50 and were just fine" anecdata, it is actually quite bad in general practice with students so young. And in order to make this happen, children will no longer have desks or tables, just chairs and clipboards, with books stacked under their chairs, because none of the classrooms are big enough for this. The high school classes such as regular freshman English and Algebra 1 are expected to top 50 due to loss of high school faculty and inability to hire.

50. 50 kids per classroom. This is what my rural district is predicting for next year. Sure, that's gonna work. 😬

Ding ding ding ding ding! This one wins a chicken dinner!

Here the PS teacher who teaches DE must use the materials and syllabus the college provides and follow it to the letter since the student is receiving college credit from that university or community college. There really isn't any choice in the matter. At the rate things are going, there won't be any public school. Our district has lost so many to retirement and just quitting, that they have no hope of giving anything resembling education to students, and the teachers left are terrified of the parents. So many of these "adults" are aggressive and threatening all.the.time. It isn't just a few, it is quickly becoming the majority. Universities in my area have announced they are cutting back their teacher ed majors/departments. Every year there are fewer and fewer students, and it is impractical to continue to fully fund the department. I don't have a problem with the book if the sexually-inappropriate-for-minors type writing prompts were not assigned. The fact that the writing prompts exist is not an issue. Just choose not to use those. I do think that parents who have a freaking cow about this stuff are often times profoundly naive about what their teens are "writing" about on social media or texting or..... So maybe take care of things at home first before going ballistic at the school. Teaching is the very LAST profession I would encourage anyone to go into these days. Shoot with all my years of experience, I still am unwilling to even sub. I can't imagine throwing a newbie into the lion's den.

We have nothing super special planned. We never do. But, I am making Mexican gumbo, fajita veggies, yellow rice, and lemonade slushies. I don't have to make dessert. We celebrated one of our son's birthdays over the weekend, and my mother in law made two chocolate pies. So there are leftovers for tonight. I did buy Mark some chocolate covered coffee beans. Hope you all have a lovely day and evening.