News

By Jon Marc Taylor

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

                                                                                                                    — Thomas Paine

Last month, Missouri’s governor (and former two-term Attorney General) released his proposed budget, calling for a “drastic” 12.5 percent cut to the public higher education allocation to balance the state^’s books. This cut, nigh “hacking” of 100 million someodd-dollars from the forthcoming public higher education budget, is on top of years stretching into decades of cuts and less-than-in flat ion increases.

By Garry W. Johnson

A reporter visited the websites of the high school’s accreditation agencies, the In­ternational Accrediting Agency for Online Universities and the Universal Council for Online Education Accreditation, and found they provided no address, names of staff, or listing of schools they certify.

Employees of Belford refused to give straight forward answers when a reporter called and asked why the accrediting agen­cies had such vague websites. When the re­porter mentioned that the agencies weren’t listed in the U.S. Department of Education’s database, the employee respon­ded – correctly, but irrelevantly – that the education department doesn’t accredit schools. Then he hung up. The reporter also called the accrediting agencies twice, but no one answered.

By Garry W. Johnson

You just can’t trust anybody anymore.   GED  and  college  correspondence graduates are finding more and more that the certificates they worked so hard for (and/or paid through the nose for) are not worth the paper they are printed on. Even worse, some are being ripped off through scholarship scams with nothing to show for their effort but debt.

THE DUBIOUS GED

If you’ve come into the prison system and find yourself sitting in a GED class because your credentials were “unverifiable,” you are not alone. Students across the country are finding GEDs they paid as much as $1,500 for are nothing more than counterfeits produced by a “diploma mill.”

These are the best of times for me, because in all my years of teaching I have always attempted to measure my success as a teacher.  I am happy to see “science” has been added to the “art” of teaching, and I believe the two can be combined nicely.

In this blog, I want to talk about how we unlock all of that success. After motivating the students, providing a safe disciplinary environment, and organizing the classroom, we get down to the “meat” of our purpose. I’ll offer scenarios and anecdotes of things that have worked for me.

“The goal of the MAC program is to provide assistance and support to these children and their caregivers by improving families’ access to much needed resources and encouraging their children’s school success. Our goal is accomplished through strategies that address both the needs of the children and their caregivers. A core strategy includes support groups in the school that help children better understand and cope with the parent’s incarceration. Groups are organized by age and meet regularly for eight weeks and then decelerate to biweekly meetings for the remainder of the school year.

Assisting Families of Inmates is a terrific Virginia-based organization which supports families of inmates. Their website is https://afoi.org/ and it is highly recommended that you head over there and see all that they have to offer. This is especially true if you live in Virginia and have a friend or loved on in prison.

AFOI’s Milk and Cookies (MAC) Children’s Program is one of the best support programs for children of the incarcerated that I have ever heard of. According to AFOI’s website, this program includes the following services:

•Children’s support groups.

•Information and groups for parents/caregivers on the special needs of their children.

I use my statistical data to develop my own goals. When we can look back and see what we did, then we can predict. I always know my numbers, so I can predict growth for the next year and figure out how I want to improve.

In my self-contained classroom, I did a compilation of 180 students I taught over a three-and one-half-year period. Of those 180 students who came through my classroom, 66 passed the GED exam. When I subtracted out those who were removed because of discipline issues, went home before they could get their GED, or quit, 75% of my students passed the GED test.

Let’s talk a little bit about collecting information and data. We all have been made to do it more often in recent years. I enjoy it and have always done it.  Data offers a way for me to see changes that need to be made, and where I can improve. When we stop looking for ways to improve, that’s when we get stale, when students start losing interest, and learning is not happening like it should. So try to stay very fresh.

I don’t keep statistics in order to be a boring person who’s a numbers freak. Rather, I actively analyze those numbers.  Obviously, I have to collect them for the administration, but I also like to use them for my own improvement.