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Homeboy Industries–"Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job"

So many at-risk youths do not have opportunities to be educated or receive help with possible job placement. The mission of Homeboy Industries: Jobs, not Jails: Homeboy Industries assists at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training, and education. Homeboy Industries located in Los Angeles, California

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Bad Boys of Summer-San Quentin Baseball

San Francisco is known for its baseball team, the San Francisco Giants. But behind the prison walls of the maximum-security prison, San Quentin is the San Quentin Giants. This is a baseball team made up of hard-core convicts doing serious time in one of the country’s most notorious prisons. The baseball diamond field is housed

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Honoring Diversity

It takes a lot of work, but once lesson plans and assessments are developed, I merely hang on to them. As I have mentioned, I can use them at other times, because six or eight months later, I have almost entirely new students.

I have no choice but to honor diversity and to individualize instruction. It is an understatement to say I have vast diversity in my classroom. I teach twelve months out of the year, but the students flow in and out on a weekly basis. Several students leave, and several enter each month. There are set standards of what needs to be mastered, but each student is on an individual plan and on an individual schedule.

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Robbing the Scholastic Peter to Pay for the Incarcerated Paul: The Show-Me State Showing Its Mulishness (1)

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 states 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.

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Finances to Degrees, U.S. Adult Education is Fraught with Fraud

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.

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From Finance to Degrees, U.S. Adult Education is Fraught with Fraud

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.”

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The Fortune Society-Building People, Not Prisons

In our society of overcrowded prisons and drastically cut funding for prison education, it is hopeful to see an organization whose mission is to support successful reentry into society and to promote alternatives to prison incarceration. Many inmates who are incarcerated have made mistakes in the past and have paid for their mistakes by serving

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PAWS Cell Dog Training Program

The P.E.T.S (Pawsitive Education Training Solutions) Program, also known as the Cell Dog Program–is to say the least–heart-warming and life-changing. I challenge you to watch the video and not feel tears of warmth, joy, hope and happiness as you watch the stories of both dogs and man realize they have a second chance in society.

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Tiered Assessment

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.

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AFOI's Milk and Cookies Children's Program (3)

Perhaps the most effective measure of the MAC Program’s success is in statements made by those who have participated in it. On AFOI’s website https://afoi.org/, under the heading “Why I like the Milk and Cookies Program…” statements from the child participants are provided. They read as follows: As you can see, Assisting Families of Inmates’

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