Christmas Eve Walk For Children

Every once in a while you meet someone who does everything he / she can to make the lives of others better. Austin Haynes is one of those people. He’s a local realtor and this Christmas Eve will be walking 75 to every Boys and Girls Club in the area to raise funds for the Clubs and CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). Austin plans to end his night at his local church in time for Midnight Mass Services.

Austin’s release is below. I know times are tough, for all of us. If you can, please consider giving a donation to Austin. Thanks!

Friends,

The Walk for Children is fast approaching, as are the Holidays. Training is becoming quite intense and my feet feel as if I am walking on glass most of the time. The final route of 75 miles is just about laid out; I should have it finished this evening. I will start walking at Midnight Christmas Eve at the CASA headquarters in Manassas and proceed over to all of the Boys and Girls Clubs, as well as the McCoart Building and City Hall. I hope to finish at St John Paul the Great in time for Midnight mass Christmas morning. I probably will not be very presentable at that point!

Thank you so much for those that have already given or have offered to walk with me and raise additional monies. WE ALL LOVE TO RECEIVE AT CHRISTMAS, BUT PLEASE REMEMBER IT IS A TIME FOR GIVING! The funds raised can be designated for the Boys and Girls Clubs and/or CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). Please mail you checks to Christopher Real Estate Co. 9316 Center St Manassas VA 20110 c/o WALK. If you wish your money split between the organizations, put split in the memo section and make it to CASA, or your just make it direct to the organization you wish to support and mail to the above address.

These children need our help!! Cases of abuse, both sexual and physical have risen with the downfall of the economy. CASA must put on an extra staff person and needs several additional advocates to handle its case load. The Boys and Girls Club is trying desperately to reopen the doors to its Heiser Club in Dumfries.

Just this year in Greater Manassas and Prince William, we have seen and read of the abuse and deaths of several children. I need your help!!! Everyone knows about budget cuts in local and state government, these groups need us, the people to stand up! I will walk for 24 hours to bring notice to this desperate situation, please support me.

Finally, let me thank several who have already reached out in support:

Marty Nohe will walk some and raise money
Mark Worrilow will walk and raise money
Sherry Day will walk and raise money
Kelly Jiminez will walk and raise money
Jane Beyer who I always bounce ideas off
Fred, Ron, Anne, Hal, Tim, Jay and others who have sent checks
Maureen Caddigan, who encouraged me to give this a try

Thank you,
Austin Haynes
Boys and Girls Clubs
CASA

Never Cease to Remember…….

November 19, 1863

Gettysburg, PA

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

- – Abraham Lincoln

Great night to watch for falling stars

Seems the Leonid metro shower will be peaking tonight through Wednesday. With clouds expected Wednesday, it seems like Tuesday will be the best night to go out and look for falling stars.

Thanksgiving Week Early Closing Schedule

In case you forgot, Thanksgiving will be upon us soon.  Prince William County Schools will be close early on Wednesday the 25th and will be closed on Thursday the 26th and Friday the 27th.  The Wednesday early closing schedule has been released by the school district and can be found here.

Rigorous Standards are Part of the Battle

With the recent release if the NGA’s Common College Readiness Standards there’s been quite a bit of emphasis on academic standards lately.  But tough, appropriate standards are only half of the battle.   We also have to be concerned with how the standards are implemented.

Take Virginia, and its Standards of Learning.

In its recent revision of the Virginia Standards of Learning for Mathematics, the Virginia Department of Education patted itself on the back for eliminating calculators in elementary grades and reducing the number of standards.  Unfortunately this is nothing more than a shell game.

In Grade 3 Virginia students sit for the SOL exams for the first time.  Just glancing at the 2009 revision of the grade 3 standards reveals that the number of standards has dropped from 25 to 20, and calculators, which used to be an integral part of the grade 3 standards, have been removed.  If you only looked at the standards you’d be convinced that Virginia had successfully reduced the number of standards and eliminated calculator use amongst elementary students.

You’d be wrong on both counts.

The Standards of Learning for math are broken into segments – Number and Number Sense, Computation and Estimation, Measurement, Geometry, Probability and Statistics, and Patterns, Functions and Algebra.  Under the previous SOLs, Grade 3 students were expected to demonstrate fluency on 25 distinct standards. That number has been reduced to 20 in the 2009 version of the SOLs.  But closer examination reveals that only two standards have actually been removed – the two standards on decimals were moved from Grade 3 to Grade 4.  The remaining reduction in the count of standards was accomplished by consolidating “like” standards.

For instance, in the Number and Number Sense strand, standards 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 were simply combined together under standard 3.1 as 3.1 (a), (b), and (c) and the two standards on fractions were combined together as points (a) and (b) under one standard.

In Grade 4 the number of math standards was cut from 22 to 16, yet only two concepts were removed and a number of concepts were actually expanded in scope.  The same “technique” appears to have been used in almost every grade.

This is not to imply that the consolidation of standards was poorly done or that the revised standards lower expectations for Virginia students.  However, claiming that the goal of reducing the number of standards was met can not be supported because that goal was accomplished by combining standards rather than eliminating unnecessary content.

The standards themselves only tell part of the story; the rest of the story comes from how those standards are implemented.  In Virginia the state develops a Curriculum Framework which explains each standard in more detail and provides the essential understanding, knowledge, and skills students are expected to obtain and demonstrate to have “mastered” each standard.  While calculators have been removed from the elementary school standards themselves in Virginia, they rear their ugly heads in full force in the Curriculum Framework.

In Virginia, calculators are suggested as an essential learning tool for children starting in kindergarten.  In the currently proposed Curriculum Framework for kindergarten, calculators are suggested as an essential tool for teaching kindergarten students how to skip count, for basic addition and subtraction facts for 1st and 2nd grade students, and in 5th grade calculators are recommended for any problem which is “too tedious” to solve by hand.  This is in a grade where the most difficult standard calls for dividing a three digit decimal by a three digit decimal where only one digit isn’t a zero (e.g. .888 / .001).

I recognize that calculators are “limited” to skip counting in kindergarten, but I have to ask what educational value is derived from having a 5-year-old hit the plus sign 10 times when he’s learning how to skip count by tens to 100, or what problem a 5th grade student would have to solve that would be so tedious that plugging and chugging the numbers into a calculator provided a better understanding of the concept than solving the problem manually.

There are many states, like Virginia, with strong standards and really bad instructional programs.  The opening for poor programs comes when the standards are bogged down with unnecessary content and dumbed down with calculators.  That Virginia requires elementary students to use calculators, and allows them on the 5th grade SOL exams, is a travesty.