COLUMN: Don’t believe the hype about violence at schools

Sometimes the best service the media can provide is a simple message.

Stay calm. Things aren’t that bad.

Whenever newspapers and the networks report on a school shooting – much less a mini-spree of them – the temptation is to think that the world is spiraling out of control.

The cable news networks start frothing for ratings. Up go the on-screen graphics – open-ended fear-mongering like “Is your child in danger?”

Self-appointed school-security experts – looking to make a buck as consultants – start e-mailing reporters about the urgent threat to America’s children.

And legislators, eager for five minutes with Nancy Grace, start overreacting and throwing around dumb ideas.

Everybody wins – except for anyone who wants to point out the truth. Which is that violence in schools has plummeted over the past decade.

It may be hard to think about that when your TV shows a line of Amish buggies rolling in a funeral procession – or when the country has three school shootings in a week’s time. But it’s the truth.

By just about every measure, school violence has been falling steadily since the early 1990s. Federal statistics say incidents of serious school violence were twice as common in 1994 as they were in 2004. […]

Read More… from COLUMN: Don’t believe the hype about violence at schools

Cotton Bowl ‘ratty,’ but fans want to stay; Fair atmosphere, accessibility, tradition make up for blemishes

Oklahoma fan Ed Marburger has been coming to Texas-OU games for 29 years. And the idea of doing it anywhere other than the Cotton Bowl seems as wrong to him as crimson and cream on Sixth Street.

“You’d lose all the festivities and the atmosphere,” the Oklahoma City resident said. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

The football rivals have played at Fair Park since 1929 and have agreed to stay there through 2010. But it’s unclear where the Red River Rivalry will call home after that.

Dallas? Arlington? Austin and Norman?

The new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington is set to open in three years and promises to be the modern, plush facility the city-owned Cotton Bowl decidedly is not. The older stadium’s other major tenant, the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic on New Year’s Day, is considering making the move.

And others have pushed for the 106-year-old rivalry to become a home-and-home series.

But for many fans Saturday, taking the game out of its unique environment amid the State Fair of Texas would make it seem like less of an event.

“I don’t think anything in Arlington could be as big a deal as this,” said Annie Schuler, who was finishing off a mustard-topped corny dog as she entered the stadium before kickoff. “I don’t want to go out to the suburbs.” […]

Read More… from Cotton Bowl ‘ratty,’ but fans want to stay; Fair atmosphere, accessibility, tradition make up for blemishes

Progress cited in TAKS cheat probe; But initial investigation of five especially suspect schools far from done

State investigators are having some success finding evidence of TAKS cheating in their first wave of on-site investigations. But it may be another two months before those investigations – of less than 1 percent of schools flagged as suspicious – are completed.

The Texas Education Agency is reacting to findings by Caveon, a Utah test-security firm it hired last year to look for signs of cheating on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

Caveon flagged 699 Texas schools for a variety of reasons, such as unexplained leaps in scores, high numbers of erased answers, or groups of students with identical or nearly identical answer sheets.

This summer, TEA appointed a task force to examine the findings. Agency staffers began on-site investigations at five schools whose scores seemed particularly suspicious. The names of those schools haven’t been made public.

TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe said the investigative interviews were helpful in determining which of Caveon’s methods for detecting cheating can be supported through other evidence.

The task force, meeting Thursday in Austin, recommended a few changes to the methods investigators use. That includes interviewing a wider range of staff members on each campus under scrutiny. […]

Read More… from Progress cited in TAKS cheat probe; But initial investigation of five especially suspect schools far from done

Cheating hasn’t hurt teachers; Exclusive: Accused WHISD educators hired in other schools

On May 12, 2005, Texas education commissioner Shirley Neeley stood in the Wilmer-Hutchins school board chambers and announced the results of her agency’s investigation into cheating on the TAKS test.

“Twenty-two WHISD teachers were found guilty of cheating,” she said. “The investigation found inexcusable, illegal, unprofessional and unacceptable behavior on the part of these 22 individuals.”

Shortly after, the Wilmer-Hutchins schools were all shut down. But the careers of the teachers lived on.

At least 10 of the 22 Wilmer-Hutchins educators are now working in other North Texas public schools, a Dallas Morning News investigation found. None has faced official sanction, more than 2 1/2 years after the cheating took place.

Most were able to find new jobs weeks after Dr. Neeley’s statements.

They were able to do so in part because the body responsible for disciplinary actions against teachers, the State Board for Educator Certification, has been slow to act on the cases. The agency has a notorious backlog and a reputation for letting cases lie dormant, sometimes for more than two years.

In addition, state officials chose not to use their normal method to inform school districts of the findings of their investigation. Several of the school districts that now employ the teachers said they were unaware of the findings until informed by The News.

“I am absolutely dumbfounded,” said Lou Blanchard, director of the Treetops School International, a charter school in Euless. When her school hired a teacher named Betty Houston, Dr. Blanchard had no idea she was one of the teachers state investigators implicated in Wilmer-Hutchins. […]

Read More… from Cheating hasn’t hurt teachers; Exclusive: Accused WHISD educators hired in other schools