GoBigEd

Posted 9:51 AM by Susan Darst Williams

NEWS BRIEFS: GAY ACTIVIST RUNS FOR LINCOLN SCHOOL BOARD

Barbara Baier, a prominent lesbian activist, is running for the Sub-District 3 seat on the board of the state’s second-largest school district, the Lincoln Public Schools, in Tuesday’s election. She is secretary of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgendered (GLBT) Caucus of the State Democratic Party.

Ms. Baier wrote a blistering post-election column for the December 2004 newsletter of www.lancastercountydemocrats.org In it, she rails against “self-righteous Republicans” and exploitation of GLBT people by “the Christian right-wing for manipulative, political purposes.” She said George W. Bush was mainly elected because of vote-mongering from the “Christian fundamentalist pulpit” and that GLBT people need to “address the attack upon our families from the right wing. . . .”

Oh, yeah. That’s a person I’d like to see in charge of molding young people’s hearts and minds. NOT!

Note that she is endorsed by Planned Parenthood, which has come under fire nationally for the obnoxious content on its “sex ed” website for youngsters, www.teenwire.com

Also in Tuesday’s school-board election, note this endorsement: the Nebraska Right to Life PAC recommends Norman Dority for Subdistrict 5 of the LPS school board.

CREIGHTON STAT REVEALS GRADE INFLATION

Puffing out your chest because Junior has close to a 4.0? Might want to rethink that. A generation ago, 18% of the students who took the ACT or the SAT had an A or A- grade-point average, but now that figure has ballooned to 43%. This is according to information supplied in an ACT prep class that’s being held on Saturdays at Creighton University.

So nowadays, almost half the class has all A’s? Gee. It’s going to be a looooooong graduation ceremony, listening to all those valedictorians.

Until parents and taxpayers demand “truth in grading,” though, rampant grade inflation is going to continue to paint a phony picture about educational quality and progress. It threatens to make the one measurement that used to be reliable, the GPA, absolutely meaningless.

ARLINGTON GIRL TAKES STATE IN LITERATURE CONTEST

Beth Milan, a seventh-grader at Arlington Junior-Senior High School, has won first place in the state in the “Letters About Literature” contest sponsored by the Library of Congress Center for the Book, and Target Stores.

Her letter to the author of “She Said Yes,” the mother’s tribute to the girl who died in the Columbine school shooting, was chosen out of 203 entries statewide for the excellent way it expressed her strong, personal reaction to the tragedy.

She won $100 cash, a $50 Target gift certificate and other prizes. She now will compete for $500 in Target goods and a trip to the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., for herself, her parents, and a teacher.