If you haven’t seen the film, this would be a great opportunity to see a free screening with other interesting people.  If you have seen it, the panel discussion planned for after the film should be a real treat.  Here’s the UA press release:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Waiting for Superman, an award-winning documentary examining the crisis of public education in America, will be screened Sept. 15 on the University of Arkansas campus as part of this year’s lecture series presented by the department of education reform. A panel discussion will follow.

Davis Guggenheim, who also directed An Inconvenient Truth, takes a comprehensive look at the nation’s education system and its failings in Waiting for Superman, while telling the stories of five families who are determined to give their children a chance at academic success. In the process, Guggenheim takes on the issues of teachers’ unions, entrenched school bureaucracies and the controversial promise of public charter schools. 

After the screening, which begins at 6 p.m. in the Union Theater at the Arkansas Union, education experts Howard Fuller and Christopher Heller will debate education reform issues. Reed Greenwood, former dean of the College of Education and Health Professions, will moderate the discussion.

“Waiting for Superman has sparked a national discussion about education reform,” said Jay P. Greene, head of the department of education reform and holder of an endowed chair. ”We wanted to continue that discussion in Arkansas by bringing Howard Fuller and Chris Heller together to share their different perspectives as we screen the movie.”

Fuller holds the rank of Distinguished Professor of education and is director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University. He was formerly superintendent of schools in Milwaukee and chaired the Charter School Review Committee for the city of Milwaukee.

Fuller, co-founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, has long been recognized as a pioneer in education reform and is one of the nation’s leading advocates for providing low-income children with educational options.

Heller, an attorney with the Friday, Eldredge and Clark firm in Little Rock, works primarily in the area of education law. As attorney for the Little Rock School District, Heller has challenged the legality of charter schools in central Arkansas.

Hard to believe, but rumors are swirling that tomorrow will bring a major development in the case, including the immediate release of 2 of the 3.  After all these years, I’m hesitant to believe it…but hopeful.

See here.

If you’re not familiar with Salman Khan, you should be.  His vision for changing the way education is delivered is potentially game changing. He’s basically offering organized online educational content for free to anyone with an internet connection. Parents can create an account on the Khan Academy website and use the resources there to provide video instruction and assessment to their children while monitoring their progress.  And it’s all FREE.  Here’s a recent appearance he made on the Colbert Report.

Excuses, excuses ……  It happens in every walk of life.  It’s difficult to hold to high standards and keep expectations up …  It’s hard not to make excuses when obstacles get in our way.

Our favorite baseball team would be great, except …

• they keep battling one injury after another, and ….
• they can’t seem to get a fair shake from the umpires, and …
• teams like the Yankees just have too much money!

Or, my sales division would be doing a great job this year, except …

• this economy is making all of our customers skittish, and …
• new government regulations are slowing us down, and …
• upper management keeps cutting our budgets.

And, yes, this even happens in schools.  In fact, our own school district is really great, and we would be doing great, except …

• the state policymakers keep tying our hands with silly regulations, and …
• those tests are wasting our time and killing our creativity, and …
• the kids that come to our schools are just not ready or able to learn!

As these made-up examples illustrate, the “victim” mindset is by no means only found in schools.  We can find it everywhere and probably all engage in “excuse-making” to some degree in our own lives.  This is why it has been so refreshing over the past few weeks to engage in the Spotlights on Success project for the OEP.

In this project, we were able to observe and speak with educators and school leaders at five schools across Arkansas with wonderful records of performance, despite facing obstacles that have slowed down schools for years.  Very few schools have figured out how to effectively educate students who are just learning English, or racially diverse student groups, or students burdened with substantial economic disadvantages.

But these schools are figuring it out! And they’re not making excuses.  They didn’t spend their time talking about the problems that the kids brought with them to school, or the numerous requirements levied on them by state policymakers, or any other external challenges.  Instead, they talked about teaching better lessons, about working together and working harder, and mostly about improving the lives of their students by delivering a quality education and expecting the best from the kids.

We were lucky to get to spend a few hours in these schools.  Here’s hoping more schools follow their lead.  If you’d like to read more, visit our site.  Or, better yet, visit the 2011 Summer Leadership Institute, sponsored by the University of Central Arkansas, THIS FRIDAY from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM at the Brewer-Hegeman Conference Center at UCA.

Bravo to these five “No-Excuses” Schools in AR that are recognized in the OEP report … and to the many others that are not recognized here but continue to look for success rather than for excuses!

– Gary Ritter, Director of UA OEP

You may recall the case of Kimberly Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mom who was jailed last February for lying about her address in order to get her children into a better school.  Now a homeless Bridgeport, Connecticutt mother has been arrested for doing the same thing.  How can a homeless person lie about their address, you might ask?  Well, apparently the homeless shelter where she had been sleeping was in a particular low-performing school district, so she used the address of her child’s babysitter to get into a better school.  Now she’s in jail, her child has been removed from the good school, and the babysitter has been evicted.  The mayor of Bridgeport, Richard Moccia, (you can just call him Dick) said “This now sends a message to other parents that may have been living in other towns and registering their kids with phony addresses.”  Here’s more from the Stamford Advocate.

Last week Rep. Denny Altes (R-Fort Smith) introduced a Bill (House Bill 1032) that would allow the State Board of Ed to develop standards for Bible studies to be offered in public schools.  At face value, the Bill seems reasonable enough.  The Bible is an enormously influential book, and it certainly shouldn’t be off-limits to acknowledge it in schools.  Here’s some of the very reasonable language that is written into the Bill:

“The State Board of Education shall allow for an elective academic study of the Bible course or courses that consist of a nonsectarian, nonreligious academic study of the Bible and its influence on literature, art, music, culture, and politics to be offered to students in public school districts…”

That sounds perfectly reasonable.  Here’s more:

“An academic study of the Bible course offered by a public school district shall:

(1) Be taught in an objective and nondevotional manner with no attempt made to indoctrinate students as to either the truth or falsity of the biblical materials or texts from other religious or cultural traditions.”

“It should be taught. The Bible is the oldest, most accurate, most popular history book on the face of the Earth. So why can’t we teach that in school?”

It’s statements like that, Denny.  That’s why.

It’s probably only a matter of days before we hear that John Pelphrey will no longer be Arkansas’ basketball coach.  I think the only thing that can save him at this point would be four wins in four days, and let’s face it, that isn’t going to happen.

Seth Gunderson, over at the Fayetteville Flyer, has an interesting post filled with facts and figures if you’re interested.  But, if you’ve been to Bud Walton this year and seen all the empty seats, then you’re already aware of the only facts and figures that really matter.

And, as if things weren’t already bad enough for Pel, now UALR is going to the NCAA tournament.  Let me repeat that: Yes, UALR is going to the Big Dance.

Then, news broke this morning that Pelphrey has violated NCAA rules and there will be an investigation.  Ruh-roh.

Personally, I wanted Pel gone last year (see earlier posts here and here).  In a nutshell, he can’t seem to keep players and he can’t develop the few that do stick around. 

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.  Speculation about Mike Anderson coming here is widespread, though thus far Mike isn’t talking.  Friends of mine from Missouri say there is no chance Mike will leave them.  I hope they’re wrong.

See you in 2011.

It’s about time.  The Arkansas State Supreme Court is finally granting the West Memphis Three their day in court. And it won’t involve the incompetent David Burnett.  From MSNBC:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The three men convicted in the grisly murders of three West Memphis Cub Scouts won new hearings Thursday to argue their innocence, more than 15 years after they were sent to prison despite scant physical evidence linking them to the crime scene.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered the hearings to decide whether new DNA analysis — and other evidence not introduced at the 1994 trials — could lead a reasonable jury to acquit death-row inmate Damien Echols as well as Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, who are serving life sentences.

The ruling was a major win for Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley, who are known to sympathizers as the West Memphis Three and have gained the support of celebrities as well as legal scholars who say they were wrongfully convicted. Echols has been on Arkansas’ death row since 1994, when he was 20, after being convicted in the deaths of 8-year-olds Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. The three boys were found beaten, nude and hog-tied in an area known as Robin Hood Hills in West Memphis.

“Damien is thrilled with the court’s decision,” said his wife, Lorri Davis. “It is the best news he has heard in his case in the 17 years he has been on death row.”

Echols’ attorneys called Thursday’s decision a “landmark victory” and praised the high court for allowing Echols to pursue his claims of innocence. Prosecutors sought to limit what evidence could be introduced under the state’s DNA law, which the Legislature passed in 2001 to give inmates an avenue to pursue exoneration.

“The decision also will affect the case of every wrongly convicted Arkansas prisoner who files a DNA innocence petition in the future,” attorneys Dennis Riordan, Donald Horgan and Deborah Sallings said in a statement.

The Supreme Court rebuked Circuit Court Judge David Burnett for not holding a hearing on the DNA evidence before rejecting Echols’ request for a new trial in 2008. Burnett had ruled that the crime-scene DNA evidence — which shows no trace of Echols or the two other men convicted of the murders — was legally inconclusive and not enough to prove innocence.

“While there is a significant dispute in this case as to the legal effects of the DNA test results, it is undisputed that the results conclusively excluded Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley as the source of the DNA evidence tested,” the court wrote Thursday.

Prosecutors maintained that the absence of their DNA wasn’t enough to prove the three men are innocent and that a jury convicted them on other evidence.

“As I’ve stated before, it is a testament to the fact that our system affords inmates multiple opportunities to be heard that this matter remains in court,” Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said. “We respect the decision handed down by the Supreme Court and my office intends to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to defend the jury verdicts in this case.”

The court also said that the new hearings should focus on all evidence that could prove the men’s innocence or guilt, not just the DNA results. Echols’ lengthy appeal includes affidavits alleging juror misconduct, claiming that the jury considered a confession that Misskelley made to police. That confession was never introduced as evidence at trial because Misskelley recanted it and refused to testify against Echols and Baldwin.

It was not clear when the new hearings would occur, and the court ordered that a new judge be reassigned to the case because Burnett was elected this year to the state Senate. The district in which the cases will be heard has 11 judges — and two are the original prosecutors in the Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley murder trials.

Administrative Judge Ralph Wilson’s office said Thursday that he was reviewing the order and the judges’ schedules before deciding who gets the case.

Burnett, who was at the Capitol for freshman orientation for state senators, said he had not heard about the ruling Thursday.

“I made my opinion and they made theirs. That’s the way the system works,” Burnett said. “I did what I thought was appropriate at the time. Times change and circumstances change, and I guess they had a different view than I did.”

Echols’ attorneys also said they would ask the court to bypass the evidentiary hearing and grant a new trial.

“We would be prepared to present the compelling evidence of Mr. Echols’ innocence to the circuit court at the hearing mandated by today’s decision,” they said. “It is clear, however, that the people of Arkansas will never be satisfied that a correct and just result has been reached in this case unless and until a new trial is granted to Mr. Echols and his codefendants.”

The case has drawn interest far beyond Arkansas. In August, a rally in Little Rock to support Echols’ legal fund featured Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, actor Johnny Depp and Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines and drew more than 2,000 people.

Over at the Fayetteville Flyer, they’ve announced that organizers in Fayetteville are planning a local Rally to Restore Sanity.  If you’ve not heard about the rally, it is being held in conjunction with Jon Stewart’s planned event in Washington D.C. later this month.  From the Fayetteville Flyer:

“Tens of thousands of people are expected to show up to the rally on the National Mall, and yesterday, we learned that UA students Roger Haak and Michael Baker Brown are organizing a local version on Friday, Oct. 29 at Wilson Park here in Fayetteville.”

*****

“I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler,” “9-11 was an outside job,” and “I’m not afraid of Muslims, Tea Partiers, Socialists, Immigrants, Gun Owners, Gays, but I am kind of scared of spiders” are some of the signs Stewart suggested for the rally.”

The rally sounds like a good idea to me.  I was reminded how ridiculous things have gotten when I heard the following ad featured on NPR this morning.  After watching it, my only question is:  What else could you ever need to know about Sharron Angle?