This is a story about a charter school in my town of Chico, CA that had its charter revoked last night by the school board. I used to serve on that board, and I would have voted to pull the charter too. Of course, I never would have voted for it in the first place since the premise wasn’t sound to begin with. When a “green school” can’t make it in liberally thinking California, you know it had to be bad.
Excerpts from the Chico Enterprise Record:
As of this morning, there is no more Chico Green School.
On Wednesday night, after hearing impassioned pleas to give the charter school one more chance to prove its worth, the Chico Unified School District board of trustees, on a split vote, decided to revoke the school’s charter effective immediately.
…
Chico Green School received its charter in 2009, and opened its doors to students on Sept. 7, 2010.
Two days later, Chico Green received its first demand it fix things from the CUSD.
Through the following months, the school was accused of failing to produce a curriculum that met state standards, and failing to provide coursework that met the admissions requirements for the University of California or the California State University system.
The Chico Green School’s board of directors was also accused of various violations of the state’s open meeting law, the Brown Act.
In June, the school was also denied accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the agency that accredits schools.
Full story at the Chico Enterprise Record
kim says on August 18, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Let’s see what happens if we play the word change game:
I personally find some/most outspoken Atheists to be people I would rather not know (not getting into names though) but I think there is a serious flaw in your statement.
So, the propaganda has been stymied in that particular neck of the woods, but there are many more forests to search yet for the rotten timber.
Well done CUSD! And let’s hope that your children will come out of this awful example of educational mismanagement unscathed. May take a while, but youngsters can take it.
Some here confuse adaptation with evolution.
Prove that evolution caused single celled life forms to clump together to create multicell life forms.
Prove that evolution caused the cells in multicell life forms to specialize so that they could form organs.
Prove how evolution caused these multi-cell lifeforms to create bi-sexual evolution.
All adaptation has shown is that in life forms with a range of capabilities, those lifeforms with capabilities that best match the current environment will eventually come to dominate.
Russell’s Teapot says:
August 18, 2011 at 1:14 pm
You read something by one or two posters that you disagree with.
From that you declare that the comment section is an intellectual wasteland.
From that you declare that you will never be back.
And to think. You actually had the gall to lecture others about intolerance.
Re: Mark Wilson 12:26 pm
An interesting agument which I shall remember.
After reading Rare Earth (Ward & Brownlee, 2000) I have become firm in the belief:
“God does indeed play dice with the Universe. Whether God occasionally plays with loaded dice is an open question.”
I went off and read the article. It didn’t list any of the complaints, just that there were many complaints and directives. Does anyone have specific examples of what they did poorly and how well graduates did getting into college? Or where’s the beef in “After reciting a laundry list of alleged deficiencies in the school….” Your newspaper didn’t list a single item. Are the newspaper’s readers interested in being told the conclusion or is it that they can’t decide for themselves?
Brad S says:
August 18, 2011 at 12:02 pm
From what I’ve seen those who come out of faith based schools have a better education, are better people and behave better than those who don’t, especially as teenagers.
I find most atheists are an intolerant bunch.
As an avowed atheist who has been a member of the Mormon faith and the church of england and now lives in deepest catholic secular france I object to all the ridiculous comments about athiests. I became a non-believer when I started to study science. You see, science informs you to become skeptical and once you become skeptical you start to look for evidence and when you find no evidence or very week evidence you become “a non believer”. Simples.
No athiest ever went to war to fight for his beliefs, now did they ? The vast majority of past wars have been fought on religious grounds including the latest, AGW. So stop criticising my friends and look in your mirror. Are you the normal hypocritical beliver or are you an open minded, skeptic.?
Mark, I didn’t say I was tolerant. I’m clearly not. I merely pointed out that the assertion that ‘atheism is intellectually intolerable’ says nothing about atheism and something about the person that wrote it.
My future avoidance of the comments is not based, as you seem to think, on a few statements in this post – I’ve been reading WUWT for years. I’m just tired of sifting through off-topic dross in the comments. If I wanted to read the talk section of conservapedia, I’d go there.
Russell’s Teapot says:
August 18, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Dear Russell,
Did you just start reading at the point where Kim made the statement or did you entirely ignore the antagonistic comment at the top of the page? Its ok to disagree with Kim’s posit, but I find it irrational to complain her and Mark’s comments when the impetus for such comments sits atop of this page.
Nothing to say about that one? Well, probably wouldn’t help the intellectual environment in the comments page, anyway. BTW, if you’re going to wade through other areas of intellectual wastelands, it would probably be useful for you to understand there are several parts of the evolutionary theory which are demonstrable, but there are also parts that are not. ID in its general terms, is not incompatible with evolution.
It could be if you worked on raising your bar a bit, you could see the value of other people’s comments here. Sad? You betcha, its sad.
Best wishes,
James
“The Chico Green School’s board of directors was also accused of various violations of the state’s open meeting law, the Brown Act.”
========================================
That’s a black mark against them and man, are their faces red. I’m sure if they can convince the board that they can redress the shortcomings, they’ll soon be back in the pink. (Sorry about the purple prose.)
The vast majority of religion based charter schools seem to be able to satisfy the minimum academic and regulatory standards and thus maintain their charters.
This charter school experiment dedicated to the green religion appears to be different. Perhaps they, like so many of their co-religionist brethren , believed they didn’t need to follow rules designed for inferiors.
“Chico Green School received its charter in 2009, and opened its doors to students on Sept. 7, 2010. Two days later, Chico Green received its first demand it fix things from the CUSD.”
The moral of the story is that charter schools are not “independent” and are being hobbled by increased involvement by teacher’s unions and public school districts. It is very simple to see that a charter school which provides a superior education with far less spending than the public schools is a threat to the teacher’s unions. At this time, per student spending in LA area public schools is over $10,000. How is that working out for California? Are California’s taxpayers really getting a $10,000 education for their students? Any institution can do better with half as much. And home schoolers outperform them all.
“No athiest ever went to war to fight for his beliefs, now did they ?”
Tell that to the Soviets.
Russell’s Teapot says:
August 18, 2011 at 1:56 pm
I thought you swore you would never come back?
Hi Mark,
I can only speak personally, but I’d suspect I’m not alone in that the issue I have with the teaching of ID is that it belongs not in the science curriculum but the religion curriculum. Belief in a God or creator is the ultimate expression of faith and, as such, shouldn’t be seen as being subject to the rigours of scientific interrogation. It has its place in schools, but not in the science lab.
It’s not a scientific theory; rather it’s a theological revision of creation incorporating much scientific knowledge developed over the ages, but retaining a faith in a creator that started it all, a gap that (barring Harold Camping being correct) will never be filled by empirical evidence.
It does scientific integrity a disservice to give a free pass to a theory that can never put up its central tenet for forensic investigation and falsification. Similarly, it does spirituality and faith a disservice to teach as empirically proveable something which should require an acceptance that not all answers are attainable. ID is not incompatible with science, but it isn’t science. I doubt we’ll ever know the origins of this universe, so it takes a faith of some kind to settle on an answer in one’s mind (or an acceptance of that question not having an answer).
Evolution does an excellent job in explaining the development of life in its many forms and guises. ID adds little in scientific terms, but incorporates the role of a creator that made it all possible and gives a guiding hand. That aspect can’t be tested, and should therefore be saved for discussions of faith, spirituality and identity.
Personally, I see the null hypothesis as being that there isn’t a sentient being or God as creator, and see the alternative hypothesis as unproven and unproveable. I fully respect the right of others to see it very differently, faith being an utterly personal experience. Because of this, I just want ID to be framed in appropriate manner.
On the matter of the school being zapped, I dare say the reasons will emerge in due course. However, the excerpt “the school was accused of failing to produce a curriculum that met state standards” raises the not-unfamiliar suspicion of just how academically rigorous the greenies are. Why learn the facts when you can just browbeat other with emotive nonsense?
James,
I started reading at the beginning and yes, I did note the troll post in passing. I didn’t complain about Kim and Mark’s post; I pointed out common (often wilful) errors contained in them and then complained (I’ll even concede that it was in an inflammatory way) about the comments being an intellectual wasteland. I stand by that assessment – there are many of us outside of the US that find it incredibly damaging for polarised politics and conservative religiousity to appear to go hand-in-glove with scepticism in relation to orthodox CAGW science and policy.
Also, if you go back and read exactly what I said you’ll see that I didn’t say that the ‘Theory of Evolution’ was demonstrable – I said that ‘evolution’ was an observable and demonstrable fact.
That’s it; I’m done explaining myself.
Not so. Atheism is active denial of the existance of God. Its greek root means “to deny the gods”. At least understand what it is you are. Lack of belief is agnosticism. Its greek root means “not known” or “unknowable”.
It is entirely possible I missed the news story where evolution of one species into another was documented as it happened. I’d be grateful for a reference. No, fossils don’t count. Time lapse photography would be nice though. Documentation of the genetic and morphalogical changes would be good. Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath.
Followup to previous comment.
I did find a more detailed article on the complaints of the CUSD against Chico Green and many of the seemed extremely petty. I also found another summary on a blog devoted to exposing problems with charter schools that mentioned the school had 50 students. One of the CUSD complaints was Chico Green had accepted 11th graders — apparently they were only supposed to have 9th and 10th graders. The same blog said there had been “considerable turnover” in the directors.
This really seems like a school that just didn’t attract enough students to provide adequate administrative continuity, especially facing a hostile district establishment. There was apparently considerable internal friction between faculty and directors.
From the Oroville Mercury-Register on August 16:
“On June 30, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), the agency that
accredits schools, advised the Green School its program had not been approved. ”
This was another complaint of the CUSD, stating Chico Green students would be at a serious disadvantage getting into California universities. Although that is hardly material if they aren’t allowed to have 11th and 12th graders in the first place.
As I said earlier, this will have zero impact on the effective transmission of the AGW message into young skulls of mush everywhere.
Meanwhile, here in Atlanta Georgia, years of investigation have established that teachers and administrators undertook extensive cheating on standardized tests (CRCT) to boost scores. Bonuses were paid as a result. The recently resigned Superintendent has denied any knowledge of, or participation in this cheating, but because of her contract, her legal bills will be paid by the Atlanta Public School system. Attempts to discipline other APS employees implicated in the scandal will cost millions to work through the elaborate disciplinary procedures mandated by union contracts. I predict most will keep both their jobs and their bonuses.
It’s hard to cheer the closing of one 50-student school that may have been obsessed with the Green agenda when we can do nothing about a system with 50,561 students held hostage to unaccountable teachers and administrators, while failing to impart the bare minimum essential basics of education. That’s the charter which really needs to be revoked.
Chico, eh? Yeah, I threw back a couple of beers or more at Madison Bear Garden and other dens of iniquity in Chico in the late 70’s early 80s. I was always shocked to learn that peple with PhDs in Chico would rather wait tables than leave for a real job, but that’s Chico.
@Mark Wilson says:
“Some here confuse adaptation with evolution.
Prove that evolution caused single celled life forms to clump together to create multicell life forms.”
Easy, come morning, have look see in your mirror. But, of course, for some people one has to wonder, are they the result of evolution or their bodies’s cells adaptation to the glue they sniff?
:p
Russell’s Teapot says:
August 18, 2011 at 2:34 pm
James,
I started reading at the beginning ……….. That’s it; I’m done explaining myself.
==============================================================
Russell, we get in these discussions from time to time. It’s bound to happen with the diverse group which entails skepticism. While I’ve often engaged, it has almost always been in response to some snarky or derogatory comment. I think it is healthy to see and participate in the discussions, though they invariably turn to something less than congenial. As to explaining yourself…… when going after other commentators here, expect to be challenged. Whether you respond or not, obviously, is up to you. That isn’t so bad, though, it sharpens the skills. There isn’t a better group of people to bounce ideas off of. All you have to do is engage in an aggressive manner, if there is a hole in your idea or thought, odds are you’ll have it explained to you in a short period of time. As to this question of our origins…… well, I think generations from now, there will be similar discussions.
I am truly glad to see you rethink your position about fraying into such a desolate place.
God Bless,
James
Knowing nothing about this particular school but a fair amount about human nature, I’d be willing to lay money on the odds that at it’s core, this was created by some dedicated scamster looking to rake a bunch of easy money from some deluded eco-enthusiasts through the vehicle of a broken and corrupt school system.
Looks like it worked for a couple of years.
One of Pres Obama’s campaign promises was to encourage greater oversight of charter schools. He has kept his promise apparently, because the shut down process can now begin within two days of a charter school’s opening. Congratulations, California.
And now opt-outs for students in California are also illegal, so parents have no alternatives to the public schools, and can’t even object to anything the public schools wish to teach.
Russell’s Teapot says:
“…I didn’t say that the ‘Theory of Evolution’ was demonstrable – I said that ‘evolution’ was an observable and demonstrable fact.”
Doesn’t that depend on how you define “evolution”? If you use the “Theory of Evolution” as the only possible definition of “evolution” then the statement is meaningless. Otherwise, the “how” of evolution is open to change and could include elements of ID. If a scientist successfully designs an experiment that demonstrates evolution in the laboratory, wouldn’t that be proof of evolution by intelligent design? (Unless the scientist was lacking intelligence.)
D. J. Hawkins
For papers on speciation read:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
There is even an example of single-cell to multi cell evolution as a response to predation.