Tracking system that monitors children's eating habits exists

Do you know what your children really eat at school? CNN.com says there's a way you can find out.

Houston, Texas is one of the many areas with schools that use Primero Food Service Solutions-a tracking system that allows parents to monitor their kids eating habits.

The system also:

• to set up prepaid lunch accounts so children don't have to carry money
• go online to track their child's eating habits and make changes
• Gives cashiers set up allergies or parent-set diet restrictions for cashiers for students

Cybersoft Technologies is responsible for the system.

The article says that not only is the system is being used in "Arizona, Oklahoma, Michigan and Tennessee, as well as other Texas cities" but other companies are using similar systems with other schools. This may be the start of something big. Sorry kids.

Hawaiian School should be for Hawaiians only, says school's president

A New York Times article tells the story of Kamehameha, a highly-rated private school in Honolulu, Hawaii that was created 118 years ago. The school was made to educate poor Hawaiians, but today it educates everyone. This bothers Mr. Shim very much. Mr. Shim, president of Kamehameha's Association of Teachers and Parents, wants the school to be for Hawaiians only. The federal courts, Hawaiian government, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, are against his notion.

But Mr. Shim and several others believe that the school should be given back to the poor Hawaiian students who need the education. One of those others, Dee Jay Mailer, the chief executive officer for a $6.2 billion trust for the school, said the school enrolled about 5,000 students each year, turning down more Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian children than it accepts. Malier, also a Kamehameha graduate, said, "I have never heard anybody of non-Hawaiian ancestry complain about not coming here. Rather, what I have heard is Hawaiians complaining, or being concerned, that they couldn't come here."

I'm sure that there are many poor Hawaiian natives who need a good education, but segregation is still wrong. My solution? Maybe they can set up a scholarship for Hawaiian natives-that is, if one has not been set up already. It will heighten the chance for Hawaiian children to get in to the school. Or they can try setting a limit for the amount of non-Hawaiians that are allowed in Kamehameha, though that still feels somewhat disrespectful to other non-Hawaiians (the idea feels like affirmative action-is the non-Hawaiian student there because he/she is the right student, or because he/she is a non-Hawaiian student?). Is there a way to please Hawaiian natives without robbing the rights of non-Hawaiians?

Also...isn't it a bit strange that the federal courts can restrict what they do with their school even though, according to the Times article, "The school receives no federal funds"?

The Top 100 High Schools in America is Finished

Newsweek and the Washington Post has the 100 best high schools in the country. Did your school made the cut?

Here's the top ten:

1. Jefferson County-Irondale, Ala.
2. International Academy-Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
3. Stanton College Prep-Jacksonville, Fla.
4. Eastside-Gainesville, Fla.
5. H-B Woodlawn-Arlington, Va.
6. Science/ Engineering Magnet-Dallas, Texas
7. Paxon-Jacksonville, Fla.
8. Pensacola-Pensacola, Fla.
9.Raleigh Charter-Raleigh, Fla.
10. Hillsborough-Tampa, Fla.


And as a bonus, find out how to build a better high school.

Peace.

American Diploma Project Helps Students Prepare for College

A little extra work won't hurt teenagers much. I've taken honors classes and AP (Advanced Placement) courses at Moragn Park High and it has made me a better person. And the work wasn't as vicious as people think (at least it wasn't during my time).

Teenagers need the American Diploma Project, a new program that encourages high school students to go beyond the usual school curricum and give college courses a try. The project's goal: to get students ready for college.

Maryland has joined the 21 other states who are using the project, says the Washington Post. This means that, according to the article, "high school students would be required to add Algebra 2 to their math courses and pursue higher-level studies in science to be able to graduate. "

Here's a survey done by Achieve, the education organization that created the program:

• About 40 percent of graduates said they felt they weren't prepared to deal with the demands of college and the workplace.
• 77 percent of those who were not in college and 65 percent of those in college said that they would have worked harder in high school if they had been aware of what they would face after graduating.

My English 101 professor in SXU once said that the goal of his class was to correct all mistakes that high school English professors have made. I admit that what he said applied to college in general; to me, college seemed to be at a level that high school doesn't prepare you for.

Hopefully, the project will change everything.

Bush Addresses Education in State of the Union Address

Forgive me for sending you this so late. Blogger.com was on the fiz.

Boy, was last week's State of the Union Address long. And Bush didn't talk about education until (nearly) the very end. Those of you who grew tired of the speech and changed the channel at about halfway point-or those who need a refresher course on Bush's future plans for our country's education-can read this transcript from the Washington Post.


BUSH: This is a dynamic world. Whether people want to recognize it or not, we're in a competitive world. Some will say, "It's so competitive, let's withdraw and protect ourselves."
That's not my attitude. My attitude is, it's competitive; let's get in a position where we can outcompete the rest of the world. And the most important place is going to be to make sure our kids have got the skills to fill the jobs of the 21st century. If our kids don't have those skills, those jobs will go somewhere else. And so, this is the initiative that I praised Lamar about. It's called the American Competitiveness Initiative. It basically says that we're going to focus on research, both in the public and private sector, to make sure that the technologies and skill base of our science and engineering community leads the world.

BUSH: It also recognizes that we've got to make sure our children have got math and science skills. By the way, that starts with making sure children can read. One of Laura's most important initiatives, inherent in the No Child Left Behind Act, is the absolute demand by our government that schools teach every single child how to read by third grade and remain at grade level throughout their entire public school career.

(APPLAUSE)

One of the ways to make sure that our children have got math and science skills that will give them the basis on which to compete -- and by the way, when you test our scores relative to other children, we're doing just fine in elementary school and we start slipping off in middle school and we're not doing worth a darn in high school.

And so one way to reverse that trend is to make sure our high school teachers have got the necessary skills to teach kids the skill sets to be able to compete.

And so we believe that we can help train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced placement courses in math and science. Advanced placement works. AP is a vital program. If you study your AP results here in Tennessee schools, you'll see it makes a lot of sense. We want AP programs to be available to children from all walks of life so that they have the skills necessary to compete.

We've got a plan to get 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in our classrooms. And we want to make sure, just like we do on No Child Left Behind, that we focus on math as well and we find math deficiencies early, we provide money to correct them. See, if you diagnose and don't correct, you're doing a child a disservice. If you don't diagnose, you're doing a child a disservice.

The best thing to do is what we're doing, is diagnose and solve problems early before they're too late. And that's what we're going to do in this very exciting initiative.

For those who want a transcript for the entire State of the Union Address, go to washingtonpost.com

Let's hope that Bush's plans for 2006 will work.