Parents who complained to school were secretly reported to social services

Diana and Peter Cooke said they were “angry and upset” after learning they had been referred to social services without their knowledge.

The couple had raised concerns after their four-year-old daughter, Chloe, who has speech problems, twice came home from school with bruising.

Gene Huie, headteacher of Whittingham Community primary school, in Waltham Forest, told them there was no evidence that the injuries had been sustained at school – before secretly referring the case to the child protection team.

The council warned the school that they had insufficient evidence to merit a referral and that it was a breach of guidelines to refer cases to social services without first discussing it with the family.

Despite the warning, the school went on to refer details of a subsequent conversation with Mr and Mrs Cooke, again without their knowledge. The school was again rebuked by the council – but the couple was not informed.

Related Articles

• Social services took my children

  26 Feb 2011

• Cassandra Jardine: Seizing our children

  30 Aug 2005

• Social services in gay adoption row

  28 Jan 2009

Mr and Mrs Cooke only discovered that they had been secretly reported several months later, by chance, when they took part in an unrelated mock interview to help council officials prepare for Ofsted inspections.

They were shown an official document relating to one of their previous discussions with the school, which contained a reference to the fact they had been referred to social services.

Mrs Cooke, 36, told the Evening Standard: “Chloe could have been taken away from us. We don’t know what extremes the school would have gone to.”

The school governors and the council both investigated and apologised after Mr and Mrs Cooke lodged an official complaint.

Ms Huie is currently absent from the school but a council spokesperson insisted she had not been fired. He said: “Meetings are ongoing with her.”

Cllr Saima Mahmud, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, confirmed that Gene Huie was currently absent from the school. She said: “To ensure stability for pupils, parents, carers, teachers and the wider community at Whittingham School, we have asked Pat Davies, head teacher of Chingford Hall Primary, to help support leadership at the school.

“While this is an unsettling time for all at the school right now, the Council is working closely with Whittingham’s governing body to bring stability.”

U.S. News to Collect Online Education Data

As early as mid-July, U.S.News & World Report will begin a first-ever effort to collect in depth data from all online bachelor’s and five master’s degree level education programs in the United States. To that end, U.S. News Editor Brian Kelly reached out to college presidents to inform them about the new and exciting online education project and to urge them to help facilitate a response from their campuses. Below is the full text of the letter:

Dear ________,

I’d like to ask for your help. Later this year, U.S.News & World Report will be publishing an expanded directory of online education programs with more detailed information including rankings and other searchable data. With the rapid growth of online programs in higher education, prospective students are asking for more, and more useful, data to make informed choices. We are creating a site that will bring the same quality of information to online consumers, and the same opportunity for schools to connect with those students, that we’ve brought to brick and mortar institutions over the last three decades. I’d like to make sure that we’re able to represent your school with the most accurate, updated information.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sending surveys about the makeup, requirements, and quality of your online education programs. Each discipline-specific survey will be sent to the appropriate departments at private, public, and for-profit regionally accredited higher education institutions in the United States.

The questions are based on academic and industry literature reviews, as well as consultation with numerous heads of online degree programs in multiple disciplines. The questions will be categorized among six distinct program-specific surveys: the master’s levels in business, computer information technology, education, engineering, and nursing, as well as an online bachelor’s degree program survey. These program and degree levels were chosen because they are among the highest enrollments in online education. We’ll be expanding the list of programs in coming versions. In addition, this will be the first initiative to collect program level data from all online degree programs in these disciplines. With your help, the rankings will become much more sophisticated in each succeeding year.

The data we collect will be part of a redesigned online education section at usnews.com. As with our Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools sites, we see this as an essential starting point for students looking to find the best online programs for them. We’ll be including profiles of online degree programs, advanced online program searches, and online program rankings or evaluative lists.

Our education rankings have attracted many millions of users over the years because people trust and value the information we provide. At the same time, many schools have benefited from the exposure our coverage has given them. With your help, we will maintain that same credibility and value for the online education community.

For more information about the data surveys, online program rankings or new online education site, please check our Morse Code blog for updates or contact . We look forward to continued collaboration and cooperation with you in the future.

Written on June 28, 2011 | Posted in School Studies | No Comment

Final day to double your gift

Our member match campaign ends tomorrow today at 11:59 p.m. We have just $810 left to raise toward our goal of $8,000. If you have not already joined the Notebook, we invite YOU to become a member now.

Nearly 100 people have already contributed a total of $7,190 toward our campaign, including dozens of first-time contributors. Thank you to all of our members.

Reader support makes it possible for the Notebook to continue to bring you critical coverage you can’t get anywhere else. Stories like the one that we broke over the weekend about the District’s school closings plan require many hours of digging, reporting, and editing. Your membership can help ensure that these kinds of stories continue to flow.

So join, renew, or upgrade your membership in the Notebook today and become a part of a passionate community that supports this important, independent news source and voice on public education.

Written on June 28, 2011 | Posted in School Studies | No Comment

Follow These Tweets!

The Folk School’s campus, which for its size, is very rich in birdlife, is a perfect setting for “Birds of Southern Appalachia,” which I’ve co-taught for the past several years.  From the purple martins, bluebirds, and tree swallows that make use of the birdhouses near Davidson Hall and Orchard House, to the eastern meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds who canvass the school’s field for mates, to the cardinal, the Carolina wren, the brown thrasher, and the blue-grey gnatcatcher, who prefer creek-side living – the Folk School provides the beginning birder with a dizzying array of species to look at, listen to, and learn about.

Our class is usually just as diverse as the population of birds that share this campus with us: some students want to learn to recognize calls and songs, while others hope to improve their ability to identify birds by sight. Some are very good at spotting birds, while others aren’t the first to find a bird, but once they’ve seen it, are able to direct others to its location.

A day spent watching birds at the Folk School might easily yield a list of 50 species seen or heard. Inevitably, the sounds and sights of so many different kinds of birds begin to blur together for most students. As teachers, we don’t expect that everyone will learn to identify every bird by sight, or memorize every song we’ll hear during the week. Instead, our wish is that people leave the class feeling excited about watching birds when they get home, and also appreciating the marvelous adaptations that these amazing animals possess.

Members of our class learn that in the real estate business, it may be all about “location, location, location,” but in the world of bird-watching, it’s all about “habitat, habitat, habitat.” A morning spent at nearby Lake Chatuge underscores this fact. In addition to viewing various species we’ve seen earlier at the Folk School, we are treated with nice views of belted kingfishers, wood ducks, and rough-winged swallows near the water. The next day, in the mountains near Stecoah Gap, the treetops are alive with warblers, including black-and-whites, blackburnians, northern parulas, ovenbirds, black-throated greens, American redstarts, and black-throated blues. Like all of us, they’ve come from miles away to be at this place on this day. What brings them here is the availability of resources that they need to survive. For the warblers, those resources are shelter, water, space, and food – caterpillars, gnats, and other insects, to be exact. For the humans, it’s a bit more complicated. What’s brought us to the Folk School is the opportunity to learn, to create, to explore, to relax, to wonder, and to be inspired ­­– not only by what we, ourselves, are able to do in the space of a single week but also by the talents and kindness of others with whom we share the experience. What pleasure, indeed!

 

Written on June 27, 2011 | Posted in School Studies | No Comment

Mackinac Center unveils online database measuring ‘context and performance’ of Michigan’s public high schools

MIDLAND The Mackinac Center for Public Policy today released a new online database cataloguing all of Michigan’s public high schools’ performances against their backgrounds.
The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Database measures success while considering each school’s size, percentage of students eligible for federal school lunch subsidies and location, be it urban, suburban, town or rural.
“This new Web tool allows Michigan residents to quickly find and better understand a high school’s performance given the school’s unique circumstances,” said Mackinac Center Director of Education Policy Michael Van Beek who compiled the database for the Midland-based conservative think tank in a statement. 
“They can compare schools more effectively and uncover hidden gems. They may also find some possible underachievers.”

The searchable and sortable database, which provides information for specific schools through a user-friendly online tool, is assembled from more than 20 state and federal government datasets. Users can view graduation rates, ACT test scores and Michigan Merit Exam results for individual public high schools, and they can compare high schools within a particular district, county or locale. 

Data from the 2009-2010 school year are available, and so are average data for 2006-2007 through 2009-2010. Data for high schools statewide can be downloaded from the website, although alternative schools and certain special-population schools were omitted from the database. 

“By providing contextual data, this online database presents a better view of how Michigan’s public high schools compare to one another than can be found elsewhere,” Van Beek said in a statement.

The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Database is available online at .

Written on June 27, 2011 | Posted in School Studies | No Comment

Loxahatchee Groves teacher ‘gets gratification from the kids’

For Alexandra Blanco, it’s about the kids.

She’s been teaching for seven years at Loxahatchee Groves Elementary School in Loxahatchee in an environment she describes as almost a small town kind of school. We work together as a team.

Teamwork is part of how Blanco was the runner-up as the Hispanic Teacher of the Year in Palm Beach County.

Blanco’s kids encompass a variety of behavior problems, stemming from issues such as child abuse and parental drug use. Some of her kids are high-functioning Asperger’s children with extreme anxiety, with behavior that ranges from biting and spitting to obsessive-compulsion.

They’re all type A’s, she said, so at first, it’s butting heads, but nobody’s a victim. Everybody has a strong temperament, and they all gradually realize that they’re strong children.

Blanco is 31, the child of immigrant parents from Venezuela, both of whom were teachers. She attended Florida Atlantic University, and noticed pre-kindergarten programs for kids with autism, which led her to a profession.

I get my gratification from the kids, she said. One of my biggest success stories I had for three years. She just left last year. When she got here, she didn’t talk, just babbled. She would eat pennies and napkins, anything she wasn’t supposed to eat. And she had high anxiety and was a screamer.

That same child was accepted into a bilingual program at North Grade Elementary School in Lake Worth, and she only missed the gifted IQ range by a few points.

She was a blonde, blue-eyed girl, and when she left, she told me she was going to be brown like me, Blanco said.

It’s stories like that keep you going. You make a difference in the family, the kids, in life.

What’s your most humbling moment?

‘I had a kid the last couple of years who had lost his father and couldn’t talk about it. He finally came to the point of being able to tell me that he had a lot of anger about that. When he came to that point and told me, I knew he’d be OK.’

What’s your favorite iPod song?

Anything by Tenth Avenue North, a Christian group.

What’s your favorite junk food?

Chocolate.

What’s the best advice you ever received?

‘My dad told me, “Never stop learning.” ‘

What’s your proudest accomplishment?

‘A little girl told me she wanted to be brown like me. Teaching a kid to love school.’

Written on June 25, 2011 | Posted in School Studies | No Comment

Page 10 of 37« First«...89101112...2030...»Last »