Here a Chick, There a Chick

One of my email loops tipped me off to this interesting post on chick lit by Jacquelyn Mitchard, of The Deep End of the Ocean and Oprah’s Book Club fame. Brava, Ms. Mitchard, for getting the point.In precis, more and more people, writers and pundits included, are beginning to refer to books written by women about female characters “chick lit.” As a writer of chick lit of the...
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Bye, Bye FCAT

Testing season is officially over. The boxes are loaded and on their way back to Tallahassee. This means two things:We can let out the breath we’ve been holding and take another so we can hold it until the infernal school grades come out in June.The students will assume that they have nothing left to do for the school year.One problem with high-stakes testing is that the chatter over the...
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Told Ya So.

HB 941 was withdrawn before introduction today. Its companion bill in the Florida Senate, SB 334 was tabled by the Education Pre-K-12 Committee with a tied vote (3 Yeas, 3 Nays).Could they talk to some teachers before ruling by fiat? Or is that just too much to expect from our so-called “representatives”?Bastards.
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Not Something SENSIBLE

So I stumble across the text of a bill filed in the Florida House today, and discover that someone (namely, Rep. Heller) has finally seen the light. Or something.It’s the Public School Education bill, HB 941. This one, though, does away with the onerous and bass-ackwards A through F school grades and instead would group schools into performance categories: Improving, Maintaining, and...
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What I Saw at the Deployment

Early this morning–and I mean early: from one to three a.m.–mom, sis, and I went on base to see baby bro off to his third deployment to the mideast. Ft. Stewart, GA, is the home of the Third Infantry, so there’s a lot of coming and going in the Hinesville area. When you add the quartermasters, MPs, artillery, etc. that accompany the “Rock of the Marne,” that’s...
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