Extra Credit Reading: Thursday, November 16, 2006

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews is looking for a few good EduBlogs and would like to know your thoughts on the subject.

The Wanker of the Day Award has got to go to...Florida high school teacher Sharion Thurman, who was suspended without pay for rigging the homecoming election in favor of her niece:

A Florida high school teacher was suspended without pay for trying to rig an election so her niece would be voted homecoming queen.

The 25-day suspension is the latest disciplinary action against teacher Sharion Thurman, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times said. School officials said firing her was an option, and if Thurman had lied about an academic issue, she would have been fired.

Teachers at Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg, Fla., said Thurman brought a large box of homecoming queen ballots to the principal's office in September and placed the ballots in piles, the majority in her niece's bunch, according to a district report.

What tipped school administrators to the scam was the discovery of more ballots than there were students enrolled -- and Thurman's niece received 753 votes, or about two-thirds of the possible votes. During a recount, from which Thurman was barred, school officials said support for the niece fell to 180 votes.

The Pinellas School Board approved the suspension Tuesday. Officials said Thurman wrote a letter in accepting "full responsibility for the situation."

Get more details from another source right here. (Our guess is that Thurman will soon qualify for receive a Darwin Award in Education...)

Here's something that we like: veterans who have chosen to enter The Teaching Life through a program called Troops to Teachers.

I don't think that it's at all surprising that here in California, the supply of charter schools isn't meeting the demand.

Heh. A couple of Indiana high schools have decided to just say "no" to MTV:

MUNCIE, Ind. -- School officials from Muncie Central and New Castle have decided against allowing their teams to be featured in an MTV reality series about high school basketball.

Producers had visited both schools in recent weeks, and athletic officials said they believed the schools were the two finalists for the series that would follow a high school team through the 2006-07 season.

Muncie Central Principal Dick Daniel said administrators called Humidity Entertainment executive producer Jason Sciavicco to tell him about the decision before a planned meeting on Tuesday.

''We didn't meet with the guy, we just called him and let him know,'' Daniel said. ''We just thought there were more negatives than positives.''

Humidity Entertainment produced ''Two-A-Days,'' a reality show airing on MTV that followed an Alabama high school football team.

Being naturally suspicious of any outfit calling itself "Humidity Entertainment," we believe that those folks in Muncie probably made a good call...

Would you believe that in England, government-run boarding schools may be the wave of the future? Believe it! ----------------------------See our latest EduPosts and yesterday's Extra Credit Reading.