Extra Credit

TCC faculty gives a thumbs down to standard textbook plan

Tarrant County College is exploring how to standardize textbooks across the college district. Administrators and trustees said the idea is worth study because they want to find ways to reduce the cost of textbooks for students (See Star-Telegram story). But the faculty is taking a hard stand against the process.

Faculty has voiced concerns such as losing academic diversity and freedom. This week they gave the plan a thumbs down with resolution vote. The Joint Consultation Committee, which represents faculty, put up of for a vote a resolution disapproving the plan.

The faculty voted 714 to accept the resolution and 54 to not accept.

Before the faculty vote, the presidents of TCC's campuses have been directed to work with faculty on reducing the price of books. One concern is that students taking the same courses at different campuses use different books.

A statement issued this week by the JCC said:

"The Faculty Association of Tarrant County College, through its elected representatives on the Joint Consultation Committee, is committed to achieving meaningful reductions in textbook costs for our students.  However, we are equally committed to opposing the precipitate implementation of a 'common course textbook' plan because we believe such a plan will not achieve the desired reductions in textbook costs and will have the effect of reinforcing the widely-held perception among faculty that their expertise, experience, and professional evaluations are not regarded as an integral part of college governance.  We therefore ask that the "common course textbook" plan be suspended and that the college faculty be allowed to develop meaningful, realistic strategies for reducing student textbook costs to be implemented by the Fall semester of 2014."

David Wells, TCC's vice chancellor for academic affairs, has said common textbooks would have several benefits, including reducing textbook costs, accomdate students taking the same course on different campuses and help in a transition to digital textbooks.

-Diane Smith 

                  

Perfect: Texas Geographic Bee winner prevails in 26 rounds

UPDATE
Rahul Nagvekar, 13, says he will ramp up his studies of maps and other sources before the National Geographic Bee in May.

"I've done this for a long time. I've worked a lot. I really felt like this was what I've been working for," said Rahul, of Sugar Land. He attends Quail Valley Middle School in Missouri City.

After 10 rounds of finals competition, Rahul faced Jacob Brown, of Doerre Intermediate School in Klein school district in the three-question championship round.

Third place went to Ben Benjadol, of Wilshire Elementary School in Euless.

Left: Rahul Nagvekar, 2012 winner, talks to Tine Valencic, 2011 winner, (right) as Rahul's father Manoj Nagvekar takes a photo.

UPDATE 12:12

Rahul Nagvekar, who took second place last year, is the winner of the Texas Geographic Bee. He did not miss one question during this morning's event.

 

UPDATE 11:40 a.m.

Some facts about the competitors: Of the 10 finalists only one is a girl: Anna C. Bowers, of Diane Gorzycki Middle School in Austin. There were only 6 females among the top 100.

And Ben Benjadol, a fifth grader at Wilshire Elementary School at Hurst-Euless-Bedford schools, was the runner up at the Fort Worth regional spelling bee earlier this month. Unlike the spelling bee, though, students can miss two questions, not just one, before being eliminated.

 

UPDATE 11:10 a.m.

Students are being eliminated from the tie breaker round. Seven students are still on the stage. For this round, they are being asked the same question, writing their answers with a marker on a white board and holding the board up for judges to see. They're wearing blue tags around their necks shaped like the state of Texas, each bearing their number.

 

UPDATE 10:45 a.m.

Prelims are over and 17 of 100 students who made perfect scores in that round are taking the stage. But before the finals can start, the students have to go through a tie breaker round to narrow the field to the top 10 spots.

"This will be the first time we've had to do a tie breaker with all perfect scores," said Texas coordinator Marci Smith Deal. "Pretty awesome."

UPDATE 10:30 a.m.

Tine Valencic, an 8th grade student at Colleyville Middle School who won the National Geographic Bee last year, is here at the state contest.

He gave a pep talk to the students before the preliminary round, telling them to relax and focus on the questions. It was the same advice he heard from a contest coordinator in a previous year, he said.

Tine, 14, is not eligible to compete this year because he took the national title last year, officials said.

"It feels a lot less stressful than last year," he said.

Tine, who took second place in the Texas contest in 2009 and won it in 2010 and 2011. As the national winner he took a trip to the Galapagos Islands, he said. He's currently preparing for the state science competition.

Initial post:

Students from across Texas are getting ready to show how much they know about the Earth at the state Geographic Bee.

To start this morning's Texas Geographic Bee competition, the 100 students are going through a preliminary round in small rooms in the Pay May Center at the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district. After scoring the top 10 finishers will emerge to a large room where parents and teachers are waiting for the finals.

The winner will get a trophy and an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the national finals May 22 and 24.

The field is particularly tough in the Lone Star State because of the number of children who participate in the contest, open to students in grades four through eight who are in public, private or homeschool, said Texas coordinator Marci Smith Deal.

"It's such a tough competition in Texas," said Deal, HEB schools social studies coordinator. "You've got more than 1,000 public schools. That's literally millions of kids and these are the top."

Judges have been brought in from across the state, including geographers from San Marcos and New Braunfels.

Please check back this morning for updates on the competition.

Jessamy Brown

 

Arlington firefighters call Mansfield sixth-grader a hero

Steven Tarver is only 12, but he has already proved that he can handle a trial by fire.

On the stormy evening of March 19, he and his stepmother, Deana Tarver, were watching TV when -- although they didn't realize it at the time -- a bolt of lightning struck their home. It sent a deafening crash of thunder through the walls.

"The house rumbled," Tarver said. "[Steven] jumped about 10 feet in the air. ... I said, 'Yes, that was close.'"  

After the pair collected their senses, they resumed their show. But a few minutes later, the TV started acting up.

Steven, a sixth-grader at Cross Timbers Intermediate School in Arlington, went to another part of the house to check the TV there. That's when he noticed black smoke coming from the garage.

He quickly informed Tarver, who called 911. Then he took charge.

"I was in a panic," Tarver said Thursday as firefighters visited the Mansfield school district campus to present Steven with a certificate honoring him as a hero. "Steven knew exactly what to do. He said we needed to get the dogs, then when we got out to the front yard, he said we needed to go across the street."

Firefighters contained almost all the damage to the garage that night. But perhaps more important, a couple of  years ago their fire safety message had gotten through to Steven, then a fourth-grader in the Arlington school district.

"The Arlington Fire Department is proud of you and thankful for you," Lt. Darrel Whitfield, the department's spokesman, told Steven as he presented the certificate.

Cross Timbers Principal Gina Rietfors said Steven's quick thinking impressed her the most.

"Not everybody his age has those kinds of problem-solving skills," she said.

So what went through Steven's mind when he saw the smoke?

"I went into survival mode," he said.

-Patrick M. Walker

Barefoot in the playground: Southlake Carroll campus to hold shoe drive

Children at Johnson Elementary School in Southlake will get to spend the school day barefoot next week to help remind folks that some kids do without.

The campus is collecting new shoes to donate as part of a One Day Without Shoes project on Thursday, April 5. Participating children will come to school wearing shoes and socks that they can take off easily.

The shoe drive benefits Shoes for Orphan Souls, which distributes new footwear to children in 74 countries and the United States. They say they are most in need of leather and canvas athletic shoes.

The aim of the effort is to draw attention to youngsters who can experience injuries and illness and miss school because they don't have foot protection.

Jessamy Brown

Weatherford school officials respond to cheating report

This week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a story highlighting where it found high concentrations of suspect tests scores after examining testing results for 69,000 schools in 49 states, including in the Weatherford school district.

The paper's "Cheating our Children" examination found that 15.5 percent of Weatherford's classes were flagged as having questionable gains from one grade to the next in 2011, which was the highest percentage in Texas identified in the report. The district had only about 2 percent of its classes flagged in 2009 and 2010, according to that newspaper.

Today Weatherford schools superintendent Jeffrey Hanks took issue with the report, which was also broadcasted on local television news, saying there was "absolutely no truth in what the story was inferring," adding that educators take the state tests and its integrity seriously.

"I take offense to this story and believe it slights the hard work of our students, their teachers and parents, and the school district as a whole," Hanks said in a news release. " From what I have been able to determine, this report should be characterized as reckless and irresponsible at best."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has previously helped uncover cheating schools. The newspaper published a series of analysis in 2008 and 2009 that showed suspicious gains in Atlanta Public schools, which led to a state investigation that found various unethical behaviors there.

This week's report also flagged that about 11.5 percent of Keller and Crowley's class results.

However, Texas officials have concerns about the report's methodology. DeEtta Culbertson, a spokeswoman with the Texas Education Agency, noted that the Atlanta paper's examination flagged classes for large gains and large losses, which wouldn't be associated with cheating. And the report examines scores for groups of students rather than individual students, she said.

"We have such a high mobility rate in our schools, especially in the urban areas, you don't know if you're looking at the same students from year to year to really be able to tell if there's cheating," Culbertson said. "Even their own analysis notes that this is not indicative of actual cheating going on. But this is a good reminder, especially this week as we begin our spring testing, that if anyone knows of any irregularities or cheating on the tests, they need to report that. Any cheating is not only a felony but also sanctionable against certification."

-Eva-Marie Ayala

 

Tarrant County Public Health holds question session about TB on TCC campus

TCC students possibly exposed to tuberculosis were able to ask question to public health officials today.

Question and answer sessions were held because a former Tarrant County College student had to have treatment for active TB. Health officials spoke to students during the classes, according to TCC. The college district and Tarrant County Public Health are working to reach anyone who may have been exposed, including as many as 200 of the student's former classmates on the Southeast Campus.

Free TB testing will be available April 3 to students who could have been exposed. Tarrant County Public Health will return to the campus April 5 to determine whether the skin tests are positive. See the original story that ran in the Star-Telegram here.

-Diane Smith

UTA students rally in protest of fatal shooting of Florida teen

Students at UT-Arlington rallied on Monday to protest the fatal shooting of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

Here is some video of UTA NAACP president Dontae Robison speaking at the hoodie march:

 

 

 

-- Photo and video by Ron T. Ennis/Star-Telegram

(Pictured, Grand Prairie NAACP President Angela Luckey reads a story about Trayvon Martin before the march.)

If your student is asleep in class today, he might have been up all night at the Hunger Games

The Hunger Games movie opened at midnight with thousands of North Texans battling long lines to be among the first to see the film. But local teachers and librarians have long been capitalizing on the popular book series for some time now through book blogging clubs, writing assignments and upcoming field day events.

-Eva-Marie Ayala

UT Arlington students use Facebook to plan march for Trayvon Martin

UTA NAACP is organizing a rally for justice in support of Trayvon Martin. Plans for the event were unfolding Friday morning on Facebook. 

"...It is important that we lift our VOICE and MARCH for Justices for our dear brother Trayvon Martin who's young life was cut short because violence, racism and discrimination," states the site dedicated to the UTA rally.

The rally is planned for Monday at 11 a.m. on the UTA library mall.

Dontae Robison said on Fcebook: "UTA NAACP 2011-2012 Will be MARCHING FOR JUSTICE for Trayvon Martin! Please visit UTA NAACP Justice For Trayvon Hoodie March for more info! Stand Up for JUSTICE! Stand up for TRAYVON! #UTAHoodieMarch"

The UTA effort comes a day after students at the University of North Texas made plans for a similar march via Twitter. Students listed April 1st as the accorded day for the #UNTHoodieMarch. Martin, the Florida youth killed at the center of a national controversy, was wearing a hoodie when he was shot.

-Diane Smith

 

Birdville auto repair students get fixer uppers for training

The gearheads in Birdville schools' automotive technology classes are getting to fine tune their skills on some fancy wheels.

A 1996 Cadillac Seville is being donated to the high school program at the Birdville Center of Technology and Advanced Learning in North Richland Hills. The car was taken to the campus in late December and it needs extensive repair work.

So the owner, Scott Schleper, is donating the car to help train students in diagnosis and repair. The donation, valued at $3,765, is being voted on by Birdville trustees at tonight's meeting.

Another car, a 2003 Pontiac Montana worth $6,047, was also donated to the program by Christopher Malvik, of Watagua.

Students in the program's shop, supervised by instructors, sometimes also take outside cars for repair. They don't do body work, but they can do oil changes, brake jobs and the like. Such paid work is warrantied for six months or 6,000 miles, according to their website.

A two-student team from the program took second place in the 2010 Ford/AAA Student  Auto Skills national finals.

Jessamy Brown