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As a parent of two high school boys, I hope the faculty will be trained on what positive reinforcement is. So many times a teacher or counselor with a negative demeanor has a longer lasting affect on a child than a positive one. If this program works as it is intended, I think it will be a welcomed change in the middle schools and high schools.

Still, teachers should be able to get disruptive students out of their classrooms.

I would think that if parent's can't teach their child what's expected at home then there should be adequate staffing within the system to almost handle this one on one, ie. Who knew there was a Director of Behavior Services! People what are we funding?

Character education is crucial. This is one of my main memories from second grade. This program can work. Don't delay!

"We don't expect students to come to school aware of what behaviors are expected of them" We don't expect them to leave having learned anything useful for the 21st century or learned anything that prepares them to be a competent citizen of a capitalist democratic republic.(an educated populace being a necessity) I guess we're going to need a large workforce qualified to wipe bird droppings off wind turbines.

“We don’t expect students to come to school aware of what behaviors are expected of them." Maybe that's one of the major problems. No one really expects anything of the children or their parents. And yet one of the catch phrases is that we have high expectations for all students. Bah!

What is a flagship schools?

My experience working with teachers and "at-risk" students leads me to believe that students who have been pushed through the system without mastering the bench-marks start acting out in Middle school when they become aware of their deficits and are embarrassed when called upon in class or have their deficits exposed for all the class to see --- particularly the girls. Sending them to "in-school suspension" or suspended them for a few days alleviates the problem, stress and discomfort. In other words, it's not punishment, but what they want to deal with a problem that overwhelms them.

While I'm a strong believer in the value of character education, that will not solve the problem I've just outlined.

I'm just curious as to why the N&R puts up a pitcher of Mo smilimg about a serious issue.

The more I think about this comment, the more offensive I find it personally as a parent. The suggestion is that no parents currently send their children off understanding how to behave in school . . . I can forcefully state that their mother and I might well be in the minority, but our children knew exactly how to behave in school. I suspect that most children are the same, but an effort must be made to bend over backwards for the few. A second issue such a quote raises is that the same lack of behavioral expectations registers for entering students all the way up to high school students. At what point might the teachers, administrators and staff expect students to know how to behave; after all, when a student enters 9th grade, they are beginning their 10th year in school. If they haven't picked up on reasonable school behavior by then, when. Isn't there a difference in expectations between a kindergartener and a high schooler . . . and if there isn't, woe betide all of us.

Brian, et al., what follows is a partial response that I posted in regard to Doug's commentary that he does not buy the line that there are no "bad kids." We should not be afraid to confront the truth regardless of what it means.

The Guilford County Board of Education has created a number of fictions that govern the way it does business that prevent us from dealing with the problems underlying public education.

In addition to the fiction that there are no "bad" kids, even though they attack teachers, etc. we have also adopted the fiction that every parent is a good parent. All one need to do is read the paper to know that this is not true either - take for example the four month old baby whose toes were chewed off by the family dog while mom and dad were "sleeping." (I don't know about you but I don't think I could sleep through a baby having all five toes chewed off.) We have parents who abuse and kill their children, but still the GC Board of Education labors under the fiction that they are all good parents and doing the best they can to prepare their children for school. I submit to you that if parents were, in fact, being responsible, setting down rules for children, requiring them to do homework, and kids actually came to school and worked hard and behaved, many of the problems in public schools would evaporate overnight. I keep saying its not rocket science, because it isn't. Before we can address these issues, however, we need to quit fearing the truth (as one pundit recently reminded us). We should stop being afraid of what people will say and do what we all know needs to be done.

I predict that we can spend every dime in the treasury, and still not get the educational outcomes that one would reasonably expect given our investment simply because we refuse to deal with these underlying issues of what I call parental involvment and student responsbility.

Paul Daniels,
District 5

I think every child is different and we must address each child's issues differently. That is difficult to do in any school system. However, a character education program is not just for the students who act out. It is a base for the life skills that students need along with academics. I went to elementary/middle school in the 70's and character education was a part of the physical education and social studies programs in school.