H/T: Tim Blair

The Alaska State Board of Education has asked for public comment to begin on proposed changes to regulations for schools classified for funding purposes as correspondence schools. Interim Commissioner Barbara Thompson has placed this as Agenda Item 20 at Friday’s meeting in Juneau.

The memorandum is here. There will be plenty more comment on these proposed regs to come.

It’s a spoof so enjoy.

H/T: Why Homeschool

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry reading this post, An Open Letter to a Concerned Parent. These must be the parents that California educrats and judges have in mind when they create their rulings and policies. Sadly, it’s hard to imagine a young man like this one finding academic success.

This chart from today’s Anchorage Daily News displays some SAT statistics alongside college education choices.

• Alaska students are 49th out of 50 states in college enrollment. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. The paradigm of the educational establishment says college is always the best choice but it seems the marketplace says otherwise. Alaska’s workforce is, statistically, fully employed.
• More Alaskans attend college at home than Outside.
• University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) gets lots of SAT scores in the mail but does not translate that into enrollment.
• Alaska kids score at or above average on the SAT except in writing.
• Family income does influence whether or not a child takes the steps to pursue a college education, i.e. takes the SAT.
• Academics run in families. Kids who have parents with college educations typically pursue one also.

It’s important to remember that this is a very narrow sampling of Alaska’s young adults. UAA has a very large non-traditional student population. Academic and career decisions made at age 18 or 19 are not binding and, often, don’t last a lifetime.

You can download this chart here.

This is a fun geography tool for determining distances and flight paths between any two locations on the globe.

Great Circle Mapper 

I’ve been reading and listening to the fallout of last week’s California state appeals court ruling that stated that parents have no constitutional right in California to teach their own children. Only parents who are certificated teachers will be permitted to homeschool. It’s an astonishing, incredible, jaw-dropping ruling.

For Alaskans who have a very friendly, cooperative relationship with the state when it comes to homeschooling this sounds impossible. Personally, I had a hard time believing this actually happened but it is California and it is true. And one always has to consider the bellwether potential of California trends.

Here’s a brief summary of what has happened:

• The original case was one of child abuse and thus was confidential. In effect, Justice H. Walter Croskey, took the facts of one family’s case and applied his ruling to every family in California. Here is the judge’s ruling.

Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.

• Homeschool legal organizations and parents are mobilized to form a strategy to take on this decision and the state of California. For now their goal is to depublish the ruling, which means it would be made applicable to just the family in the original case and not everyone in the state. Anyone in any state may sign the HSLDA petition here.
• Dr. James Dobson spent an entire Focus on the Family radio program addressing this matter. You can listen to it here. Glenn Beck interviewed Debbie Schwarzer, co-chair Homeschool Association of California on his CNN show. Transcript here.
• Governor Schwarzenegger denounced the ruling:

Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts, and if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights then, as elected officials, we will.

• Yesterday, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell issued a statement saying the state’s policies toward homeschooling will not change.

Looks like the diligence and watchfulness of California homeschool families and their associations is paying off. Those who are elected to political office are better listeners to 200,000 voters than an imperious judge.

So, how does this affect Alaskans? It doesn’t. It is a state issue in California where their legislature has not addressed homeschools and thus there is no statute for homeschoolers to stand on. Homeschool families are treated as private schools. Alaska’s legislature has addressed homeschooling and the legislative intent is very clear.

If you want to keep up with this case I recommend Crimson Wife, a California homeschool mom and blogger.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt devoted the third hour of his show to the CA homeschool issue with guests Michael Farris, Erwin Chemerinsky, John Eastman and Brad Dacus. You can find the podcast here.

The LA Times has weighed in opposing the ruling though they do insist that homeschool families must have government oversight so

that children aren’t home all day watching reruns of “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Oh brother, maybe parents also need oversight to ensure they aren’t starving their kids, too. At least they are on the correct side of the ruling.

I’m hooked on Windows Live Writer to compose and publish blog posts but today I’m going to try posting with Google Docs. I just learned Google has slipped in a function that publishes Docs to a blog. It’s found under the ‘Publish’ tab on the far right of the Docs window.

So what? Well, WordPress’ editor can often be very tedious as I wait for the server to save or to pull up editing tools while Google Docs works much more smoothly. It’s really not a big deal but if I’m away from my own computer and without Live Writer then Google Docs is another option for seamless posting.

I’ll try inserting an image to see how Google Docs does some heavier lifting.

Now that I’ve published this I’ll edit it again with Google Docs.

Here are some Google Docs shortcomings:

• Cannot categorize so I’ll have to go back in WordPress to do that.
• No title to the post. Hmmm. That’s not good–Google still has some work to do. I’ll have to add that with WP editor.

H/T: Lifehacker

Are you wishing you had $650 for your very own copy of Photoshop? $600 for Illustrator? or $1800 for the entire Adobe Creativity Suite? Are you tempted to turn to pirating? Don’t do it! Here are some tools that will do the job very well, free.

For image editing a la Photoshop try GIMP, a powerful open-source package comparable to its Adobe counterpart. It’s available for Windows, MacOS and Unix and also has extensions to create animations.

Here’s a screenshot of GIMP in action in Windows:

GIMPshop is a modification that gives GIMP a user interface similar to Photoshop. I like their purpose:

My original purpose for GIMPshop was to make the Gimp accessible to the many Adobe Photoshop users out there. I hope I’ve done that. And maybe along the way, I can convert a Photoshop pirate into a Gimp user.

Paint.net is also a favorite at our house. It will do basic image editing.

If you need a vector graphics editor like Illustrator or Corel Draw download Inkscape for Windows, MacOS or Linux. The Inkscape site is built on a wiki and provides great documentation. You can also check out the Open Clip Art Library.

Huffington Post has sifted through the presidential campaign finance forms and created this useful graphic tool, FUNDRACE2008, to see who donors are, how much they give, where they live and their occupation.

Some observations:

• Actors and CEO’s give overwhelmingly and generously to Democrat candidates. So much for the stereotype of the fat cat Republican donor.
• In my own Anchorage zip code GOP candidates receive much more than Democrats. Not surprising.
• Engineers, my own profession, are split with a slight edge to Republicans.
• Bill Gates has given to both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. In 2004, he gave to President Bush.
• Google employees send their money to Democrats. Could have guessed that.
• Exxon Mobil employees support Republicans but BP employees are split pretty evenly. Shell employees are most likely to give to a Democrat. Interesting.

There’s lots more information to mine. Have fun!