After hearing countless times that the parents don’t respect their kids’ teachers enough, Dr. Bill Maxwell, the new Wales, UK chief inspector of schools, tells the teachers that they shouldn’t take “respect for granted and must ensure good communication with families.” What a novel idea!

[Dr. Maxwell] warned that Wales was in danger of losing its tradition of respecting and valuing education unless more was done to engage parents and carers.

“Good schools are taking notice but some need to try harder,” Dr Maxwell said.

“Society is changing. There’s no question that the automatic respect once accorded to school teachers, for good or ill, is not automatic now. Schools have to proactively seek and earn respect.

“Schools should be very conscious of their reputation and image in the local community.

“Successful schools try to break down the barriers between the harder-to-get parents and the school. Many of these parents, possibly, had very negative experiences of school and may even have had the same teachers.”

Well this is certainly an interesting way to take on teacher unions, who some critics say put too many barriers in place to fire incompetent instructors:

The Center for Union Facts, a Washington-based nonprofit, will launch a campaign Tuesday spending $1 million on ads and a billboard in New York’s Times Square. It also says it’s starting a Web site with data documenting how far unions go to protect bad teachers.

It’s also inviting nominations for a contest to determine the nation’s worst unionized teachers. The “winners” will be offered $10,000 each if they permanently resign or retire from any career in education — if they sign a release agreeing to have their name and the reasons for their selection published by the group.

Rick Berman — the center’s executive director and a former labor lawyer who has represented auto and steel workers — declined to offer specifics on his group’s supporters. He said that the organization has spent about $6 million since its founding in February 2006 and that it opposes union corruption and intimidation, not unions in general, he said.

You know, when we were 14 we took our dad’s car out for a little joy ride while he and our mom were working late hours. Little did we know that the gas gauge was broken, and we ran out of gas on the side of the highway. Boy, was *that* ever an awkward phone call. Moral of the story, kids, nothing good comes from messing around with a car before you get your license.

An 11-year-old girl is in some hot water [Ed. note: was the pool heated?] after she sent her grandmother’s car plunging into a swimming pool at Kingston Village apartments in southwest Shreveport.

Margaret Gober said she was in her apartment when she heard a commotion outside. Her grandson screamed, Gober went to the door and saw her car in the pool, with her granddaughter Dineshia inside.

The girl can’t swim so her grandmother and an apartment complex employee helped her to safety. No injuries were reported.

A West Bloomfield, Michigan man accused of raping his 15-year-old daughter had all charges against him dropped, because his daughter — who is severely autistic — could not testify.

The case was controversial from its beginning because the 15-year-old girl, who cannot speak, made the claims through facilitated communication, a widely discredited method of communication in which a teaching aide helps such students type words into a keyboard. Experts testified that scientific evaluations of the method have proven that the teaching aide, consciously or unconsciously, authors the messages.

Oakland County Assistant Prosecutors Paul Walton and Barbara Morrison defended their decision to press the case until it became clear the girl would not testify.

“We wanted to make sure we were giving her the same kind of opportunity to have her voice heard in court as every other kid,” Morrison said.

“We’re never going to feel good about this case,” Walton said. “Have we sent a child back to a potentially dangerous situation?”

We were first prone to outrage when we read the headline and first paragraph of the story until we got to the bit about “facilitated communication” — prosecutors might as well have said the girl told them she was raped by ESP. On the surface, this makes the Duke lacrosse team rape case look well run in comparison.

Here’s more on the farce of facilitated communication, which serves only to cruelly give parents of these kids false hope.

A mother threw her two young children, 6 and 8, over a freeway overpass and then jumped herself.

All three survived the fall but it is unknown if they will survive their injuries…

MT feels a little insulted by the police sgt.’s “not knowing why” the mother did this — There is no WHY!!!! She is a crazy beeotch, that’s why! And, she ought to rot in a 4 x 4 cell for the rest of her crazy life! And the father sounds like he’s whacked too.

Dallas police were investigating Wednesday morning why a mother threw her two children off an overpass and then jumped into oncoming traffic on Interstate 30 near Jim Miller Road.

Khandi Busby, 27, and her two children survived the 22-foot fall from the overpass railing into westbound traffic, Dallas police said. The three were taken to local hospitals where the mom was listed in critical condition after being struck by a vehicle. The two boys were in good condition.

“We don’t know the reason at this point why she did this,” said Dallas police Sgt. Gil Cerda.