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Peer Grading and the Supreme Court

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

Any of you following the Supreme Court case Falvo vs. Owasso Independent School District? I first learned about this case here on these boards. I am appalled at the ignorance of Justice Scalia. He is quoted in the Washington Post as accusing the defense attny. of exaggerating the child’s disability— saying he received “only 45 minutes per week of speech therapy” (which means he probably really needed three times as much). When the attny. replied, “he was slow at reading” the judge said “Well, how does speech therapy help that?” “What does he have, a stutter?” I think this man needs to hear from some SLP’s and other Special Ed. professionals to set him straight. I also think it’s ridiculous that this case had to go this far when it could have been handled by a sensitive teacher, perhaps with the guidance of his/her school administration. Opinions?

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/29/2001 - 12:38 AM

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AAAAAmazing!

I found a web site
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
and an address
Substantive questions should be directed, in writing, to the Public Information Officer, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, DC 20543.

Not sure how much mail they are getting right now.
Wish there was an email address.

Anne

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/29/2001 - 12:55 AM

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I was disconcerted & downhearted, too, at the collective insensitivity. I couldn’t help but theorize that well, if you end up a supreme court judge, you’ve probably been competing academically since pre-school and are an Educational Darwinist (just made that up). I mean, the kid wasn’t pathetic enough, so it’s okay to put him down? I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry somebody like that, much less have him being any kind of judge.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/29/2001 - 11:08 PM

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Thank you for letting everyone know about this. I signed on here tonight to make sure people knew about this, and was glad to see a discussion in progress. My LD son chose this article to present for current events tomorrow. He is speech-language impaired which greatly affects his reading ability. He has been tutored and had speech therapy all his life, and reading comprehension is still hard. It was so ignorant of the supreme court justice to say this. You can read an article at the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25291-2001Nov27.html

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 11/30/2001 - 4:05 AM

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Why is this case just limited to this child? Why aren’t there thousands of children out there who are subjected to this humilating practice every day who would be protected if the Court finds their rights have been violated?

The sad reality is when people don’t do the right thing on their own, we sometimes need to pass laws to try to guide them to that. Each day in schools teachers routinely tell students to exchange papers and have students evaluate other students’ work. As a teacher, I think it’s a poor practice even though I understand the time it saves. But that time saved comes at the cost of students’ privacy.

We pay millions of dollars in taxes every year for teaching professionals to evaluate our childrens’ work - not for them to pass the job to students.

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