6/29/2009

A Fly Went By

I enjoy reading the picture book
A Fly Went By by Mike McClintock. I long to relax barefoot in that row boat chewing on a blade of grass as the sun slowly makes it's way across the sky. Of course this idyllic scene is soon interrupted by a frantic fly. The fly ran away in fear of the frog
Who ran from the cat, who ran from the dog. The harder the boy worked to find the cause of the commotion, the more complicated the commotion became. Finally, after after talking to several terrified animals each terrified by the one coming after it, the problem is discovered. A hunter runs by. But the hunter doesn't stop to negotiate an end to the chase because he is running too. The hunter is running from a loud clanging sound. And what do you think it was? It was a lamb with a bucket stuck on it's leg.

I had a similiar feeling reading education news in my email.

I read this:

June 29, 2009 Chicago Tribune Newspaper BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter


The typical Chicago public school loses more than half of all its teachers within five years -- and about two-thirds of its new ones, a study released today by the University of Chicago indicates. Teacher churning is especially severe in high-poverty, heavily African-American schools -- about a hundred total -- where half of all teachers disappear after only three years, the study found.

"I find that really disturbing,'' said Elaine Allensworth, lead author of the study from the U. of C.'s Consortium on Chicago School Research. "I just see no way they can improve if they can't maintain a stable work force.''

And this from Florida,


By Tony Marrero, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Monday, June 29, 2009

Under a new policy up for a vote by the Hernando County School Board next month, the new grade for a missed assignment or test at the elementary level would be 40 percent.

Translation: no more zeros.

And this blog about a KIPP school teacher:

"No," he told me, shrugging. "I'm leaving teaching. I don't have a plan."

I was shocked. "Why? You're such a wonderful teacher! What happened?"

"It just got to the point that every morning I thought, 'I don't want to go in.' We start at 7:20 and go til 5pm. I wake up at 4:45 for my commute and some days don't get home til 10. I'd honestly rather work in an office at this point." I am still trying to reconcile this new image of Joe with the old one, who was so in love with teaching and seemed to be made for the job.
When Joe left my school, it was a huge loss to our students. But I understand why he wanted to go somewhere less crazy, more organized, that serves a similarly needy population. His current school has one of the highest student achievement rates in NYC, but something is wrong if it killed Joe's drive to teach. He told me that a many other teachers at his school burnt out and quit, much like him. I'm wondering if this KIPP school sees its teaching staff as expendable. Perhaps it has such a great reputation that it can easily replace good teachers who leave with other good teachers.

http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/shoulders_of_giants/2009/06/a-casualty-of-the-teaching-profession.html

And this:
June 15, 2009 Education Week

Study Casts Doubt on Charter School Results By Lesli A. Maxwell

A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford casts doubt on whether the academic performance of students in charter schools is any better than that of their peers in regular public schools.

Looking at 2,403 charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia, researchers at Stanford University found that students in more than 80 percent of charter schools either performed the same as—or worse than—students in traditional public schools on mathematics tests.

“If this study shows anything, it shows that we’ve got a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters,” said Margaret E. Raymond, the director of the center and the study’s lead author. “That’s a red flag.”

Mr. Henig said the Stanford report, along with others that have similarly compared charter school and traditional public school performance, is more evidence that asking which of the two types of schools is better “may be the wrong question.”

As you can see, teachers are leaving the profession in which they invested an expensive college education. School Boards are interferring in individual teachers decisions, one of the key protections of tenure. And when you look at the proposed alternatives, private and charter schools, you see the same burnout with no discernable difference in outcomes.

As more and more government intervention chases fewer and fewer resources, and judicial decisions erode en loco parentis, it is time to take stock.

Can we come to an understanding of what causes what? We know so much about education. Can we synthesize this information into a fishbone diagram in order to get a better picture of the problems and the causes?

Lets take stock of the situation. Lets begin with what exactly we as a nation want to get from our educational system. What constitutes an education? Should it be the same for everyone? Should it look the same for everyone?

When we know what education is for, we can begin to design it. I would guess that education in the future will not have traditional schoolhouses.

But I am asking you to join me in a discussion of National Goals for Education.

WE NEED A STRATEGIC PLAN FOR U.S. EDUCATION

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6/28/2009

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden


I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; the Purpose and Promise of Special Education

Our government expects all children in public schools to achieve an arbitrary level of expertise in a select number of academic subjects. This expectation extends to children facing any and all physical, mental and emotional challenges. Special Education may have performed great deeds in the past, but it would be a mistake to waste the time and effort of Special Education students and personnel on this wild ride.

I entered Special Education about the time the first Federal Special Education Law, Public Law 94.142, (In it's current form called IDEA) had to be implemented. Public Schools had provided services for the disabled previous to the law’s implementation, but now it was mandatory across the country to provide a Free, Appropriate, Public Education to students with disabilities.

Special Education teachers were considered akin to Florence Nightingale.
We were willing to go in and work with the students that no one else wanted. Our job was to provide these children with an education. No one thought that we would cure retardation or learning disabilities. No one expected us to make the blind to see or the deaf hear. We were teachers. We were to teach the blind to read, write, and do arithmetic. We were to teach the retarded to take care of themselves, hold down a job, and live in the world. We were to assist the learning disabled in overcoming their weaknesses by using their strengths.

Over the years, we became experts in our fields. We developed new techniques and methodologies. We developed a deeper understanding of the variations in brain functioning associated with various disabilities. We found that many children were indeed “differently abled.”

Now children who were were considered “Trainable” as opposed to “Educable” (TMH and EMH respectively), were learning to read and write. Children who might have been diagnosed as retarded in the past could now be understood as learning disabled. Early Intervention and Early Childhood Education were helping children overcome developmental delays and speech problems that could have turned into learning disabilities. Parents were grateful for what we did.

Over the years the expectation of rehabilitation has become the norm for Special Educators.

At the same time that educators were improving the academic outcomes for children with disabilities, medical science was discovering ways to save people who previously would have died. Premature babies were surviving at smaller and smaller birth weights. Traumatic Brain Injuries were no longer fatal. With enough medical intervention many lives could be saved, with no consideration of the quality of life. So after all the progress we have made in improving the outcomes for children with disabilities, we are now faced with new challenges created by medical science.

In my 30 year career I have worked with two children each of whom did not have a brain. One child contracted a herpes virus at birth which destroyed his brain. He required a roomful of machines to live, but he did live for eight years. The other child was anacephalic, born without a brain. When she passed away at the age of two the doctors said no one had ever lived that long with that condition.

There is a lot we can do to overcome problems while the brain is developing. We can do a little to overcome a bad home situation. There is nothing we can do to change genetics. We can’t cure a learning disability. Children going through emotional trauma cannot be made to learn. We can’t reverse brain damage.

If you lose your arm we can teach you to do things with your other arm. We can show you how to compensate for your lost arm. We cannot give you your arm back.

If you have a learning problem, we can teach you in different ways. We can help you use your strengths to compensate for your weaknesses. We can provide a supportive environment. But we cannot make you a different person. Frankly, I think that is a good thing.

It takes all kinds of people to make a world. We need farmers and scientists, artists and mathematicians, musicians and inventors.

I cannot walk in a parent’s shoes. I see the pain, I see the grief, I see the denial, and I see the anger. What I want to see is the love.

When I see the anxiety of the parents of a child with Autism, I know what they are really thinking is, “Will these professionals with all their book knowledge, be able to see beyond the label to the wonderful child I know and love.” When a parent loves a child with all the child’s problems, when they can accept the child even if nothing gets better, then living can begin.

I have heard and experienced many poignant stories in my career. One of them is the story of a young couple expecting a second child. The child is born with the entire back of his head open. There is no bone protecting his brain and the skin is open as well. The parents are told the child will soon die and they are left to be with the child alone. Four hours later the child is still alive and the parents are unsure what to do. The doctors recommend that they care for the child and see what happens. The head is left to heal on its own. I met the child as he was approaching his third birthday. He was able to move around his environment by rolling. He could hold objects and act on them. He was considered blind but I saw him fuss and cry when he saw a favorite toy while visiting a new school. Several years later I talked to his mother. He was attending a special school and making progress. His mother was not planning for college, but she loved him just the way he was every day of his life.

Schools cannot promise you a perfect child. Schools can see each child as an individual. Children are not test scores. Children are human beings with all the success and failure that being human entails. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Special Education. So I am looking to the Special Educators of this nation to stand up and speak for the children. When it comes to standardized testing of Special Education students, just say "No."
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6/09/2009

A Federal Role in Education?


As we stand on the brink of national standards for education, perhaps we should take a step back and look at the the Federal role in education and what it has done to education so far.

The United States Constitution states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to regulate or fund elementary or secondary education. The federal role in education is a violation of the 10th amendment of the United States Constitution.

The federal government formed the Department of Education (ED) in 1979

Some politicians warned against the ED.

“No matter what anyone says, the Department of Education will not just write checks to local school boards. They will meddle in everything. I do not want that.” Representative Pat Schroeder (D-CO) 7

“A national Department may actually impede the innovation of local programs as it attempts to establish uniformity throughout the Nation.” Representative Joseph Early (D-MA) 8

“We will be minimizing the roles of local and State education officials; we recognize that the States are responsible for the education policies of the children in the is country.” Representative Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) 9

“This is a back-room deal, born out of a squalid politics. Everything we had thought we would not see happening to education is happening here.” Senator Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) 6

Every dollar parents send to Washington is a dollar they don't have to spend directly on their children's education. Most education tax dollars sent to Washington fund the federal bureaucracy; far less than half of each dollar is ever returned to local schools. More importantly, federal school dollars come with strings attached. The more money we give to education bureaucrats, the more power they have to dictate how local schools are run.

When federal spending increases, local schools are forced to do whatever it takes to get their share, even if this means adopting one size fits all policies mandated in Washington. In other words, federal money is used as a club to force schools to surrender more and more of their decision making authority to Washington.

Although statistics show that only seven percent of an average school’s budget is subsidized by the feds, local districts complain about massive paperwork and red tape required to receive these skimpy funds. A 1991 survey of Ohio school districts found that each district was required to fill out an average of 330 forms, of which 157 were from the state and 173 were from the federal government.4 The federal government, responsible for only seven percent of the budget, causes 55% of the red tape.



The List of Programs:
Goodling stated, “This massive list of federal education programs clearly demonstrates what many of us had suspected for quite some time that Washington is out of control and out of touch.” Pointing out a huge stack of papers required for all the Education Department’s programs, McKeon remarked, “The Clintons say that it takes a village to raise a child, but that is only because it takes a village to fill out this paper work.”
Obviously, ever-increasing federal control over our schools has failed the nation's children and lowered educational standards.

Parents and teachers know what is best for their schools at the local level. The key to reforming public education in America is returning local control back to our public schools.

NOTES
Berthoud, Dr. John E., Who Got It Right? What Proponents and Opponents of the Creation of the Department of Education Promised & Predicted, The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, January 18, 1996, p.11.
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