Live Long and Prosper...

SPECIAL EDUCATION NEEDS AND LEAD POISONING

In Flint, Schools Overwhelmed by Special Ed. Needs in Aftermath of Lead Crisis

In nearly all my previous posts having to do with the lead poisoning of America's poor children, I have commented that we would likely see increased numbers of students needing special services in areas where lead is an identified problem.

Flint, Michigan is facing that situation. There aren't enough special education teachers to handle the increased case load in Flint's schools. The author of the article (and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit) don't blame the lead in the water for the increased need for speical ed services in Flint. It seems likely, however, that the near doubling of the number of children identified for special education over the last 8 years has something to do with the damage done to Flint's children by the lead in the water.

Who should pay for the permanent damage done to an entire community of lead poisoned children? Who should be held accountable? Will teachers' evaluations reflect the lower test scores of their students damaged by policy makers' neglect?

By the way, the title of this article refers to the "Aftermath of [Flint's] Lead Crisis." Is Flint's water safe yet? What about Newark? What about the lead in the ground in East Chicago, IN?

In a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, the Education Law Center, and the New York-based firm of White & Case, lawyers representing Flint families have sued the school system, the Michigan education department, and the Genesee County Intermediate school district, alleging systematic failure to meet the needs of special education students. The Genesee district helps oversee special education services in Flint and other county districts.

While the lawsuit does not pin the increased need for special education services solely on the prolonged lead exposure, research has linked lead toxicity to learning disabilities, poor classroom performance, and increased aggression.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT TESTS AREN'T VALID FOR TEACHER EVALUATIONS

As low ILEARN scores loom, McCormick wants to change how Indiana evaluates schools, teachers

What McCormick should have included in her comments...

We shouldn't use student achievement tests to evaluate teachers. Student achievement tests are developed to assess student achievement, not teacher effectiveness...not school effectiveness...and not school system effectiveness. This misuse of standardized tests invalidates the results.

McCormick also said it is “past time” for the state to take students’ standardized test scores out of teachers’ evaluations. The argument is that scores should be used to inform educators on what concepts students have mastered and where they need help, rather than a way of evaluating how well teachers are doing their jobs.

“ILEARN was a snapshot in time, it was a one-day assessment,” McCormick said. “It gave us information on where students are performing, but there are a lot of pieces to student performance beyond one assessment.”

As for why the first year of scores were low, McCormick said the new test was “much more rigorous” and weighed skills differently, prioritizing “college and career readiness” skills.

McCormick: It’s time to change school grading system

"It's past time to decouple test scores from teacher evaluations."

• Hold schools harmless for test results for accountability purposes. In other words, schools would receive the higher of the grade they earned in 2018 or 2019.
• Pause the intervention timeline that allows the state to close or take over schools that are rated F for multiple consecutive years.
• Give emergency rule-making authority to the State Board of Education to enable it to reconfigure the accountability system to align with the new assessment.

McCormick also said it’s past time to decouple test scores from teacher evaluations, which can determine whether teachers get raises. Current law says teacher evaluations must be “significantly informed” by objective measures, like students’ test scores.

TEACHERS REPEAT WHAT THEY'VE BEEN SAYING FOR YEARS: LISTEN TO US!

Local educators tell commission to ‘support Hoosier teachers’ during input session focused on competitive wages

Once more teachers tell policy makers (this time "business and education leaders") how the state of Indiana (and the nation) has damaged public education and the teaching profession. Apparently, the only people who don't know why there's a teacher shortage are those who have caused it...

One by one, teachers and community members took to the mic to give their input of what they believe needs to be done to increase teacher pay as well as revenues available to school corporations.

Recommendations included — but were not limited to — looking into low-enrollment schools, increasing state taxes, dropping standardized testing and examining charter schools’ “harmful impact” on public education.

THERE IS NO MAGIC ELIXIR

Is NCLB’s Reading First Making a Comeback?

There's more to reading instruction than phonics.

[emphasis in original]

Teachers need a broad understanding about reading instruction and how to assess the reading needs of each student, especially when students are young and learning to read.

This includes decoding for children who have reading disabilities. But a variety of teaching tools and methods help children learn to read. The conditions in their schools and classrooms should be conducive for this to happen.

It would be helpful to read more about lowering class sizes, a way to better teach children in earlier grades.

Problems relating to the loss of librarians and libraries is also currently of grave concern. And with so many alternative education programs like Teach for America it’s important to determine who is teaching children reading in their classrooms.

The Reading First scandal was noxious, and I have not done justice describing it in this post. Today, most understand that NCLB was not about improving public education but about demeaning educators and closing public schools. Reading First fit into this privatization plan. It was about making a profit on reading programs. It turned out not to be a magic elixir to help students learn how to read better.

TEACHERS OPEN THEIR WALLETS

It’s the beginning of the school year and teachers are once again opening up their wallets to buy school supplies

While the governor and his commission on teacher pay argue about the best way to increase teacher salaries across the state, Indiana's teachers are opening their classrooms and their wallets. The average amount of money a teacher spends on his/her students in Indiana is $462, which is more than the national average.

The nation’s K–12 public school teachers shell out, on average, $459 on school supplies for which they are not reimbursed (adjusted for inflation to 2018 dollars), according to the NCES 2011–2012 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). This figure does not include the dollars teachers spend but are reimbursed for by their school districts. The $459-per-teacher average is for all teachers, including the small (4.9%) share who do not spend any of their own money on school supplies.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOL - END VOUCHERS AND CHARTER SCHOOLS

Support Our Public Schools – And The Teachers Who Work In Them

What can you do to help support your local school?

As our nation’s young people return to public schools, there are things you can do to shore up the system. First, support your local public schools. It doesn’t matter if your children are grown or you never had children. The kids attending public schools in your town are your neighbors and fellow residents of your community. Someday, they will be the next generation of workers, teachers and leaders shaping our country. It’s in everyone’s best interest that today’s children receive the best education possible, and the first step to that is making sure their public schools are adequately funded.

Second, arm yourself with facts about the threat vouchers pose to public education and oppose these schemes. To learn more, visit the website of the National Coalition for Public Education (NCPE), a coalition co-chaired by Americans United that includes more than 50 education, civic, civil rights and religious organizations devoted to the support of public schools. NCPE has pulled together a lot of research showing that voucher plans don’t work and that they harm public education by siphoning off needed funds.

GUIDE TO THE DPE MOVEMENT

A Layperson’s Guide to the ‘Destroy Public Education’ Movement

This excellent summary post by Thomas Ultican was originally published on Sept. 21, 2018.

The destroy public education (DPE) movement is the fruit of a relatively small group of billionaires. The movement is financed by several large non-profit organizations. Nearly all of the money spent is free of taxation. Without this spending, there would be no wide-spread public school privatization.

It is generally recognized that the big three foundations driving DPE activities are The Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation (Assets in 2016 = $41 billion), The Walton Family Foundation (Assets in 2016 = $3.8 billion), and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation (Assets in 2016 = $1.8 billion).

Last week, the Network for Public Education published “Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super-Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools.” This interactive report lists the top ten billionaires spending to drive their DPE agenda with links to case studies for their spending.

THIRD GRADE FLUNK LAWS

Third Grade Flunk Laws–and (Un)intended Consequences

States (and schools...and teachers) continue to retain children in third grade (and in other grades) simply because they can't read at an arbitrarily determined "level."

Retention in grade doesn't help children "catch up." It doesn't give kids "another year to grow." It doesn't help and often hurts

This post by Nancy Flanagan discusses the unintended consequences of using an "intervention" strategy that doesn't work.

[For more information on Retention in Grade, click HERE.]

Now we are witnessing the other consequences of the Third Grade Threat—pushing inappropriate instruction down to kindergarten, as anxious districts fear that students who are not reading at grade level (a murky goal, to begin with) will embarrass the district when letters go out to parents of third graders who are supposed to be retained. Because it’s the law.

Who’s to blame when students lag behind (arbitrary) literacy benchmarks, for whatever reason, from learning in a second language, an identified disability or merely being a late-bloomer? Teachers, of course.

NCLB: DEVELOPMENTALLY INAPPROPRIATE

How NCLB is Still Destroying Reading for Children 

NCLB gave us Reading First and testing, testing, testing. This was followed by Race to the Top which continued to punish schools for societal failures. Bill Gates jumped in with Common Core, a reverse programmed curriculum forcing developmentally inappropriate instruction on students in the early grades.

This hypervigilant push for children to read before first grade is not working.

Bring back kindergarten! Quit repetitively testing children! Get those play kitchens and sand tables out of the closet!

Don’t only say that kindergarten shouldn’t be the new first grade! Bring back kindergarten! Get rid of NCLB once and for all!

SCHOOL LIBRARIES SUFFER FROM UNDERFUNDING

U.S. Public Schools Have Lost Nearly 20% Of Their Librarians Since 2000

Here's one more way that we're shortchanging our future.

The shortage in public school librarian employment — which saw the most dramatic drop following the Great Recession of 2008 and hasn't recovered since — has hit districts serving minorities the hardest. Among all the districts that have retained all their librarians since 2005, 75% are white, Education Week reports. On the other end of the scale, student populations in the 20 districts that lost the most librarians in the same time comprised 78% students of color.

In other words, while U.S. employment rates are back up in the wake of the Great Recession, the public school librarian sector has not rebounded, and the nation's collective failure to rebuild its public information infrastructure is hitting minorities the hardest.

WE CANNOT AFFORD PARALLEL SCHOOL SYSTEMS

Charter Schools Are Pushing Public Education to the Breaking Point

When striking Los Angeles teachers won their demand to call for a halt to charter school expansions in California, they set off a domino effect, and now teachers in other large urban districts are making the same demand.

Unchecked charter school growth is also bleeding into 2020 election campaigns. Recently, New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait berated Democratic Massachusetts Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren for having opposed a ballot initiative in her home state in 2016 that would have raised a cap on the number of charter schools. “There may be no state in America that can more clearly showcase the clear success of charter schools than [Massachusetts],” declared Chait.

But while Chait and other charter school fans claim Massachusetts as a charter school model, the deeper reality is that charters are driving Boston’s public education system to the financial brink.

As the Boston Globe recently reported, the city is experiencing an economic boom, but its schools resemble “an economically depressed industrial center.” The state’s unfair funding formula is part of the problem, but an ever-expanding charter school industry also imposes a huge financial drain.

WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY KILLS ITS OWN CHILDREN...

Since Parkland

It's time for commonsense gun laws. The Second Amendment is no more important than the First Amendment. We freely accept accommodations and exceptions to the First in the form of libel and slander laws. It's time we tweak the Second Amendment so that our children can grow to adulthood.

12 months
1,200 American kids killed by guns
1,200 stories about the lives they led, reported by teen journalists across the country

NON-CHRISTIANS DON'T MATTER TO JUSTICES

With Alabama Execution Case, Supreme Court Declares That Only Christianity Matters

...and speaking of the First Amendment, we have some educating to do. We need to teach certain members of the Supreme Court that religious accommodations are not only for Christians. Perhaps they believe that America is a Christian Nation (hint: it's not). In any case, the five "conservative" justices ruled that a Muslim was not allowed access to his preferred spiritual leader before he was executed. You would think that the First Amendment mattered as much to "conservatives" as the Second...

I’m not asking you to feel sympathy for a man who raped and murdered a child. I’m asking you to be outraged by a Supreme Court blatantly and publicly stating that only Christianity matters. This decision spells disaster for minority religious believers and non-believers alike. Our heartfelt beliefs, our core values, are without value to the majority of this Court. Where exemptions are granted, it will be to Christians. Their beliefs are important enough to the right wing majority that they warrant protection. The equally strongly held moral values of Muslims, or Hindus, or Jews, or atheists are to be dismissed if they cause even the slightest inconvenience to the state.

We knew we were facing a tough battle with this Supreme Court. We had no clue just how hard it would become so quickly.

SEGREGATION IN INDIANA

1920s decisions shaped racial landscape

Blogger Steve Hinnefeld provides an excellent history lesson on segregation in Indiana.

But Indiana schools are still segregated by race, ethnicity and family income, according to a 2017 study and data visualization by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. The legacy of the 1920s lives on.

LOSERS ARE AS LOSERS DO

Finally, the President's eldest son has about as much verbal self-control as his father. Speaking at a Presidential rally against black and brown immigration, the "first son" called teachers "losers" who indoctrinate their students in socialism.

My response to that are the following socialist benefits Americans enjoy: the U.S. Military, oil subsidies, farm subsidies, social security, Medicare, public roadways and waterways, municipal water systems, public libraries, police and fire departments, the postal service, public trash pickup and landfills, congressional health care, veterans' health care, public parks, the court system, state and city-run beaches, unemployment insurance, the national weather service, and NASA. [For more see HERE.]

Here are two excellent responses to Junior's idiocy.

Commentary: Trump Jr., losers are as losers do

We have a trust-fund baby like the president’s son, one not even smart enough to stay away from meetings where people planned lawbreaking, calling other hard-working Americans losers.

That by itself is enough to trigger a gag reflex.

Then there’s the gratuitous nonsense about socialism. Coming from a guy whose family members are soaking up millions of tax dollars as they vacation every third day at one Trump property after another and leave the nation’s citizenry with the bill, that’s so rich it’s gooey.

Finally, there’s the muddle-headed and mean-spirited goofiness of whining about indoctrination at a Donald Trump rally.

Young Trump complained about indoctrination at an event where a Trump supporter assaulted a BBC cameraman and where anyone who doesn’t chant agreement with everything the leader says or shouts is threatened, beat up or kicked out.

But that’s the way it is with folks like Trump Junior.

Diary Of A Socialist Indoctrinator

Principal McBossface held me over a minute after the meeting to let me know that he's aware I'm running behind on my Socialist Indoctrination and to remind me that it's super-critical that I get up to speed. I'm really feeling the pressure.

Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, has been telling teachers what they're doing wrong since he was elected. He's knee deep in the "Schools are failing and it's because of bad teachers and their unions" reform movement and is pushing for charters, teacher pay based on test scores, union-busting, and experience doesn't matter pay schemes for Indiana public schools.

Now he has a "situation" on his hands which throws some light on what happens when the business community moves into public education. Profit and money become the bottom line...not students and learning.

Karen Francisco wrote in Fort Wayne's Journal Gazette on Sunday, February 6,

One year ago, the Indiana Department of Education hyped 2010 as the “Year for Science Education Reform” and kicked off with a science summit featuring State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, Eli Lilly officials and “national experts.”

Among those experts was Michael Klentschy, Ph.D., a researcher and retired superintendent of schools in California’s El Centro Elementary School District. Panelist information for the summit touted his research in the “longitudinal effects of inquiry-based science education on language minority populations and with the science-literacy connection in North Carolina, Idaho, New Mexico and California.”

It also noted that he served as principal or co-principal investigator on several National Science Foundation-funded elementary science initiatives.

Over the next few months, references to Klentschy appeared on numerous education department notices, including an October reminder in Bennett’s weekly mailing to school superintendents that Klentschy would speak at a $140 teacher workshop at the Wabash Valley Education Service Center. “This is a chance to hear and ask questions about notebooking, inquiry, and best practices utilizing science kits,” Bennett’s e-mail said.

Klentschy was named a budget partner in the $18.4 million proposal for the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) grant competition. Purdue University was lead partner in the request for an Indiana Science Initiative program to “validate a statewide K-8 science education reform based upon scaffolded guided inquiry.” Other partners included the Indiana DOE, Ball State University and several school districts.

A link to a video featuring Klentschy boasting of the results of his “inquiry-based science curriculum” work still can be found on the website for NISTEM, the Northeast Indiana Education Resource Center.

But Klentschy’s name appears on another interesting document: a federal indictment from a 2009 grand jury inquiry alleging that he and two colleagues stole $5.4 million in grant money from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. A separate indictment naming Klentschy alone alleges that he falsified standardized testing results supporting his own “special” kit based on “scaffold guided inquiry” in teaching elementary school science.

This reminds me of the Reading First scandal of a few years back where the Federal program was only accepting certain programs and assessments from states...which "just happened" to be in the economic interest of some of the Reading First developers.

Francisco went on...

Since he took office in 2009, the superintendent has made unrelenting demands on Indiana schools to adopt his approach or face consequences.

He fired most of the experienced educators in his department and assembled a young team of officials who spout the current buzzwords in school improvement. The “we’ll work with you” style of his predecessor has been replaced by “trust us – we know best.”

To me this looks like Tony Bennett is just another anti-public education politician who wants to convince the public that teachers don't know anything about education, that training doesn't matter, and that the business community knows best. It looks like he's in it for the money and we all know there's a bundle of money in school budgets. People like him -- the Duncans, Gates, Broads, Waltons, Obamas and other "reformers" -- want their cut of the education loot and they're willing to throw public education under the bus to get it.

Fans of college athletics know what a Red Shirt is:
Red Shirt = a term used in American college athletics. Typically, a student-athlete has four years of eligibility in a given sport, to coincide with the standard four-year calendar for obtaining a degree. For various reasons, some student-athletes may opt to attend only classes and practices with the team; this process is known as redshirting. The student-athlete does not use one of his or her four years of eligibility in that season. Using this mechanism, a student-athlete has up to five academic years to use the four years of eligibility, thus creating the phenomenon of "Fifth Year Seniors". -- Wikipedia

Star Trek Fans know what a Red Shirt is, too:
Red Shirt = A redshirt is a stock character, used frequently in Sci-Fi, whose sole purpose is to die, often violently, soon after being introduced. Redshirts are a plot device used to indicate the dangerous circumstances faced by the main characters at the start of a narrative without having to kill any of the vital main characters. The term comes from the popular American Sci-Fi TV series Star Trek, in which security officers wore red shirts, and were often killed on missions under the aforementioned circumstances. -- Wikipedia

But there is a new Red Shirt on the scene...new...and not new:
Red Shirt = in elementary education, where it refers to the practice of delaying a child's entrance into kindergarten by a year to give the child opportunity for further mental, physical, or socioemotional growth. -- Wikipedia

Parents have been holding their kids out of kindergarten for a variety of reasons...and for a long time. But things have changed.

The kindergarten curriculum under the "standards movement" and No Child Left Behind has become what the first grade curriculum was 20...no 10 years ago. The concept of a developmentally appropriate curriculum has been lost, so teachers have been forced to teach kindergartners, many of whom are not academically ready, how to do things that first graders used to learn.

Recent studies have shown that when kids are held out of kindergarten if their birthday are in April or later - now officially called "Red shirting" - the students do better. They are more confident, achieve higher, have a higher chance of going to college, and are just better off all around. If you are teaching what is actually first grade, no matter what you call it, it just makes sense to teach kids who are of first grade age.

So what have we achieved by all this? Preschools have become the new kindergarten - the place where the skills of cooperation and learning through play are taught and experienced. Kindergartens are now the first grades...first grades are now second..and so on. To give their children the most advantage, parents who are aware of this are keeping their kids in preschool for an additional year. They think it is because it will help them when they get to school...and they are right, but not for the reason they think. It will help their children because the curriculum they will get in school is not appropriate to them until they are a year older.

If this was universal, then there would be no problem. Kids would be in preschool and get the traditional developmental curriculum that they used to get in kindergarten and, since they start the new kindergarten - which is the old first grade - at a later age all is well...and everyone will be happy. The truth is however, that this is another example of the class divisions in this country. Wealthy kids, kids of the educated, will be red-shirted, while kids of the poor will be sent to kindergarten at the age of 5...and in some states 4. No only do poorer children not have the benefit of a "print rich environment" at home, they do not have the same opportunities to go to preschools - especially since the Head Start program has lost much of its funding under the Bush administration. They will come into the new kindergarten younger than their kindergarten peers around the country and with academically poorer backgrounds than their kindergarten peers around the country.

The current administration says that No Child Left Behind is working, but that is not really true (see Reading First and the Evidence: A Response to Sol Stern by Steven Krashen). The current administration whose Secretary of Education is not even an educator and whose only qualification on her government bio is that she is "a mom" and has a "personal interest" in seeing that we have quality schools...This administration is killing the public schools of America. Not only is Bush giving the rich tax advantages, but his Department of Education is now giving the rich educational advantaged too - using the public schools, the taxpayers money, and the corrupt practices of Reading First and the infamous Bush style of paying off friends with contracts. Those who have the wherewithal to send their kids to private preschools and who learn about the practice of "redshirting" will gain the advantage for their children, while the children of the poor will be more "disadvantaged" than ever when they start kindergarten.

Published: March 21, 2007

LETTER

In Reading, a Scandal Without Consequences

To the Editor:

It seems that in Washington there are scandals, and
then there are scandals.

In February, The Washington Post ran a series of
articles on the neglect and mistreatment of wounded
soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center. Generals have been fired and
heads have rolled. And that’s as it should be.

We’ve now had a series of reports from the U.S.
Department of Education’s inspector general on the
implementation of the multibillion-dollar Reading
First program, part of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Not one congressional hearing has yet been held.
Despite the recommendations of the inspector general’s
reports, only one scapegoat has been permitted to
resign. No investigations of violations of the law
have been initiated by the attorney general. No grand
juries have been convened. And the national press and
media have virtually ignored the whole scandal.
When Education Week went through the mountain of
e-mails released by the Education Department under the
Freedom of Information Act ("E-Mails Reveal Federal
Reach Over Reading?" Feb. 21, 2007), it found numerous
messages that seem to involve conspiracies by
Education Department and Nation Institute of Child
Health and Human Development functionaries and their
paid consultants to violate and misrepresent the law.
And yet those very violations were excused by ranking
authorities as being necessary to force teachers and
administrators to use reading programs and tests
labeled “scientific” by their own authors, with no
supporting evidence for the particular programs and
tests.

We need to insist that those responsible for
mistreating our returning servicemen and -women be
punished. And we must also insist that those abusing
the children of these returning servicepeople—and the
rest of the children in American schools—also be
punished.

We need to fully air the impact of Reading First, and
NCLB as a whole, before the No Child Left Behind Act
is reauthorized for another, even more disastrous five
years. Thanks to Education Week for its full reporting
of the Reading First scandals.

Kenneth S. Goodman
Professor Emeritus
Department of Language,
Reading, and Culture
College of Education
University of Arizona
Tucson, Ariz.

Vol. 26, Issue 28, Page 32