Which is the better number?

 Which is the better number? 

 

Which is the better way to go if you are looking for an appropriate special education for your child?  There is section 504 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act and there is PL101-476 which is the Public Law of the 101^st Congress that passed the 476^th piece of legislation better known as IDEA.  

Let’s start with Section 504.  This section of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act says that organizations that receive federal funds  (almost every school district) must make accommodations for people with disabilities. That requirement includes staff as well as students.  In a school setting the accommodation might be smaller classes, longer test times, or even additional breaks.  Many school districts will default to 504 plans for good reasons.  They are generally less expensive to provide. There is little paperwork involved. And most importantly from the school’s perspective, there is no enforcement mechanism if the plan is never implemented or only partially so.

Parents like 504 Plans because they are quick to implement and children do not have to have a specific diagnostic category to have access.  They only need to have a “disability”.  

On the other hand, PL101-476 is much more difficult to put into place.  The child must be formally tested and be determined to have one of the 13 disabilities described in the law. Once that happens, a school team, including the parents, meets to construct an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for the child.  These plans can sometimes be contentious because they include not just the educational objectives for the child and the specific instructional supports, they also must include any additional related services such as speech, occupational therapy or counseling among several others.  Parents generally want more; school districts often want less. The other major difference between the 504 Plan and an IEP is that the IEP is a legally binding contract for services between the child’s parents acting on behalf of the child and the school district.  It is NOT, however, a guarantee that the instructional objectives outlined in the plan will be achieved.  IEP meetings need to be held at least once a year to be updated as the child’s needs change.

So which is the better way to go?  Well, that depends.   If what a child needs is an easy tweak to a typical educational program then the 504 Plan may fill the bill.  But if what a child needs is a full rounded, enforceable, contract for service then there is no question- the lower number 476 delivers on the goods more so than the higher number 504.

Birds, Bees & Disabilities

 Birds, Bees and Disabilities

 

People with disabilities learn sex ed in classes just like everyone else.  That’s enough-right?  Well not exactly.  There are multiple wrinkles to the needed sex ed for folks with disabilities.

Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernadino Counties has created a six- session curriculum called “Equal Voices” that teaches people about sexually transmitted diseases, birth control, consent in a relationship and the perils of online dating and predatory relationships.

Many people with disabilities are naïve when it comes to relationships.  Even when they get a lot of love from family and friends, an individual may strongly want to bond with a partner. This need makes them very easy targets for predatory relationships.

Because people with disabilities usually have fewer sexual relationships, they lack the experience of being able to tell how sincere the other person is.  People with disabilities need to know enough about themselves to understand their own personal boundaries so they can tell their partners which behaviors are ok and which behaviors make them feel uncomfortable.

Sadly, some people with disabilities feel grateful for any partner/sexual relationship so they are afraid to say “no” for fear this will be their one and only chance for a partner relationship.  Families who work out ways for their offspring to live independently in group homes or supported apartments, don’t include advice on sexual relationships now that their children are living outside of the family home. Living independently will include dating and perhaps bringing someone home.  People with disabilities are often seen as asexual by the non-disabled community.  That is not the situation at all and explains why these individuals are such easy prey for those who would take advantage.  

It is also true that individuals with physical disabilities may need alternative methods for achieving sexual satisfaction.   Able bodied individuals generally have not thought of what those alternative methods might be.

Sex for people with disabilities begins with self-respect and self-appreciation so that people with disabilities can enter into relationships on an equal level playing field and not one of gratitude and thankfulness which can make the individual easy pickings for an unbalanced predatory relationship.

 

 

Can't Nobody Get This Right

 Can’t Nobody Get this Right?

 

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)made a big splash a few weeks ago with its grades for Maryland Colleges of teacher education.  Simply put with the exception of McDaniel, they were all terrible.

The Baltimore Sun jumped on the issue and immediately equated the ratings to why kids can’t read and are failing the state tests. Of course, no effort was made to evaluate either the organization or the method being used to make the determination.  Only 46% of the State’s 4^th graders are proficient in reading according to those tests. 

The first thing that needs to be known about these ratings is the method used by NCTQ.  Did the National Council send trained researchers to visit campuses and sit in on classes?  The answer to that question is nope.  Well then, did the organization send surveys to graduates to ask how their undergraduate programs have served their professional needs.  Again, the answer is nope nothing like that.  Did the organization review the credentials of the faculty to see if they were qualified to prepare and teach people to teach.   Again, no. Well then how did they come to their conclusions? Answer, they reviewed the descriptions in the college catalogs of the courses being taught.

The emphasis on the review was how much in depth was the teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness.   Instead, Maryland schools taught what is called “balanced literacy”.  That is in addition to word attack and decoding, Maryland schools also taught reading comprehension and literature- both of which are the point of reading!  Doesn’t do much good to decode words if the reader doesn’t get any meaning out of the sounds they are producing.

All of Maryland colleges and universities that prepare teachers are accredited by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE).   The AACTE sends teams of professionals into the schools and they stay for most of a week.  They visit classes, interview staff and students, review and evaluate coursework AND talk with graduates regarding how well prepared they were to enter their chosen profession.  The review process isn’t easy.  Lots of paperwork is submitted in advance of the site visits.  So, when a school does get accredited it means something.  And yes, sometimes as a result of the review a school is put on probation, that means something too.

The Baltimore Sun and NCTQ did a disservice to the schools that are doing a comprehensive job of preparing future teachers.  They are getting it right and in the right way.

 

Should he have been included?

 Should he have been included?

 

Samir was excited to get his yearbook.  There had been lots of photos of him during the year.   As he and his mom went through the book they had ordered, there was no mention of Samir or of the other special needs young people who attended the school.  Samir’s Mama Bear was over-the-top furious.

But before you get too whipped up, here is the rest of the story.  Samir attended a post-high school federally funded program that was housed Northwest Career and Technical Academy in Las Vegas.   Technically they were not students at the school and since they had already graduated from high school, they would not be students at any other high school either.

Samir’s mother went to the media to complain about her son and the other “kids” being left out.  There are several issues here.   First of all, all of the young people in the program were over 18, some over 21, so they were not officially “kids” any more.  Secondly, they also were not citizens of the high school, merely members of a program that was leasing space from the high school.

Samir’s mother keeps referring to his completion of the program as his “last year of school”.   But the program Samir was participating in is NOT a school program; it is an employment training program for high school graduates.

So why all the confusion?   

First of all, perhaps the managers of the federal grant made an error by renting space in a high school.  That alone could have led to the confusion that the program was an extension of the school.  Yet all of the participants had already experienced a high school graduation.

Secondly, school staff do a notoriously terrible job of teaching families about post-secondary programs, about what they are and what they are not.  Then there is the fact that families also struggle to think of their children with disabilities as adults and not still children.    Certainly, this mom seemed confused as to what kind of program her son was in.

Clark County school district personnel tried to explain that the yearbook is typically for students in grades 9 through 12 and that these individuals were in a post-graduate program that just happened to be on housed on campus.   No dice, the school district was reduced to playing good defense.

Sometimes people, even people with disabilities, are left out because they should be.  I know hard to accept.

 

If you talk the talk, it't time to start walking

 If you talk the talk, it’s time to start walking.

 

It is the end of the school year.   Principals and school districts are beginning to hire up for fall.  What are principals looking for when they begin this process.  The results are interesting and depressing. The survey was conducted by the RAND Corporation.

According to this recent survey of school principals the number one thing principals are looking for in new hires is a mindset that aligns with the school’s vision.  What that means is the principal as the school leader sets the vision for the school.  New hires need to sign on to that vision.  No new ideas or outliers wanted.

The second area sought after is the alignment of the individual’s certification with the needs of the school.   So, if the school needs a first grade teacher, does the individual have elementary education certification?  Ditto for secondary education where certification in individual academic areas is important.   Certification is more important for secondary schools than for the lower grades.

And rounding out the top three is the applicant’s experience in behavior management. 

 

What is probably more telling than what are in the top three, is what is left OUT.

Job experience was a surprisingly low requirement. In fact,  less than a  quarter of principals thought job experience mattered.  Doesn’t matter if you  haven’t done this job before, what counts is can you keep the kids behaved and your willingness to follow the leader.

Educator diversity ranked pretty low too.  So in spite of all the chatter about increasing diversity in schools and about how that will be so much better for kids of color, this trait ranked low across all school types: urban, suburban, or rural.  Also didn’t matter if the school was majority white or majority non-white.

In all schools, talk was one thing, behavior was another.

One of the most remarkable omissions in the survey, an item that didn’t make the list AT ALL!  Was the ability to teach school!   This omission is incredible.

Politicians rail about the low-test scores.   Education leaders talk about what they are doing to raise test scores.  But when the rubber meets the road, no one seems to be looking for good teachers.

Clearly, we are best at talking the talk, but we sure aren’t doing anything to walk the walk.

 

School to Prison

 School to Prison

 

There is a new superhighway that folks are worried about.  It is the road from school to prison.  The wisdom in this approach is that by suspending students for aggressive behavior their next destination will be prison.  Quite a leap but then these are visionary thinkers.

One of the consequences of this type of thinking is that we do not suspend students even if their behavior is quite egregious.  On the other hand, we talk about putting school resource officers (SOROs) in schools, some of whom are armed or police officers.  In some states there is a push to arm the teachers themselves, not sure where target shooting shows up in teacher preparation courses, but that could be added.

We are told the current spike in school violence is still another negative outcome of the pandemic and kids being out of school so they have forgotten how to socialize in person. 

It is entirely true that there is too easy access to guns in our culture.  Perhaps it is a holdover from our early cowboy days.  On the other hand, we also know that the kids who do commit gun violence in school usually feel they are outliers and unknown to their teachers.

Is there a reasonable way to stop violence in our schools without sending all those "bad apples" to prison?

The best way to stop school violence is a two- pronged approach, a carrot and stick policy.

First of all secondary schools are just too big.  With 1,500 to 3,000 students in a school, there is no way that EVERY child is truly known by a staff member.  So the very first step in preventing violence of any kind in a school is for there to be a connection with a staff member for EVERY student.  A real connection so that the teacher, counselor, custodian, administrator- knows when something is off for that child.  There is a caring adult that is connected to the child.  That’s the carrot, and it needs to be a very big sweet carrot, not a perfunctory little sliver of a carrot.

Secondly, the stick needs to be swift and dependable.   If a student misbehaves, even a small infraction, there needs to be a consequence.   Not a suspension for all offenses but a consequence.  Profanity is not allowed.  If a student uses profane language or is disrespectful to a teacher there is a consequence, maybe having lunch in a room with a teacher monitor rather than peers.  Whatever, the consequence needs to be uncomfortable but not fatal.  Students need to learn that rules WILL be obeyed and if they are not the punishment will fit the crime.  An act of physical aggression is met with suspension. Verbal aggression that makes someone feel unsafe also warrants a suspension.  Those consequences are given with the warning, our school needs to be safe for everyone and you made people feel unsafe so you need a break.  The other important piece of the suspension is that it is short and re-entry requires a parent or guardian to appear and for there to be a discussion about what the unacceptable behavior was, why it happened and what’s the plan so it won’t happen again.   Yes, family members NEED to be inconvenienced because unfortunately sometimes that is the only way to get families invested in school behavior.  

School needs to be a place where kids want to be not where they are MADE to be.  Teenagers are relationship anchored.  We need to anchor some of those relationships both with staff and with the safety of the community.

Armed teachers, school resource officers and sworn police officers in schools do not set the tone for a safe community. They set a tone of us against you. Making a full on commitment to care about each other does.

School suspension can be a superhighway to prison.  But superhighways have many off ramps and educators need to identify those off ramps and make sure kids use them.

A safe school is a better school for everyone.

Where have all the high scores gone?

 Where have all the high scores gone?

Where have all the high scores gone, long time passing.   There has been a great deal of concern lately that scores on standardized tests are dropping precipitously since the pandemic has been over.   Several reasons have been advanced.  One is that the students didn’t get quite as much out of virtual instruction as once thought.  Imagine that!   Another reason is that it has been hard for the kids to get used to being in school buildings and settling down with in-school behavior thereby limiting learning.

Here is another reason.  Baltimore County has seen a decrease in population this school year of almost 5%.   It has been determined that these students are either being home-schooled or they are in private schools.

Here is how that can disproportionately negatively impact test scores.   Along with acknowledging the first three letters in the word assume, there are supportable reasons why the loss of over 5000 students would impact test scores.

It is reasonable that these parents care more about their child’s education than the average bear.  They are proactively moving their children out of the public schools because they are not satisfied with the free education.

Private schools cost money.  Unless a family is extremely well off financially, making the decision to place your child(ren) in a private school is going to impact the financial affairs of the family.  Maybe shorter or different vacations, maybe keeping that car an extra year or two.  These families are willing to make the sacrifice in order for their children to have a better education.

Home schooling also costs money, even if only sacrificing the income of the parent who is doing the schooling.  And even home-schooling requires technology, materials, books and money for field trips.

Families making these sacrifices value education and are showing it by their spending.   Probably these are the same kids whose parents made sure homework was done, followed what their students were learning in school and made sure they got good rest and a breakfast on standardized test days.

Losing 5% of your best performing test takers is bound to impact the overall performance of the school district.

Not saying that virtual non-learning didn’t have an impact, nor did getting back in the grove.  But if you wonder why even the “good” systems saw a drop in schools, maybe all the high scores have gone to private schools and home schools.   Just a thought.