Here we go again…

 

Every time there is tight money and schools are looking for a place to cut, it’s the arts that go on the chopping block.

Besides funding, schools are worried about attendance.   This is not a change of subject.

For many kids with learning challenges, they are only coming to school for the arts portion of their day.   In Maryland, children between 5 and 18 are required to attend school. If traditional school learning is a challenge for you, that means a life sentence of failure.  Every day someone will demonstrate that you are not as smart (read not as good as) some of your peers.   Yet you gotta go every day because that’s the law.  So you figure out ways to avoid the daily punishment.   You skip school whenever you can; you feign illness.   For many children, the only reason to come to school, the only place where their other skills count, is the arts.

Instruction in visual arts, music and theatre always lags behind the “important” subjects of English, math, science and history/social studies.   Reading on grade level is now the holy grail of education based on the new policy passed by the State Board of Ed and the new Superintendent.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is very specific about how local districts can spend their money.  Seventy-five percent of the State funds must go for the pillars in the Blueprint.   That leaves the remaining 25% for everything else, including the arts.   Advocates for the arts tried to get those areas included in the Blueprint along with other content areas.   They failed.   The arts are generally considered an added extra, the icing on the cake that can easily be done without.  State regulations require instruction in the arts but there are no specifics as to how that requirement is met.

Maryland is facing a 3 billion dollar budget deficit so budget cutting is more likely than budget enhancement.

No district in Maryland gets more money from the Blueprint than Baltimore City because of its high concentration of students living in poverty.   It can also be argued that no district in the state is in greater need of providing arts education to struggling learners and to kids whose families are unlikely able to supplement the school programs with cultural experiences.   The City also has a HUGE attendance problem. The arts could help solve this problem.   Frederick and Howard counties are both proposing to cut arts programming.

Give the kids a reason to come to school.   Give them a space to shine and show their other abilities.  Why is school just for the academically talented kids?

Keep that spin going...

 Keep that spin going…

 

A few weeks ago, eleven students with autism and their seven teachers were denied service at a Cracker Barrell restaurant in Waldorf, Maryland.   The teacher in charge had called the Cracker Barrel and asked if they needed a reservation or anything else.  They were told no.   The lunch visit is part of a program to assist kids with significant disabilities to participate in the community.   Cracker Barrel had been part of the program.  The students are all on the autism spectrum and moderately disabled.

Upon arrival at the restaurant, the students and teachers were told they could not be served.  The teachers volunteered to break into smaller groups so that the grouping would be more typical.  They were still refused by the server, the assistant manager and the manager.   They waited 1 hour for carry out which they ate back in their classroom.

The incident went viral.  The county superintendent wrote a strongly worded letter.  Community groups were up in arms.

Corporate Cracker Barrel said the local staff would be spoken to, but the restaurant was too crowded to accommodate such a large group even though the group had asked in advance if it was ok.  

So, on the one hand, corporate said “we did not refuse service to this student group, but operational breakdowns caused by staffing shortages and poor communication on our part led us to fall well short of our service standards”.   Okay, service was not refused because that would be an admission of violating the Maryland public accommodation law.

On the other hand, Corporate said it was firing three employees at that Cracker Barrel including the general manager.  And they would be “moving forward with specialized training for all employees at this particular store” and that it has a “zero-tolerance policy against any form of discrimination”.  Makes sense, who wants to admit to breaking the law?

Representatives from Cracker Barrel have met with the school system and said they would like to continue to participate in the program.

So here is the confusion- your staff did nothing wrong but you fired them anyway??? Hmmm, that is curious.

Why not do a huge mea culpa and invite the kids to lunch, with the treat on Cracker Barrel?  Oh because then all those funny looking kids would be in your restaurant.  And so the spin goes on.

 You don’t care about me soooo

 

We have known for a very long time that students learn more from teachers they like and who they perceive as liking them.  Kids want to feel cared about by their teachers.

We also know that the students who have been involved in school aggression or violent assaults have all felt alienated from their schools.

We know so much and do so little…

A mere 22% of middle and high school students reported that many or all of their teachers cared about them, and/or made an effort to find out what their lives were like outside of school.

In the days before pacing guides, measuring learning with frequent tests and grading schools by test scores, people became teachers because they cared about kids and wanted to be a part of their successful future.  Schools and teachers were measured by how many kids graduated, went onto college or a job.   Schools seemed to recognize different values.  High school students in Maryland could earn an academic diploma, a commercial diploma (for students who wanted to do office work) and a general vocational diploma for students who were going into the trades.  The union really was a professional association that lobbied for more instructional materials, professional standards and better teacher training not higher salaries, shorter hours and protections for poor teachers.

Teachers are human and they will put their energies where the rewards are.  Right now, the rewards are for test scores and keeping on pace with the pacing guide.   Students have become cogs in the wheels rather than people with feelings and home lives.

Reasons for students feeling that no one cares about them have been offered up as the outcomes from teacher shortages and behavioral disturbances.   Maybe this is a chicken and egg situation.  If teachers cared about kids more, the teachers might enjoy their jobs more and not leave, hence not as much of a teacher shortage.  If kids felt cared about, they wouldn’t be as disruptive and would learn more.

 

All the kids just got smarter!

All the kids, just got smarter

 

Everyone seems to agree that test scores need to move upward.   The big question is exactly how do we do that.

Well several states have found a guaranteed way to improve test scores.  Oklahoma and Wisconsin have just changed the “cut point”.   So, by lowering the point score needed to be ranked basic, proficient or advanced, the same actual score, gives students a much better rating.  Truly simple.  This approach gives parents the impression that the schools and their child are improving; when, in fact, nothing has changed at all. Easiest approach of all.

Another approach is to reduce graduation requirements and inflate grades by banning failing grades and/or lowering the “fail” grade to 50% instead of the standard 60%.   Both Washington state and North Carolina have used this approach to show that grades are improving since the pandemic.

The approach to the grading crisis seems to be to lower expectations down to where the kids are rather than work with the students to meet the higher standard.

Each state controls its own definition of proficiency and how students can achieve grade level performance.  States aim for grade level proficiency based on their own standards. There is no gold standard in the sky of what equals 3^rd grade reading level.   Consequently, what is 3^rd grade in one state might be 2^nd or 4the in another state.  By moving bar on cut scores, states can automatically improve their proficiency scores.    The alternative approach is to redesign the test to make it easier so kids will do better.  Then tout how much better students are doing.  New York won’t admit to lowering standards.   Instead, they say they are adjusting the tests to what you would expect kids to learn today.  Illinois is the next state to lower the cut off scores so that more students score in the proficient range.

Dr. Cathy Wright, the new superintendent in Maryland, says that approach is all wrong.  She firmly believes that higher standards need to be set and teachers need to be trained to meet those standards.  She has set a goal of a 5% improvement rate each year for the next three years. To achieve that goal, more students will be retained in 3^rd grade if they are not at grade level.

Dr. Wright’s approach is not as sure fire as the other states, but if it works, the kids might just not only be more proficient but even learn more.

 

What do principals have the right to know?

 What do principals have a right to know?

 

Recently, a student in a Howard County public school came to school with a gun and fatally shot another student.   Turns out the student had a record of such offenses.  The principal didn’t know that.  The Superintendent knew the student had a record with the Department of Juvenile Services but was not told how serious the record was.

The question is-who benefits from this system?  Some say it is not fair to the student to carry the burden of past offenses for everyone to know.  How can he start over?   Others say it is the primary duty of the local superintendent and the principal to keep the other students safe.   Can these both be true?

Maryland had a rule that superintendents could share the specifics of reportable offenses (rape, murder, weapons charges) to the receiving superintendent.  They were not required to. Some did, some didn't.   Following the fatal shooting of a student in Columbia, Howard County things changed with lightening speed.

Citizens demanded action from their legislators.  Turned out that wasn’t necessary.  At the next State Board of Education meeting the State Board enacted emergency legislation that requires sending superintendent to notify the receiving superintendent of any transfer student with a reportable offense that has been charged or convicted.   The receiving superintendent is then required to notify the receiving principal.   School districts are required to provide an education to all children between the ages of 5-18 in Maryland.   But that education does not have to be in the comprehensive school with other children.  The measure was passed as an emergency regulation so it went into effect immediately without the usual period of public comment and an open hearing.  The speed was lightening even for emergency rulings.

As usual there are three sides to every story.  Some people are very concerned for the safety of the general population and do not want students with these kinds of past behaviors in the school.  They are concerned about events such as the ones that have recently happened.  Others think this will stigmatize these young people and not give them a chance to change.  This situation will be particularly true if school districts chose to educate delinquents with serious offenses in segregated environments or virtually.   Is there a third option that would protect both sets of kids, those who have offended and those who have not?  Once you have the right to know, what do you do with the information?

Why so many?

 Why so many?

 

The number of American children and adults diagnosed with autism increased 175% in roughly a decade.  This information is according to new research that shows the uptick is particular to a few groups.

In a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open indicated that autism prevalence jumped from 2.3 per thousand to 6.3 per thousand in the roughly one decade studied.  

The biggest jump was seen in adults ages 26-34 which saw an increase of 450%.  This jump included a significant increase of female vs male children.  The highest prevalence was found in children ages 5 to 8.   Kids from racial and ethnic minority groups saw the biggest jump.   But this trend did not hold to adults.

The big question is why???  Have you ever had the experience after buying a blue car to notice how many blue cars there are out there.   Something similar is happening to diagnosing autism.   There has been an expansion of universal development screening that accounts for some of the increase in diagnosis rates.  There is also the notion of status.   Many years ago, the formal diagnosis of learning disabilities became a reality.   Suddenly,  many children who had been diagnosed with mental retardation became learning disabled.  As we learn more about autism, some historians are looking back at famous people and deciding that they too had autism.  Perhaps autism has become a status diagnosis.   People on the spectrum are featured in prime time TV shows.   It has become sort of a boutique diagnosis.

Interestingly, the increase has been more in the higher functioning areas of the spectrum.   Although the increases in the lower functioning areas sends out a call for society to be looking at adult care for these individuals who may not be able to live independently.

What you look for you will find.   Is that true of autism?

Jump down, spin around, pick a bale of cotton

 Jump down, spin around, pick a bale of cotton

 

Gotta jump down, spin around,  pick a bale of hay.  Some of you might remember the old folk song.  It seems it might be coming back to life.

A federal lawsuit claimed an Illinois teacher gave Black students a bag of cotton- and ONLY Black students- after a lesson on slavery.

The racial discrimination lawsuit was filed against a teacher at Julian Middle School in Oak Park Illinois.   The lesson involved all students putting their hands into a box that supposedly contained raw cotton from cotton plants.   The teacher then gave the 2 African American children a separate bag of cotton for them to take home.   No white child was given the separate bag of cotton.   The incident caused an outcry at a Board meeting.   Numerous parents said their children had experienced racial discrimination in the district was this was the last straw or piece of cotton.

At the meeting, parents spoke about many different instances of overt racial bias.  Representatives of the local NAACP were also at the meeting and said it was their intent to also file a compliant with the U.S. office of Civil Rights.

The lawsuit said that Oak Park school administrators held a meeting with the teacher after the incident.   Administrators explained that the use of cotton in the lesson had not been “approved” by the school district.  The teacher allegedly cried during the meeting with her principal and said she didn’t think it “would cause any harm”.  It is difficult to figure out just what she thought it would do to those two students.  And why were they treated any differently than the remaining white students?

Another question that needs to be asked is where has the local NAACP been during all these months when Black families have been complaining about racial bias and harassment.   Are they just waking up to the need to do something?

The NAACP asked, “why are Black families not taken seriously when they report something?”   The same question could be asked of the NAACP.   What caused them to finally wake up to the issue?

Maybe the school district and the teacher are not the only ones ignoring feelings. Maybe folks need to jump down, spin around and pick up some good sense.