Promises Made, Debt not Paid

 Promises Made, Debt not paid

In 1975, about 50 years ago, President Gerald Ford signed into law the Education for all Handicapped Children Act (EHA).  This law later morphed into the Individuals for Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).   

In 1979, the U.S. Congress established the US Department of Education.   Yes, you got that right.   The US Department of Education that Trump and Congress are talking about eliminating wasn’t established until Four Years after EHA.  In the beginning, EHA was administered by the Department of Health and Human Services currently led by Robert Kennedy Jr.   After the creation of the US Department of Education, EHA was moved to that department.

So why all the fuss now about moving the provisions of IDEA to Health and Human Services?   

There are a couple of issues.   When EHA was signed into law, President Ford famously said he doubted we could ever educate all children with handicaps (Kids had handicaps then, not disabilities).   While there are notable exceptions, we are doing that.   BUT the law also recognized that it would cost more to educate a child with a disability than it would to educate a plain child.  So, the Congress agreed to “authorize” up to 40% of the cost of implementing EHA.  Laws authorize; budget bills appropriate and that amount of money, although promised has never been appropriated.  Today the federal government provides roughly 5% of the cost of education a child with a disability.  A far cry from the initial promise.

Mostly states are doing a decent job of meeting the requirements of the law.  But what if they don’t?  Approximately 5,800 families had filed complaints against their local public school district prior to Trump taking office.  With huge cuts in personnel in the Office of Civil Rights and the US Office of Education, what are the chances these complaints will be heard at all, let alone in a manner fair to families. Presently, 30 states are out of full compliance with IDEA.   The Secretary of Education has indicated that she would offload the enforcement of IDEA back to the states.  Is this not a perfect storm for the fox watching the henhouse?  State departments of education will now determine if they are violating the law they are accused by families of violating.  

Promises have been made to our children with disabilities.  When do we think the debt might be paid?

 

Find the new, and keep the old

 Find the new and keep the old

 

There are over 2000 vacant teacher positions in Maryland schools as of the middle of this past January.   Of the positions that are filled, 6000 of the individuals are not professionally licensed to do their jobs.  Maybe that explains why Baltimore City hired a man with a felony conviction for carrying an unlicensed loaded gun.  Times are tough.

There are lots of ways to work this problem besides hiring folks with a felony conviction.   Credit to the City, they said if he had a record of sexual abuse they would not have hired him.  Probably because that is against Maryland law.

If an individual has a bachelor’s degree and he/she wants to become a teacher, there are lots and lots of hoops to jump through and tests to take.  And the process is time limited.  People with a degree that is not an education degree, have three years to get a beginning professional license.   They must also pass 4-6 tests depending on what they want to teach.  There are also lots of courses they need to take.  And there are NO exceptions.   If you let the three years run out without completing everything, you are out of a job and cannot reapply until you have met all of the requirements.

It's an old business adage that it costs more to recruit a new employee than it does to train/fix a current employee.   The same rule applies to customers.   So, one might ask why doesn’t it apply to teachers?  During those three years of training, schools get a chance to see if the individual has the makings of a good teacher or not. And besides just taking coursework, why isn't there a mentoring program to really teach folks to teach in the real world.  Oh and what better way to assess their future abilities.  Why not bend the rules for the folks who will become stars and fast track them?  Why not council out the duds rather than just keep pushing them through?  We should specifiy competencies for what we think our teachers should be able to do and once they can do those things, let’s move them along.

The problem is that the teaching profession is regulated by politicians and bureaucrats who have never spent a day in a classroom so they have no idea what it takes to be a good teacher let alone a great one.   Other professions have professional associations (AMA, ABA, APA) that regulate who can come into the profession.    But long ago, teachers gave up both control of their profession and their professional association to replace it with the NEA, a union that only promotes higher salaries and more benefits.   They have left a void that the non-professionals have been only too happy to fill.  

Teachers have only themselves to blame for the current situation.   And politicians and bureaucrats are left with trying to recruit more bodies to fill that 2000 person hole without any understanding of what it takes to make and keep a good teacher.  It’s fine to recruit the new, but let’s hang onto the old.

Nice of you to stop by

 Nice of you to stop by

Absences are high in public schools.   Achievement is low.  The State Superintendent of Schools in Maryland has a couple of miracle programs that she is sure will fix the latter.   So far, politicians have defaulted to that age-old cure all, appoint a committee to study the problem to fix the former.

It’s not clear what needs to be studied.  Of course, it will be surprising if “blame it on the pandemic” doesn’t show up as a cause.  Five years out that is our still go to reason for problems.

The Maryland State Department of Education has five legal reasons for not coming to school: death of a close family member, illness, religious holiday, unsafe transportation, court appearance.    Family outings, family vacations, family celebrations are not among them.  For some reason, families are unhappy with poor achievement but fail to see the connection between attending school and learning.  Oh, right, blame it on the pandemic when that great oxymoron “virtual learning” became the balm everyone accepted.

One of the legal reasons for school absence is unsafe transportation.   That reason allows school districts to not transport to school and, therefore, schools to close when weather emergencies interfere with safe transportation.   However, if you attend high school in Baltimore City, there is no safe transportation even on a sunny spring day.   Baltimore City is the only school district in Maryland that does not provide safe transportation for its high school students.   These kid use public transportation which is neither good nor safe.   It takes some students almost two hours each way to get to school. Students are routinely harassed on public transportation and some have even been assaulted. No wonder there are too many days when a warm bed looks so much better.   Teachers will tell you that too often the kids are barely awake before 2^nd or 3^rd period.   Baltimore City has zoned schools and all-City schools.   The All-City schools are open to anyone in the city.  Sone of these schools require certain academic standards, others may offer a unique program that isn’t available elsewhere.    The City will tell you that because of these All-City schools, providing district transportation is just impossible.  Surely City administrators could figure this out if they wanted to.   And before we take the usual default, there isn’t money, the State pays a large share of the transportation costs depending on the number of children transported.   Then there is the question, what do all these absences cost the students and the City?

Poor school attendance is a huge problem for the schools in Maryland.  Most folks would worry about this, but we will soon have a committee to investigate that so assuming the committee members will stop by and attend, we can check that off our worry list.

 

Go Away US Dept of Ed

 Who Cares if there is a US Dept of Education

During the campaign Trump promised to end the US Dept of Education.  It’s not entirely clear why he thinks this is important.   Of all the 15 Cabinet level agencies, Education is the smallest.  

The total federal investment in education is about 8%.   But all of that money does not come through the Education Department.  Head Start is funded through the Department of Health and Human Services and school lunches are funded through the Department of Agriculture’s school lunch program.   So, Education is not a significant source of funding to public schools.  Traditionally, education in our country is a state and local affair. 

The GI Bill provides funds for veterans to go on to higher education.  Impact Aid provides funds to school districts that have high concentrations of military installations for which district receives no property taxes, the primary funder of schools.

Perhaps the rub for Trump is that the Department of Education does administer Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.  The Title I program provides funds to schools with high concentrations of poverty.  Student higher ed loans are also processed through the Department.  Perhaps it is these programs that Trump may view as DEI programs that get in his craw.

The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) operates as a civil rights act for children with disabilities.   It is funded through Congressional budgets each year.  Other than providing a pass through of funds to state education departments, the US Department of Education also monitors state departments of education to ensure that they remain in compliance with the law.  If the US Department of Education is gone, this function may shift to the Department of Justice where it  probably will slide down the priority scale. 

Do we need a Department of Education?  It has only existed for about 45 years.  It was created by Congress and can only be eliminated by Congress, but Trump can starve it to death cutting staff and fund.  Who will care?

 

What's with DDA Funding?

 What’s With DDA Funding in Maryland?

 

Governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, has recommended $200 million in cuts to the Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA) budget for FY 26 as he attempts to come to a balanced State budget facing a nearly 3 billion dollar deficit.  Advocates for the disabled are working desperately to try to put faces to that cut.

Some of the larger reductions would reduce wages for care givers which are already very low for a very demanding job.   Currently, there is a wage differential for areas in which the cost of living is higher than other areas in the State.   That differential would be removed.  Funding for some specific supports for residential clients with higher intensity needs would also be reduced.    DDA also has a program which allows for guardians to be given a sum of money to purchase services for the client.  This program is known as “self-directed” services.   The legislature may choose to reduce those funds that allow people to hire and manage support staff.

There is also the low-intensity support program that provides up to $2000 for things like assistive technology, transportation or other supports.  On the table is suspension of these services but not elimination.  

Advocates say the need for such services is expanding not growing. Supporters of the cut say that DDA administration has been sloppy and there is a lot of waste. People argue that the mistakes that have been made in the administration of DDA funds should not be passed on the disabled.  Advocates say they are struggling to serve the people they should serve.   How can they be expected to meet demands with less.  State officials say the budget proposal preserves much of the progress and previous investments made for DDA services. 

Advocates respond that taking money out of the piggy bank when times get hard is hardly an “investment”    Services for the disabled in Maryland are being cut, plain and simple.

 

 

Paying the Price

 Paying the Price

All that convenient virtual learning is coming at a steep price.  Sure it’s convenient and a cheap and easy filler but now the piper must be paid.

Virtual learning has left kids and their families with the sense that school is a great place to stop by if you have the time.   Long after the end of COVID, school attendance rates have not begun to get back to where they were. 

Lots of excuses about why kids are not back in school.   But one thing is sure.   Math and reading scores are not nearly where they were five years ago.  On average reading scores are about a half year behind what they were in 2019.  BUT the situation is much worse for some states.  Generally, the states with the greatest use of virtual teaching and closing for COVID have lost the most and haven’t recovered.

States that voted Republican tended to lose the least and states that voted Democratic tended to lose the most.  That's because Republican led states used less virtual learning and were not quick to close schools.    Maryland lost a full year in math achievement.   This isn’t a full year below grade level; this is a full year BELOW what the scores were in 2019 which were already low.   Reading loss was almost as bad.

Lower socio-economic students have lost the most.    Some of these high school students were not in school, so the grabbed low paying jobs which were high paying for a teenager.  They haven’t given those jobs up.  Kids are staying home from school for family vacations, babysitting younger sibs and "just because".   Attending school in person has lost it priority.

You might think school districts have learned something from these data; but they haven’t.   One of the latest go to’s for snowy days is to switch kids to virtual learning.   They tune in on their tablet devices and tune out on learning.   From the district’s perspective these days count as school days and do not need to be made up.   From the student’s perspective, we are learning that the learning is never made up.  After all, when a nice pile of snow beckons a boring slide show is no competition.   Who cares if there is a price to pay, just not yet.

 

  

The new sheriff doesn’t give a damn.

 

There is a 10 year old boy in Prince George’s County who still has not been in school this school year.   It’s déjà vu all over again.   Prior to the Education of All Handicapped Children’s act (EHA) in 1975 and  recreated as Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), principals routinely told parents of children with disabilities that the school did not have a program for them.  The law changed all that, or did it?  Because that is exactly what principals have told this family about their son.   The issue at hand is that Omari uses a wheelchair for mobility.   The schools have just said that they cannot accommodate the wheelchair.   Oh, but the Americans with Disabilities Act say that they are required to do that. In fact, EVERY year Prince George's County Public Schools has certified they are in compliance. So how can so many eleme Laws are great only when enforced.

The US Dept of Education should be enforcing IDEA.   The Trump administration is the new sheriff in town and really they do NOT care.  The staff of the Department has been decimated and those folks who are left are not about to make waves.  So far in spite of the pressure from advocates, Omari is not in school.

People worry that if the Department of Education is totally disbanded as Trump wants to happen, the money for children with disabilities will disappear.

The money will probably be distributed by the Department of Justice since it is guaranteed by IDEA and acts of Congress.   The money is the least of it.   Maryland gets about 5% of its funds for kids with disabilities from the feds.   The real issue is the USOE’s hammer to make sure that states enforce the requirements of IDEA and that the states respond appropriately to families who appeal to the State Department of Education for redress when the local system is failing to meet its responsibility.  Several years ago Maryland was cited for failure to adequately address family appeals.   What will happen if there is no pressure from the feds to keep Maryland in line?   The record is not stellar.   

We are hearing a great deal about the loss of federal dollars in all manner of places.   It’s not all about money.   Oversight is critical.

And, as Rhett Butler said, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”.