Deep In The Heart of Texas

Deep In The Heart of Texas

We already know Texas is a different land.   It imposed a limit on the number of children with disabilities it would serve.  Got itself smacked by the US Office of Education, in and of itself, a miracle given Betsy DeVos is in charge.

But this case might be a new low even for Texas.

An elementary aged child with autism repeatedly came home with bruises, abrasions and contusions over a two-year period in her school.  On more than one occasion, the parents took their child to the hospital or her physician for treatment of the injuries.  The parents reported the injuries to school officials.  First, the school personnel said that the injuries were self-inflicted.  Later these same officials said the injuries were caused by other students.  Finally, a staff member ultimately admitted to hurting the child.

The parents went to court and sued the school district and the employee who acknowledged the behavior.  The parents sued for assault, infliction of emotional distress, disability discrimination in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act,(ADA)  and constitutional rights violations.

The parents lost on all counts.  Why you ask?   Partly because the case was filed in Texas.

The Court granted qualified immunity to the school district and to the employee because it felt the hospital records and doctors’ visits were vague and there was no evidence that the employee has caused the particular injuries for which the child was treated.

Then there was the issue of emotional distress.  In Texas there is a law that if someone sues a government agency, the employees of that agency cannot also be sued.  So since the family sued the school district the employee was off the hook for his responsibility.

Next the school district claimed that the assault charge was an intentional tort under Texas law and that the state would need to waive sovereign immunity in order for the case to proceed, which the state refused to do.  So, the court dismissed that charge.

Lastly, the district said that the ADA claim should have been made under IDEA and that the parents had not exhausted the administrative remedies under IDEA.  The Court agreed with this reasoning as well.

Therefore, none of the claims survived and the case was dismissed.

How do these things happen?   In Maryland a licensed educator who was physically aggressive towards a student would lose his/her license.   Maybe the issue is that Texas no matter how deeply you go doesn’t have a heart.  I would think that teacher might want to think again about supporting open carry and gun laws in Texas.   If that were my kid being hurt like that and nothing was being done about it…   Just sayin’

Black Teachers Matter

Black Teachers Matter

African-American children who are taught by just one black teacher during their school years are 13% more likely to go to college.   Students have at least two African-American teachers are 32% more likely to go to college.   These are facts garnered from a recent study by a Johns Hopkins University professor.  This information isn’t new.  It builds on what has been found previously that black students with black teachers are also much more likely to graduate high school.    The theory seems to be that black teachers can tap into their lived experiences when relating to black students.

Next up there were lots of concerns that in Baltimore City (with the most African-American teachers at 40%) and in the surrounding counties the percentage of black teachers was well below the percentage of black students.  The author of the study insists that public education needs to get moving to increase the numbers of black teachers that minority students experience.  It all seems so simple.

But let’s hold up here for a minute.  In Baltimore City roughly 80% of the students is black while only 40% of the teachers is African-American.  So it stands to reason, that even though the number of black teachers doesn’t equal the percentage of black students, those African-American students most likely had at least 2-3 African-American teachers in their twelve years of schooling.  According to the predictions of this research, these kids are 32% more likely to go to college-except that they don’t!  Not sure how that would be explained.

Then there is the issue of numbers.  Maryland colleges of teacher education are graduating about 550 qualified to teach black graduates.  That is 550 all-total, not just one school.  So where are these African-American teachers going to come from.

There is also another issue and that is the BIG assumption that all African-Americans share the same “lived experiences”.   From my perspective that is racism at its finest.   Sure, both students and teachers are black and as such have certainly shared racist experiences.   But I am willing to bet that those middle and upper middle class young African-American adults who are graduating from Maryland colleges have hardly had the same “lived experiences” as the kids growing up in Baltimore’s shooting galleries- where guns and drugs are everyday happenings.  And yes, I know that some kids do make it out of the low socio-economic neighborhoods and go to college.  But I also know that when they do, they may be looking for more high status and higher paying positions than teaching.

In my view, it would make more sense to provide in-service education experiences for all teachers, black, brown, yellow and white, about implicit racism, those sneaky little conclusions that sleep in our minds with no visible means of hard evidence.   Pre-service programs might want to do a bit of that as well.

Yes black teachers do matter, but so do all teachers and we need to start training our educators so that all STUDENTS matter regardless of the color of skin teachers and students are wearing these days.

What's Money Got to Do With It?

What’s Money Got to Do With It?

What’s money got to do with it?   Turns out not too much.  The average teacher’s salary in Maryland is in the mid-60’s.   They work about 190 days out of the 365.  That means they are off almost as many days (175) as they work. The benefits are good and the likelihood of getting fired is very low. 

 In spite of these happy numbers, 44% of new teachers leave within the first five years. And that is 44% of all teachers, not just teachers who work with students with challenges.

The number of teachers in public schools is exploding.  It is growing much faster than the number of students.  The pressure for reduced class sizes, more special ed services, STEM teachers and English-as-a-second language have all pushed the numbers higher.  The question of how long the cost can be sustained by the taxpayers has not even been asked let alone resolved.

Teachers are getting younger and much less experienced.  In the 2007-08, the average age of a teacher was 55. In just ten years that number has dropped to a number where most teachers are in their late 30's.  In 1987-88 school year, the most common public school teacher had 15 years of experience.   Today that number is three years or less. 

Teachers have become more racially diverse, but they are still primarily white women.

So, what are the issues if it is not money?   First of all, it is the testing and the blame teachers get when the test scores go south.  The presumption is if your students get bad scores on the test it is because they have not been taught well.  We do not give the students or their families any responsibility for attending school, doing the necessary studying nor do we acknowledge that children have differing academic abilities that no amount of teaching is going to totally change.

In order to do the testing, school systems have instituted the pacing guides.  These guides ensure that the students have been “exposed” to the content that is being tested.  They also require the teachers to be on the precise section of the curriculum on each precise day.  There is no time to re-teach or teach differently.  The joy of connecting with kids and matching the pace of the program to the pace of the child’s learning no longer exists.

Then there is administrative support and the demand to decrease the number of out-of-school suspensions.  Teaching is not supposed to be a contact sport.  It is true that we have been suspending kids for the dumbest of reasons. So if you are truant (illegally absent from school) as a consequence we suspend you and make you legally absent from school.  Seriously dumb!   However, if you commit an act of aggression against a classmate and/or a staff person, that student needs to be suspended.  Recently a student smacked a teacher in a local school system.   The student was not suspended, he was counseled and the union said the teacher forgave the student and accepted his apology.  I would not be surprised if that teacher did not become one of those 44% of teachers who do not return next year.  Administrators are also worried about their numbers. The test scores of the students in the building and the number of suspensions each semester.   They are not protecting teachers.

In the end, what’s money got to do with it?   Not too much if you don’t enjoy the job and need to play duck and cover from your students.

Far Right and Far Left agree

Far Left and Far Right agree

What do Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch agree on?  Turns out that as with Anton Scalia and RBG the right and the left can come together and even do!

This current issue is the almost complete absence of civic studies in our public schools.   Why is that?   One of the reasons that is often advanced for the provision of a free education at public expense is that a democracy depends on an educated electorate.  However, it turns out that as we have been spending  more and more time preparing for standardized testing in areas students will seldom use, we have squeezed out what they desperately need and that is an education in how our democracy works.  And what their responsibility is as a citizen in that democracy.

It is pretty sad that while we are testing our kids on algebra II, Justice Gorsuch said that only about 25% of Americans can name all three branches of government and 33% can’t name ANY branch of government.   And, showing the power of the media, 10% of those surveyed THOUGHT JUDGE JUDY WAS A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE!!!   I wonder how they did on their algebra test.  Justice Gorsuch has made a plea for civility, making appeals to decency and good faith in both his legal practice and when speaking in public forums.  He has demonstrated these behaviors since being appointed to the Bench.

Justice Sotomayor believes that it is well-documented that the shift toward science and technology has left out civics.   Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has made the teaching of civics a mission of hers since she left the Court in 2008.  She founded a non-profit iCivics that provides elementary and secondary schools with digital resources and lesson plans to cultivate citizenship responsibility. This past fall Justice O’Connor announced she was leaving public life due to a diagnosis of dementia.   Justice Sotomayor will be taking her place on the Foundation leadership.

Why are our school systems ignoring this pressing need to educate our children?   The extreme partisanship of today’s politics has made all of us vulnerable to lies and half-truths.   If we knew more about how our government was supposed to run perhaps we could recognize when politicians are working to make us dysfunctional.  If Justices Gorsuch and Sotomayer can get it, why can’t the rest of us.  Hopefully everyone exercised the most important lesson of civics- vote!