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.