Coming to a school near you

 Coming to a school near you…

The law requires that all children in Maryland under the age of 18  attend school.  That age was recently increased from sixteen.   

Who are the children in your child’s school?  The Juvenile Courts of Maryland regularly release students to attend public school with hours of community service as a consequence of a variety of bad behaviors.   These behaviors range from something like shoplifting all the way up to what would be felonies in the adult system.  

Those felonies include the use of a weapon in the commission of a crime, murder and sexual offenses such a rape.

School systems are not notifying families of the other students because that would be an obvious violation of the juvenile’s privacy.  However, if that person were a couple of years older, he or she would be listed on a sex offenders list to which the community would have access.

Let’s take the case of a teenager who cornered a girl student in the stairwell of a public middle school.  The girl, who was in a special education class, was pushed up against the wall and the boy touched her inappropriately under her sweater and rubbed his pelvis against her.  The girl was not even sure what was happening.  The consequence of that behavior was that after a 2-day suspension, the boy was transferred to another county middle school.  End of story.  None of the famiies at the receiving school were aware of the disciplinary situation.

In a Baltimore City high school there is a boy who has been convicted of second- degree rape of a 3-year old cousin.  He is currently in the 9^th grade at the school.  As part of the disposition of the case, the juvenile magistrate said that he could not be around any child younger than 15 unless there was close supervision.  In a ninth grade there are lots of kids that are not yet 15.  It is next to impossible for any student in a large comprehensive high school to have constant supervision unless there is a dedicated aide.  Neither boy in these two examples has a dedicated aide.

Both school districts have refused to discuss the particular cases because they are protecting the privacy of the juvenile offenders.  In each instance, the districts have offered the legal and constitutional right of the boys to a public education.  That is totally true.  What they do not say is that there are non-public state approved schools that have closer supervision and programs to deal with students who have been sexually aggressive.   Of course, that would mean the school district had to pay that tuition.  But they do that for lots of students for different reasons.

Who are the kids in your child’s school?   Do parents have a right to know?

Yep, Yep, We all know that.

 Yep, Yep, We know all about that

 

Really old news.  Kids (and adults) are spending too much time on their screens and social media.  But, well, you know how folks are about their technology.

Now the dangers of social media are attracting the attention of the U.S. Surgeon General.  Remember this was the office that long ago warned us about the dangers of nicotine and smoking.  Last year this same office took a stand on the dangers of social media for developing brains.  Important stuff when even young elementary kids are carting around smartphones.

Federal and state legislatures have also weighed in to regulate the use of social media.   Lots of political districts and school districts have taken to the courts to sue major social media platforms like Facebook.  These groups are accusing the social media platforms of being unsafe for a child’s mental health.

There are lots of opinions floating around.  Now there is also some empirical data to add to the discussion.  A longitudinal and empirical research analysis found that more frequent use of smartphones and social media is associated with higher rates of mental distress, self-harming behaviors and suicide among teenagers. Children's brains are slower to develop.  Kids do not realize the long term impact of these behaviors, not only on their mental health but also on their digital reputations.  They are bullied into sending sexually explicit images of themselves to peers without realizing how long this digital image is going to be around and/or shared with others.  A youngster’s brain is not fully developed.  They lack the capacity to make judgements based on long term harm. Too often families and schools just throw up their proverbial hands and say, “there isn’t anything we can do, the phones are everywhere”.

That’s the easy way out.  It’s too late to ban the phone after the damage has been done.

Authors of the study strongly recommend that the damage from too much social media needs to be controlled.  They recommend students and families engage in nonjudgmental and developmentally appropriate discussions and problem-solving around ways to limit social media.  But what can schools and families do when these logical, mature approaches don’t deliver?  That may be the time to remind kids who pays the cell phone bill and who is in charge.  In the old days, the advice was, “if your friend jumped off the bridge, would you do that too?”.   If your kid answers yes or maybe to this question when the bridge is cell phone usage, maybe it’s time to be the grown up in the room.

Do Something!

 Do Something!

 

Yesterday we celebrated Martin Luther King Day.   Many people had the day off.  It is doubtful that they used the day off from work to do anything that honored the work of Dr. King.  Baltimore City even cancelled the parade in his honor and that of the community because of some snow flurries.

Of the many Dr. King quotations, one of my most favorite is:

            “If you can’t fly then run,

            If you can’t run then walk,

            If you can’t walk then crawl

                But whatever you  do

                   Keep moving”

Sadly the vast majority of us sit on the sideline with the expectation that “someone else” will do the deed.  Unfortunately, “someone else” is expecting another “someone else” so very little gets done or what gets done is done by the folks on either extreme.

Almost fifty years ago, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (EHA, 1975)was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Ford.  At the signing, President Ford who signed under pressure, made the statement that he doubted its provisions could ever be fulfilled.

For the most part he was wrong.  By far, the vast majority of children with disabilities are being provided a free public education, but is that education appropriate to meet the needs of the individual child-the answer is – sometimes.

EHA was replaced by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which embodied all of the provisions of EHA and added a few extras.  In many ways, IDEA made children with disabilities as special class. But the public is very skilled at “work arounds”. Class size was restricted so that children with learning challenges could get more attention.  Today, the vast majority of children with disabilities are taught in co-taught classes meaning there is a special education trained teacher and a general ed teacher.  But the class size is in the mid-20’s.   IDEA requires that each child have an IEP- an individual learning program.  These plans specify the extent of related services the child will receive.  School districts regularly disregard the amount of service by saying they can’t find occupational or speech therapists or other providers.  No one enforces the IEP, unless the parents do.  When the parents try to enforce the IEP, school districts have highly paid trained attorneys to protect the interests of the school system, not the child’s.  If parents prevail at a due process hearing they get reimbursed for attorney’s fees, but only if they can afford the upfront cost of the long fight and if they prevail.  All of the decisions are supposed to be made by a child’s IEP team consisting of the school system staff and the child’s parents but some school districts hold preliminary meetings to make sure all of the school staff know the party line and stick together.

Today school systems do not have the programming options they had 40 years ago.   Self-contained classes ensured that families knew each other and could compare note and/or have belong to parent organizations.  In numbers there is strength.  We are returning to many of the ploys of old.  Conservative pundits are blaming the budget shortages on providing special ed services for kids as prescribed by law. 

The days of flying to meet the needs of children with disabilities are over.   It’s not even clear if advocates for children with disabilities are even moving anymore.

Algebra 2 vs social studies 1

 Algebra 2 vs. Social Studies 1

 

Our students are learning lots of algebra which only a fraction of them will ever use and next to nothing about history and civics which as a citizen in a democracy they should be using every day.

A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that one in five 18-29 year olds believe the Holocaust is a myth.  Another 30% said they are not sure!  Nearly 20% of Americans think the moon landing was faked. Half of Americans cannot name the three branches of government, yet we are reluctant to let immigrants gain citizenship through rigorous testing.

Most of this historical ignorance is among the young people.  So the question remains, where are we failing kids in our provision of an education?

Our young people are great consumers of social media.  They grab onto issues they really don’t understand and we, as educators, are not doing our job to help them.  The University of California-Berkeley recently conducted a pole.  Most students (86%) supported the popular media chant, “from the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free”.  But nearly half (47%) couldn’t name the river or the sea!  Maybe it’s the Mississippi River or the Mediterranean Sea.  Ten percent of these same COLLEGE students named Yassir Arafat as the first prime minister of Israel.   When the professor conducting the survey explained to students exactly what river and sea were in the chant, over half changed their views.

Only about 1/4^th of young adults subscribe to a print newspaper.  The rest get their news online or by watching TV with its 30 second reports.  

We are still teaching US history in one year, even though the history or our country increases every year. Our kids know more about the Pilgrims and the first thanksgiving than they do about the Gulf War.  We do not teach civics so young adults all get to vote but are hardly informed citizens and many are not voting at all.   We live in a capitalistic economy but don’t teach economics.  Many people think employers can increase employee salaries without increasing costs passed on to the consumer.

Educators need to grab back the curriculum from the politicians.  We need to decide what young adults need to know to be contributing citizens in a democracy.  That should be our basic curriculum plus reading and basic math skills.  That’s the cake, we can add the icing after that.