Tell me again-why college?

 Tell me again why college?

Maryland has launched a big push for college and career readiness.  They really mean college readiness.  That’s easy to see by the courses they require to get a diploma for all students. For many kids with disabilities, traditional academic degrees are not an option.  The number of eighteen year olds in our country is way down.  Colleges and universities need to make their budgets work so they have started offering “ego” degrees.  Your kid gets to go to a big name school, buy the sweatshirt, live in the dorms and you get to pay the full tuition and get bragging rights to say your kid is away at the “University of Big Name”.  The students learn “life skills”, get to  live in the dorms with a counselor and complain about the dining hall food, just like their contemporaries.  When they finish the two-year program they leave with a certificate which will qualify them to do what?

Some students with disabilities can do the traditional academic work.  They can spend 4-5 years studying for an undergraduate degree in psychology, criminal justice, creative writing or maybe family and consumer sciences.  If they complete the program, they will graduate with a bachelor’s degree and a chunk of student debt.  And they will be qualified to do exactly which job?

Then there is the real world.  Over 70% of US households hire people to do construction and maintenance work in their homes.  There is a huge shortage of such workers.  In our economy where there is shortage, high prices follow.  Back in the 1800’s, when disease linked to sanitation was on the rise, plumbers were honored as high or higher than physicians.  Have you hired a plumber recently? They are still among the highest paid trades.  

In the 1900’s tradespeople were so proud of their work that they often signed their names.  In the early 20^th century, vocational education teachers needed 5 years in the trade and a 90-hour course in how to teach kids.  Then big push academics switched the expectations to require a bachelor’s degree and the entire program became less hands on and more eyes on books.  

There is a huge shortage of skilled trades people.  Did I mention shortages drive up wages?  Instead of algebra 2, we should require personal finance and financial business skills and maybe young adults wouldn’t be so easy to fleece.  We should be teaching written communication skills in an era when we communicate  in code by text.  And most of all, we should be teaching the trades.  Contractors are begging for trained staff.  Homeowners are always on the search for a dependable skilled home maintenance person.  Rewards start easily in the upper five figures and no student debt.

Tell me again why we all need to go to college?

Put your money where your values are!

 Put your money where your values are!

Maryland has a 1.4 billion dollar deficit.  So, some programs will need to be cut.  And, even with the deficit, some programs are getting an increase.  Currently there are 4,000 adults with disabilities who qualify for adult services but who are not receiving those services because there is no money.  If there are so many people waiting for service, why is the Governor proposing to cut the funds for those services even more. 

 In the budget presented to the legislature, the Governor is proposing a cut of 150 million to disability services. Currently it appears that the most significant cuts will be for those individuals with the most severe disabilities.  In the 2025 budget, Governor Moore proposed a 200 million dollar cut, but advocates were able to convince the legislature to restore about 97% of those cuts.  However, the Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA) lost a rate increase for providers.  These are individuals who care for the most vulnerable in our population.  We all get very angry when there is a case of a person with disabilities not receiving the attention and care he/she needs and becomes injured.  Everyone jumps and shouts, including members of the legislature, about how awful it is. It is all well and good after the injury to complain about the agency not doing its job.  But what is the job of the legislature to provide the funds to secure the appropriate adequately paid staff.

Support for DDA funding is bipartisan but Republicans are also using the full funding of DDA as a reason to cut the funding for the Blueprint for Education.  The Governor also wants to increase the per pupil state aide to school districts from around $9,500 per student to around $11,500 per student to help compensate school districts for the loss of funds due to decreased enrollment.  If schools are dealing with fewer kids, why do they need more money? And why is DDA with a waiting list that is YEARS long being cut when they have MORE people needing service?  And if members of the legislature all agree that serving these very vulnerable citizens is a top priority, how does that value align with cutting funds? Perhaps they talk big but need to put the money where they say their values are.

Who Needs Teachers When You Have AI?

 No Teachers Needed, AI is doing the job

Everyone knows that AI can never replace teachers-Right!  Well, seems that could be wrong.  Alpha is a chain of private schools that educates kids from grades k-12 using AI to teach core subjects in just two hours a day.  No teachers needed.

The school does not have homework or textbooks.  Kids just sit in front of laptops.  A typical day begins around 9.  There is a group activity that introduces the life skill of the day.  Students then get headsets or VR sets to enjoy the day’s curriculum which will include 30-minute sessions in math, science, social studies and language arts.  They will also have 20 minutes in something like test taking skills.   The rest of the day is spent in activity workshops in skills such as financial literacy or problem solving.

Alpha was founded by a tech billionaire, MacKenzie Price. Alpha has received high praise from Secretary of Education McMahon.  Some parents have embraced the approach.  But the second school that opened faced some serious blow-back from parents.  Many parents complained that the program was creating significant anxiety in their children.  School officials say much has changed as they learn to do better.  However, Alpha is not allowing ANY independent evaluation of either the model or of the results.  The school says it has hired “world-renowned learning scientists, advanced degreed academic experts and researchers” to assess outcomes.  They insist that students learn two-times faster with this method.   The school has paused any “non-essential” visitors from the outside because the model is so ground-breaking that they could not field all of the requests.  The model has expanded to multiple states and cities.  Some of the schools have a selective focus such as sports or high academic achievement.  Tuition can range up to 75,000 depending on the location.  Children have access to human teachers for some intervention skills including diverse learners.  High achievement can be rewarded with simple prizes but also trips to Europe.  Tuition mostly covers the cost of prizes but families are sometimes asked to contribute to the trips. The teachers are called guides and are NOT required to have any training in education, only a bachelor’s degree in any field.  All guides need to sign an NDA. Guides are directly told they are not to teach. Instead kids are directed to Google or YouTube to discover answers to questions.

It’s all about the metrics.   When these kids grow up, how will they name their favorite teacher-a machine?  Does that matter?

Can we afford special education?

 Can we afford special education?

 

Many years ago Maryland reimbursed the local districts based on a per pupil allowance depending on the disability.  In fact, local districts got $500 for each “retarded” student (MR that’s what they were called in the “70’s) and $1000 for each student with learning disabilities (LD).  When the bounty changed to allow so much more for LD kids, at least one county in Maryland retested all of its MR students and sooo surprisingly found that the vast majority of those kids were really learning disabled.  And now the school district would get much more money.

The per pupil by disability code funding changed and counties were given lump sums of money depending on the number of students with disabilities who were in their child counts.  Recently the geniuses behind the funding formula have determined that it costs less to educate a child with a speech issue than it does to educate a child with multiple disabilities and contrary to the common wisdom the bulk funding does not even out to cover all students with disabilities.  So Maryland did what all smart politicians do; they hired the American Institutes for Research to do a study.  The study mandated by the legislature will recommend a new funding formula for the local districts.

Public schools have lost 11,000 students this school year.  These kids are not likely to be kids with disabilities.  So with expectations that the number of students with disabilities will remain roughly the same and with the total number of students going down, kids with disabilities now represent a larger percentage of the total student body.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which is putting billions of dollars into education, does not mention special needs kids at all. The research group has determined that differentiated funding for special ed is the way to go.  All things old are new again.

Fifty years ago the federal government pledged to pay 40% of the cost of educating kids with disabilities.  So far that number has reached between 5-7%, but no higher.

An interesting fact is that because of the non-public funding formula, it actually costs a local school system less to send a child to The Harbour School than it does to educate the child in the local system and the child will benefit from smaller class sizes and all related services.

Can we afford to provide special education to all of our children with disabilities,  really depends on when you ask.

Classical schools teach kids NOT to think

 Classical Schools teach kids to be citizens, not to think.

Classical schools are not about individualizing the curriculum, not even for students with special needs.  Founders is a network of classical education schools that was founded in 2012.  There are 23 “classical” schools in this particular network but there are 275 “classical” schools throughout the country that are not part of a particular network.   Most of the schools are within the sunbelt.  Some folks will tell you that the term “classical” is a “dog whistle term" to attract conservative families with Christian nationalist identities anxious to place their children in schools that reflect early and mid-century values, pedagogy and curriculum”.  The Founding headmaster says they are working against the grain of a progressive utilitarian culture that is taking over public schools.  Kids are NOT supposed to evaluate or think about the content.  There is a great deal of classical knowledge, memorization and public speaking.  The staff speak with horror about schools where teachers meet regularly to discuss student test performance and how that performance can be improved with more individual attention and instruction.

Proponents eschew the notion that education must be utilitarian and designed to help kids get into college or even become employed.  Curriculum should be selected because it is “noble and suitable for a free person”.  The school selects its students by lottery but the kids are not economically privileged.  The median income is $74,000 slightly below the American average.  But the schools are in the south where median incomes are lower overall.   There is diversity in the population; 45% are white, 22% are Asian, 20% Hispanic yet only 7% Black in an area that has a high African American population.  Immigrant families are increasingly applying so that the lower grades are even more diverse.  The school is very clear, gay kids, trans students, even mildly rebellious or slightly weird may apply but they would be very unhappy if admitted. And no accommodations will be made for them.  There is one program which the administrators believe will lead to a well-educated and virtuous citizenry and there are no exceptions, not even to help the student get a job when formal schooling is done.  Some parents think that is just fine.

How do you teach math?

 How do you teach math?

What’s the best way to teach math?  Turns out that depends on whom you ask.  Ask general education teachers and researchers and they will tell you it’s the inquiry-based approach.  This approach emphasizes productive struggle in which students grapple with open-ended challenging problems before a teacher models solutions.

Special ed researchers say that method is all wrong.  In fact, it’s backwards.  They argue that the explicit instruction method is better for all kids.  In this approach step-by-step systematic teaching that breaks down complex tasks will reduce the very tension for which the Inquiry Method is aiming.  In this approach, the teacher models the process first and the students practice what the teacher has modeled.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) advocates for the Inquiry Method.  On the other hand, the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) advocates for the Explicit Method.  Groups of special education teachers feel strongly that the Inquiry Method is educational malpractice.  Others argue that many students with math disabilities are in general ed classes and the Inquiry Method will not address the disability nor help kids get over their fear of math.

Special ed researchers charge that the research done to support the Inquiry Method reflects a lack of understanding and familiarity with mathematics-related disabilities.  With the support of the NCTM, the Inquiry Method is taking hold in many states and the high-quality instructional materials that are being rolled out across the country are based on this method.  Even the goals of the approaches are different.  Special ed teachers tend to focus on data-based outcomes and meeting testing standards.  General educators are looking for kids to find “joy” in math and use it to engage in civic life.  

State standards are following the lead of teaching reading and insisting on research-based methodology.  The big question is whose research will be followed and what is the purpose in teaching math?