How Will Your Money Be Wasted This Year?

How Will Your Money Be Wasted This Year?

 

EVERY year Maryland spends about 1 billion- yep, that’s billion with a B, on professional development and reimbursement to teachers for courses that they are required to take to sustain their initial certification.  Maryland continues to do this even though there is NO evidence that this expenditure impacts the quality of teaching in Maryland.

Mark Procopio, an educational research professor, says there are no data that show either the coursework or the professional development contribute to teacher growth or student outcomes.   Yet both are required in Maryland for teachers to maintain their certification.  In fact, Maryland also requires that teachers earn Masters degrees or 30 post-bachelor degree credits within a short time of the initial certification.  As a reward for meeting this requirement teachers get a nice bump-up in salary, an additional added cost to the taxpayers.   David Steiner, the executive director of the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University and former member of the Maryland State Board of Education has said “we have no quality assurance that this money is really well spent.”   Yet we keep on spending it.

The Maryland legislature recently approved a 10-year multi-billion-dollar (there’s that b again) educational reform package that will be throwing more money at folks who get the advanced education and certification.   There is absolutely no evidence that paying poor teachers more money makes them any better at their jobs or improves student outcomes.

The one thing that would improve teaching, the teacher unions would never accept.  Teaching is the only so-called profession in which people who are bad at their jobs can’t get fired.  The unions have assured us of that by creating so many multi-year hoops that principals and school districts must jump through to terminate a teacher that few teachers ever lose their jobs for incompetence.  Instead we get the dance of the lemons, where poor teachers are transferred and recycled to other schools where they will inflict their poor skillset on other innocent kids.  And by the way, ever a fan of getting teachers more money regardless of whether it is earned or not, Cheryl Bost, president of the Maryland State Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in Maryland, thinks the money spent on professional development and coursework was great for her.  But then she hasn’t been in a classroom for many years. She works fulltime for the union.   And there we go, more money wasted. 

There isn't enough money, then why didn't you spend what you had?

 There is not enough money, then why didn’t you spend what you had?

 

We regularly hear from school districts that there is not enough money to provide the wide range of services that both state and federal law requires for children with special needs.   We have also heard repeatedly that during pandemic and required distance learning students with special needs might have been shortchanged in the delivery of a free and appropriate public education.

 

Now we are learning about a whole new result of the pandemic.   Schools have NOT spent the amount of money they were required to spend by those same federal and state laws. There is a requirement called “maintenance of effort”.  It means that a school district must spend at LEAST as much money this year as it spent last year providing for the education of children with disabilities.  As the school year comes to an end, it seems that many districts have not met this effort.  Some schools have asked if they could use the federal money from IDEA to charge against the state required expenses.  They can't.  Black letter law.

 

Here is how they have saved money.  One savings is pretty obvious.   Schools are able to charge the cost of transportation for kids with special needs against the expense requirement.  Since students weren’t being transported, that money wasn’t spent.   The same is true regarding the classroom aides.  In many districts these aides are hourly and schools just decided to furlough these people during virtual instruction.  Could these people have been kept on and provided individual follow-up to the students who were struggling with virtual education.  Absolutely, but they weren’t kept on and the kids didn’t get the help.  More money not spent.  Some districts are being advised to count money spent on personal protection equipment for students in special education towards meeting the spending requirement.   How spending money on PPE for special ed kids is different and unique from what is spent on plain kids is an interesting question.

 

Districts have approached the U.S. Office of Education asking for a waiver for the 20-21 school year for maintenance of effort.  So far the USOE has refused.

 

Here is a very interesting question.  When just about everyone agrees that children with special needs have suffered more loss during this pandemic, why is it so difficult to spend the money that has been allocated to meet those needs to be spent?  Districts always complain they can’t meet kids’ needs because there is not enough money- now they complain they can’t spend what they have!  As Lucy would have said, they have some “splainin’ “ to do.

Yes, it is your fault.

 Yes, it is your fault

 

We have entered the era of “don’t blame me I am not responsible”.  This attitude sometimes takes refuge in the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech.  Just because a person may be free to say something does not mean he/she should escape the consequences for the saying.  

In the golden olden days if a child misbehaved at school, the school consequences were only the half of it.  Things would get worse when the child got home.  Not now.  It seems every parent has become a public defender securing their children’s rights to do and say whatever without consequences but with lots of excuses for the bad behavior.  Some parents have literally made a federal case out of it as the recent Supreme Court case regarding a 14-year old who used profanity online to trash her school and team because she didn’t get picked for varsity cheerleading.  The consequences were minimal but the parents weren’t having any of it.

Adults have difficulty owning up to their mistakes.  They are talented in making up all manner of extenuating circumstances explaining why they were not responsible.  Now they are attempting to pass this gift onto their kids.  It is not a good idea.

Failure to be responsible for one’s behavior is plain and simple bad character.  Why do we want to raise our students up to have bad character?  Making a mistake is not the end of the world.  Owning up to what we do wrong is being a responsible adult.  By insisting that our children own up to what they have done wrong and take the consequences for that behavior is how we teach people to be responsible adults.  

Perhaps one of the reasons for our current political division is the absence of people being brave enough to say I was wrong or calling out bad behavior on the part of someone else without huge political consequences.  

No one gets through this world without making lots of mistakes, some big and some small.  What is it about some of us that makes it so hard to admit to those mistakes.   Being wrong is ok, and yes, sometimes it is your fault- admit it, make compensation, accept the consequences and move on.  You’ll be a better person for doing so especially when it is your fault.

What Exactly are we testing?

 What Exactly are we testing?

 

Once upon a time someone got the idea that testing would improve education.  In truth, testing has been used to punish teachers for not doing a good enough job.  In some school districts teachers whose students got high test scores got salary bonuses.  In other districts, when kids got low test scores, teachers were poorly rated.   It came as a HUGE surprise when there were testing scandals because staff were helping kids get higher scores.  Heads rolled.

Then came the pandemic and a chance for folks to take a breath (behind a mask of course) and consider if this idea of testing was all that terrific.   It would be easy to blame the testing pause on the fact that online learning was proving to be not as effective as in the classroom face -to-face and those low scores would punish teachers, schools and school districts.  There was another opportunity to reconsider testing.  The new President brought with him a new Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona.  There was hope among the folks who didn’t see testing as the holy grail.  But at his confirmation hearing, Cardona said that he supported the testing required by federal law.   “If we don’t assess where our students are and their level of performance, it’s going to be difficult for us to provide targeted support and resource allocation in the manner that can best support the closing of the gaps that have been exacerbated due to this pandemic” he said.

All of those fine words make the assumption that testing does indeed measure the students’ levels of performance, with or without a pandemic.  In fact, educators have repeatedly said that test scores are more a measure of a student’s demographics such as race, family income, parental educational attainment and the student’s ability to test well.  All of these factors are confounding variables in  measuring achievement. Each of them impacts the validity of the test, i.e. measuring what the test says it measures.

A total of 548 scholars and academic researchers have sent a letter to Cardona saying that there is no empirical research based evidence to support the value of testing as a measurement of either student learning or teaching ability.  Yet we continue to test because the testing yields a number.  It is a meaningless number but still it is a number.

Testing could be useful if we forgot about the number and its ability to reward or punish educators.  Instead, we could use the tests to describe where kids are having difficulty and may need to be retaught or taught differently.  Now there's a concept.

There are no other professions where the professional’s clients are tested to measure the quality of the professional.  It is not like teachers have these great lesson plans that they are holding in reserve and they will pull them out to rescue test scores.  Really can’t we get some benefit from the pandemic and just forget the tests

 

 

Do teachers have a right to be safe?

 Do teachers have a right to be safe?

 

Apparently not according to both  district and circuit courts. Two teachers acknowledged that they voluntarily accepted work in an alternative school for middle school students with social and/or emotional issues.  However, the teachers charged that the district failed to do what it needed to do to protect the security and safety of the staff.  The teachers asserted that students threatened teachers, damaged furniture and technology and name called and bullied other students and staff.  The teachers went to court and asserted what they believed to be their right to a safe workplace. Their case was first heard in the District Court which ruled that there was no Constitutional guarantee of a safe workplace.  They were sure that was wrong so they appealed to the Sixth Circuit.  Although the court empathized  with the teachers, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals  found no constitutional right claim.

The teachers claimed that their right to due process under the 14^th amendment to the Constitution had been breached.  However, the Supreme Court found in 1989 that while there are limits on state power it does not guarantee safety and security.  Other court cases have also found that states do not have a constitutional obligation to ensure a workplace free of unreasonable risks of harm.   More significantly, the court held “federal law does not support a cause of action for due process violations against a school district, even if its workplace is unreasonably dangerous, and the district fails to warn it its employees of the danger.”  (emphasis added).    Also interestingly, the Court noted that the school district had no constitutional duty to protect people not in its custody.  Which might mean there is a constitutional duty on the part of the state to protect prisoners in penal institutions but not to state employees. 

While this case was specific to teachers claiming harm from the potential of physical violence, it does not seem like a big leap to teachers claiming harm from the “potential” of illness from a virus if the school district has exercised reasonable precautions and therefore avoids “unreasonable risks of harm”.    Since the court asserted a state’s obligation to protect only those in it custody, one would imagine that the court expects teachers to make their own decisions regarding where they will and will not work.  It would appear that there is no constitutional right or expectation  for teachers to be in a safe workplace, but their freedom to work elsewhere is still intact.

Are families with disabilities still American families?

 Are families with disabilities still American families?

 

Later this month, the President is expected to unveil an American Families Plan to help American families through the economic downturn of the pandemic and to make life better going forward.  Notable by it absence are any updates to SSDI- Supplemental Security Disability Income benefits that are available to individuals and married couples with disabilities.

SSDI is available to people who are disabled or become disabled.  Eligible individuals must be under 65 (when they would qualify for Social Security).  Currently about 8 million Americans with disabilities receive a maximum federal benefit of $794 a month, married couples can receive up to $1,191 per month.  Some states supplement this allowance with state funds.

There is a strong congressional press to tie the amount to both the poverty level and to inflation so that finite amounts would be taken out of the rules.  Essentially this system is how regular social security works.  The members of Congress who support this move, want the benefit to be 100% of the federal poverty level and for an individual’s asset level to be adjusted upward with inflation.  Because the asset limit is not indexed to inflation, individual assets cap is operationally lowered each year.  Additionally, current rules lower benefits for individuals that receive other government assistance such as food stamps or shelter from a friend or family member. They would also like the married couple benefit to be double the individual benefit if both members of the couple quality.  Currently two individuals with disabilities who live together without being legally married come out ahead of the game on income.  The President backed these changes in the campaign but so far he has left them out of the American Families Plan which focuses on paid family leave, child care and other domestic issues.

The reality is that nothing is free.  If businesses are required to give paid family leave, that income will need to be made up through higher prices, lower overall wages and/or fewer employees.  That reckoning needs to be taken into account with any increased benefit.

So it is with increasing benefits for individuals with disabilities.  The entry point of the discussion is: should people with disabilities receive federal funds (our tax dollars) to assist in their support.  If we agree that they should, as we have agreed, then the next question is how much support?  That is a question being answered right now.  Are families with disabilities American families?  If so why are they not being included in the proposed legislation that supports other American families.

That's not the half of it

 That’s not the half of it!

 

As of April 19 all adults and teens over 16 are eligible to receive the COVID 19 vaccine.  If enough people accept the opportunity, we will reach herd immunity by early summer and life will be good- or will it.

Since the pandemic began, children and adolescents have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and stress and even more specific issues of addictive internet behavior (Education Week, March 31,2021).  The CDC has reported that the percentage of children 5-11 visiting emergency rooms for a mental health crisis has risen 24% in the last year. Among 12-17 year-olds, that percentage of increase is 31%.  It is a good thing that with the vaccine we will all be fine, except that we won’t.

Experts tell us that the mental health impact of the pandemic is just beginning and will be with us for years to come.  There are significan differences between those students attending school in-person, hybrid and totally remotely.   First of all, kids need other adults beside their parents to turn to for guidance.  For students that is usually some respected/loved adult at school.  In fact, 84% of the students attending school in-person say they look to a teacher for that support.  Yet with all virtual teaching only 64% of students still feel they have that support from a teacher.  This situation is particularly true for low-income kids.  

Our country already does not treat mental health needs with the same intensity and support as it does physical health.   Some health plans have been forced to include mental health services.  And even plans that have the service, it is generally dramatically less strong than for physical health.

Many older students in communities without the technology supports for online learning have just “evaporated” from the school system.  Public school enrollments are down dramatically.  In higher income areas, those kids have gone to private schools.  In lower-income areas, those kids have gone to the streets.

We are going to need many more social workers, guidance counselors, pupil personnel workers in our schools once we are back in the school buildings.  That is expensive and with public school enrollments down, that will mean less money for schools to do anything.  Some school districts are bragging because they plan on keeping teachers they no longer need with decreased enrollments.  That money could be better spent on mental health professionals for the students who have stayed with the public schools.

Unfortunately, there is no vaccine for mental health issues and no great clamor to develop therapies.

The vaccines are great but they are only our hope to win half of the battle.  It’s the second half that is going to be a great deal harder.