Bad school or bad economy

 Bad school or bad economy

The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) released the scores for the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP) last week.  The worst scores were in Baltimore City and Somerset County, even though both jurisdictions raised their scores just not as much as the rest of the state.

The scores also indicated which jurisdictions did the best and which schools within those jurisdictions had the highest scores.  In both instances, it was the county and the schools with the highest socio-economic status that did the best.

The highest level of kids living in poverty is Baltimore City (29.5%).  First runner-up is, you guessed it, Somerset County (29.4%. ) A dubious honor at best.  These kids don’t have parents with the time or energy to insist on homework, come to school meetings, make sure health care is provided.  Not to mention a good breakfast and lunch.  Then there is the issue of unions which allow seasoned teachers to pick the best schools leaving the least experienced teachers to struggle along with the kids.

If we want to see better achievement in our kids we need to start with improving their lives.  Many kids who live in poverty live with parents whose school achievement isn’t much better than the child which is one explanation for lack of a better paying job for the adult.  

In a school with high poverty, teachers have to cope with vandalism to their vehicles.  Kids who come to school hungry, kids fighting public transportation if they live in the City, violence in the neighborhood, and sometimes having to stay home to watch younger siblings because there is no one else to do it.  Teachers who teach in wealthier jurisdictions have first world problems: pushy parents who demand more of their kids and the school, expect higher achievement and offer after school tutoring to get it.

In the meantime, the Blueprint for Maryland’s educational future thinks giving teachers 40% of their day for planning while costing a fortune is somehow going to improve the educational achievement of those poor kids. 

Some countries require that all young adults serve their communities for two years, either in the military or in community service.   What would happen if in order to achieve an advanced pay status in a school district, experienced teachers would have to show they could do well in a lower socio-economic school?  Sort of like military service.   What would happen if instead of spending millions of dollars for teachers to have 40% of their time to plan instead of the 20% they have now, those millions were spent on after school care and tutoring in the poorest schools?  That would keep kids off the streets AND make sure they had some structured remediation time.  

That won’t happen because the teachers unions are the fattest pigs at the trough of public funding and we seem to be more comfortable blaming the bad schools rather than their bad economies.   

What is due in due process?

 What is due in due process?

Fifty years ago, when the Education for All Handicapped Children was signed into law, one of the provisions assured families due process in securing a free and appropriate education for their child (FAPE).   The Individual Education Plan (IEP) is a contract between the family and the school system to ensure that FAPE is provided.  If the school district doesn’t provide the education as detailed in the plan, families have the right of due process to make their case known.

Due process means that the family gets to present its argument before an independent arbiter and, if they can make their case, get the education they want for their children.

That right has been significantly watered down over the last few years.   The vast majority of due process cases are brought by families wanting a non-public placement for their child.  In days of old, the school district had the burden to prove that their program provided FAPE.  In those days families won 97% of the cases.  But that was a bar too low for school districts, so they pushed to get the law changed.  Now the burden of proof  has been shifted to the party proposing the change in placement which is almost exclusively the parents.  The arbiters of these cases are trained by the Maryland State Department of Education so they generally see the case from the school’s point of view, as in foxes watching the hen house.    In the 23-24 school year, 20 cases made it to the state level for due process.   Only 2 of those cases were won by the parents.

Children with disabilities are often placed in general education classes with plain kids.  To help these children access the curriculum, one-to-one aides are provided.  These people are poorly paid and don’t receive benefits.  Nor are they trained on how to teach kids with disabilities. Not surprisingly the positions are hard to fill.  Right now, in one of the counties in Maryland, there are 434 children who are supposed to be receiving the benefits of a 1:1 aide.  But only 354 of those kids have an aide.   The remaining 80 do not.  That means two things: First of all, without the aide these 80 kids are going to have a very tough time accessing the curriculum which is already beyond their reach.  Secondly, the 1:1 aide is in the child’s IEP which means it’s a contractual agreement between the school and the family.  These families have a right to due process because their child’s contract for service is being violated.   The district says it’s trying to hire.   The Maryland State Department of Education says, after an audit “it may require corrective action”, but no audit is currently scheduled.   The U.S. Office of Education says, not our problem to investigate complaints.   Even if those complaints stem from the violation of a federal statue???  That's odd?  So unless the families of these children do something, the students will go on just sitting in classes with content they cannot access.

Looks like due process may be one more right that is becoming aspirational.

Bigotry is always with us

 Bigotry is always with us

In the few years following WWII, antisemitism was rampant.   Hitler had just engineered the murder of six million Jews, and other groups including gypsies, people with disabilities and some Catholics to name a few.  Yet in spite of that horrendous event and the huge loss of life in freeing the world from Hitler, there were signs in the neighborhoods that advised “no Jews, coloreds or dogs allowed”.  If you were not Jewish, “colored” or a dog, why should you care?

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that separate was inherently not equal and schools could not be segregated.  To this day, residential restrictions leave some schools segregated.  Why should you care?

In 1965, President Johnson, a southerner, signed the Civil Rights Act declaring that places of public accommodation must indeed admit the public regardless of skin tone or ethnic origin. I remember in the early ‘60’s being in a Hot Shop restaurant with a friend.   We were seated but never got service.  When I complained my friend said, “it’s because you are with me and I am Negro”.  We were just barely outside of the University of Maryland campus in College Park.  If you were never denied the chance to eat in a restaurant or book a motel room, why should you care? 

In 1975, President Ford signed the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) requiring public schools to educate kids with disabilities.  Prior to that any principal at any school could “just say no” when a parent presented his/her child for enrollment.   Parents routinely hid their children with disabilities in private rooms never letting them out.  Every so often there would be an expose article about a found child.  Every winter just before the opening of the Maryland General Assembly, there would be an expose of the Rosewood Hospital Center where children and adults with disabilities lived in squalor.  The hope was that the legislature would grant more money to the "hospital". These people weren't sick, they were disabled.  It didn't happen. The common wisdom was the “sins of the fathers were visited on their sons” so clearly having a child with a disability was an indicator of some evil deed by someone.  Families argued over which side of the family created the disability.  Certainly we never had anything like that in our family.  Baltimore City served its children with disabilities in classes called “Opportunity Classes”.  These classes were in elementary schools and kids stayed in them until they were 16.  The children in these classes were not allowed to be on the playground nor in the cafeteria at any times when the plain kids were there.  If you weren’t the parent of a child with a disability or weren’t the child yourself, why should you care? 

In 1985, The Harbour School suspended a child for spreading Nazi literature.  His mother appealed the suspension to the Anne Arundel County public schools which was funding his placement.  The AACPS rep supported the school in its decision.   The mom asked the rep if she were Jewish; the rep said no.  The mother replied “then why do you care”?

Which brings us to where we are today.  Children with disabilities are afraid to come to school if they happen also to have brown toned skin.  They are afraid they will be taken from their parents or their parents will be taken from them.  They ask their teachers if the teacher will be their mother if their mother suddenly disappears.   Their teacher has lighter skin so “why should she care”?

If we do not stand up for a targeted group, when the bigots come for us, who will be there to stand for us and why should they care?

 

Maybe he was right after all

 Maybe he was right after all

 

Fifty years ago, President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) which has since morphed into the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).  At the signing, which he did only after extreme pressure, Ford said he was signing the legislation but doubted it could ever be accomplished.

For the most part he was wrong.   One of the benefits of IDEA is that families have the right to due process in securing a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) for their children.  In 2023, a federal judge ordered New York City public schools to provide the services that various due process hearings had determined they needed to provide.  Almost as soon as the judge’s order was issued, NYC began to miss deadlines.

As of this July, of the 51 steps outlined in the Court order, New York has only implemented 21 of them.  The court order was designed to resolve long standing issues where families waited months or even years for both services or payments as the result of administrative due process hearings.  New York City is so far behind in providing legally required services that last year alone nearly 20,000 cases were filed.  By comparison, in the whole state of  Maryland last school year, 20 cases went to a full due process hearing.  Even after adjusting for population differences, that is still a HUGE difference. The delays mean kids might go without physical therapy, transportation or even tuition for special private schools.   A major issue is that the children grow older each day and failure to provide the needed services in a timely manner may well have a lifelong impact.  Each day of delay is a day lost and an irreplaceable educational opportunity that cannot ever be recaptured. Orders for services such as speech therapy or counseling were implemented on time in just 9.5% of nearly 3,400 cases.  Just 1% of the nearly 5,300 payment orders were fulfilled on time.

The US Office of Education (USOE) is being dismantled bit by bit by the President.  One of the functions of the USOE is to enforce federal laws such as IDEA.  Their job is to monitor state and local jurisdictions to ensure that these laws are being implemented as written.  With the USOE gone, the monitoring and enforcement will be transferred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) which lacks both the skill sets and the people power to enforce these laws.  Enforcement of education laws is not high on the priority list for a DOJ that needs to concentrate on righting the wrongs against the current President.

So maybe President Ford was right after all.  Fifty years later we are still working on the issue.

 

History doesn't write itself

 History- the story of yesterday

It is often said history is written by the winners.  Probably true.   There are lots of history courses in the U.S. south where the Civil War is still called the War Between the States, ignoring the fact that the states that left the union did so in defiance of the Constitution.

The Smithsonian Institution recently announced that it was removing the mention of the two impeachments of Donald Trump from its exhibit on the Presidents of the United States.  Trump has said he does not want any divisive DEI exhibits that are against the American mainstream.   Under pressure a few days later, the Smithsonian changed tactics and said the removal was only temporary and would soon be restored.  History is written by the winners

The story of history is not just what is included but what is excluded as well.  What do we teach our children about history.   Even the topics we select for inclusion in the story reflect what we want our children to know.  A photos of the Potsdam Conference to end WWII show only white men.   A local Baltimore coed private school that prides itself on teaching values has a conference room with photos of leaders in our democracy.  There are NO women or persons of color in those photos, leading one to believe that these individuals contributed nothing to our democracy.  That is happening right now, not 70 years ago.

The Maryland State Department of Education recently released its curriculum and guidelines for teaching social studies.  Discussion of the Middle East conflicts ends at 1994.  Reason for this truncated view of history is that the Commission did not want teachers to be drawn into the conflict and not know what to teach.  What is the point of teaching history if not to be drawn into conflicts so that each student decides his or her own point of view of the events of history.  The same event can be viewed through two different lenses- one seeing a catastrophe and the other a great victory.  Every war ends that way.  Every Supreme Court decision has two points of view.  Every Big Beautiful Bill can be viewed that way.

If we do not present our students with all the information how do they become informed voters and citizens. The same nation that placed 120,000 Japanese American citizens in internment camps, forcing them to lose both property and freedom is the same nation that sent 133 billion dollars in today’s money with the Marshall Plan to Europe to rebuild a continent devastated by WWII.  

For generations our history books have been literally “white washed” when discussing the contributions of minority groups and women.  What message does this send to the children who belong to these groups? History is amazing.   Even more so when it is told from all its points of view and by all the folks who lived it and made it.

$1,700 doesn't buy a helluva lot

                                        $1,700 Doesn’t Buy a Helluva Lot

The recent tax bill (AKA the Big Beautiful Bill) has a provision for parents to donate up to $1,700 to a scholarship granting private school and then take that exact amount as a credit (not a deduction) against income taxes owed.  In essence, the family would have no expense at all for the donation.

The Republican party has been trying since Ronald Regan to come up with a plan to fund private schools with taxpayer money without running afoul of the U.S. Constitution.  This plan seems to do the job.

Seventeen hundred dollars is not a poke in the eye with a stick.  Nor is it a path for lower to middle income families to be able to afford private school.  It essentially allows higher income families to get a $1,700 reduction in tuition.  Non-public schools for children with disabilities have tuition rates that often range into six figures but definitely above sixty thousand.  The seventeen hundred dollar reduction will not make that tuition affordable for lower or middle income families.

Private school tuition for plain students for day programs in above thirty thousand.  A seventeen hundred dollar reduction in tuition will help those families that could afford the thirty thousand all along but will certainly not make that tuition affordable for lower to middle income families.

Individual state governors need to agree to accept participation in the plan.  Governors in blue states will be in a bind.  To accept the arrangement means they are going against their principles of not spending taxpayer dollars on private tuition.  If they don’t accept the plan, their private tuition paying families (and voters) will feel cheated out of a good deal.   Teacher unions are against states joining the program.

Cui bono?  Who benefits?  Wealthier families paying private tuition definitely benefit by having their tuition reduced.  Lower to middle income families are still out of the pool because the reduction is still insufficient to give these families a true choice.  And of course, politicians benefit because they can brag they have helped parents have choice in schools for their children even if the choice is only available to a select few.  Not much will change for kids, but then this was really never about kids because in private education $1,700 doesn’t buy a helluva lot.

 Trying again with Social Studies

Only an estimated 4 out of 10 American teens know that approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, one-third of the world’s Jewish population at that time.  Only three out of 10 American teens know that Hitler came to power through a democratic process according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.   The representative body of the National Education Association (NEA) just voted to stop teaching about the Holocaust using any information from a Jewish organization.  That resolution was overturned by the NEA executive staff after a hard pushback from Jewish organizations.

The Maryland State Department of Education Social Studies Standards and Frameworks Validation Committee approved a new framework for instruction this past June that includes a reworked focus on antisemitism and Holocaust education, which are set to go into effect beginning in the 2026-27 school year.  It has been over a year in progress.

The Committee consulted the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the nonprofit Facing History & Ourselves.  Changes in the curriculum include a middle school addition of how the bubonic plague had both long and short-term impact on population and antisemitism.  A high school world history unit on WWI discusses how the European mandate system contributed to the rise of Zionism.  The language of the curriculum tries to avoid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to “regional conflicts and diplomacy have influenced efforts towards stability and cooperation in the Middle East”.  The portion of the curriculum that discusses the Middle East stops at 1994.  Many critics felt this is a significant omission since it does not provide students with an understanding of current events and prevents the curriculum from being relevant.   Some members of the Committee felt bring the curriculum to the present day put too much of a burden on teachers.  Others explained that the framework is a floor not a ceiling and it is not a cap on what can be taught.  Individual school systems will use the revised frameworks to write their own curriculum based on that content.   The CAIR- Council on Arab-Islamic Relations has strongly protested the absence of content and word usage in not mentioning the word "Palestine". 

Overall, 67% of public comments were in support of the revisions, another 16% supported it but wanted revisions.  Only 17% of the comments were in opposition.

Maybe we have something.