You gotta a job!

 You gotta a job!

New regulations went into effect this past April 2024.   Now teachers will receive a license instead of a certificate.  More importantly, people can no longer receive a license by a credit count method to make sure they have the required courses.   Instead, they must complete a Maryland State Department of Education approved program.  These programs can take 2-3 years.   Ok, there are some good reasons behind that approach.  People wanting to be teachers should complete a program that reflects the full vision of a complete program.

Turns out that’s the plan for most people but not for all. The Governor is out to get those federal employees who are no longer employees of the federal government into state jobs, including jobs as teachers.   So, he has given one million dollars to several universities to create wonder women and men teachers.

After a one-week intensive program at Towson University, participants magically become teachers.   The program participants came from a variety of affected federal offices including USAID, the Department of Education, the National Institute of Health and the Department of Housing and Urban Development according to Towson officials. All agencies not known for their teaching skills.  “The program required participants to directly and physically engage in the material.”  According to one of the program leaders.  Whatever that means.  The one-week training covered things like building relationships, how to communicate and lesson planning.  “All the important highlights of what it means to be a teacher”, said one of the team leaders.

Hmmm, so how to differentiate learning for kids who don’t get the lesson the first time, how to teach the content in multiple ways, how to deal with discipline- none of these skills are evidently not part of the necessary “highlights”.   But not to worry.  These folks are already teaching in a school near you.  The One-week Wonders are now employed.  Those other people who are in programs that take 2-3 years to complete?  Wonder what their problems are.

You gotta a job!

Are the Ten Commandments a Religious Document?

 Are the 10 Commandments a Religious Document?

Turns out, that depends on whom you ask.  Most folks would probably answer yes, but legislatures in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas are thinking otherwise.

In the opinion of these legislators, the Ten Commandments is an historical document that provides behavioral guidance but not a religious one.  The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that while some of the Commandments provide behavioral guidance (thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, or steal) others are clearly religious in nature, particularly the ones pertaining to worshipping one God, keeping the sabbath and taking the Lord’s name in vain.  

These legislatures want to try another bite out of the apple because they feel emboldened by a much more conservative Supreme Court.  So far the approach is not working in the lower courts.

In Texas, beginning on the first of this month, all schools were supposed to display a copy of the Ten Commandments.  A judge is a US District Court has ruled that doing so would violate the Constitutional requirements that the US cannot establish any one religion and the Free Exercise clause both the first amendment to the Constitution.  He blocked the law from going into effect.  Some have argued that even though the US was founded on Judea Christian values, our nation has citizens of many different faiths and even no organized faith.

Louisiana also tried to require EVERY public school to permanently  display the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.   The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that law to be unconstitutional.  The ruling is all the more remarkable because the Fifth Circuit is considered to be the most conservative in the nation and its ruling was unanimous.  This Court too, cited the First Amendment Establishment clause.  The plaintiffs were a multifaith group of nine Louisiana families with children in the public school.

If the Ten Commandments are a religious document, then any required display in a public school would be restricted.  The question is still in the judicial system.  How it will turn our- God only knows.

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.