A Letter to Education Officials

The following is an editorial written by the mother of an autistic student. It points out the absurdity of requiring IEPs for students with disabilities but at the same time expecting them to master the same Common Core requirements as all the other students. It seems that an Individual Education Program is no longer a priority in this new push to have all students master the Common Core. This parent is genuinely worried that her  child will be neglected. I can see why.

Academic Standards and Individualized Education Programs

How are schools supposed to get every student to meet the same academic standards and meet the individualized education programs for children with disabilities (both are required by federal law)?

The following is a letter written from the heart of a mom with a son with autism. It is not meant to expose any teacher or district. On the contrary, both are working hard to support the student. It is simply written to express an opinion of the situation we are all in at this time.

Dear "Is Anybody Listening?,"

Several weeks ago I sat down with my son's teacher and listened to her tell me what her priorities are for him for this year. She revealed that she is largely focused on reading comprehension and, to a lesser extent, writing. It is indisputable that those are areas of high need for him. But what she had forgotten and said very little about, until I mentioned it, was language and social interaction. I could see a light bulb go off in her head. Suddenly she understood. Yes, of course, I must work on those too. Then I saw something else. It was something I can only describe as concern, although an insufficient descriptor. She started talking about all of the third grade standards. She handed me copies of the standards which she had already printed out, tucked safely inside page protectors. The teacher began to ponder, how will I address the core deficits of his disability in the midst of teaching the standards? Oh, maybe there would be a few minutes during group work or perhaps during a pull out session, but there's so much to work on academically...

We are over half way through the first nine weeks and, although every member of his team is working hard, Jackson is so lost. He's lost in a sea of standards and expectations for him to think critically and explain every answer. It takes much more than raising the bar or saying you believe students with disabilities can achieve for them to actually achieve. You see, he has only answered a why question a handful of times in his life. Now he's asked why, how and explain your answer all day long. What do you think is going to happen when you test and assess him? He is going to fail. It will look as though he cannot and has not achieved.

Let me tell you what he has done, though. Jackson had been permitted to isolate himself from all the children on the school playground for the last 2 years. We were less than one week into the school year and Jackson was no longer standing next to the wall, far away from his peers. He was under a tree next to the playground. Fast forward a few more weeks and he has played on the equipment a few times, but more spectacularly, he is engaging and playing a game of "I see you" with a little girl in his class. She enjoys him. She likes him. He likes her. They play together for a few minutes every day. No standardized assessment he will take this year or any year will reflect that progress. No teacher or related service provider will be rewarded for their role in facilitating this achievement. After all, it's not one of the standards. It's not on "the test."

As an advocate, some days are very challenging when both working and living in the disability world. There are no breaks. There is no escape. I sit in rooms with educational leaders who make statements about the 43% (of students with disabilities who passed the tests last year) and then I come home to the sweetest little boy who falls in the 57%. A boy who has an amazing ability to tolerate the world around him, but who no longer wants to go to school. How will it get any better? When will it get any better? It only seems like we're heading in the opposite direction of improving outcomes for kids like Jackson.

Rebecca Ellis

Mandeville, Louisiana

Building the Plane in Flight

Scott Richard, Executive Director for the Louisiana School Boards Association, pointed out some of the serious problems with the new Common Core State Standards in recent comments to the Press Club. I agree with Richard that the standards are being rushed into full effect without adequate preparation. BESE and the State Department of Education are ramming this additional reform into our public schools in a big hurry based on the assumption that these new standards will magically improve the performance of our students. This so called “reform” may be more like throwing a tired swimmer a huge rock and then telling him to swim with it an extra hundred yards to shore. We may not be pleased with the results.

Unlike some of the more vocal critics of the Common Core, I don't believe the CCSS is a Federal Government takeover of our educational system. That has pretty much already happened in many respects. I don't believe the Common Core is a secret plan to shape the minds of our children to make them into willing robot-like workers for the multinational corporations. And I don't believe it is a scheme by President Obama to indoctrinate our students to love socialism.

My understanding of Common Core is that it started off as a joint effort by the National Governor's Association and leaders of the College Board elites (the producers of the SAT tests) and some of the huge testing companies to create a standard set of criteria for academic achievement for American students for all states that would prepare all students to attend and succeed in college. (Don't believe that part about “College and Careers”) It is also thought that these more rigorous standards which are supposed to require the development of analytical thinking and problem solving skills would better prepare our students to compete for high level jobs with students from all other countries.

My main problem with the CCSS is that the developers assume that all students can and should learn the same college prep material that they (the developers) judge to be appropriate in order for students to receive a high school diploma. The developers of CCSS apparently believe that all children have the same intellectual capacity, the same interests, and the same motivation to tackle a curriculum that was designed by a group of academic elitists who believe in college for everyone. And if any part of those assumptions are not correct, then it is up to the public school educators to do whatever it takes to make it happen and to make sure that all students succeed in mastering the new standards anyway. I believe these are impractical expectations that are not appropriate for many of our students. I believe such standards when added to the previous ill advised reforms initiated in Louisiana by Governor Jindal will lead to a continued crisis in our public education system. Just like the current federal government shutdown, this is a totally unnecessary manufactured crisis that can only lead to harm to many of our students and educators.

My perspective is different from that of Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, David Coleman, and many of the other leaders of this initiative who had never spent a day in a K-12 classroom dealing with real students. Unlike these self appointed experts, I had the good fortune to work as a high school science teacher where I had the opportunity to teach science to a rich cross section of our Louisiana students. I found that while all students were wonderful to work with, they were just as different intellectually, talent wise, and motivation wise as they are in their physical abilities and interests.

Arne Duncan and Bill Gates would never dream of prescribing the same standards in a physical education class for all students of the same age, but they are quite willing to do so for all the academic classes. We would never require that students have the same requirements for the high jump, the hundred meter dash or weight lifting, because the physical differences and athletic potential of our students are visually apparent. It would be considered cruel and unfair to require a 10^th grade student who is 5 ft 5 inches tall and weighs 220 lbs to clear a 6 ft high jump bar in order to pass a physical education class. But the same range of differences occur in our students' academic potential and interests. Yet in education it is considered OK to raise the academic bar and to make it exactly the same for all students.

For years now I have been preaching about how our schools have increasingly narrowed their focus to only college prep requirements. More and more we are ignoring the Arts and vocational-technical skills. This is happening while many industries requiring voc-tech skills are booming in Louisiana. Our employers are beginning the process of importing skilled workers from other states and from overseas. With their dead end training, our graduates will be relegated to serving these imported workers in our fast food restaurants. The Common Core will narrow this focus even further. Just because the developers of common core religiously repeat that these standards are designed for “college and careers” does not make it so. I submit to my readers that there was no one, not one person, involved in the development of Common Core that was a voc-tech or an Arts or Music educator. In my opinion there is very little in the Common Core standards that address the need of an educated work force to be familiar with tools, with construction principles, with mechanics, with electrical wiring and plumbing, with practical nursing, and physical therapy, with practical math, and with dexterity and with arts and music. The developers of the Common Core believe that if students are required to spend a certain percentage of their reading assignments reading technical manuals that this will prepare them for the career part of the standards. Bull s_ _ _!

What industry or profession adopts an entirely new set of standards for their workforce without testing of any kind? Diane Ravitch points out that this is what we are doing with the adoption of the Common Core. Even the best engineers, the best designers always test prototypes and do small scale testing before totally overhauling a factory to implement a new manufacturing process. Yet with the implementation of Common Core we are willing to “build the plane while it is in flight”. (The credit for those quotes goes to Dr Lottie Beebe and Scott Richard)

Only in the field of education are the bosses willing to implement a totally experimental approach to all operations without pilot testing. If it fails then it must be the fault of the educators on the ground who just did not implement it correctly. It can never be the fault of the reformers who never have to implement anything. Teachers, get ready to face the music two years down the road when this plane starts to fall apart.

Continued Attacks on Louisiana Public Education

A small private meeting was held in Baton Rouge a couple of weeks ago including representatives of several highly influential power brokers who are dedicated to a major overhaul and privatization of our K-12 education system. These groups were very concerned that much of the Jindal reform legislation has either been declared unconstitutional by the courts or is still tied up in litigation. They are frustrated that the supporters of our public education system are fighting back against their sweeping “reforms”. They figure that they have only the rest of the Jindal administration in which to push through revisions of the law that will keep their reforms intact.

They are concerned that only a relatively small number of teachers are on a pathway to being fired as a result of the sloppy implementation of the new VAM evaluation by Superintendent John White. They believe also that the new laws should be identifying many principals and even local superintendents who should be fired. The firings are not happening quickly enough!

They are concerned that the privatization of our K-12 educational system is not happening fast enough. They are frustrated that many of the new voucher schools have turned out to be run by small time swindlers who knew almost nothing about education and who had no business running schools. They feel their cause has received bad publicity when it was revealed that some voucher schools were teaching about dinosaurs and humans existing at the same time.

The reformers feel that they were let down by the charter takeover schools in Baton Rouge, Pointe Coupee, St Helena and Caddo that failed to produce even minimal improvement in student performance in the years since takeover. These schools have lost almost half their enrollment when parents pulled students out and re-enrolled them in public schools.

It was clear from the recent meeting that none of the reformers have questioned for one minute the assumptions upon which their reform movement in Louisiana is based. The core assumptions upon which the reformers proposed overhaul of our K-12 system is based are as follows:

1. Public schools are ineffective and should be replaced by a system of competition between voucher schools, charter schools and reorganized public schools where the survival of each school is determined mostly by student test scores. The profit motive of entrepreneurs can be adapted from the private sector and used to produce effective schools. The market place will determine the winners and the losers. Parental choice will help to determine which schools survive because parents will seek out the most successful schools for their children.
2. Local school boards are obsolete. School boards are not doing enough to close down or reorganize low performing schools. School boards are an obstacle to entrepreneurs who want to form charter schools and voucher schools.
3. The primary cause of low student performance is that there are too many lazy, ineffective teachers. Thousands of teachers in our public schools are not pushing students to succeed and have low expectations of poor children. They are protected by tenure and care mostly but their cushy 9 month jobs and their generous retirement benefits.
4. The solution to the ineffective teacher problem is to do away with all seniority and tenure rights and to systematically fire teachers based on their student test scores. If the state sets a quota of say 10% of teachers found ineffective each year and puts them on a pathway to being fired and replaced by new, younger, lower paid teachers the state can improve its teacher force in just a few years and can save money to boot.
5. Teacher professional training and traditional certification are an unnecessary luxury. Teach for America has demonstrated that all a teacher needs is a bachelors' degree and 5 weeks of training in how to prepare students for the all important annual testing.
6. The Common Core standards will produce a revolution in teaching methods to produce world class achievement by all students. This will be accomplished by closing schools and firing teachers and principals based on the level of achievement of the Common Core standards by their customers, the children.

Who are the primary forces aligned with the Jindal administration who want to revive and continue the reforms of our K-12 system?

The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry: LABI has been the primary arm of big business in Louisiana. In the past LABI has made sure that the biggest and richest businesses in Louisiana receive the most lucrative tax breaks and exemptions and avoid paying for the destruction of our coast and environment. This is all based on the assumption that the high paying jobs provided by these companies trumps all other concerns of Louisiana citizens. In the past LABI has presided over the destruction of the trade unions in Louisiana by passage of the right to work laws. Many of those unions supported apprenticeship programs that trained young workers for union jobs. Recently one of the founders of LABI admitted that the new system created by LABI left big business with a shortage of skilled workers. LABI has been a major proponent of college prep for all students which has pretty much destroyed all vocational technical programs in our high schools. Now LABI is complaining that our K-12 system which they reshaped is not producing workers for high tech jobs. LABI is a major proponent for the firing of teachers based on student test scores.

Council for a Better Louisiana: CABL is basically a lap dog for LABI. CABL produces so called studies and analysis of government programs that are designed ahead of time to produce the results demanded by big business interests. We can depend on CABL to support all LABI initiatives.

Black Alliance for Educational Options: BAEO is funded by out of state business interests who want to see the proliferation of charter schools and voucher schools. We call this an asto-turf group as compared to a grass roots organization. BAEO is paid to produce bus loads of black parents and students to attend any demonstration in favor of charters and vouchers. Recently, parents were bussed to a BESE meeting to speak in favor of the approval of more charter schools. One of the parents of a child in one of the takeover charter schools in Baton Rouge complained that her child had been subjected to numerous changes in teachers and principals in the charter takeover school yet she was there to ask for approval of more charters.

Stand for Children: Is a recently formed astro-turf group set up to support all privatization and charter efforts. It also supports removal of tenure and seniority rights of teachers. It is also funded by wealthy out of state groups that want to benefit from the testing and charter school movement. The director of the group in Louisiana, Rayne Martin, is a non-educator who helped design Louisiana's Compass evaluation system before leaving the LDOE for this an even more lucrative job. Stand for Children which has a minimal membership is nevertheless quoted in the Baton Rouge media as a major player in education. The DOE contracts with Stand for Children to write some of its web site offerings.

New Schools for Baton Rouge: This group is led by former TFA Corps member Chris Meyer. Meyer did the usual two years of teaching in order to become an expert in education reform. His resume states that he was able to help over two hundred children achieve significant academic gains. This reminds me of the bogus stories about Michelle Rhee's credentials as a teacher. At a recent forum on charter schools, Meyer supported the idea that charter schools should be exempted from the teacher retirement system. This is a move that allows them to receive the full MFP allocation and to pay their administrators lavish salaries. This group supports only new charter schools to replace the failed charters in the Baton Rouge area.

The growing Charter school and voucher lobby: Every time a new charter school is formed, the highly paid administrators take as their primary job the formation of a lobbying group for the benefit of charters. These administrators are able to suspend school to bring busloads of supporters to any legislative of BESE event where their interests are at stake. When teachers are shut out on the capitol steps because of fire Marshall rules, these folks get to enter the capitol by the back door and get the choice seats in the Education Committee rooms. More and more legislators and their family members are being given jobs in connection with these new special interest groups.

Campaign Contributions and favors: One thing the voucher/charter/privatization interests have is lots of money. As they milk more and more tax dollars for their for ventures, more and more contributions are available for politicians on the take. The Bloomberg group, Newscorp, Pearson, the wealthy foundations, ALEC all make big contributions to our legislators and BESE members.

What can the supporters of public education do? We have a loose knit organization called the Coalition for Public Education that includes representatives of school boards, superintendents, principals, parents, teacher unions and many others that truly believe in our public education system. There are 45 thousand dedicated public school teachers and about five thousand principals, assistant principals and administrators who work in an believe in public education. None of these enjoy lavish salaries. They do have a decent retirement system which also is under attack by the reformers. There are many parents who know their child is getting a good solid eduction in our public schools. There is a huge untapped political power in these numbers if we will just get better organized for political action.

That's why I've formed the Defenders of Public Education email system. This system works in cooperation with the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education to support our public schools and public school educators in fighting off these attacks on public education.

If you have not yet done so, please consider participating in this email system. It will cost you absolutely nothing but your time and effort. Those efforts will be rewarded by the support we need for public education.

Just send your name, preferred email address, and your zip code to me at louisianaeducator@gmail.com. And I will add you to my legislative email list. (I need your home zip code so I can place you in the correct legislative districts) You will then get the information you need to communicate effectively with your legislator or BESE member. Please join the fight to save our public schools!
Sincerely,
Michael Deshotels