MISS UNIVERSE URUGUAY 2010

The new Miss Universe Uruguay 2010 is Stephany Ortega, 20, of Montevideo. She won the title late Saturday night in a glittering ceremony at the Conrad Hilton in Punta del Este. Eliana Olivera, 22, was first runner-up, winning the title of Miss World Uruguay 2010. Rounding out the top five were Evangelina Lechini, Natalia Yoffe, and Rocío Da Silva.

Unemployment benefit reduces work even in recessions

In 1995 Sweden was in as deep, arguably deeper crisis than the US is now (unemployment went from 2% to 9%, preceded by a financial crisis). In the midst of the crisis the replacement rate from the unemployment insurance was reduced by 5 percentage points, from 80% to 75%, for most, but not all, workers.

A Keynesian would argue that this could have no effect, as there was no “demand” for workers. Indeed, in textbook Keynesian analysis unemployment should have gone up, since this further reduced consumer demand.

But this is not what happened. Supply side reform works even during weak labor markets. The benefit cut put a downward pressure on unemployment. The decrease has been convincingly tied to the benefit cut by Carling, Holmlund and Vejsiu 2001, who show that those workers whose benefits got cut were about 10% more likely to exit unemployment, compared to those whose benefits were not cut. They write:

"Our estimates suggest that the reform caused an increase in the transition rate [from unemployment to employment] of roughly 10%"

The figure shows the probability of exiting unemployment for two groups, those whose benefits were cut (T) and those whose benefits were not cut. For those whose benefits were not cut the probability of exiting unemployment dropped significantly. For those whose benefits were cut the probability of exiting unemployment did not decrees, and actually increased slightly.


"The period 1995-96 is characterized by a weakening of overall economic activity, resulting in a substantial fall in the number of new vacancies notified to the employment offices (Fig. 4). With this evolution of labour demand conditions, some decline in job finding rates should be expected. The surprising part of Fig. 3 is the absence of a decline in job-finding rates among workers in treatment group."

Now, I am not arguing that benefits be cut in the U.S. There is always a trade off between the pain low benefits cause and the pain unemployment causes. The Swedish benefits rates started from a high level, whereas the American are already pretty low.

I just want to make a theoretical point, that Keynesians who claim that supply and demand stop applying in recessions are wrong. The fundamental laws of the economy do not just vanish because the capacity utilization rate decreases.

Race To The Top: Pre-Game

Thomas W. Carroll, the president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, provides a sound analysis of states' chances of winning Race to the Top funding in phase one. [Hat tip: Alexander Russo]

I would agree that Florida and Louisiana are the likeliest winners in phase one, and would be surprised if Delaware and Tennessee were not, at least, semifinalists. I'm not as keen on Colorado and Michigan, but agree that Georgia is a likely semifinalist as well. Here are some other possible phase one semifinalists from my vantage point: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island. Much will depend on how many states make the cut (Rick Hess says 10-15) and where Secretary Duncan draws the cut line.

Semifinalists are expected to be announced this coming week, possibly as early as Monday. Teams from those states will be invited to make a formal presentation before a panel of reviewers in Washington, DC sometime in March. Finalists are expected to be announced in April.

Who are your favorites? Which states am I overlooking? Which am I crazy to even be including in my list of possible semifinalists?

-------

UPDATE: Education Week weighs in with its picks for RttT finalists.

Phase One winner picks: Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee

Phase One semifinalist picks: all above plus Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Minnesota, Rhode Island

Wild cards: California, District of Columbia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania

-------

UPDATE 2: Eduflack weighs in with some picks as well.

Barring any real surprises in the interview stage, I'm going with California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and Rhode Island. How does that fare against the $4 billion pool? Cali and Florida will account for $1.4 billion. Ohio picks up $400 million. Indiana and Tennessee get $200 million apiece. Colorado and Louisiana split $300 million. Rhode Island gets $50 million. That's $2.55 billion on the first eight states.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System

cross-posted from Daily Kos

My support for NCLB remained strong until November 30, 2006. I can pinpoint the date exactly because that was the day I realized that NCLB was a failure.

This is a book review. Those words appear on p.99, which however odd a starting point is critical. I learned about this event contemporaneously from the late Gerald Bracey, who informed some of us by email and many more in this Huffington Post blog. At a conference at the American Enterprise Institute called to answer the question of whether No Child Left Behind was working, we learn from Bracey

Charged with summarizing the day, former assistant secretary of education for Bush I, Diane Ravitch, declared that the answer to the conference title's question was clearly, "No!"

That began an intellectual transformation that leads to the outstanding new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. I will explore the book, the author and the implications of her transformation.

First, let me dispense with any necessary disclosures. My professional association with Diane Ravitch goes back almost a decade to when as a graduate student studying Federal educational policy I was fortunate enough to have an extended phone conversation picking her brain. Our contact has become more frequent especially in the past year, in part as a result of her transformation, a process she thoroughly explores in her first chapter, "What I Learned About School Reform." As a result of at least one of those exchanges, I am included in the acknowledgments as one who assisted Ravitch in obtaining information. I was aware of the general thrust of the book, but until I received a copy to review had no knowledge of the specific contents.

Diane Ravitch has been a major figure on educational policy for several decades. She is by training an educational historian, having done her dissertation at Columbia, beginning her association with Lawrence Cremin, perhaps the preeminent historian of education. Ravitch had first begun writing about schools in the late 1960s, during a period of turmoil in NYC public schools over the struggle between centralization and decentralization. Ravitch went back and examined the history of New York's schools to find out why they had become centralized, not only discovering relevant material but becoming thereby the most knowledgeable person about the history of NYC schools. In the process she demonstrated something that has been a characteristic of all of her scholarly work - she thoroughly examines all relevant material so that her conclusions are strongly supported by fact.

Ravitch was critical of some of the radical reformers of the period of the 1970s, some of whom were very harsh on public education. This began the process of turning her into something of a target for those on the educational and political left. Ravitch will now acknowledge that some of the viewpoints she espoused over the next few decades are things she no longer believes. She had supported some ideas because of what she saw as their promise, but as she notes in that first chapter (which is a product in part of the happenstance of cleaning out her office and thus having the opportunity to examine the work of several decades)

my views changed as I saw how those ideas were working out in reality.

She offers a possibly apocryphal remark by Keynes explaining that when the facts changed, he changed his mind.

I think in fairness to Ravitch it is important to note several things. First, she has never been a Republican, even when she served in the Bush 41 administration under Lamar Alexander at Education. She was a Democrat and is now an independent. Second, she has an absolutely consistent and strong position with respect to public schools - she wants to see them not only maintained, but thriving. Third, having grown up in Houston and seen how some of her teachers were bullied by right-wing organizations, she is a firm supporter of the due process rights unions provide teachers. Let me offer several quotes from the chapter with a title derived from a teacher influential in her own life, who would perhaps not be highly valued by some so-called "reformers" of our day, "What Would Mrs. Ratliff Do?" First,

No one, to my knowledge, has demonstrated a clear, indisputable correlation between teacher unionism and academic achievement, either negative or positive.

And if we consider the kinds of international comparisons used by "reformers" to denigrate American public schools, these words will be quite relevant:

Some of the top-performing nations in he world are highly unionized, others are not. Finland, whose students score highest on international assessments of reading, has a teacher workforce that is nearly 100 percent unionized. Most high-performing Asian nations do not have large proportions of unionized teachers (though some do). Unionization per se does not cause high student achievement, nor does it cause low achievement.

I will not fully recapitulate her entire career. You can get a sense either from the Wikipedia article or from the CV she has at her website. She worked in a Republican administration. She had an association with the Hoover Institute. She has maintained friendly relations with people who many in the more progressive educational circles in which I participate despise, whether it is educational economist Eric Hanushek or her former fellow Assistant Secretary Checker Finn. Yet rather than presume that such associations are the complete indication of her orientation, she now jointly blogs with Deborah Meier, and among those she acknowledges helping her with the book by reading are Linda Darling-Hammond, education journalist Linda Perlstein, former NY Times educational writer Richard Rothstein, and Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters (a strong opponent of things like mayoral control) - none of these would be considered favorites of those on either the political or educational right.

And yet it is precisely because of her associations with those more 'conservative" on educational matters that this book by Diane Ravitch carries the impact that it does. It may infuriate some of her former colleagues, because she is thorough, she is blunt. Were I to offer a parallel, perhaps it would be the conversion of David Brock from a henchman for the political right to one of its more visible opponents. Except Brock was never considered a major player, and in educational circles Ravitch has been a major figure for several decades.

Let me focus on the book. Let me start by saying that I cannot hope to cover all of its value even in a piece several times as long as this will be. I want to give a sense of the book - its structure, some of the key issues covered therein. That also means I want to give a sense of Ravitch. I hope thereby to persuade you that is a book of critical importance. Here I note that while the publisher had apparently requested reviews not appear until March 1, the day before the book is publicly available for sale, there are already a number of reviews, for example this, this, and this - you can see how others are approaching the book. I am sure there will be many more reviews as well.

Let me list the chapters, then offer some explanation.

1. What I Learned About School Reform
2. Hijacked! How the Standards Movement Turned Into the Testing Movement
3. The Transformation of District 2
4. Lessons from San Diego
5. The Business Model in New York City
6. NCLB: Measure and Punish
7. Choice: The Story of an Idea
8. The Trouble with Accountability
9. What Would Mrs. Ratliff Do?
10. The Billionaire Boys Club
11. Lessons Learned


Chapter 3 is a detailed study of the reform efforts in one New York City regional school district. As it happens, the person responsible for those efforts, Anthony Alvarado, then went to San Diego, which leads logically into Chapter 4. New York City is the current model of mayoral control, and re-imported some of what had happened in San Diego - despite the fact that, as Ravitch clearly demonstrates, those "reforms" in San Diego provided no better performance than most of the rest of the state.

Of course, the reform in New York is led by a billionaire, Michael Bloomberg. That provides at least some connections with Chapter 10, where Ravitch thoroughly examines the efforts of several other billionaires, individuals and families, who have been using their wealth through their foundations to shape American education in ways that have been excluding the voices of the people whose schools are being reshaped and the teachers who work in such schools. That chapter is worthy of an entirely separate posting to see up close the influence of Eli Broad, Bill and Melinda Gates, and the Walton family. Some of those names appear elsewhere in the book, especially in San Diego, and in discussing the issue of choice.

Let me offer some selections of the author's words on a couple of topics. For example, after looking at San Diego and mayoral control in New York, (both districts in which control was given to former prosecutors with no prior educational experience, Alan Bersin in San Diego and Joel Klein in New York), examining the data from what studies are available, etc., Ravitch on p. 91 offers the following conclusion:

Mayoral control is not a guaranteed pat to school improvement. On the 2007 NAEP, the cities with the highest scores were Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin Texas, neither of which had mayoral control. And two of the three lowest performing cities - Chicago and Cleveland - had mayoral control for more than a decade. Clearly many factors affect educational performance other than the governance structure.

These words carry a powerful punch. Might I remind readers that the current administration unfortunately seems to favor mayoral control. Secretary Education Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago public schools from 2001 until he joined the Obama administration, thus the NAEP evaluation that showed Chicago public schools in such a poor light happened on his watch.

Ravitch offers a further criticism of mayoral control on the same page. She writes of such control

It solves no problems to exclude parents and the public from important decisions about education policy or to disregard the educators who work with students daily. Public education is a vital institution in our democratic society, and its governance must be democratic, open to public discussion and public participation.

Here you see something that has been an essential part of Ravitch's approach to education throughout her career, one too often not noticed by those who criticized her positions on some issues or her associations. It is a constant theme in the book, to which she returns again and again. Thus we read in her final chapter

Schools do not exist in isolation. They are part of the larger society. Schooling requires the active participation of many, including students, families, public officials, local organizations, and the larger community.

This is why Ravitch finds it necessary to remind us that we cannot hold teachers accountable for test scores in isolation from the responsibilities of others, including the students themselves. It is why she raises real questions about any approach that excludes participation in shaping educational policy and governing schools by parents and the community. In the penultimate paragraph of her book she writes

Our public education system is a fundamental element of our democratic society. Our public schools have been the pathway to opportunity and a better life for generations of Americans, giving hem the tools to fashion their own life and to improve the commonweal. To the extend we strengthen them, we strengthen our democracy

Policies that undercut public schools, and thus weaken our democracy, are things that Ravitch opposes, and against which she now forcefully advocates.

Thus we can understand her changing position on school choice. She reminds us that charters as originally proposed were not institutions to be run by for profit entities. Ray Budde and Albert Shanker both offered proposals in 1988, the former wanting schools run within districts by groups of teachers with specific goals to be evaluated at the end of three to five years, the latter also run by teachers within regular schools in order "to pursue innovative ways of educating disaffected students." Ravitch reminds us that by 1993 Shanker had withdrawn his support of charters and become a vocal critic.

We now know that when we control for all factors there is no evidence that charters as a whole perform better than public schools. We have seen charter schools and some for choice public schools find ways of excluding the harder to educate. Close examination shows, as Ravitch reminds us, that some charters are able to obtain success

because the charters often get additional financial resources from their corporate sponsors, enabling them to offer smaller classes, after-school and enrichment activities, and laptop computers for every student. Many charter schools enforce discipline codes that would likely be challenged in court if they were adopted in regular public schools; and because charter schools are schools of choice, they find it easier to avoid, eliminate, or counsel out low-performing and disruptive students.

A recent study out of Stanford analyzed data from 2,403 charters. Ravitch quotes the principal author, economist Margaret Raymond, as saying "If this study shows anything, it show that we've got a two-tone margin of bad charters to good charters." That would seem to demonstrate a lack of data to justify large-scale expansion of charters, and yet Secretary Duncan and President Obama are insisting on just such an expansion as a requirement in Race to the Top funding. One who reads the book carefully will discover this is no anomaly. Ravitch makes clear what people should have known - there is NO research base supporting any of the provisions so-called "reformers" advocate - not for charters, not for merit pay for teachers, not for using test scores as the sole measure of the performance of teachers and schools, not for approaches such as those advocated by Teach for America for teachers nor New Leaders for New Schools for principals . . . That Ravitch makes shows this clearly will not endear her to former colleagues at places like Hoover Institute, American Enterprise Institute and Fordham Foundation (on whose board she used to serve).

Ravitch also warns that the ability of charters to exclude the harder to educate will create "a two-tier system of widening inequality." Some charters will continue to show success, and because the more motivated families will opt out, we will have a spiral where the scores of those left behind in the public schools will continue to decline. As Ravitch notes,

This would be a ominous development for public schools and for our nation.

As noted, some "success" of charter schools is a direct result of the intervention of corporate interests and foundations of wealthy people. These are issues that repeatedly come up, throughout the book. Thus in San Diego, when one school board member was opposed to what Alan Bersin was attempting to do, Frances Zimmerman found herself a target. At a time when the typical school board race cost $40,000,

leading business figures in the city contributed over $700,000 to defeat Zimmerman. Walmart heir John Walton of Arkansas, a supporter of charter schools and vouchers, and Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad each contributed more than $100,000 to the anti-Zimmerman campaign.

In this case Zimmerman survived, although she remained in the minority on a pro-Bersin board.

This kind of intervention by the wealthy should be of great concern, and Ravitch fully takes it on. In Chapter 10 she traces the history of the involvement of charitable foundations in public education, and provides close scrutiny of the major players today. This chapter alone would justify buying and reading the book. You will see in the detail the roles of the major players, including but not limited to the owners of Walmart, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad. You will see not only direct contributions but also further contributions through other foundations. Let me offer four selections, two from the portion on the Walton family, and two more general.

As one review the contributions made by the Walton family Foundation, it is obvious that the family members seek to create, sustain, and promote alternatives to public education. Their agenda is choice, competition and privatization.

But why should it be surprising that a foundation owned by one of the richest families in the United States opposes government regulation and favors private sector solutions to social problems? Why should it be surprising that a global corporation that has thrived without a unionized workforce would oppose public sector unions? Nor should it be surprising that the Walton Family Foundation has an ideological commitment to the principle of consumer choice and to an unfettered market, which by its nature has no loyalties and disregards Main Street, traditional values, long-established communities, and neighborhood schools.

After similar deconstructions of the role of the foundations of Gates and Broad, Ravitch provides a couple of succinct summaries. First,

The market is not the best way to deliver public services. Just as every neighborhood should have a good public school. Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or the police department. It is possible, but it is not wise. Our society needs a sensible balance between public and private.

After noting the power and money now arrayed against public schools and education as a profession, and reminding us of the devastation wrought by financial deregulation, Ravitch cautions us

Removing public oversight will leave the education of our children to the whim of entrepreneurs and financiers. Nor is it wise to entrust our schools to inexperienced teachers, principals, and superintendents. Education is too important to relinquish to the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs.

There is so much more of value in this book. In her final chapter Ravitch is very blunt, warning that what we are doing in educational policy "will very likely make the schools less effective and may further degrade the intellectual capacity of our citizenry." She does offer some specific suggestions which are worth considering, although I think the real power of the book comes from how she takes apart so much of what recent educational policy has been doing.

There is in the final chapter a series of statements, each of which begins the same way: Our schools. If you take nothing else from this review, the list that follows should convince you of the value of the book.

Our schools

... will not improve if we continually reorganize their structure and management without regard for their essential purpose

... will not improve if elected officials intrude into pedagogical territory and make decisions that properly should be made by professional educators

... will not improve if we value only what tests measure

... will not improve if we rely exclusively on tests as the means of deciding the fate of students, teachers, principals, and schools

... will not improve if we continue to close neighborhood schools in the name of reform

... will not improve if we entrust them to the magical powers of the market

... cannot improve if charter schools siphon away the most motivated students and their families in the poorest communities from the regular public schools

... will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises

... will not improve if we continue to drive away experienced principals and replace them with neophytes who have taken a leadership training course but have little or no experience as teachers

... cannot be improved by blind worship of data

... cannot be improved by those who say money doesn't matter

... cannot be improved if we ignore the disadvantages associated with poverty that affect children's ability to learn

... cannot be improved if we use them as society's all-purpose punching bag, blaming them for all the ills of the economy, the burdens imposed upon children by poverty, the dysfunction of families, and the erosion of civility. Schools must work with other institutions and cannot replace them.

Given the prominence of Diane Ravitch, this book cannot be ignored. Because of her previous positions and associations, her clarion rejection of the entire "reform" agenda that is unfortunately continuing in the present administration will hopefully cause some in positions of responsibility to take several deep breaths, step back, and perhaps reconsider what they are doing.

She is likely to be attacked by those who will consider themselves former allies now being betrayed. About that I can do nothing. That they will be upset is to me a positive thing, for what they have advocated is damaging to our schools and our nation.

I hope in this review I have convinced you of the importance and the power of this book. It is yet another book about which I can say that anyone concerned about public schools should read - or in this case, devour. It is that good, that rich, that important.

Ravitch ends her book as follows:

At the present time, public education is in peril. Efforts to reform public education are, ironically, diminishing its quality and endangering its very survival. We must turn attention to improving schools, infusing them with the substance of genuine learning and reviving the conditions that make learning possible

Perhaps you think I should conclude with those words. I cannot. Even as I value them, I must remind you that I have barely scratched the surface of the riches of the book.

Rather, I want to turn back to how Ravitch concludes her introductory chapter, in which she explains her intent of the book. She acknowledges that she does not have all the answers, she offers no silver bullet or magic feather. She does claim that

we must preserve American public education, because it is so intimately connected to our concepts of citizenship and democracy and to the promise of American life. In view of the money and power now arrayed on behalf of the ideas and programs that I will criticize, I hope it is not too late.

So do I!

Those who seek knowledge suffer from the sin of despair and frustration

This excellent piece by James Howard Kunstler is a MUST READ. (Kunstler is the author of the Long Emergency). There is a specific paragraph about the housing market and toxic mortgages, and there is a clear link to what's happening in that sector to that of the student lending industry. For instance, do you know that Deutsche Bank invests in student loan debt in the stock market? Does anyone wish to discuss the repercussions of the fact that our private loans are being swapped and packaged at the global level? What happens when those private loans become toxic? I have been digging for months and reading about a lot of these private loans - some companies are doing very well, while other companies are going belly-up. But I think there is a clear trend: private loans are becoming more toxic than they ever had been in the past. The consequences of this happening are catastrophic, and I fear that I may never be able to return to my home and make an honest living. 

Homesickness and despair sets in . . . We are heading into darker times.

 

Those who seek knowledge suffer from the sin of despair.

MISS NICARAGUA 2010

The new Miss Nicaragua 2010 is Miss Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur, Scharllette Allen Moses, 18. She won the pageant late Saturday night.

ZEN ON SUNDAY

India's Sushmita Sen, Miss Universe 1994

Private Debt Swap Proposal

I am on a grueling schedule as a new teacher in Korea. My first official day doesn't start until Monday (I've been in intense training these past two weeks), but am excited to be teaching again.

Despite this demanding schedule and adjusting to an entirely new culture (not to mention the worst bout of jet leg I've ever experienced - in fact, I am still feeling its after affects), I have managed to stay on EST and continue advocating for the indentured educated class.

For instance, a few days ago I touched base with the Education Policy Staffer at Sen. Sherrod Brown's office by phone. I wanted to catch up with her and inquire about the private student loan debt swap. Many of you viewed the proposal after I provided a link on my Facebook. There were mixed reactions to this proposal.

On top of this contact, many of you sent your letters that we sent via snail mail to the White House electronically this past week. Thank you so much for following up on this second step. For those of you who have yet to send your letters electronically, please do so ASAP. The email address is public@who.eop.gov.

Here was my letter to provide a general template (feel free to use your own introduction to Mr. Rodriguez - I am just offering a quick opening, because I know many of you have families, several jobs, and so many other priorities):

Hi, all,

It takes quite a bit of time for letters to arrive - thanks to that Anthrax scare a few years ago, letters are scanned and so forth . . . so, I have put up a request on FB to send your letters via email to the following email address: public@who.eop.gov

Also, please cc Sec. Arne Duncan ( arne.duncan@ed.gov) and Deputy Under Secretary Robert Shireman (robert.shireman@ed.gov).

Just add a quick note at the top (I pasted my letter in the body of the email) like this:
Dear Mr. Rodriquez: I am a member of the indentured educated class. Recently, we carried out a letter writing campaign with the help of Ms. C. Cryn Johannsen. She is an advocate for student loan debtors and helped draft a general letter of concern about the student lending crisis and the indentured educated class. Please find my copy below.

In any event, I just wanted to provide an update.

BOOT CAMP INES

JAPAN TODAY, 24-Feb-2010: The final 11 Miss Universe Japan contestants have kicked off a two-week beauty camp at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa, where the ladies will stay together and refine their techniques before the winner is announced on March 9.

Three of the sexy ladies, Chie Ishii, 22, Moeko Fukuda, 22, and Maiko Itai, 25, attended a press conference with Ines Ligron, who has been national director of Miss Universe Japan since being appointed to the position by Donald Trump in 1998.

Ligron said: “What I want most from the girls during the next two weeks is for them to have a good think about who they are and how they are going to convey that to the world.”

She added: “This year we’re looking for a girl who can express herself clearly and embodies Japan. Until now, we’ve put forward a strong and even shocking image to counter the one the world has of Japanese girls being shy and weak. We’re going to change our approach this year, putting forward a more traditional image and one of a smart, pure and sophisticated young woman. I want her to show off her Japaneseness as much as possible, so I’d like to see her in a kimono at some point.”

News Alert: Stay Put Awarded to Preschooler with Autism and Apraxia

Today, Mandy Favaloro of A2Z Educational Advocates won a stay put order from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in a factually complicated case involving a preschooler with Autism and Apraxia. The victory is a small victory, in that it means only that the child continues to recieve the disputed services during the time that our case is going forward, and does not determine what the ultimate outcome will be. But it is a significant victory in this case nonetheless, not only for this family, but on the bigger issue of stay put in general.

Stay put means that a school district must maintain a student in their "current educational placement" during the pendency of a dispute (at the administrative and subsequent judicial levels) between parents and the school district. "Then current educational placement" refers to that which was in place, agreed upon and implemented (usually) prior to the dispute arising.

In the 9th Circuit (and in some, but not all, other circuits), case law establishes that stay put acts as an "automatic injunction." In other words, when a case is pending, it is a given that the child will continue in his / her current program. Parents filing for an order determining stay put need only establish what the student's current program is, and are not required to establish all of the factors that would be considered ordinarily when a party to an action is seeking injunctive relief.

Sounds simple, right? And in many cases it can be. A child is in a general education class, which has been written into her IEP, consented to by the parents, and implemented. The District proposes to change Child's placement to a special education class, and parents disagree. When parents file for a due process hearing, it is "automatic" that the child should continue in the general education classroom during the pendency of the dispute.

Not all cases are so simple, and determining what makes up a child's "current educational placement" can in fact involve many different factors. Such was this case, and the daunting challenge facing Mandy and the A2Z team has been to effectively piece together rules and holdings from various cases in order to establish the totality of what should be stay put for this particular child.

This case is complicated, in part because the IEP "in dispute" is the child's initial IEP when he transitioned to the school district at age 3. It is complicated because there has never been a fully agreed upon and implemented IEP. Parents agreed upon some parts of the initial IEP and a subsequent IEP, but not all, and District implemented some, but not all, of what parents consented to. It is complicated by the fact that now, there is a decision from an ALJ in an underlying due process case, a decision that finds in favor of parents on some issues and the district on others; a decision that is being appealled by parents now, but only partially. The fact that the decision ordered reimbursements for specific services funded by the parents in the past throws another kink into the analysis, as does the fact that the order for prospective services is less clear than the order of compensatory remedies.

So what is stay put and how do we determine it in such a complicated case? Here are the issues and what we can learn from this case:

(1) Unilateral Placement (i.e. private school specifically) at Parents Expense Does Not Automatically Prevent Parents from Accessing Stay Put

In this case, stay put includes a program that is funded in part by parents and in part by the District. Because parents did not win on their unilateral placement argument (specifically as to the private school itself) at the due process level, and are appealing that finding, there is no requirement that the District would have to now pay for the private school during the pendency of the dispute. It is important to note that, contrary to the District's assertion, Parents did not ask for District funding for the private placement as part of stay put. His "status quo" at the time of the appeal included placement in the private school at parent expense. It is also important to note that the fact that parents decided to maintain that status quo while they appealed the finding regarding the private school of the ALJ did not prohibit them from receiving other services funded by the district as part of stay put.

(2) Continuation of Agreed Upon and Implemented Services is Necessary

The basic principles of stay put require that those components of the program to which the District and parent have agreed, and have been "in place" prior to this dispute, must continue to be provided. Here, there were services from the child's initial IEP which had been agreed upon and implemented, and those services must continue. The District argued that because the ALJ did not agree with Parents regarding the private school (unilateral placement) that they sought, and yet Parents chose to continue in that program, the Student was no longer entitled to services. The Court disagreed, and said that inherent in the stay put provision is the requirement that the District continue those services that were already agreed upon and in place.

(3) "Otherwise agree" includes that which is ordered by an ALJ (and not appealled by parents)

Stay put typically includes the program identified in a child's previously agreed upon IEP, unless parents and the district "otherwise agree." This court found that "where the due process hearing officer 'agrees with the child's parents that a change of placement is appropriate, that placement must be treated as an agreement between the State and the parents' for purposes of stay put." (citing 34 C.F.R. 300.518(d)). Further, "an order for reimbursement predicated on a finding that a previous IEP was substantively inappropriate 'constitutes a change in the child's current educational placement for purposes of interpreting [stay put].'"

Here, the ALJ's order included specifically identified reimbursements for services funded by parents as a result of their dispute with the district's offered program. The school district attempted to argue that no "agreement" had occurred because the ALJ disagreed with parents on some aspects of what they sought (like the private school).

The Court found that the District's argument completely ignored the fact that the District is "required to provide those special education and related services that are not in dispute," and further stated:

The IDEA's implementing regulations require only that the ALJ agree with the
parents that "a change of placement is appropriate," not that
all changes are appropriate, in order to establish an agreement between the
State and the parents for the purposes of stay put."

Ultimately, the court ruled in parents favor and ordered that the District fund the services, while parents continue to fund the private school placement. The services that make up this child's stay put include a combination of those agreed to from the initial and subseuqent IEPs (and thereafter implemented by the District) and of those that the parents previously funded and were awarded reimbursement for in the ALJ's decision. As to the latter, the stay put order specifically identifies the service providers, as they were identified specifically in the reimbursement order by the ALJ, meaning that in this case, the student's stay put will continue to include his current providers specifically.

Mandy did an outstanding job piecing together cases and rulings to make a strong and effective argument in this very complicated stay put case. As this is her very first District Court case as an attorney of record for parents, I think she deserves much props for this outcome. It stands to show that with zealous and dedicated advocacy, coupled of course with a situation where the law is in Parents favor (and someone with the legal savy to be able to show that it is in their favor, even when it's complicated), a positive result CAN happen for students and parents!

A redacted copy of this decision will shortly be posted on A2Z's website.

Spreading the Wealth Around

Over the past few years, I have done some thinking and writing about the distribution of income and optimal tax policy.  I have collected some of my thoughts in this new paper, which later today I will be presenting as my presidential address to the Eastern Economic Association.

The smoking gun of Eva's emails

Be sure to check out Juan Gonzalez’s Friday's column where he revealed the smoking gun of emails, showing how Eva Moskowitz asked Klein to close two neighborhood zoned elementary schools in Harlem, PS 194 and PS 241, so that her charter schools could take their place.

Less than two months later, Klein announced plans to phase out those schools and use the space for two Harlem Success academies on the pretext that both schools were "failing"; yet both of them got "A's" at the end of the year.

Don’t forget to read all the emails on the News website – full of fascinating nuggets about the battles for space; also discussed are Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton and how Eva persuaded Klein to change DOE policy in order to provide her with the addresses of parents through mailing houses so she could saturate them with her mailings and recruiting efforts.

As she writes Klein at one point, "the decisions that have to be made are are political. Deciding on merits of quality of school and space allocations per pupil is in our system political."

Absolutely. And in every case, his decisions were politically based.

The emails also show how Moskowitz even now trying to engineer her schools' expansion into preK and get double the state funding for it – even though state law officially disallows charters to provide preK. Meanwhile, the DOE has cut back on preK in several Harlem public schools to give the space for charters!

FYI, anyone can FOIL the emails themselves sent between charter school operators and the DOE. It would be instructive to read them all. I imagine much of Klein’s time is taken up by agreeing to the aggressive demands of these privatizers. READ them for yourself.

Below see an excerpt from Democracy Now, where Juan Gonzalez talks about how he fought DOE for eight months to obtain these emails:

TFA 'Set Aside'

The Washington Post's Nick Anderson reports that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was grilled by Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) yesterday about why he proposed eliminating the set aside for Teach for America in the Administration FY2011 federal budget.

"We made some tough calls. And what we did is we simply eliminated all the earmarks. We increased the chance for competition," Duncan said.

"Teach for America is an earmark?" Doggett asked.

"It was a set-aside," Duncan clarified. The organization, he said, would have "every opportunity to compete and get, frankly, significantly more money."

My question is: Why should TFA receive such a set aside while other high-quality education non-profits do not? What about KIPP, Urban Teacher Residency United, The New Teacher Project? How about the nonprofit I work for, the New Teacher Center? All of these nonprofits are national in scope. Is there something special about TFA that merits direct federal funding and forces these other organizations to exclaim, "We're not worthy!"?

Frankly, I like the Administration's competitive approach. Let the cream rise to the top. That's a very American concept.

-----------

UPDATE: Here's more on the TFA funding issue from Eduwonk.

Central Falls Redux

I have to side with Rick Hess over Andy Rotherham on the question of whether the mass firing of teachers at Rhode island's Central Falls High School is a portend of things to come. In yesterday's Christian Science Monitor story, Hess calls the situation in Central Falls "a canary in a coal mine." In a blog post yesterday, Rotherham calls is "a bogus trend story."

“This will be a canary in the coal mine,” says Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Such dramatic moves are likely to multiply as “an increasing crop of no-excuses superintendents and state commissioners” take the view that “it’s essential to clean house” to improve persistently failing schools, he says.

This Rhode Island high school situation sure seems like a bogus trend story. Turnarounds may be a trend but really dramatic moves like this seem pretty anomalous. That whale in Florida killing people seems like a more common trend than schools firing all the teachers en masse. -- Eduwonk

In a Tweet this morning, Alexander Russo sardonically notes that "'mass layoff' sounds so much worse than school 'closing' or school 'turnaround' tho they're all the same thing." Indeed.

This morning word comes from the Providence Journal blog that teachers will appeal their firings. No surprise there.

Related Post: Rhode Island District Fires All Of Its High School Teachers (2/25/2010)

------------

UPDATE: President Obama comments on Central Falls in his prepared remarks before the America's Promise Alliance Education Event on March 1, 2010 (via TWIE, via D_Aarons).

"If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability. And that's what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school, when just 7 percent of 11th graders passed state math tests -- 7 percent."

Exploring kindergarten teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics

Last week, an interesting article was published online in the International Journal of Early Childhood. The article is entitled Exploring Kindergarten Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Mathematics, and it has been written by Joohl Lee. The combination of teachers knowledge of mathematics and kindergarten is very interesting, and while a lot of research has been done to learn more about the type of knowledge mathematics  teachers need in school, little has been done to learn more about this in kindergarten. This is also mentioned by Lee in the article. As the title of the article reveals, Lee builds upon Shulman's traditional framework of teachers' professional knowledge. What I don't understand, however, is how it is possible to write an article about teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics without making any reference to the MKT (Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching) framework, or any of the work done by Deborah Ball and her colleagues at the University of Michigan. I understand that this article has a focus on kindergarten, but still... I also think there should be some mention of how the teachers in the study were selected. 81 kindergarten teachers were assessed in the study, and 55% of these had a master's degree. I would like to know more about how representative this sample was. Still, I think it is an interesting article, and I think it is a good thing that the issue of kindergarten teachers' knowledge of mathematics is addressed.

Here is the abstract of the article:

The purpose of this study was to assess 81 kindergarten teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics on six subcategory areas such as number sense, pattern, ordering, shapes, spatial sense, and comparison. The data showed participants possessed a higher level of pedagogical content knowledge of “number sense” (M = 89.12) compared to other mathematics pedagogical content areas. The second highest scores among six subcategories of pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics was for the pedagogical content area of “pattern” (M = 82.33). The lowest scores among those six subcategories of kindergarten teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge were obtained from the subcategory of “spatial sense” (M = 44.23), which involved the means to introduce children to spatial relationships. The second lowest score was obtained for the subcategory of “comparison” (M = 50.40) which involved the means to introduce the concept of graphing and the use of a balance scale for measurement.

Exploring kindergarten teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics

Last week, an interesting article was published online in the International Journal of Early Childhood. The article is entitled Exploring Kindergarten Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Mathematics, and it has been written by Joohl Lee. The combination of teachers knowledge of mathematics and kindergarten is very interesting, and while a lot of research has been done to learn more about the type of knowledge mathematics  teachers need in school, little has been done to learn more about this in kindergarten. This is also mentioned by Lee in the article. As the title of the article reveals, Lee builds upon Shulman's traditional framework of teachers' professional knowledge. What I don't understand, however, is how it is possible to write an article about teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics without making any reference to the MKT (Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching) framework, or any of the work done by Deborah Ball and her colleagues at the University of Michigan. I understand that this article has a focus on kindergarten, but still... I also think there should be some mention of how the teachers in the study were selected. 81 kindergarten teachers were assessed in the study, and 55% of these had a master's degree. I would like to know more about how representative this sample was. Still, I think it is an interesting article, and I think it is a good thing that the issue of kindergarten teachers' knowledge of mathematics is addressed.

Here is the abstract of the article:

The purpose of this study was to assess 81 kindergarten teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics on six subcategory areas such as number sense, pattern, ordering, shapes, spatial sense, and comparison. The data showed participants possessed a higher level of pedagogical content knowledge of “number sense” (M = 89.12) compared to other mathematics pedagogical content areas. The second highest scores among six subcategories of pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics was for the pedagogical content area of “pattern” (M = 82.33). The lowest scores among those six subcategories of kindergarten teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge were obtained from the subcategory of “spatial sense” (M = 44.23), which involved the means to introduce children to spatial relationships. The second lowest score was obtained for the subcategory of “comparison” (M = 50.40) which involved the means to introduce the concept of graphing and the use of a balance scale for measurement.

Spirit Level loses more credibility

The Spirit Level authors have given an answer to the critique (in Swedish). It is extraordinarily dishonest:

1. They still stubbornly maintain that their book demonstrates a relationship between inequality and life expectancy. Most of their text consists of attempts to confuse readers by pretending it has to do with the choice of country or the choice of inequality measure.

This is simply a lie. Regardless of the choice of measure (UN gini data, OECD gini after tax and transfers, UN 10/10 ratio) or the choice of country (28 OECD, 21 OECD, 21 OECD plus Singapore and Israel) there is no relationship between life expectancy and inequality that is statistically significant at the 5% level.

End of story.

Writing "Vi har ingen anledning att anta att en dataserie är att föredra framför en annan." (we have no reason to believe one data-series is better than another) is irrelevant, since both data-series show that you don't have a statistically significant relationship!

Who are you trying to fool with this silly game?

The refusal to simply admit that they have no robust evidence, despite the fact that they don't have a statistically significant relationship in any(!) of their specifications shows these people are not following academic standards.

2. They try to get around the fact that they have made claims they did not have scientific support for ("inequality kills") by saying that other variables in their book are statistically significant. This is just childish. If you make 5 claims, 1 of which people object to, it is not an answer to defend the other 4. This is not how serious debate is done.

3. They still claim their book demonstrated that inequality leads to lower mental health and lower innovation, even though it has been demonstrated that these two variables have no statistically significant relationship with Gini. I assume their silence means they have no answer.

4. They repeat the claim about US states, even though Deaton and Lubotsky (2002) have demonstrated that these results disappear when controlled for the demography of the states.

5. They constantly refer to two studies, as external evidence for their claims. They do not mention that one of these two studies (the meta-study with almost 200 studies) is done by themselves(!), and has very little credibility for the story they are trying to sell. Another sign of dishonestly. The readers of SVD have no way of knowing this. The other study is of 28 papers, not all of whom are significant.

More importantly, these are not the gold-standard surveys of the literature. They are not chosen because they have more scientific weight, they are chosen because they confirm their story.

The most reliable survey-article of this field is written by Princeton professor Agnus Deaton, one of the leading health economists in the world, in the Journal of Economic Literature, the most prestigious journal for surveys.

Deaton concludes that "it is not true that income inequality itself is a major determinant of public health. There is no robust relationship between life expectancy and income inequality among the rich countries, and the correlation across the states and cities of the United States is almost certainly the result of something that is correlated with income inequality, but is not income inequality itself".

To simply ignore the prevailing view in health economics about the relationship between income inequality and health is dishonest. Pickett and Wilkinson are betting that their audience are unsophisticated, and unaware about the scientific debate. They are trying to deceive the public, to give their political beliefs about inequality and health the aura of agreed upon science .

Pickett and Wilkinson are abusing their positions as academics. They should spend more time doing empirical research and convincing health economists of their claims, instead of trying to deceive a trusting Swedish public to sell books and gain fame and acclaim.

The class struggle in one picture

Social Democratic economic theory is that unions and collective bargaining can dramatically improve the earnings of the working class relative to owners of capital.

Neoclassical economic theory in contrast predicts that unions are not needed. Competition among firms for workers ensures that labor get's its marginal product. Social Democrats believe this is naive.

There is simple and powerful evidence that the Social Democratic theory is wrong and the neoclassical theory is correct.

I have plotted the share of workers that are covered by collective bargaining agreements. This is better than the share of workers that are members of unions. In some countries, such as France, few workers are actually members of unions, but unions have the power to determine contracts for workers that are not members. There are huge differences across countries. In Sweden and France 90% of workers are covered by collective union agreements. In the U.S and Japan only 15% of workers have their wages determined by unions.

I also plot the share of national factor costs that goes to labor (as wages and compensations). What you will notice is that this does not vary systematic across countries.


The way the economy gets divided between capitalists and workers is virtually identical in weak union countries such as the U.S as it is in countries with powerful unions, such as France and Sweden.

If anything, American workers with weak unions get a bigger share of the cake compared to European workers with strong unions. Due to high labor costs, European workers have to some extent been replaced by machines.

Italian workers get slightly less than other countries. The reason I believe is that they have a high share of self-employed, which does not fit nice in the capital-labor divide.


So are unions useless? Not entirely. Unions can raise the wage of some workers, but not at the expense of capital, but at the expense of consumers (mainly other workers), or perhaps single "rent" earning industries (such as mining or years ago American auto). This is good and well for those few workers, but does not work as a large scale redistribution program, since workers are just transferring resources from other workers.

Second, Unions seem to be better able to extract rent within the class of workers, from high skilled to low skilled workers, than they can do with capital, which is very responsive to returns. If capital earnings go down, investments in capital goes down, or is perhaps re-located to other countries. In contrast I.Q. and education seem less elastic in supply, so they can be taxed more by unions.

This simple graph can tell us a lot about the economy, and is a powerful argument against the world-view of the left.

Eva and Joel getting physical

Humor from David Bellel, in reference to today's Juan Gonzalez column and the revealing emails he uncovered between Eva Moskowitz and Joel Klein.

After all, it's better to laugh than to cry.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Political pull by charter school operator exposed

Some parents have asked me why I am involving myself in such a controversial issue as charter schools, seemingly unrelated to class size. But I don’t think it is.

District public schools that have a higher concentration of high-needs students are losing classrooms, libraries and intervention spaces to charter schools, which is neither equitable or good policy.

This is especially damaging, given the fact that only three out of 13 district schools slated to lose space next year to charters have reached their mandated class size reduction targets. For more on this see here, my comments on the charter co-locations that were voted on by the PEP last night.

Yesterday, on Good Day NY, when asked why the Chancellor seems biased towards charters, I said I didn’t really know, but that I suspected that many of the charter school operators are receiving preferential treatment because of their political connections.

A perfect example is revealed in today’s column in the Daily News by Juan Gonzalez, and in the emails he FOILed between Eva Moskowitz and Chancellor Klein.

Not only did the Chancellor intercede repeatedly with his own staff to get her chain of charter schools more space, when she had already received more than the formula would allow, helped her recruit parents for her schools by giving her access to their names and addresses, and also appeared at numerous fundraisers and helped her raise a million dollars from the Broad foundation, explaining how politically useful she was in organizing thousands of charter school parents to support Bloomberg, the continuation of mayoral control and raising of the charter school cap.

As Klein wrote to Dan Katzir of the Broad Foundation, “she’s done more to organize parents and get them aligned with what our reforms than anyone else on the outside.”

In her emails, Moskowitz repeatedly refers to her “army of parents” and many of them were indeed at attendance last night in the PEP meeting, along with their kids, cheering and chanting in support of their expansion into district buildings – all of which were approved, except for one.

Click on the email above, and check out the others on the Daily news website here. You'll be amazed.

You can also check out my appearance on Democracy Now .

More on Ranking CEAs

The Economist takes up the challenge.

Is Harlem Village Academy Really the Model for Urban Public School Reform? Times Columnist Bob Herbert Seems to Think So.

In his latest NY Times column, Bob Herbert has shown that he belongs to the Nick Kristof club of "journalists" who helicopter into an issue, traipse around for a few hours, get treated like royalty and receive a king's tour, hear a one-sided pitch, watch a show being put on for their benefit, and then go write a story as if they actually know something about the broader topic.

Herbert decided to dabble for a few hours in NYC public school education, and the Potemkin village story he presents is about the marvels of Harlem Village Academy (HVA) charter school on West 144th Street. Herbert makes much of one his one selected statistic: "In 2008, when the math and science test scores come in, Ms. Kenny's eighth graders had achieved 100 percent proficiency." That's commendable, of course, but here are a few figures he overlooked or failed to mention:

-- In 2006-07, the first year on which DOE reports data for HVA, the school had a Grade 5 class of 66 students. HVA has no students in Grades K-4, so Grade 5 appears to be the school's primary intake class. The next year, that same cohort as Grade 6 students numbered 45. A 32% loss of students in a single year for such a stellar school, even in the middle school crossover year, is worth explaining.

-- In 2006-07, HVA had a Grade 7 class of 42 students, but the next year's Grade 8 cohort numbered just 31, another 26% loss of students that raises an eyebrow or two.

-- One-third of the school's classes in 2008 were "taught by teachers without appropriate certification" according to the DOE's own data, and 42% of the teachers were reported either without certification (18%) or teaching outside their area of certification (24%). HVA did not report its teacher turnover rates for the DOE's 2007-08 report, nor does it appear to have ever disclosed those figures for the DOE's public reporting.

-- In 2006-07, HVA had zero students out of 200 classified at Limited English Proficient (LEP); in 2007-08, that number was still only three out of 233. By comparison, PS/IS 210, located just eight blocks away on West 152nd Street, had 173 LEP students out of a student population of 360 in 2007-08, or 48%.

-- In 2006-07, 53% of the HVA student body qualified for free lunch, rising to 61% in 2007-08. By comparison, 91% of the student population at nearby PS/IS 210 qualified for free lunch in 2006-07 (no data reported for 2007-08).

-- HVA reported 75 student suspensions in 2005-06 and 87 suspensions for 2006-07. The student body in those two years totaled 200 and 233, respectively. Nearby PS/IS 210 reported just 10 suspensions in each of those two years for student populations of 192 and 257, respectively. Both schools reported 94% attendance rates for 2006-07, the only year reported by HVA.

-- For 2007-08, HVA reported a Grade 8 cohort of 31 students. Thirty took the Grade 8 Math exam, but only 25 took the Grade 8 Science exam in which 96% were rated Proficient. What happened to the other six students, almost 20% of the class? If they were all too weak academically to have reached Proficient, the school's percentage would have dropped to 77% -- still good, but not as chest-thumping as 96%. Curiously, 41 of HVA's 43 Grade 8 student the previous year took the Science exam for 2006-07, and their proficiency percentage came in just there, at 76%.

-- A recent executive search letter seeking teachers on HVA's behalf included the following statement: The organization [Harlem Village Academies] recently completed a $67 million capital campaign to build a new high school in the heart of Harlem and has a robust pipeline of donors. Harlem Village Academies recently held its first ever gala, hosted by Hugh Jackman, with performances by John Legend, Patti LaBelle, and Joss Stone. The event, attended by Mayor Bloomber and Governor Patterson, generated net revenues of nearly $2 million. I can't resist adding here that the DOE is still aggressively pursuing its edict that NYC public school students are forbidden from selling homemade brownies, cupcakes, or cookies to raise $50 or $100 for their clubs and activities; if they could just get Hugh Jackman and Patti LaBelle!

-- Other recent news items from HVA's own website cite the involvement of Jack Welch (GE), Dick Parsons (Citigroup), Brian Williams (NBC), and Tiki Barber. Again, compare all this to the (steadily shrinking) resources DOE provides to PS/IS 210 and its much needier student population nearby. Note as well that Mayor Bloomberg is repeatedly quoted in the school's literature and on its website as describing HVA as "the poster child for this country." Is this really the Mayor's vision for NYC public schools: dependent on celebrities and the feel-good charitable funding fad of the moment among NYC's corporatocracy and its nouveau riche hedge fund managers?

-- Principal Deborah Kenny, as chief executive of Harlem Village Network (which includes one other school in East Harlem, the Leadership Village Academy Charter School), commanded a neat little compensation package totaling slightly under $420,000 last year. She is not the acting principal of any of her network's three schools, yet her compensation, spread over the 400-odd students in her network, adds a $1,000 per student overhead burden. If the entire NYC public school system operated in the same manner for its one million students, the combined compensation for all the comparable "network chief executives" would add one billion dollars to the city's education budget!

I should state here that I am not categorically opposed to charter schools in principle, any more than I have ever been opposed to parochial schools (from which, in Indianapolis, I am a partial product). What I object to is the unthinking, unquestioning acceptance by people like Mr. Herbert, who are supposed to know better, that privatizing public education based on hidden investors (with potentially their own agendas), paying outsized salaries to members of the club, dumping at will any kids who are difficult to teach or control, ignoring kids with English language or special education needs, and then blindly comparing these cream-skimmed apples to a wholly different and far more inclusive set of underfunded oranges somehow represents "the answer" for urban education in America. Mr. Herbert owes us much better than the misleading storyline he has provided in this instance, whatever his personal feelings and connections are.

Schools like Harlem Village Academy may indeed work well for the population they create for themselves after dumping the kids they don't want back into the "traditional" public school system, and they deserve to be credited for what they achieve as a result since their students appear to be benefiting. But that's not public education, that's just a tuition-free private school operating on public money in public space, supplemented by lots and lots of private money and making a few more, mostly white people like Ms. Kenny and Ms. Moskowitz shamefully well-paid.

One of the newest members of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau - George B.

Holocaust survivor living in Snohomish County ready to tell his story
Everett Herald
By Julie Muhlstein

George Beykovsky came to Snohomish County by way of Ecuador, but his story is neither of here nor there.

The 78-year-old Everett man is a Holocaust survivor.He never spent time in a concentration camp, but his family's flight from Slovakia in 1939 is one example of how the diaspora of Jews during World War II affected countless people.

While researching his family's history, he has tracked down and contacted relatives in Canada, in Great Britain, and many in Israel.

“They all scattered,” he said.

It's a story Beykovsky has only been telling since the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. After gunman Naveed Afzal Haq's rampage injured several people and killed one woman, Beykovsky decided to make a donation to the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center....Read complete article

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100221/NEWS01/702219933

Misconceptions about IEPs, and how they impact parents and students

I'm a frequent twitter user, and follow many people who tweet about special education issues. On "HootSuite," an application that both enhances and simplifies use of twitter, I have an ongoing search set to track tweets with certain words in them, including "IEP." This search gets all kinds of results, from informational posts to parents simply talking about their kid's IEP meetings.

Today, I saw this tweet:

"My son is in an IEP in middle school, if I don't get him out of IEP b4 HS he will be put in classes that will not help succeed."

This statement makes me sad, because it is representative of such a large and persistent problem when it comes to special education. I have no idea the circumstances behind this post; no information about this child's disability or his current program. But what I do know is that I have heard this statement before.

There are two problems I see illuminated by this mom's statement, one having to do with the realities of special education that lead her to feel this way; the other having to do with the misunderstanding behind it.


Let's address the misunderstanding first: Special education is not a place! Rather, special education is a combination of services, specialized instruction, accommodations, and supports that a student needs in order to receive an educational benefit. A child is not "in" special education, but rather "receives" special education. True, there are many instances in which the combination of services, supports, and specialized instruction that a child requires can best be provided in a separate classroom setting or even a specialized school, but that is an individual decision for each child based upon his/her IEP. It is not and should not ever be the assumption that a child on an IEP will be "placed" in special classes.

Even when you are talking specifically about placement, rather than more broadly about special education, the concept includes more than simply where a child will receive instruction. In California, the legal definition of "specific educational placement" incorporates this notion: "Specific educational placement means that unique combination of facilities, personnel, location or equipment necessary to provide instructional services to an individual with exceptional needs, as specified in the individualized education program, in any one or a combination of public, private, home and hospital, or residential settings." Title 5, California Code of Regulations, Section 3042(a).

The assumption that a child will be in certain classes simply because he/she is on an IEP also flies in the face of the idea of "least restrictive environment." (For a good overview of the relationship between special education and "inclusion" read this article by the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education). The legal presumption of where a child will be placed is actually the opposite of this statement. The presumption is that a child with a disability will be placed in general education / educated with typical peers, and that removal to special classes or specialized schools will only happen if the child's disability is such that education in general education cannot benefit the child, even with the full range of supplementary supports and services in place. In other words, the school district should make efforts to include a child in "regular" classes before considering specialized settings; these efforts should include the full range of services and supports that could assist the child in the regular setting. Assuming that simply because a child is on an IEP, he/she will be in certain special education classes at any point in the child's educational career is not an assumption that any district, parent or IEP team should make, because it ignores the fact that special education (a service, not a place) could be provided in the regular education setting.

As to the realities of this statement: Unfortunately, in many places the reality may be that a child on an IEP, particularly a child with certain categories of disabilities, will likely be "warehoused" into specialized classes and taken off of the "diploma track" in high school. I have faced this reality in some of my cases. I know of parents with students in middle school who feel the same way as the mother who tweeted this post. They are looking into the future of their child's program, and the only options they see within special education are specialized classes with "functional skills based curriculum," separated both from the general education students and from the general education curriculum standards. They go and view these classes and see what is "taught" there. And they come away with the conclusion that if their child goes into those classes, he/she will never learn the skills necessary to have any chance of succeeding in further education, employment, etc after high school.

This comes up with two sets of kids particularly. The most obvious are the students labeled as "severely disabled." In lower grades, many school districts are doing a good job of developing "inclusive schools" where even the students who need to be in specialized settings for some or most of their instruction are included within the general education setting for part of their day, even part of their academics. In high school, the argument is made that this is not possible, it's more difficult, it will no longer benefit the student. High school general education classes are fast paced, standards and testing driven, and students move from class to class all day long. Students with "significant" disabilities are unfortunately moved into "self-contained" programs at this stage, where they are in the same specialized classroom setting for the full school day. The argument also becomes that at this stage, these students need to learn "functional skills," and rather than incorporating these while keeping instruction in academics aligned with general education standards, these classes focus solely on functional skills. These students are not likely those whose parents will decide to "exit" them from special education, but they are still faced with the reality of little to no options other than these specialized classes.

The second set of students affected as a group are those that are what I will call "on the cusp" of needing an IEP. These are the students who have long-standing disabilities; high functioning Autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, etc, but who have received great interventions and services and have made such progress that they no longer require intensive supports. I've seen IEPs ignore the fact that a student really can learn general education content, and place them in a very restrictive special education setting simply because that is what is available at that school / grade level. The misconception is at its worst here: the thought is that if the child requires specialized instruction at all, he/she must therefore need a specialized setting. The fact is, the system simply isn't doing a good enough job of providing the full range of options for these kids, of implementing research based instructions and services that support the students in general education settings and learning general education curriculum, without removing them to specialized settings. If a parent is weighing the benefits of special education against the risk of having the child removed from classes that would prepare him/her for college or other post-secondary education, what is that balancing going to favor?

What is the result of a parent's belief, be it misconceived or based in reality, that a child should be "taken off of an IEP" before high school in order to be able to be placed in academically challenging classrooms, rather than in specialized programs that will "not help [them] succeed?" Unfortunately, it would seem that the result would be kids in high school not getting the services that they need. Imagine being the parent in this catch-22: On the one hand, you want your child to learn academics, to be successful and to go to college. The "track" that your child will be put on if he/she remains on an IEP and goes only to these special classes may not accomplish those things. On the other hand, your child still has a disability, still needs services and supports, but you are told that the option for special education in HS is to place the student in a special class. You, as the parent, may not be given the full benefit of understanding that special education is not a place, that your child should be educated in the general education setting to the maximum extent possible with appropriate supplementary supports and services, and that your child's IEP should include a transition plan, geared towards outcomes that may include post-secondary education. That parent is faced with an impossible choice, and so the child that is "on the cusp," let's say, in terms of needing an IEP may be exited from special education.

What a parent holds onto by keeping their child on an IEP in high school is the right to a transition plan. Special education is premised on the idea of preparing students for productive lives after high school: to live as independently as possible, and to be contributing members of the community. This comes most sharply into effect when the Individual Transition Plan (ITP) becomes a part of a student's IEP at age 16.

Transition services are defined as "a coordinated set of activities for a child with a disability... designed to be within a results-oriented process, that is focused on improving the academic and functional achievement of the child with a disability to facilitate the child's movement from school to post-school activities...; based on the individual child's needs taking into account strengths, preferences and interests; and includes instruction, related services, community experiences, the development of employment and other post-school adult living objectives, and when appropriate, acquisition of daily living skills and functional vocational evaluation."

Is the system doing what it is supposed to do if students are exited out not because they no longer need supports and services, but because their parents (or even school district staff) are under the impression that an IEP equals placement in a special classroom? Congress recognized that meaningful parent participation is essential to effective implementation of the IDEA, and at the heart of meaningful parent participation is the fact that parents must be given information about what their rights are, what programs are available, what the district is obligated to provide. If parents aren't being informed, or worse, if districts themselves are misinformed about LRE and other requirements and truly are making this the choice for high school kids, then right at the critical moment of special education, right when transition planning that is so key to the "big picture" of what special education is all about comes into play, students are being denied the services and supports they need to succeed in later life.

Parents are faced with difficult, sometimes impossible, choices. No one can make those choices for them, but as their advocates and attorneys, as school district staff charged with providing students an appropriate education and including their parents in the decision making progress, and as a community of professionals, parents and providers, we can educate parents and continue to fight to put an end to the misconceptions about special education. Only when special education truly no longer is a "place" but a service in all school districts, and only when parents and the community at large understand this, will parents be empowered to fight for appropriate services to continue, rather than eliminating services and supports rather than risk placement in an inappropriate setting.