Christian came in the other day and said he'd gotten a 95 on his first paper.

Then he got a 98 on his first test, and the professor invited him to attend a screening of a movie on hip hop artists made by his son. (I think it was hip hop artists.) Shortly after that Christian ventured out of his quiet overachiever hiding place and challenged the brainy female student who'd been dominating the class — and the professor sided with him!

Ed said, "He's getting straight As and he's the teacher's pet."

That's good.

Christian needs to spend some time being teacher's pet.

My favorite Christian story — my favorite Christian's mom story, that is — was the time in high school when somehow his entire team of teachers decided to call Christian's mom on the carpet.

Something like that.

She went in for the meeting, sat down alone in whatever room they put her in, and one by one each teacher walked into the room expecting to tell her all the bad things they knew about Christian.

Not all of the teachers came.

As far as I can tell from this distance, they were all supposed to come.

But some of them refused. Christian's English teacher told him, "I have no problems with you. I'm not going."

That's another thing. There are a lot of hero teachers out there. My kids have had some hero teachers, of course; more often they've had terrific teachers in settings where heroism wasn't called for one way or the other, thank heavens.

But lately I'm hearing other people's stories of hero teachers. One of these stories makes me cry just thinking about it.

Anyway, Christian's mom sat down alone in the room and one by one each teacher came in with his list of complaints and sat down facing Christian's mom.

The teacher would start to talk and Christian's mom would cut him off. "What are you doing for my son?" she said.

The teacher would start to talk again and she'd cut him off again. "What are you doing for my son?"

She just kept doing it until the teacher gave up and left. At least, that's what she did in her son's retelling of the tale.

Then she did the same thing all over again with the next teacher.


I'm sure that went nowhere, but it's a great story.




Saxon math placement test

So I gave Christian his Saxon math placement test and the news was grim: if he were a kid he'd be starting in grade 3.

Since he's an adult I ordered Saxon 5/4, the fourth grade book.

Christian went to 4 grade schools in 5 years. That's called "student mobility," and it's death to achievement,^* particularly math achievement. (I think I'm channelling an earlier post.)










I don't know which of these categories Christian was in — either the 2nd or the 3rd.

That's another story. Christian's mom was fighting with the special ed people to get Christian something, a keyboard I think, a reasonable request given that his entire 504C classification was apparently based on bad handwriting, and the special ed person told her to have Medicaid pay for it.

Christian's mom said, "I work, bi***."

That's the difference between Christian's mom and me.

When my school told me to have Medicaid pay for assistive technology, I went for it.^** I spent months shlepping the kids to WIHD for Medicaid-funded assessments. Then two years later Ed spent months trying to clear up the billing problems when Medicaid didn't pay for it after saying they would.

Our district does now pay for assistive tech for Andrew.

As far as Christian can remember, none of these schools ever checked to see what he knew when he came in. They just plopped him into whatever classroom had space, gave him whatever "services" his 504C standing entitled him to, and went about their day.

Anyway, whatever his income category, Christian went to 4 schools in 5 years.

So today he has 3rd grade level math.




my trip to the edu-attorney

I've mentioned that Ed and I saw an education attorney a few weeks back.

We were there on special ed business, but I was eager to ask about the legal status of typical kids.

Do typical kids have any kind of legal entitlement to an education?

Obviously they do; typical kids have a legal right to a free public education.

But do typical kids have any kind of legal entitlement actually to learn the material the teachers are teaching?

That's what I wanted to know.

The answer is no.

I asked the attorney, "How close are we to being able to sue school districts for negligence or malpractice?"

"People can sue doctors," I said, "people can sue lawyers, people can sue accountants.^*** Why can't people sue schools?"

He stared at me blankly.

I stared back.

"What do you mean?" he said finally. "On what grounds would you sue a school district?"

"Well," I said, "say a student goes all the way through school and graduates without knowing how to read. Could a parent sue because the school has passed her child through 13 years of school without teaching him how to read?" I'd read somewhere that this would be the first successful lawsuit brought by a parent against a district. That's why I brought it up.

No.

A parent could not sue on these grounds.

"If he's gotten all the way through school without being able to read," the attorney said, "then he should have been referred to special ed at some point."

I wasn't quick enough on my feet to ask whether a parent could sue a district for failing to refer her child to special ed, but I gather the answer to that question, too, is no.

The reason I gather that the answer is 'no' is that I now know children to whom this has happened.

I asked whether NCLB altered the legal landscape, but didn't quite follow his answer, which was, in essence, that "NCLB is a special ed law."

I'd never heard it put that way, but I suspect he's right.

I'm coming to the conclusion that parents don't understand the first thing about the law.




case law and custom

For some reason, I had been assuming that the reason parents can't sue schools was that there are state laws protecting school districts from legal action. It made sense to me that a coalition of teachers' unions and school districts would have been able to lobby for such legislation and get it passed.

The reality is far worse.

The reality is that parents have been suing schools for many, many years in many, many states, and they have always lost.

The courts have always ruled in favor of the schools.

Never in favor of the children.

Many decades of case law and custom tell us that no school is accountable for an individual child learning anything at all. I'm happy — in fact I'm eager — to revise this characterization if it's wrong. So let me know.

As our attorney put it, the courts have ruled against parents, because the reason a particular child failed to learn "could be something about the child."

I wasn't quick enough on my feet to ask whether a class action lawsuit would get around the "something about the child" issue (could it be something about every child?), but I doubt the answer would have been any better.




parents step in

For a couple of years now I've been getting the message that it's up to me to make sure my child learns the material covered in school.

When I say "getting the message" I mean "getting the message" in a global, big-picture kind of way.

I don't get this message from individual teachers, with a couple of exceptions. No teacher at Dows Lane or Main Street School ever gave me the impression that she wasn't reponsible for her students learning. The middle school, last year, had an official Grade Contract message assigning full responsibility for learning to students, but when we had our "team meeting" it was obvious every teacher there felt personally responsible for students in her class actually learning the material she was teaching.

So...this isn't a "teacher message."

It's a "school message;" an "administration message;" a "district message."

Why has my district shown no interest in formative assessment or teaching to mastery?

Because decades of case law and custom say there's no reason for them to be interested in formative assessment and teaching to mastery.

They are in the inputs business. The inputs business and the compliance business. They must provide teachers, buildings, books, lessons; and they must comply with countless thousands of pages of edu-law. When I was the parent rep on hiring committees, one of the key questions we asked every candidate concerned his or her familiarity with education law.

And that's it. So when schools innovate or "implement" reforms, they provide more teachers, buildings, books, and lessons. Character ed, differentiated instruction, portfolio assessment — whatever it is.

More stuff.

Parents have to understand that it's up to us to make sure our children learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. It doesn't just seem that way. It is that way.

Individual teachers take on responsibilities beyond what they have to take on; individual schools may do the same thing.

But if you don't have one of those teachers or schools, assessing your child's learning and remediating gaps is your job.

Saxon into the breach

So last week Christian started Saxon Math 5/4 Homeschool Edition.

MORE COMING






^* Probably the best article on this is Hanna Skandera & Richard Sousa's "Student Mobility and the Achievement Gap" in the Hoover Digest, but the link isn't working at the moment.

^** Christian's mom didn't have Medicaid because she made too much money. We had Medicaid because we got a Medicaid waiver.

^*** Tough to sue a writer, I've noticed. Free speech is a beautiful thing.

christianlearnsmath

-- CatherineJohnson - 17 Oct 2006

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