progress report

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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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, was no.

I think you can successfully sue on this one. At least, I know of one parent that succeeded in suing our town for a failure to provide services and identify her kid for special ed. By 4th grade, her son wasn't reading at all, he was way behind his peers (most kids here read, because we are pretty affluent and most parents teach their kids how to read if the school fails to), so the complete lack of reading in this 4th grader should have raised lots of red flags. Also, it appeared that he actually was trying to learn and he had tremendously supportive parents. But the school wouldn't identify him and provide services.

From what I've heard second hand, the mom had teachers ON TAPE telling her that they'd like to identify her son for SPED but couldn't because there was no room and no money, and if they id him, they have to serve him. Administrators had told teachers directly not to id any more kids, no matter what.

I guess this is what it takes to sue a school for failure to id for sped. Anyway, it seemed like a huge burden on the parents and I doubt you could usually get a teacher on tape admitting to doing the wrong thing just because of the budget.

BTW, the administrator in question is the BIGGEST fan of character ed in the school system. She has been instrumental in bringing all char ed all the time to town.

-- LynnGuelzow - 17 Oct 2006

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"They are in the inputs business. They must provide teachers, buildings, books, lessons.

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

More stuff."

Beautifully said! You're absolutely right.

Why was it that Wile E. Coyote never stuck to one strategy and improved upon it to catch Roadrunner? I mean, he would get close sometimes, but whenever he failed, he would turn around and try something completely new. I wonder the same thing about schools.

-- JdFisher - 17 Oct 2006

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Yay for Australia! We may only be able to sue private schools (and you need to prove that there isn't something wrong with the child) but we can do it!

-- SamanthaRawson - 17 Oct 2006

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"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."

Here in Illinois a group sued CPS for providing special ed and won. It's the Corey H case: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/arch/12-02/1202coreyh.htm

Now we need parents or a group to sue again so that special needs pupils get the attention they deserve.

-- CharlesH - 18 Oct 2006

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oh my god!

I just saw the Wile Coyote cartoon!

so now I'm wondering whether I have the nerve to post this up front....

hmmm

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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What I didn't mention in the post (you may have noticed that the ktm Comments are slightly less "public" than the posts..) is that the child I've learned about is an Irvington student whose parents hired an attorney...etc.

I won't say more here.

I gather we have a number of such cases.

And at least two of them involves a school failing to refer a child for services.

I also gather that a significant number of these children are now attending a private school for kids with dyslexia at their parents' expense.

I'm very concerned about the situation, which, as usual, almost no one knows about. The few who do know about it may have the perception that these are wealthy parents who've chosen to pay $30,000 a year for expensive remediation the same way a wealthy parent might pay to send her child to Horace Mann.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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What I didn't mention in the post (you may have noticed that the ktm Comments are slightly less "public" than the posts..) is that the child I've learned about is an Irvington student whose parents hired an attorney...etc.

I won't say more here.

I gather we have a number of such cases.

And at least two of them involve a school failing to refer a child for services.

I also gather that a significant number of these children are now attending a private school for kids with dyslexia at their parents' expense.

I'm very concerned about the situation, which, as usual, almost no one knows about. The few who do know about it may have the perception that these are wealthy parents who've chosen to pay $30,000 a year for expensive remediation the same way a wealthy parent might pay to send her child to Horace Mann.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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From what I've heard second hand, the mom had teachers ON TAPE telling her that they'd like to identify her son for SPED but couldn't because there was no room and no money, and if they id him, they have to serve him. Administrators had told teachers directly not to id any more kids, no matter what.

I'm hearing stories along these lines — nothing quite so bad, but bad enough.

And certainly, having been in special ed forever, I can tell you that it's standard practice for schools simply to drag their feet & play out the clock.

We had an amazing moment two years ago, our superintendent's first year on the job, when the School Board actually announced, in a School Board meeting, that they were pulling all of the special ed kids out of their BOCES programs across the county and bringing them back to district to save money.

That is illegal.

Parents spent a fortune hiring attornies to protect their kids' placements out of district.

Edu-attornies cost a bloody fortune here. $3000 at a minimum. At the time we were looking at having to hire an attorney for both kids, which would have eaten up $6000 we didn't happen to have at the time.

If Jimmy's class hadn't gotten its bus this week we would have been sending a check to the attorney I'm quoting here.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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How did that mom get this stuff on tape?

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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BTW, the administrator in question is the BIGGEST fan of character ed in the school system.

Interesting.

Same here.

Our superintendent took the job and instantly went after the special ed placements.

She's the character ed person. That's her thing, character ed.

Character ed and data mining.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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Why was it that Wile E. Coyote never stuck to one strategy and improved upon it to catch Roadrunner? I mean, he would get close sometimes, but whenever he failed, he would turn around and try something completely new. I wonder the same thing about schools.

I love it!

That's a brilliant image for school "reform."

It's always the same reform.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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We may only be able to sue private schools (and you need to prove that there isn't something wrong with the child) but we can do it!

lol

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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Charles - Thanks so much for the link. That's very helpful.

I wish I'd kept the law journal article on this subject I came across awhile back. The author was talking about how close we are to being able to sue schools.

Of course, if we really did cross that line — if we really did become able to sue schools — the unintended consequences would be a bl**** nightmare and the taxpayers would get to pay for it, tra la, tra la!

Still, I have to say that if I were given a vote I might vote 'yay.'

I hate what lawsuits have done to physicians, so maybe not.

But lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits do provide a check.

As things stand, schools aren't accountable to students or parents. I'm not just talking philosophy, I'm talking law.

Schools are not legally accountable to students and parents.

I don't feel lots of confidence that choice (charters, vouchers) would necessarily change that.

I wish I knew more about the recent history of the medical profession.

At some point in the 1970s (I think) patients began to wield far more power vis a vis their physicians.

That reform was a good one, and my sense is that at least some of it was due to an increasing threat of legal action.

otoh, the increasing threat of legal action could have followed the change in status of physicians rather than preceded it.

don't know

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Oct 2006

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wilecoyote

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Oct 2006

WebLogForm
Title:	progress report
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	AssessmentTests, FromTheKitchenTable, MathWars, SaxonMath
LogDate:	200610171135

Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
roadrunner.jpg	manage	37.9 K	17 Oct 2006 - 18:53	JdFisher