Free and appropriate, mm-hmm

Special needs cases tax state education budget

...
Then came middle school. District officials said they could help Sam, legal records show. They integrated Sam, then in 6th grade, with traditional students because test scores showed he could handle the work and they believed it put him in the least restrictive environment, a tenet of federal law.

But the chaos of six class changes, tougher assignments and what the Levins contend was misplaced support, proved too much. Sam's depression worsened, and in February 2007 he became suicidal, they said.

The Levins withdrew Sam and moved him to New Hope Academy in Niles, where two dozen teachers and psychologists oversee 60 students.

For the first time, Sam wasn't the only bipolar student in class. His medical prescriptions fell from four to two, and his mood swings leveled.

But Sam's plateau came as his family labored to secure his costly education. The Levins fronted the cost of private school and spent $15,000 on legal fees while requesting that the Evanston district reimburse them for the costs.

In December, Judge Julia Quinn Dempsey determined the district should have done a better job of training teachers and staff on the nuances of bipolar disorder. The ruling in the due process hearing required the Evanston district to pay Sam's tuition and the Levin's legal bills, for a total of $51,000.
...

That's at least how much it would cost the district to pay one teacher's salary and benefits. But now the district has to pay for him to attend a private therapeutic school.

Is it what the kid needs? You bet. I won't even bat an eye at that one -- remember, I live with one just like him.

Is it the school's job to provide it? You bet. You see, they made the nest they're living in. It's called FAPE -- that every single solitary child, no matter the abilities or lack thereof, has the RIGHT to a Free, Appropriate Public Education.

But it's going to collapse because it isn't possible. We could all pay one hundred percent in taxes and there still wouldn't be enough money to educate every single child to the point where they can pass the Iowa Test of Basic Skills or the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills or whatever other standardized test somebody wants to give them.

I've actually been looking forward to the collapse of the public education system for many years. I think it could really change things for the better. It's too bad all our hard-earned money has to get flushed down the toilet in the meantime. If I had all the money we shell out in ridiculous taxes, I could afford to medicate and educate my children without anyone's help.

LRE and FAPE are going to bite us in the butt, peeps

LRE = Least Restrictive Environment
FAPE = Free Appropriate Public Education

These are the two ten-ton gorilla acronyms which have spearheaded all the special-ed reforms that have taken place in the public schools. No matter what the disability, the public school system is required by law to provide a Free and Appropriate Public Education to any child, and that education must by law take place in the Least Restrictive Environment.

These have always been intended for children with disabilities. Parents have fought -- and won -- many court battles declaring their children's RIGHT to a FAPE in an LRE. What the FAPE and the LRE actually looks like, well, this is where the battles get all picky and lawyers get to write public education policy.

I can foresee, however, that parents of gifted children may have a beef with the public education system for the exact same reason... and I expect our societal tendency to grant blanket rights will then dictate that schools MUST provide gifted programs that meet all the needs of every individual student regardless of their strengths and weaknesses.


Schools, Facing Tight Budgets, Leave Gifted Programs Behind

Before her second birthday, Audrey Walker recognized sequences of five colors. When she was 6, her father, Michael, overheard her telling a little boy: ''No, no, no, Hunter, you don't understand. What you were seeing was a flashback.''

At school, Audrey quickly grew bored as the teacher drilled letters and syllables until her classmates caught on. She flourished, instead, in a once-a-week class for gifted and talented children where she could learn as fast as her nimble brain could take her.

But in September, Mountain Grove, a remote rural community in the Ozarks where nearly three in four students live in poverty, eliminated all of its programs for the district's 50 or so gifted children like Audrey, who is 8 now. Struggling with shrinking revenues and new federal mandates that focus on improving the test scores of the lowest-achieving pupils, Mountain Grove and many other school districts across the country have turned to cutting programs for their most promising students.

''Rural districts like us, we've been literally bleeding to death,'' said Gary Tyrrell, assistant superintendent of the Mountain Grove School District, which has 1,550 students. The formula for cutting back in hard times was straightforward, if painful, Mr. Tyrrell said: Satisfy federal and state requirements first. Then, ''Do as much as we can for the majority and work on down.''

My kid is a super genius and your classroom doesn't challenge her... she's acting out and is bored out of her mind. You had better meet her needs. I don't care how many other kids are in the classroom with their own needs...

The time is coming. Keep a sharp eye. When parents as a whole gave over their responsibility for the education of their own children, and when individuals ceased to take personal responsibility for their OWN education, this is what we get: requirement upon requirement upon unfunded requirement heaped atop struggling public school districts.

Whatever happened to being so determined to get an education that you self-educated? Whatever happened to parents, realizing their children's limitations or special abilities, tailoring their child's educational experiences themselves?

Public education can -- and should -- give a solid framework for young citizens to then build upon in a way that befits their unique gifts. When we start demanding that public education provide the whole building, you're going to get the cheap shoddy gray Communist apartment buildings that institutionalization produces. If you start demanding granite countertops and large balconies for every single person, the system will collapse under the weight of that granite.

Variations on a theme

Continuing with my "yearbook" theme, my pal RedFish sent me a cool link this morning. It's to The Sheila Variations, and in that blog post she reminisces about one of her high school activities.

I loved the post, but I gleaned a slightly different angle from it. She posted photographs of her activities, photos which apparently came from her high school yearbook.

Which means that someone took pictures of said activity, even though it wasn't an "officially-sanctioned" group.

I so loved that, and I've printed it off to take to my yearbook class. I'll edit the occasional swear word she threw in, of course -- I wouldn't want any of the parents to freak out or anything, even though the content of the article isn't offensive at all. But I want to stress with my class the importance of including all the off-Broadway stuff that occurs this year and not just the typical stuff you might see in any yearbook from any given high school. Sheila was able to share with us some terrific photos thanks to some forward-thinking photographer. I'd like to have that kind of yearbook.

Never forget.

The conference has been very productive so far. As for describing what I've seen, well, that won't be happening for a while -- if ever. But if you ever take a trip to DC, you really should carve out a couple of hours or so to go through the USHMM. It may not be pleasant, but people need to see it. They need to see it, and they need to remember what they've seen.

And then they need to make sure it NEVER happens again. To anyone. Anywhere.

Nightmares for teachers

Night before last I had a truly terrible dream which I remember vividly. I had gone to Ballyhoo to speak to the principal, and when he showed me my classroom, it was only a 10 x 10 room AND it was joined to another teacher's classroom -- and the other teacher was the woman who I had had to do my student teaching with 15 years ago. This woman, of course, was a living nightmare for me at the time, and her face often shows up in my dreams during times of severe stress. I'd describe what that time was like, but it was too awful. I don't know if I'll ever talk about it again if I can help it.

Thank goodness it was only a dream. He showed me my actual classroom today and it was just fine.

I just read in the Philadelphia Enquirer's online newspaper site, however, of just the sort of thing that will give a teacher REAL nightmares:

High stakes in teacher-parent clash

This whole thing, unless it's just the reporter's slant, smacks of a set of wacked-out parents with way too much money on their hands. It does, however, point out the precarious nature of a teaching position. I'm very, very vulnerable to the caprices of those in power over me (administrators, school boards), and their decisions (which can affect my entire life and the life of my family) can be based on nothing more than fear or whim and may literally have not one thing to do with my skill or success as a teacher.

Couple all that with a panicky bureacracy at the state and federal levels who make sweeping changes meant to make things appear as successful as possible every few years, and you've got a fairly risky occupation. Teachers end up doing a complicated dance... taking extra and usually meaningless college courses... re-wording the same old lesson plans to reflect the "new objectives" which aren't really new, they're just ways to sound as though things are happening... spending precious time piecing together ridiculous "portfolios" to display to disinterested administrators... it's gotten almost suffocating in some places.

These are the things which keep me awake late some nights. There are some times I don't like being a grownup.

YEEOW!

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!

Interview #2

Tomorrow at 1:15.

The interview is at the same school district that I interviewed in on Monday, but because the art position would straddle middle school and high school, I need to speak with the middle school principal as well as the high school one.

Alice has an endocrinologist a neurologist appointment tomorrow morning in Dallas, so I procured a substitute teacher for the day anyway. I don't think the appointment will last all morning, though.

Keep them fingers crossed, y'all.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

I've been accepted!!

My application to attend the Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Conference for Educators at the U. S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C. has been approved!!

I am totally, completely STOKED about this. Educating the current generation about the Holocaust and what factors brought it about in the first place is of critical importance, particularly now. The older I get and the more aware I am of things occurring in the world, the more urgency I feel about making sure we NEVER FORGET.

Over at Meryl Yourish's place, I read something that struck me -- struck me HARD. Her observation was that there were a number of Virginia Tech parents who were grateful that Hitler didn't get Dr. Liviu Librescu that first time around... and if this single individual will be remembered always for the last few noble and sacrificial moments of his life, think of WHO WE LOST back then. Imagine it... these two little boys in this photograph never had the opportunity to become Doctor Anyone... Dr. Librescu was buried in Israel last Friday. His eldest son said, "I walked through the streets today with my head held high because I have such a father."

Now I need to start rallying around and raising the dough in order to make the trip. This is just too important to miss.

UPDATE: Prochein Amy suggested in the comments that I post a donation link, so I did. It's on the sidebar.

Thirty books every American college student should read

John Mark Reynolds gives his list of thirty books that every American college student should read. That is, thirty plus one -- he says that the English Bible should be read cover to cover alongside all the books on his list. And he's an academic.

Oh, the list?

1. Iliad
2. Odyssey
3. History of the Peloponnesian War
4. Ethics (Aristotle)
5. Metaphysics (Aristotle)
6. Meno
7. Republic
8. Timaeus
9. Oedipus Rex
10. Bacchae
11. Orestia
12. On Friendship and On Duties (Cicero)
13. Aeneid
14. Meditations
15. History of the Church (Eusebius)
16. Confessions
17. City of God
18. Histories (Tacitus)
19. Consolation of Philosophy
20. Summa Theologica (selections!)
21. Divine Comedy
22. Canterbury Tales
23. The Prince
24. The Institutes (selections from Calvin)
25. Fairie Queen
26. Shakespeare (Hamlet, Lear, As You Like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar)
27. Faerie Queen (at least Book I)
28. Leviathan
29. Second Treatise on Government
30. Pensees

And then 10 works you should read in order to call yourself civilized:

1-3. Some poetry by Donne, Blake, Wordsworth, and Dickenson (counts as 3!)
4. Pride and Prejudice
5. Tale of Two Cities
6. Jane Eyre
7. Moby Dick
8. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
9. Brothers Karamazov
10. Anna Karenina

And finally, 10 modern works:

1. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
2. Federalist Papers
3. Reflections on the Revolution in France
4. Wealth of Nations
5. Communist Manifesto
6. Origin of Species
7. On the Genealogy of Morals
8. Civilization and Its Discontents
9. No Exit
10. Lincoln’s speeches (especially Gettysburg, which should be memorized, and the Second Inaugural)

Even as a high school English teacher, I'm afraid I'm behind on a few of those. I suppose I should get started.

Ms. Cornelius gets Historical

The de-emphasis of history education

I'm seeing similar problems in my own experiences in public education -- the insane push away from real education toward test-taking. Reading and math are critically important, but they go hand in hand with the humanities, and an entire generation or two is graduating from our high schools without any clear understanding of history.

I think that the battle-to-the-death between revisionists and multiculturalists and nationalists has deadlocked, and the high-school textbook has suffered greatly because of it. Now we feel obligated to include a blurb about every little ethnic group and minority and woman and disabled person and whatnot, to the detriment of the understanding of the incredible feat performed by the founders of our country. Large sections of the literature text is devoted to crappy poetry and stories simply because they belong to some perceived oppressed people group, and there's little room left for truly classic, pivotally important works of literature.

I don't know where this will lead us all, but if I'm able to make the leap out of public education altogether this year, I don't think I'll be terribly disappointed. I'll miss my students, but the state of affairs in general is pretty dismal, in my estimation. The kids are getting shortchanged, and I don't like it. I'm hopeful that the Law of Diminishing Returns will eventually kick in and real education will return, but I've been hoping for that for a long time and haven't seen any improvement.

"No Child Left Behind" is crap. It has nothing whatsoever to do with children.

Washington's Farewell Address, in contemporary English

I thought this was quite nicely done, and much easier to understand. I think that all our founding-father documents should be translated like this once every ten or twenty years, just to keep it fresh and keep people aware of what those men thought and said. Heck, they do it with the Bible, there's no reason we shouldn't "update" all our literary and political documents to make them more accessible. I do think it's important to teach Shakespeare in the original language, but I think that every year we get further and further away from understanding it. Perhaps teach a certain passage in the original, but translate the rest into modern English. I don't mean simpler. I just mean modern.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 27, 1945
Children being liberated from Auschwitz
(photo from the USHMM web site)

Today was set aside by the UN last year as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It's the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the Nazi killing centers.

Light a candle tonight to remember... and to remind everyone around you that you'll do your part to see that it never happens again.

Holocaust teachers' meeting, day one

Phenomenal symposium... I can't believe the serendipitous provision that allowed me to attend. I'm still digesting some of it, and I don't feel as though I can completely give you the rundown you deserve until I've listened a little longer. But I have benefited enormously from this training and the wealth of resources they've provided for us. I didn't have to pay to attend it, but I would've gladly paid for it. It was THAT worth it.

There's a national teachers' symposium in Washington DC at the Holocaust Museum there in late June of this year. It's also free; I'd just have to come up with a place to stay and transportation. I'd absolutely love to find a way to get there and soak up more of this. It's simply outstanding, and incredibly enlightening.

Adventures, adventures

The life of a teacher is full of surprises. On Monday, one of my colleagues approached me and said that she'd registered for a conference this week, but now could not attend it. Was I interested?

I took a look at the materials. It's the Dallas-Area Teacher Forum on Holocaust Education. She knew that I had taught the Holocaust using the novel The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, so she thought I might be able to glean some good stuff. You BET I was interested.

So tomorrow and Friday I get to spend the day at UT-Dallas (in Plano, actually). I am thrilled to have the opportunity to attend it.

And then, after it's over tomorrow, I'm going to go have supper at Cafe Brazil with my blogger pal MaggieKatzen. How could it be any better than this?

The Invalid's Story

"The Invalid's Story" is a humorous short story by Mark Twain about a catastrophic mixup involving a dead body and a hunk of Limburger cheese. To give the story multi-sensory effect, I bought some Limburger cheese (as well as a few others more tasty and less, well, obnoxious) for a cheese-sampling party.

I have to admit that I had never been exposed to Limburger cheese. I knew that it had a reputation for being stinky, but I honestly expected that to have been exaggerated.

It wasn't.

Limburger cheese is some of the most vile-smelling stuff on the planet.

Yes, I did taste it. I figured I owed the kids that much. Some of the kids tasted it, too. It doesn't taste nearly as foul as it smells, although it certainly is strong and even a bit bitter. The unfortunate result, however, is that any surface (including your fingers) which come into contact with the cheese then becomes foul-smelling and difficult to clean.

As the cheese becomes room-temperature and even perhaps a bit warm, the aroma wafts throughout the classroom and begins to evoke retching and gagging. If I hadn't been there myself, I'd say the kids were engaging in some hyperbolae, but I was there, and they weren't.

Limburger cheese smells like dirty underwear, or rotting roadkill, or perhaps both of those items after having been consumed and regurgitated.

I wish I were kidding, but I am not. I actually read that the bacterium responsible for Limburger cheese is also one of the main bacteria found in human sweat. How appetizing is that? Yeccch.

Here's one of my brave freshman boys, about to "be a man" and eat some cheese:




And here's an illustration by another freshman of the Limburger experience:


I also provided a sample of Gouda, Chevre and Muenster cheeses, which were much more warmly received. Each student then had to write a short descriptive paper about the experience (even those who hadn't wanted to eat it had certainly smelled it, so they were able to describe it). It turned out to be a great lesson, and one which I believe will stick in their minds for a while.

This incenses me...

Hyannis mom irate over weighty issue

Jasmine, a 4-foot tall, 66-pound, third-grader at Hyannis Elementary School, was sent home last week with a letter stating she was ''at risk of becoming overweight.''

Jasmine is one of 139 students at the school who came home last week with a height and weight screening referral letter. Though similar letters went to nearly half of the school's 295 students, Jasmine's mother, Vicki Elliott, said she is unhappy because the letters not only single out easily rattled youngsters for being ''fat,'' it's none of the school's business.

''We've had the same pediatrician for the past 17 years. If there was a problem, he would have told me,'' Elliott said. ''She probably can eat healthier but that's for the doctor and me to decide, not the school nurse.''

Nice... first they pound into kids' heads that they can't bully someone because of the way they look, then they take it upon themselves to do so.

Like it or not, however, a student's body weight is the school's business under a federal law passed last year that requires school districts across the country to develop and implement ''wellness'' policies.

School officials said Elliott is misunderstanding the intent of the letter, which, said school nurse Stacey Shakel, is meant merely as an ''educational tool.''

More evidence of the "nanny state" mentality of many public school districts... there are any number of them who believe in the cradle-to-grave education philosophy, that they're there to educate everyone of every age and that we'd all be better off if we'd let them do it.

The Barnstable school district conducts height and weight screening annually on all students from kindergarten up to eighth-grade. BMI is a formula that computes whether a person is too plump, thin or within a healthy weight range.

School officials said the height and weight screenings are just one piece of the district's developing wellness policy.

''We are required now by the state (Department of Public Health) to report students who are - or who are at risk of becoming - overweight or underweight,'' Shakel said.

REQUIRED TO REPORT STUDENTS WHO ARE AT RISK OF BECOMING OVERWEIGHT OR UNDERWEIGHT??????? Sorry for the screaming... this absolutely chaps my hide. But it's what you get when you hand over more and more of the caregiver responsibility to the government.

Beyond the question of her daughter's obesity risk, Elliot said she objects to the way the information was delivered.

''I don't agree with the policy, but if you're going to do it, don't send it home with the kids,'' she said.

Elliot is worried about the impact the letter will have on her daughter. Though Jasmine didn't read the entire letter, she understood enough to say that the letter made her feel angry because she doesn't consider herself to have a weight problem.

Of course she understood it... and now she very well MAY have a weight problem, now that it's been compounded by the emotional trauma of being singled out by the school nurse FOR BEING FAT. If this happens to any of MY children, I'm going to be in the face of whoever thinks they need to report my children to some faceless bureaucrat, and they're going to be reminded that THIS PARENT doesn't want anyone feeling responsible for my children's health needs except ME. Period. Now ease on back before somebody gets hurt. [taptaptap]

With 6,000 students enrolled in Barnstable public schools, Supt. Patricia Grenier said the district can't afford to mail out every parental notice.

As for the referral letter itself, Grenier said the purpose is to provide parents with precautionary information. And there's an educational pay-off, she said: ''Healthy children learn better.''

Oh how very maternalistic of you, Madame Superintendent. Go eat your fat-free chicken breast salad and let me take care of my own children's health. Snoop around in some lockers for marijuana or spray-glue or Kalashnikovs. That should keep you busy for a while.

What are they going to send out a notice about next? Making sure parents know to put clean underwear on their children before sending them to school? They could give little written notices to that one boy in class that always smells funny. Then when he drops it accidentally and the jock bully picks it up and reads it and shows everyone in class and they all laugh at him, he can go home and buy a black trenchcoat.

Can you tell I'm angry?

Kid Cowboy

This photo is of one of my freshman students involved in his favorite hobby. He's also ranked second in his class academically. He shared with me this photo of himself roping in last year's Junior High National Finals, and I thought you should see him. Here's another one, at a different rodeo:



The white streak in front of the horse and the illusion that he's been Photoshopped over that cowboy in the background is just that -- an illusion. When I take the high-res original and do a super-closeup, the white streak is really part of the horse's rein, and there's a dark shadow on his jeans that looks like it blends right into the background. Goofy, yes, but it's real.

[sigh]

Do I reeeeeallly have to go back to work in the morning?

Okay, yes, I guess I do. I am thankful to report that we'll get two whole days before the students return, so maybe I'll actually get something DONE in my room. It needs it. And my lesson plans need tending, as well.

I love my job. The only thing I'd change about it would be that it starts too early in the morning. For those who are tempted to point out those eight weeks in the summer, I'd remind you that most teachers I know spend all summer taking classes and getting ready for next year. Plus, might I remind you that most of you DON'T want to spend all day every day with your teenagers. I earn that paycheck, and don't forget it. heh

Meetings...

I'm sitting in an enormous teacher's meeting in Plano, Texas... [yawn]...

Don't worry, I'm taking notes, of course, but occasionally she drifts off into miles of data and anecdotes, so I'm also surfing the wi-fi. Whee! This makes the experience WAY more beneficial, because I can also immediately access the information she's referring to, I can Google pertinent items instantly, and I can still pay attention and my hand doesn't get a cramp from trying to write way too much stuff.

It's a beautiful thing. This is the way ALL meetings should be, at least for people like me.

UPDATE: Susan asked for a TAKS update. This meeting really wasn't about that... it was about helping kids improve their writing. Say what you will about standardized testing (most of which is valid complaint, by the way), teaching kids how to write better IS a standard that we English teachers need to achieve. There isn't much that any standardized test can ruin with writing -- you need to learn writing anyway, and it's helpful in the "real world" to be able to extemporize well and quickly, so the TAKS model works for the writing test. That's all that this meeting was about -- how the TAKS officials are scoring the kids' writing samples. None of what she said was outside what a good English teacher should be emphasizing anywhere in the USA.

I can't really speak to the other subjects, but I do know that we're not going to move back to the top of the educational heap by coddling kids and kowtowing to the "every child's a winner" theorists -- "No Child Left Behind" is a pile of crap. Every child needs to have options available to them. Not every child needs to go to college. College needs to be a place where the brightest and best end up, and where the expectations are extremely high. We've made college an expectation, and as a result a college education has cheapened and dumbed-down. I sincerely doubt that most college graduates today could pass an 8th-grade exit exam from a hundred years ago.

If we don't expect kids to pass a standardized test, there really isn't another feasible method of determining educational success (on a large scale) (which IS necessary if public funds are to be used for education, which is an assumption built into our current educational system). However, instead of putting such intense pressure on schools to produce 100% successful test takers, the test should help determine where students go next. If they can't pass it, that's fine. They have other options open to them. It's not the end of the world.

Our mistake is trying to produce perfectly stamped-out clones. Can't be done.

[stepping down off soapbox]

Anything sounds better in Latin

There are moments -- particularly during my third period or my sixth period -- when such a phrase would bear great significance:

Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.

(Or, translated: In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.)