The End of Black Wednesday

For the last 198 weeks I've tried to wear black on Wednesday. Black Wednesday is a ritual that I developed after the 2004 presidential election. The re-election of George Bush meant the continuation of No Child Left Behind - not that that is the only shortcoming of the current Bush Administration. NCLB has been a horrible thing for public education, in my opinion. And I believe that its accountability provisions are an unachievable, cynical attempt to eventually justify federal support for private school vouchers.

I did okay with Black Wednesday. I wore brighter colors on the Wednesday after Democrat Tim Kaine won the governor's race in Virginia in 2005, and after the Democrats took back Congress in 2006. I missed it one day last year because I just plain lost track of the days of the week. And last month I forgot to back black clothes when we went to Myrtle Beach for a week. Otherwise, when I've gone out in public on a Wednesday over the last 45 months or so, it's been in black.

While NCLB is still technically alive, its heart was cut out recently when the Reading First program was cut to zero funding in next year's budget. That wasn't the place to start, in my opinion. But I think it signals the end of NCLB as we know it. And with the election season in full swing, so many issues are now around that I no longer see the point. So Black Wednesday is officially retired....

No Dentist Left Behind

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup.

Cavities: that's what it comes down to, right? Shouldn't dentists be rated (Excellent, Average, & Unsatisfactory) based on cavities in their client? Okay, it's humor...

No Dentist Left Behind is making the email rounds. Again. The story has been around for a number of years - since before No Child Left Behind became law. It was originally meant to ridicule a South Carolina state law designed to "bring accountability" to public schools. The parody, originally titled Absolutely the Best Dentists, was sent to every legislator and newspaper in that state when it was composed by a retired school superintendent.

Think about it. Shouldn't someone be telling us whether dentists are doing a good job or not? Shouldn't we have the right to compare dentists based on the only thing that really matters in dentistry: cavities? And if we're going to a dentist that's only "above average" (and not improving that rating every year), we should have the right to move our business to a practice where the dentist has at least an "outstanding" or "excellent" rating. Dentists who don't manage to prevent cavities should lose their licenses, don't you think...?

Some of the parody's comparisons have teeth (no pun intended). The idea that one day we'll rate all schools based on a single, statewide measure of mastery -- regardless of the different educational levels of individual communities, regardless of the value those individual communities places on education, regardless of the resources available to parents during the preschool years -- seems at least as ludicrous as rating dentists based on the average number of cavities their clients have regardless of whether a dentist's clients have access to fluoride in their water or understand how diet impacts their dental health.

On the other hand, dentists exist largely in private practice while schools are public agencies. And the sense of government intrusion that so offends the dentist in the parody is probably misapplied to in a school system setting because, well, schools (mostly) are government.

Is the parody a fair look at No Child Left Behind? I'll leave that to you, the reader...

Special Education Vocabulary: Accommodation

The law says that a school has to "accommodate" a student's disabilities. Do you know what that MEANS? Technical jargon can get in the way of understanding your child's rights.

What is an accommodation? The long list of technical terms in special education can be daunting to some parents. And since accommodation is one of the most basic terms, I thought I'd take a little time here to make sure you could find a clear, concise definition...

Schwab Learning has one of the best explanations of the term accommodation that I've come across on the Internet:

Accommodations provide different ways for kids to take in information or communicate their knowledge back to you. The changes basically don't alter or lower the standards or expectations for a subject or test. Through the child's Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 Plan, classroom accommodations are developed formally.

Their page goes on in other places to explain (correctly, I might add) that an accommodation is a change in the student's classroom learning environment so that the student has better access to the educational process.

Accommodations can be simple. If a child's disability has to do with their hearing or vision, one of the simplest accommodations is usually called preferential seating. Johnny can't see very far or hear very well so we move him to the front of the room - closer to the blackboard and to the talking teacher. And in some cases, accommodating a child's disability with a change in their classroom learning environment as simple as that one makes a huge difference in how well they do.

Some other common accommodations include:

• Extended time - a child with a disability may be given extra time to take a test or complete an assignment.
  
  

• Oral testing - if we want to know whether a child with a learning disability knows who the first president was, we can ask him and let him tell us instead of writing down our question and having him write down his answer. After all, if he knows who the first president was he should get credit for that. And if his disability interferes with his ability to write, that's a fair accommodation to make.
  
  

• Assistive technology - a child with a vision problem can listen to a story on tape instead of reading it from a book and a student with dysgraphia may benefit greatly from using a word processor instead of a pencil.
  
  

• Peer tutoring - simply assigning a classmate to help a disabled student "get it" can be powerful.

Parents should distinguish between these two ideas. Accommodations do not change what is expected of a student in school; they only change the way the student gains access to learning. Modifications actually change the curriculum and expectations placed on a disabled student. But we'll leave that piece of vocabulary, modifications, for another day...

Why Special Education Labels Matter

Does it matter how your child is classified as a special education student? I mean, after all, Special Ed is SPECIAL ED: right?

I subscribe to a number of email lists on various topics related to education and twice now in the last few months the question of labels and why they matter has come up on one of these email lists.

The most recent occasion was a posting on a mailing list dedicated to special education law. A parent emailed the list to say that now, at the age of 12 and after over seven years as a special education student, her child had been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, a communication disorder that falls under the umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The child had previously been diagnosed with some disorders that led to a special education label of emotionally disturbed. And the parent wanted to know why it mattered and whether she should push to have the classification changed.

One of the people who replied to her email was Carol Moore, a school psychologist in Oregon. I liked her answers (they were more thorough and systematic than my own) and, with her permission, I've quoted them here for my readers:

1. The "right" classification is the accurate one. One person mentioned that the child had a chromosomal disorder that causes low cognition, motor difficulties, speech language, etc. In that case, the most appropriate classification would be Mental Retardation, since language difficulties are subsumed under that label, as would be behavioral difficulties, etc. The motor issues would still be addressed in the IEP, but that is not the primary factor affecting the student's educational performance. Other examples: a kiddo has a head injury and subsequent learning and behavior difficulty. The appropriate classification is TBI, not Mental Retardation, Emotional Disturbance, or Learning Disability; another child has a variety of medical diagnoses...let's say, ADHD, Bipolar, Tourettes, etc. The appropriate classification is Other Health Impaired.
   
   

2. Too often parents and other team members would prefer to use a more palatable category, say Developmentally Delayed, when the child is clearly Mentally Retarded, to give a common example. This hurts the family by raising the expectation that the child may develop out of her difficulties, reducing community services and supports that may be available, and perhaps leading to school based services that are less appropriate.
   
   

3. Categorical eligibility has an educational benefit...staff must learn about the conditions that give rise to an OHI or Autism eligibility, for example, whereas an Emotionally Disturbed or Learning Disabled student may be considered "someone else's problem," specifically, the SPED staff's vs. the regular education teacher's.
   
   

4. Dollars flow through special education eligibilities via formulas that are established by the state. In my state, for example, the category of Traumatic Brain Injury is finally being added to the low incidence regional disability services, opening up the possibility of additional resources being available to students in that category. This is what happened with Autism spectrum disorder...parents advocated and the disorder became recognized and resources flowed.
   
   

5. Finally, it is possible to have multiple eligibilities, if they all make sense. Some disorders "trump" or subsume others. For example, an Autistic student should not have an ED label UNLESS the emotional (and not typical behavioral manifestations of autism) component is significantly interfering and not automatically a part of the autism...perhaps depression. A child with an OHI eligibility due to ADHD should not also be labeled ED for the same reason...behavioral difficulties are part of the ADHD. Again, if something rather different were presented, say, substantial depression or anxiety, then addition of ED may be warranted.

Note: the ellipses were part of Moore's remarks and do not indicate that something has been deleted...

Moore concluded with a remark I had to smile at: "If you're now confused by all this, take heart: so are all the teams I've worked with. The primary thing to bear in mind is to accurately portray the student's difficulties."

The discussion took place on the Reed Martin Special Ed Law mailing list.

Special education labels DO matter for other reasons, too. A label/placement can determine what teacher a child sees. Different special education teachers may have different certifications.

In the not too distant past I was involved in a discussion on an email list on Down Syndrome. Let me say at the start that it is a great mailing list. If you are interested in issues related to Down Syndrome, the Down Syndrome List is the place, and I highly recommend them.

That said, the discussion I'm referring to lasted a week or more and shifted between a couple of focus points, depending on who was contributing at the moment and what their exact interests were. The focuses included:

The role of IQ (and, probably more importantly, IQ testing) in determining the eligibility category of a special education student.
The importance of inclusion for mentally impaired students (something the people on the list placed a higher value on than most special education parents)
And a classification distinction my particular state makes between students who are mildly mentally impaired and those who are moderately mentally impaired.
The discussion was animated. With several people replying to several people as they checked their email, it was sometimes like being at a table where everyone was talking at once. And, to be honest, I'm not an average member of the list; I'm a teacher, while most members of the list are caregivers for a child or adult with Down Syndrome.

At times in this particular discussion I felt like I got slapped around a little. (But, like I said, it's a good list and, hey, that's okay.)

The question of the validity of IQ tests -- what they really measure and to what extent they accurately gauge intelligence -- I leave for some other day (like when I do my doctorate, or something). But, like it or not, IQ ("general intellectual functioning," in the words of the policy) is specifically used in my state's policy to determine whether a student is mentally impaired. To be classified as mentally impaired, the student has to have an IQ of less than about 70. My state goes on, following the American Medical Association's model, and classifies mentally impaired students into sub-classes for eligibility purposes:

• Mildly Mentally Impaired if their IQ falls between about 55 and about 70
  
• Moderately Mentally Impaired if their IQ falls between about 40 and about 55
  
• Severely Mentally Impaired if their IQ falls between about 25 and about 40
  
• Profoundly Mentally Impaired if their IQ is less than about 25

"About" is an important word. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale uses slightly different numbers.

But why does it matter whether a student is classified as moderately mentally impaired or mildly mentally impaired? Because teachers get certified to work with mildly mentally impaired students or they get certified to work with moderately mentally impaired students, etc. That means that if a student is classified as moderately mentally impaired (as Down Syndrome students often are) they become the educational responsibility of someone certified in working with moderately mentally impaired students -- and in my county we don't have someone with that certification at every school.

It's possible to be certified in more than one area of mentally impaired; but I don't know anyone who is (and the academic work involved would be considerable). And if an eligibility committee decides that Johnny is moderately mentally impaired instead of mildly mentally impaired, that may ultimately affect which school Johnny attends, what his program of study looks like, whether he is required to take the same high stakes test that most of the school's students take, etc. At the very least it would mean that the student would have to attend school somewhere in the county where a teacher certified to work with moderately mentally impaired students was available - and there's no teacher like that at my school!

Why doesn't my county place a teacher certified in teaching the moderately mentally impaired at every school? They don't exist. We don't have that many teachers certified in teaching the moderately mentally impaired. There's a shortage. Just like there's a shortage in my area of math and science teachers for the middle and high school grades.

At one point some of the participants in the discussion drew the conclusion that we segregated moderately mentally impaired students in my county. Of course, that's not the case (it would be a gross violation of the student's civil rights). And while a moderately mentally impaired student that lived near my school might have to take the bus to a different elementary school so that someone properly certified would be around to be responsible for their educational experience, that school would be a perfectly normal elementary school. But I don't think some of the people in the discussion ever bought that. And, as I said above, Down Syndrome parents seem to place a higher value than most special education parents on seeing their children taught in an environment where they are with their non-disabled peers...

But as you can see, whether a child is classified as moderately mentally impaired or mildly mentally impaired could possible make a big difference in their educational experience. Labels do matter.

A Philosophy of Education II (Things Schools Do Besides Teach. Safeguards for Society...)

Before a child is taught anything in school, the school system provides a service that is indispensable: it ensures that the child has been inoculated against diphtheria.

And tetanus. And whooping cough, measles, rubella, polio, and a few other things. Through the various carrots and sticks available to society from universal schooling, public health in America has been greatly advanced in the last century; I can't think of a more reasonable agency to carry out this service. The decline of child mortality in America that has resulted from every parent knowing that eventually they'll have to produce that shot record at the door of a school house may by itself be make the cost of schooling in America worthwhile.

Without establishing a timeline for what services (or mandates) entered the public school system at what point in time, I tend to just push the blame for all of them off on Lyndon Johnson. He started the modern trend, at least, of providing services that were not directly educational in nature. Among my favorite is free and reduced lunch. It serves society (and students) with a safeguard against poverty. Children are disproportionately impacted by poverty. The free and reduced lunch program has served to keep large parts of America turning into scenes from a Charles Dickens novel. And the school system has been the tool society used to achieve that.

Another example has to do with the treatment of people with disabilities in our society. Forty year ago America may have been far above much of the world in the treatment of disabled individuals; but families were still largely on their own in dealing with and supporting their disabled members. Today, disability laws in America require that children with disabilities be sought out early during the preschool years, and that services be provided under many circumstances to families with disabled children. This is part of the reason the life expectancy of a person with Down's Syndrome has more than doubled in the last few decades. And it is the public school system that at least seeks out identifies the children with disabilities and, often, provides the actual services. The quality of life for the retarded, the hearing impaired, the visually impaired, and those with other disabilities has been greatly improved as a result. That safeguard against neglect of the disabled is part of what makes us a civilized society.

Some socialization also takes place, and I would argue that much of the weight of socialization in American society falls upon the public school system. It is where kids learn to stand in line in the cafeteria the way they will have to sand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles of the Post Office later in life. It is where they learn that you can't hit people just for what they say (even if your father says you can). It is where they learn not to steal, not to bite, how to act in groups, and how to relate to authority.

Of course, some of the safeguards provided by the school system are in fact educational, or academic, in nature. The school system should infuse a minimal level of literacy and math skills into all the children who come through its doors. And there are economic safeguards - the hope that schooling will provide employability skills at some minimal level to the majority of students. Society currently disagrees about what that minimal level of literacy is; perhaps there has never been a consensus - just an idea. And the employability skills need to survive in society are rapidly changing. It becomes easy to lose sight of the many other things the school system does when success with the educational goals becomes difficult to measure.

These things are as they should be in a society with our resources (in my philosophical view of education, or at least of schooling). Society should have an institution that ensures that public health measures are being instituted in small children. Society should have an institution that aids parents in socializing their children. Our society should have a mechanism for identifying individuals with disabilities early in life and ensuring that they receive services. The purposes of education should be multiple and complex in a society as complicated as ours. And individuals and their families should be able to avail themselves of the system for their own purposes while society still achieves its own in some measure. Educational institutions must resign themselves to the fact that those who come through their doors have their own motives and values. And in America that's allowed.

In my philosophy of education, the purpose of schooling is to serve multiple ends for both the learners and the providers. There is no singularly important or outstanding particular purpose for education in America that stands alone. And education, or more properly schooling, has become an institution that is central to the core of our society and legitimately serves a variety purposes.

Taking Georgia's "Technology Test"

To be certified in Georgia (something I'm trying to accomplish), you have to prove computer skill proficiency. One way of doing that is to take the technology test at a RESA office.

Georgia has a 25-page list of technology skills they think a teacher should be able to show. I took their test on July 2.

The technology test took me about 40 minutes. It was actually 6 different test (in Riverdeep, believe it or not) and I had an hour total to take them all. Lowest possible score was 100. A passing score was 176. Highest possible score was 300.

I got my lowest score on WORD, which I suppose means that WORD does a lot I don't know about (since I use it 8 or 10 times a day). If I'd gotten one more wrong answer on WORD I'd have to take the test again. I got my highest score on EXCEL, which I learned to use mostly for this test. Whatever...

My scores:

• Internet - 288
• Access (Database) - 280
• PowerPoint (Presentation Tools) - 280
• Spreadsheets (EXCEL) - 300
• MS WORD (Word Processing) - 176
• Windows Operating Systems - 248

Comes the test...

Tomorrow my school system starts the test. You know. The high stakes test. The one to see whether or not we're a good school, or whether the parents deserve to be able to send their kids someplace else.

In my state, West Virginia, the test is called the WESTEST. It's untimed. Tomorrow we'll test reading. The test will start at 9:00 am (or there abouts) and most of the kids will be finished by lunch. I believe we will test Math on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday are social studies and science.

I could tell you more of the details of testing, but I figure you'd stop reading this if I did. It doesn't really matter, those details. The bottom line is that we have to make a certain score (at least in Math and Reading) in order to be seen as having made adequate yearly progress. A certain percentage of our kids have to display mastery of the subjects tested, or we're a "bad" school. Mastery is like a low "B" and the students could score in categories above mastery on the test.

At the moment the percentage of students that have to score mastery on the test is probably reasonable for our school. Next year it will be higher. Eventually (2014), every child will have to score mastery on each of the tests. That, of course, is ludicrous considering that No Child Left Behind says it doesn't matter that they child may

• have a learning disability
  
• not speak English fluently
  
• have an IQ of 62
  
• have recently moved to the school from somewhere else
  

I would never argue that accountability is wrong. The primary purpose of schools is to teach. But I've said elsewhere that it certainly isn't the only purpose.

I also agree that we need to look not just at aggregate data for a school, but at disaggregate data. It protects minorities and shows weaknesses in the process of education.

I have no problem with the test itself. My problem with the test is with the use of the test. The test is being used to eventually show that the concept of public education is flawed. The Bush Republicans want to privatize education - or at least justify the creation of a large scale private alternative to public education. And they want it to be church-based and paid for with vouchers. They are willing to use the disabled and minorities to accomplish their goal.

In two different states I've dealt with and taught children with educational disabilities from kindergarten to high school. Children have value and their disabilities make them no less valuable. Good teaching brings increases with it in the level of skills and knowledge those children have. But the expectations placed on them that they will all perform as though they have no disability is unreasonable - purposefully unreasonable. The purpose of the unreasonableness is for those behind the Bush agenda to eventually be able to say 'most public schools are bad schools and we need an alternative."

Someone recently said to me, "This is what the school year is all about." I held my tongue, but in my head I yell:

"Bull Hockey!"

This test is not what the school year is about. The school year has been about trying to light a fire. William Butler Yeats was right when he said “Education is not filling a pail, but the lighting of a fire." And George Bush's approach to education is that of the water boy...

Black Wednesday

Tomorrow is Wednesday. I'll have to iron a black shirt. And a black pair of pants. And perhaps polish my black boots a little. Because on Wednesdays I wear black...

It's been that way for 132 weeks. On November 2, 2004 I worked as a poll worker for Tazewell County, Virginia, at the Springville polling place. I think I worked about 17 hours that day. I came home and went to bed. And when I got up the next morning it took me about seven or eight minutes to figure out the George Walker Bush was still president. I wore black to work that day. And for 130 of the 132 Wednesdays since the election I've worn black whenever I left the house.

The two exceptions? The day after Democrat Tim Kaine won the governor's race in Virginia I wore more festive colors to work. (Since I work in West Virginia, half my co-workers never fully understood why.) I also dressed quite colorfully on the Wednesday after the most recent midterm election - the one where Democrats won back Congress.

When is the next opportunity for a colorful Wednesday? At some point in 2008 I expect No Child Left Behind to face reauthorization. I'd like to see the Highly Qualified Teachers provision and the accountability provisions of the law revised considerably. I'd also like to see the name changed; NCLB is leaving children behind in droves.

If the law governing public education in America is revised substantially I may well dye my hair some strange shade and wear a green shirt and purple tie to work the next day...

The Quest to Stay Certified

I'm in graduate school - at least at the moment. When I first entered the public school classroom a couple of years ago as a teacher I already had a Masters Degree in Education - but it was in adult education and did not include any type of certification. The state of West Virginia certified me, provisionally, in special education. That Master’s Degree was actually my second graduate level degree.

Part of the reason I'm in school is that I change careers - twice now, actually. I went from working for a volunteer service organization overseas (a "missions agency" - 1983-1993) to working in higher education in a variety of semi-administrative student services roles (1997-2004) to teaching in the classroom. While I can understand some retraining being necessary, I had begun to suspect that the "high qualified" provisions of No Child Left Behind would keep me in college for the rest of my adult life.

Of course the colleges eat this up. My need to stay certified subsidizes their existence. I get credit for the classes I've taken (and paid for). No one much cares what I actually know or can do.

I make a joke out of the cost of going to college. If you look at my face you can see that my left nostril is somewhat bigger than the right. That’s because there’s a man at the Bursar’s Office at Marshall University who sticks his right forearm up my left nostril all the way to his elbow to retrieve tuition. Yes, I pay through the nose for going to Marshall…

Since I started teaching I've taken forty or so additional hours of graduate work, and because I live in Virginia and work in West Virginia, I've paid out-of-state tuition to take my classes. I have over 100 graduate hours altogether and while the coursework keeps me certified, it provides me not further pay advantage (I have a "Masters plus 45" now). I'm tired of it.

Georgia seems to have solved my problem for me. I've recently discovered that Georgia will certify me based on testing - without any additional college work. They'll do that provided I'm already a teacher someplace else (which I am). So after a review of my transcripts they've told me three tests I need to pass to be fully certified in special education (learning disabilities, emotional and behavior disturbances, autism, mentally impaired, etc.) And by the end of August I expect to have passed those tests, be certified, and be in the process of transferring that information back to West Virginia. Then I can take other tests and add additional certifications to my license - early childhood education, middle school social studies, high school English, whatever...

It saves me $4,000 in tuition this summer.

When NCLB is reauthorized next year, hopefully one of the things that will change is that the Federal government will mandate a "test out" option for many of the specialized certifications teachers need today. College was nice; but the best training I've gotten has consistently been professional development in-services and workshops provided by my school system.