Ed Notes Online: The DOE Special Education Passover Plot

Friday, June 8, 2012

The DOE Special Education Passover Plot

Thou shalt not put SPED or ELLs in charters

The LORD BLOOMBERG said to his knave Dennis Walcott, "Yet one plague more I will bring upon the public schools. I deem neighborhood public schools shall accept all children with special needs whilst I deny them adequate resources to service such needs.”

June 8, 2012 -- Norm in The Wave -- www.rockawave.com

The DOE Special Education Passover Plot
By Norm Scott

The LORD BLOOMBERG said to his knave Dennis Walcott, "Yet one plague more I will bring upon the public schools. I deem neighborhood public schools shall accept all children with special needs whilst I deny them adequate resources to service such needs.” And Walcott said, "Thus says the LORD BLOOMBERG. I will go forth in the midst of the public schools and all of them shall die (eventually), especially those with the most senior and highest paid teachers. But against any of the people of charter schools, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl; that you may know that the LORD BLOOMBERG makes a distinction between the evil unionized public schools and the good non-unionized charter schools.”

And the LORD BLOOMBERG thus saith to his servant Walcott: “Tell every charter school to take the leg of a lamb and smear the blood of doth lamb on the doorpost, so the angel of death of the public schools shall know to pass IEPs over the charter school and not deposit even one child with an IEP (or English Language Learner either) in saith charter school.

"And parents of children in classes with high class sizes shall be mixed with such children that require more intense help than they shall receiveth and thus overburdened teachers shall not be able to give such attention to all children and parents of such children shall get perturbed and blame and degrade and defame such public schools and seek out charter schools while I send my knave Walcott to smite such public schools into closure and turn such buildings built with public funding into the hands of doth privatizer charter school management organizations which shall taketh a 15% commission for services and make sure to pay extremely high salaries to all who run such charter schools. Thus I have spoken.”

And Walcott doth did as he was told, as he always doth does when LORD BLOOMBERG doth speak to him.

=====================
OK, so let’s get serious. The Bloomberg education destruction machine has ordained major changes in special education that will put special needs children in regular classrooms in neighborhood schools, but with little of the support they truly need, thus burdening classroom teachers and school administrators even further with even more responsibilities. Parents may even be pressured to support modifications of their children’s IEPs (Individual Education Plans mandated by law for children with special needs) that will lesson the services they really need.

I received this email from Mona Davids, who ironically heads an independent charter school parent advocacy group, NY Charter Parents Association (NYCPA).

We need your help and our teachers' help. DOE is implementing destructive, unproven special education "reforms" this September with no support for parents and teachers.

To summarize:
• The DOE is implementing special education reforms beginning this September that will deny children with IEP’s their mandated classes, services and support.
• The DOE is implementing these reforms forcing students with IEP’s to attend their neighborhood school even though the schools do not have enough trained, professional general & special education teachers and cannot provide the mandated classes, services and support required by law in the IEP’s.
• The DOE’s reforms will not improve student achievement because they do
not support research based effective practices.
• The DOE is decreasing the funding for full-time integrated co-teaching services and full-time special classes forcing principals to coerce parents to change their child’s IEP because they don’t have money to provide all mandated services and supports.
• The DOE is implementing these reforms without notifying all parents about these reforms affecting general education and special education students in September.
• The DOE is violating Special Education law and our most vulnerable children’s civil rights by sending students with disabilities into schools that are not prepared to meet their needs.

We need to get word out about these destructive reforms. It's not fair to our children and it's not fair to our teachers.

Supplement: since I wrote the column June 6, Mona has sent out more materials plus a comment from Loretta Prisco. First Loretta:

Norm,

There are some significant points missing in the discussion of special ed. "reforms".

When Walcott visited D.31, I asked the following question:

The money follows the child. If a child's IEP mandates a 12:1:1 but there are only 7 children in the neighborhood school who need these services, how will the school pay for it?

The response: the situation "escalates" to the network leader. If the network leader cannot help, it "escalates" to the DOE. To me, though not stated in the response, that means that the network leader and DOE will tell them what to cut and how to change IEPs. They never never said that funding would be given to meet the mandates.

If they continue to rate/punish/close schools as they do now, the idea is not a bad one. For the most part, Special ed kids do not score as well as general ed. That is why they need services and are in special ed.! When one school gets too many special ed. kids as some do now, their scores go way down. In addition, by necessity, because of labeling schools, the school often focuses on the learning and behaviors of special ed., and general ed is slighted. That was the case in almost every SURR school -their spec. ed. population was over 25%. Superintendents did that to prevent the number of "failing" schools. Limit the number of schools that have special ed in your district and you limit the number of "failing"schools.

In addition, they will be able to cut teachers with "creative"programming. Program all of the kids in one class for mainstreaming in the same period and the teacher will be free. Program all of a class for SETSS in the same period and the teacher now has another "free"period. Send them to related services during the same period and there is another "free" period. Send them to chorus, art, lunch, gym without the self contained teacher. This will loosen up the self contained teachers program and he/she can cover 3-5 self contained classes in a 12:1 or 8:1 setting in one day. This can be done in larger elementary school, but more of a challenge.

Loretta

And Mona:

Yet, the DOE is still moving forward. Unacceptable. Join us at our press conference demanding the DOE stop violating the rights of students with special needs. These "reforms" must be delayed until they've sorted the issues out. Parents should not be forced to change their child's IEP to suit the school budget! Press conference June 12, 12 noon at City Hall.

Daily News

ARISE Coalition says schools not prepared adequately for reforms involving students with special needs

System-wide effort in 2013 to move students with disabilities into mainstream classes

BY RACHEL MONAHAN AND BEN CHAPMAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, June 6, 2012, 10:26 PM

JEANNE NOONAN FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS A letter to Education officials from the ARISE Coalition says schools are not adequately prepared for reforms involving students with disabilities.

The city's overhaul of services for students with special needs is drawing criticism from advocates who fear crucial programs will be gutted, the Daily News has learned.

A letter to Education officials from the ARISE Coalition — which includes the teachers union and the Citywide Council on Special Education — says “schools . . . have not been prepared adequately” for the reforms.

Starting next school year, Education officials will mount a system-wide effort to move students with disabilities into mainstream classes.

Officials believe the push will result in better student outcomes. Just 30% of students with special needs graduated from city high schools on time last year — compared with 65% of students overall.

In the letter, ARISE Coordinator Maggie Moroff noted more than a dozen parents said their zoned schools may lack essential services for disabled kids next year. She said parents fear small, intensive classes exclusively for their kids could be cut.

The Education Department’s own analysis found that the reforms yielded “no statistically significant” improvement on state exams at 260 schools last year.

Still, spokeswoman Deidrea Miller said officials are confident the reforms will succeed.

bchapman@nydailynews.com

No comments:

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended