Talk to You Later-Notes to My Son: Last Day of School
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Found this interesting post about how a special ed student invoked stay put to end teacher furloughing in Hawaii, claiming that furlough days would deny him services mandated in his IEP. If the teachers aren’t teaching me I am not getting what IDEA guarantees. No, says the Ninth Circuit Court:
In affirming the district court’s decision, the Ninth Circuit reviewed the four legal factors the students must establish in seeking a preliminary injunction: (1) they are likely to suffer irreparable harm; (2) the balance of equities tips in their favor; (3) a preliminary injunction is in the public interest; and (4) they are likely to succeed on the merits. First, the court determined the students would likely suffer irreparable harm as the evidence demonstrated actual regression suffered by the students because of the first few furlough days. In balancing the equities, the court found reasonable the district court’s analysis of the financial harm to Hawaii schools versus the harm to students, and concluded the equities were fairly balanced. In doing so, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s recognition that the furloughs were “the least bad of all the bad choices you can make.” As for the public interest analysis, the court noted that while the public would not benefit from the reduction of instructional minutes, this harm was less harmful than teacher layoffs.
Finally, in reviewing the final and most important factor – likelihood of success on the merits – the court analyzed the stay put requirement to maintain a child in his or her “current educational placement” during the pendency of any proceeding under the IDEA. While noting there is no definition of “current educational placement,” the court found the purpose of stay put is to avoid a unilateral change from one program to another or a “significant change” to the student’s program within the same setting. The court concluded “an across the board reduction of school days such as the one here does not conflict with Congress’s intent of protecting disabled children from being singled out.” According to the Ninth Circuit, applying the stay put provision under such circumstances would give parents “veto power over a state’s decision regarding the management of its schools.” Thus, in spite of the determination of actual harm outlined above, the students were still not likely to prevail on the merits as the court agreed “that the stay-put provision of the IDEA was not intended to cover system-wide changes in public schools that affect disabled and non-disabled children alike, and that such system-wide changes are not changes in educational placement.”
In other words, everyone is screwed. Well, what’s fair is fair.
Last year I recorded the driving rain outside my window. I put it up on SoundTransit, an online ambient sound cooperative, and somebody called In Vitro found and used it in his music. It is very beautiful. What a strange world we live in that we connect this way.
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Punishing and firing teachers, and punishing and closing schools is not a way to improve public education! Parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens have initiated a postcard campaign to First Lady Michelle Obama to end the use of high stakes testing.
On the campaign trail in Wisconsin on February 28, 2008, Michelle Obama said, ”No Child Behind is strangling the life out of most schools.” She added,”If my future were determined by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee that.” Thousands and thousands of Americans agree with her criticism.
MICHELLE OBAMA CAN HELP END THE RELIANCE ON HIGH STAKE STANDARDIZED TESTS.
On May 29, 2010, get everyone you know to send postcards to the First Lady. Affix a 28-cent stamp to a postcard and address it to:
First Lady Michelle Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Send the postcard with this message (modify if sent by students):
Dear Mrs. Obama,
We want the same education for our children that you provide for Malia and Sasha. Our child is not a test score.
Please tell the President to end the use of high stakes standardized tests!
Sincerely,
Your name
Your address
According to a just published report that connects lead exposure to learning disabilities:
The correlation between high lead levels and low test scores carries particular resonance in Detroit, where students have fared poorly on academic achievement tests.
DPS students ranked last in the nation in 2009 on the National Assessment of Education Progress math test for fourth- and eighth-graders. The city’s MEAP scores are consistently among the lowest in the state.
“This is a crisis,” said Carole Ann Beaman, disabilities coordinator for DPS. “There is a clear connection between lead poisoning and academic problems, which is relevant to understanding achievement gaps and why schools are failing.”
Do my own SoCal students snack on paint chips? I don’t know. But my school IS:
Does this have anything to do with why we’re a Program Improvement (“failing”) school? Can environmental causes of learning and other disabilities be ignored? How can we discount what studies like this one are telling us?
Ask Obama, Duncan and the billionaires who drive their educational policy.
Or better yet, ask teachers. We know.