CURMUDGUCATION: The Culture of Compliance

CURMUDGUCATION: The Culture of Compliance:

The Culture of Compliance

Last night I attended a school board meeting at a nearby district where they are struggling, like all Pennsylvania school districts, with financial problems.

Culprit #1 is the pension system. For a variety of reasons, school districts must contribute an amount equal to roughly 21% of their payroll this year to the pension fund. Next year it will be 25%. In a few years it will finally top out at 32%.

Culprit #2 is the cyber charter system, which sucks enormous amounts of blood from local districts. At the meeting, the treasurer listed off the monthly payment as well as the year-end total. It would be enough to keep their soon-to-be-closed elementary school open.

As the expense was explained, one board member said, "That's just nuts." Another board member said, "Well, let's just not pay it." And there was a sort of awkward silence.

Now, practically speaking, it would be a fruitless gesture. Presumably the state would simply garnish the district's subsidy payments, perhaps levy a fine. And it can be dicey to go head to head with the state-- a few decades back Philadelphia schools decided to play financial chicken with Harrisburg and lost local control. So withholding charter payments may or may not be a wise idea.

But the moment reminded me once again of how thoroughly the education system is saturated in the culture of compliance.

It is, frankly, one of the worst things about how we sometimes run schools and classrooms. When I was first starting out, it suddenly hit me like a bathtub full of icy water that when some of my colleagues talked about excellent and outstanding students, they were not talking about students who were whip smart or highly curious or uniquely driven or bold thinkers-- they were talking about students who behaved themselves, who did as they were told, who were cheerfully and fully compliant.

In my career, I have occasionally butted heads experienced philosophical differences with colleagues who don't just want their students to learn the material, but to be happy and grateful about it, to have the Right Attitude. I once worked for a man who equated letting students get away with dress code violations with letting students walk around shooting people.

We love rules. I would argue we love them way too much, and our love of the rules permeates the institution from top to bottom.

This is a lesson we could actually learn from the business world. My brother, who comes from the world of manufacturing, served on the school board for years. He would tell versions of the following story: "In the meeting administration would talk about some stupid rule from the state and we would all agree that it was a stupid rule. Then I would say, 'Well, let's just ignore it' and everyone would look at me like I had two heads one of which spoke Greek." But in parts of the business world, rules are not king. If a rule is stupid, you ignore it. And if you're supposed to pay somebody, but they are doing a crappy job or hurting your business, you withhold payment to get their attention and start a conversation.

Sure, too much of that gets you companies violating important rule and doing real damage. But so does doing as your told without thinking about whether that's a good idea or not. The world is filled with folks who live somewhere between the Land of Anarchy and the Culture of Compliance.

Compliance is so hard-wired into schools that most educational regulations do not have any substantial oversight-- they just assume that schools and teachers will do as they're told.

True story. Pennsylvania has a law that says your school year must be done by a particular date, which means a teacher strike can't extend beyond a number of days. When we were on strike over a decade ago, we needed to figure out what that date was, so both the union and the district tried to find somebody in Harrisburg who could tell us for sure when the end date for the strike would have to be and, just for fun, what the penalty would be if we went over. Not only could we not find anybody in Harrisburg who could answer the question, we couldn't even find someone who would admit that their office was supposed to know the answer. We finally picked a final date to agree on-- it was one of the first points of agreement in the whole negotiation. There was no enforcement mechanism to go with the law-- apparently they had just assumed that if there was a law about school stuff, everyone involved would be sure to follow it.

In this one respect, the creators of Common Core actually read the room pretty well. "Once we put this out there as the Official Approved Standards," they must have thought, "teachers will pretty much fall in line, because they always follow the rules no matter what."

Meanwhile, we've been taking these crappy high stakes tests for years because that's what we were told we were supposed to do. In the face of the opt out movement, we still have education folks CURMUDGUCATION: The Culture of Compliance:

Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization :: SI&A Cabinet Report

Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization

by Tom Chorneau

(District of Columbia) Despite signs of growing bipartisan support for legislation reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 52 percent of Washington’s education stakeholder community says it won’t happen while President Barack Obama is in office.

In an unscientific survey of between 50 and 75 Washington, D.C. education insiders, Whiteboard Advisors also found that Congress is likely to approve a proposal from the administration this year to restrict commercial use of student data.

Whiteboard Advisors, a nationally recognized capital consulting group, includes as part of its pool of participants White House and administration officials along with congressional staffers, state education representatives and leaders of key private education associations, think tanks and other influential groups.

The poll results come as members of the U.S. Senate Education Committee approved without dissent last week an initial set of amendments to the Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, jointly authored by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash.

As currently drafted, the bill would make a number of changes to the nation’s primary public education law, including elimination of the requirement that K-12 schools meet Annual Yearly Progress benchmarks.

Also not included in the bill – which might raise some opposition from the Obama administration – is any mention of teacher evaluations.

Although there are a number of issues that could sidetrack the legislation, many in and around the Capitol are giving Alexander and  Murray high marks for herding the diverse membership of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions – a panel that includes GOP firebrandRand Paul and polarizing Democrats Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren.

The bill now moves to the Senate floor.

The Whiteboard survey, which is published monthly, found 54 percent of respondents believed a student data privacy bill will be enacted under Obama’s watch.

The president’s student data legislation – dubbed the Student Digital Privacy Act – would prohibit companies from selling student data to third parties, which might use the information for targeted advertising.

A version of the proposal had been expected from Rep. Jared Polis, D-CO, and Rep. Luke Messer R-IN, but so far that has not happened.

The poll found most policy insiders believe that the Common Core State Standards are here to stay, with 61 percent giving high marks to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness and 65 percent saying the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is “on the right track.”

Although there are efforts to repeal the Common Core in 19 states, the Whiteboard survey found 70 percent of respondents believe that at least 20 states will continue to use the testing systems of one of the two consortia.

Whiteboard published a number of comments in connection to the ESEA poll question that reflected a wide range of opinions. Here is a sample:

• “I think Obama and (U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan) will be starved for a late term accomplishment, which could lead them to nudge a Democratic coalition to join more moderate Republicans around a proposal that Alexander and (House Education Committee chair John Kline, R-Minn.) put together.”
• “Just hard to see how both Houses can come together in a time when compromise is a dirty word.”
• “Alexander is showing how to lead and Murray is a good partner for him. They'll get major things done.”
• “The difficulty is getting a bill that Congress will approve that the Administration will sign into law.”Inside the beltway pessimistic about reauthorization :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch | Bob Braun's Ledger

Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch

 New Jersey universities and colleges that offer graduate education programs are the next targets of what Gov. Chris Christie and Newark schools superintendent Cami Anderson call educational “reform.” But what they are doing to block Newark teachers from earning credits at these traditional institutions looks–and smells–like insiders using their power to help old friends make money in the good old Christie ExxonMobil sort of way.

According to the  Newark Teachers Union (NTU), Anderson–at least for the moment– is insisting that stipends to teachers for taking graduate education programs be limited to those attending courses at an institution known as Relay-GSE, a free-standing operation with roots in Teach for America and the KIPP schools. Relay-GSE announced Anderson’s “approval” of the school in a press release March 3.

Anderson was, of course, an executive with Teach for America–and the KIPP charter people who operate TEAM Academy charter schools  are such good friends with Anderson that she sold them a public school at a discount.

Not too many people in the Newark schools have ever heard of  Relay-GSE (the GSE stands for graduate school of education although it’s not so much a school as a, well, adjunct to privatized “reform”), but Cami Anderson has been sending some of her favored administrators there for years–for example, Wayne Dennis, the principal she fired at Barringer, had to sit through Relay GSE courses in New York, apparently paid for by the taxpayer.

It is headquartered–and accredited and licensed–in New York. It is not listed in  New Jersey’s official list of colleges and universities offering teacher education programs but, of course, any student can attend an out-of-state school. In any event, Relay-GSE now lists a Newark branch  at 10 Washington Place which just happens to be the location of North Star Academy and the Newark Charter School Fund.

Cozy.

This is how the Newark campus of Relay-GSE describes itself:

“Relay Newark is the graduate school for teachers who want to close opportunity gaps and fight for social justice. By combining in-person practice, performance-based assessments and rich online learning, we help teachers become more effective for their students in some of New Jersey’s most challenging urban areas.”

This suggests that any teacher who would rather take graduate education courses at Rutgers, Seton Hall, Montclair State, Kean, or any of the other established schools of education is not a fighter “for social justice” and therefore does not deserve to be subsidized.

Whether Anderson can grant a monopoly to Relay-GSE for providing subsidized graduate education to Newark teachers isn’t known, but the NTU clearly is trying to Look out Rutgers and Seton Hall–Cami’s “Relay-GSE” is out to eat your lunch | Bob Braun's Ledger:

New York State Tests Had Reading Passages Meant for Older Children - WSJ

New York State Tests Had Reading Passages Meant for Older Children - WSJ:

New York State Tests for Fourth-Graders Included Passages Taken from Books Meant for Older Students

Excerpts came from ‘The Green Dog: A Mostly True Story,’ ‘Hattie Big Sky,’ and ‘The Clay Marble.’

 By  LESLIE BRODY and MELANIE GRAYCE WEST

April 20, 2015 9:10 p.m. ET

Some fourth-graders tackling New York state tests in language arts last week examined passages that were taken from books deemed by several independent rating systems to be at a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level, according to a person who saw the exam.

For the past three years of new state exams aligned to the Common Core learning standards, a set of guidelines for skills children should master in each grade, critics have said some questions are too difficult and confusing for many children.

A person who saw one of the four versions of the fourth-grade language-arts test spotted excerpts from three books that are considered at a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level by several widely used rating systems of children’s literature.

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The books featured on the test included: “The Green Dog: A Mostly True Story,” “Hattie Big Sky,” and “The Clay Marble.”

“ ‘Hattie Big Sky’ is not for fourth-graders,” said Pat Scales, a retired librarian living in Greenville, S.C., who wrote a teachers’ reading guide for the book, which she described as appropriate for middle-school students.

“Just because a fourth-grader can probably read that book as far as calling the words, they don’t have enough life experience or are mature enough to deal with ‘Hattie Big Sky,’ ” Ms. Scales said.

State education officials declined to confirm which excerpts were used on the exams, but they said teachers were involved in developing and reviewing questions.

“There are, of course, challenging questions on every test,” said Dennis Tompkins, a spokesman for the New York State Education Department.

Mr. Tompkins also pointed out that a specific excerpt used as part of the test could be rated at a different grade level than the book overall.

“Ratings of a whole book are not going to match the text complexity of a selected passage,” he said. “To compare the complexity of an excerpt to an entire book would be akin to saying Bill Buckner was a terrible baseball player based on one play in the 1986 World Series.”

A spokesman for Pearson PLC, the test vendor, said the company works with state officials to write the tests, and all tests meet the standards set by the state Education Department.

“We take steps, in line with these standards, to ensure that the testing material is right for the students taking the test,” the spokesman said.

State rules bar educators and students from disclosing what is on the state tests, but some questions have been leaked at a time of mounting opposition to standardized testing.

Parents and teachers pushing for boycotts of state tests hope airing questions will help discredit the tests. Officials at teachers unions have protested using student gains on these tests as part of teacher evaluations, especially when they believe the tests are poorly designed.

But state officials have said it is crucial for children to take the tests to show how their skills compare to their peers’, identify achievement gaps and guide instruction. The tests are mandated by federal rules.

Lucy Calkins, director of the Teachers College Reading & Writing Project at Columbia University, has reviewed previously released test questions. Having difficult reading passages, she said, wasn't the main concern.

“The biggest problem is the obscurity of the questions and the fact that well educated adults can’t agree on the answers,” she said.

Ms. Calkins said the new tests should have debuted as a pilot project before being used as part of teacher evaluations.

Carl Korn, a spokesman for the New York State United Teachers, a union, said some test questions this year, as in the past, were too hard and complicated, with overly lengthy reading passages.

The third-grade test, for example, had an allusion to the Aurora Borealis, a pattern of different colored lights sometimes seen in the night sky in the northern part of the world, without a definition of the term, he said.

Further, Mr. Korn said, one language-arts question was used on both the third-grade exam and the fifth-grade one.

“Many test questions were inappropriate and served no purpose but to confuse and frustrate students,” he said.

Ryan Bourke, principal at Manhattan’s P.S. 212, said he heard of children crying after the language-arts tests last week. He couldn’t discuss the content of the test or its questions, he said, because the test is “veiled in secrecy.”

In the months and weeks preceding these exams, the anxiety builds in third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students and their parents, who go through lengths to pay for tutors and test prep, said Mr. Bourke.

“To put this kind of burden on kids as young as third grade is a form of child abuse,” he said. “The test is hard and it’s long.”

In August, the department released half of the 2014 test questions to the public, up from 25% the previous year, to help teachers understand the questions and how they aligned to New York State Tests Had Reading Passages Meant for Older Children - WSJ:

Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says - The Washington Post

Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says - The Washington Post:



Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says

A new book is being released on Tuesday titled “The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter.” If you doubt the title, read this post — and then the book.

It was written by Greg Toppo, USA Today’s national K-12 education writer, who spent eight years as a teacher in public and private schools before becoming a journalist. He worked for the Associated Press as its national K-12 education writer, moving to USA Today in 2002. In 2010, Toppo was a Spencer Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and the next year, he co-led a team of USA Today  reporters that investigated educators cheating on standardized tests, prompting the inspector general in Washington D.C. to launch a probe into high erasure rates on test forms.

Now Toppo has taken his  special interest in technology and how video games help students learn and put it in his new book — and in the following post.

By Greg Toppo

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” -– Samuel Beckett

This spring marks an important milestone in U.S. public schools: For the first time, millions of students are taking new Common Core exams in math and reading. The test results serve as a kind of audit of our kids’ education and, the theory goes, will push schools to improve their basic product. Supporters and detractors of the Common Core have spent years debating the new standards’ merits, but one fact is inescapable: by the time the tests roll around each spring, students nationwide have spent weeks preparing for them.

In 2013, the American Federation of Teachers found that most students in one Midwestern school district spent the equivalent of 16 school days preparing for tests. Throw in the actual testing and it expanded to 19 days – nearly a full month of school on test prep and testing. In another district, AFT found, students in middle school and high school spent six weeks on prep and testing.

Understandably, resistance is growing. Thousands of students now simply refuse to sit for the tests, part of a defiant “opt-out movement” that last month included student walkouts across New Mexico. Meanwhile, districts across the country are having second thoughts about the tests’ costs and effectiveness – and educators are concerned that the tests are narrowing schools’ once broad curricula.

Into this fray has entered a small group of educators and researchers who are pushing for a new approach, one that doesn’t back away from testing but embeds it into everything students do. Long ago, these folks realized that millions of kids – the same kids, in fact, who sit for tests each spring – already enjoy access to a powerful tool that tests them constantly without actual tests or test prep. They are thinking, of course, about video games.

The idea is simple: the game is the test. It lays out the content and tests the player on the spot. It invites the player to celebrate a job well done or, more likely, to redo a job not so well done. Every level of every game asks a player to assess what went wrong and come back next time with a better plan. In other words, try again.

Linguist and games researcher James Paul Gee has written that games actually make players think like scientists. Game play is built on a cycle of “hypothesize, probe the world, get a reaction, reflect on the results, reprobe to get better results.” Game studios have created assessment systems that can tell players exactly how well they’ve done on thousands of variables, how their performance has improved and, if played online, how they stack up against millions of players – all without subjecting anyone to a multiple-choice test.

“Think about it,” Gee once said. “If I make it through every level of Halo, do you really need to give me a test to see if I know everything it takes to get through every level of Halo?”

In the process, a good game naturally invites a kind of complexity that schools can only imagine. It was only a matter of time before game designers began hacking standardized testing, but it has happened in an unexpected way: In 2012, the Educational Testing Service, the folks who bring you the SAT, formed a partnership with, among others, the video game giant Electronic Arts, the folks who bring you Madden NFL, Mass Effect, and Battlefield 3. The result is an experimental nonprofit dubbed the Games, Learning and Assessment Lab, or GlassLab.

Based at Electronic Arts’ Silicon Valley headquarters, GlassLab is bristling with PhD-level learning scientists and assessment experts who are experimenting with ways to combine game mechanics with academic content. The effort’s ultimate aim is essentially to do away with standardized testing as we know it.

The project is part of a larger effort across academia looking for alternatives to standardized testing. Researcher Daniel Schwartz at Stanford University, for instance, is leading an effort to find “new ways to capture compelling forms of learning” that existing tests can’t measure. Florida State University researcher Valerie Shute has pushed for what she calls “stealth assessment” in educational games, saying such assessments could get at-risk students interested in school again.

The idea for GlassLab came in 2011, during an informal get-together of game designers and testing experts at the University of Southern Smart video games can assess kids better than standardized tests, a new book says - The Washington Post:

State Teachers Union Challenges Legality of Camden Charter Takeover - NJ Spotlight

State Teachers Union Challenges Legality of Camden Charter Takeover - NJ Spotlight:

STATE TEACHERS UNION CHALLENGES LEGALITY OF CAMDEN CHARTER TAKEOVER

JOHN MOONEY | APRIL 21, 2015

Complaint alleges plans to convert five schools are attempt to circumvent state’s Urban Hope Act

As expected, the state-operated Camden school district’s controversial plan to transfer five of its schools to charter school operators is now facing a formal legal challenge.

A little less expected: The New Jersey Education Association is filing the complaint.

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NJEA Complaint

The NJEA yesterday announced it is formally challenging the plans announced last month to turn five Camden public schools into “renaissance schools,” a hybrid charter school model operated by large charter organizations.

The teachers union specifically challenged the district’s method for accomplishing the switch -- technically closing four of the schools outright and then either selling or leasing their operation to the charter organizations.

“The school district is attempting to circumvent the terms and spirit of the Urban Hope Act to allow the corporate takeover of Camden Public Schools,” NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer said in a statement announcing the legal challenge.

“The district is merely waiting until the end of the school year to do superficial renovations, at which time it will simply call these schools Renaissance Schools so they can be turned over to private management companies,” Steinhauer added.

Some kind of legal challenge was hardly unexpected, as the Newark-based Education Law Center sent the first shot across the bow last week when it questioned the legitimacy of the move.

The fact that the formal challenge comes from the NJEA is not entirely surprising, either, given it is its members whose jobs could be at stake in the closings.

However, leaders of the local Camden Education Association had taken part in announcements of the plans for the five schools. And that local teachers union recently approved a new contract that called for an early retirement plan to soften the impact the charter-school conversion will have on jobs.

The NJEA’s complaint specifically targets the school-closing proposal currently before state Education Commissioner David Hespe.

The challenge asserts that the schools, already targeted for interventions under both federal and state law, can’t legally be closed or transferred to charter networks.

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The NJEA challenge also notes that the planned closures were announced without any formal public hearings.

Still, how much the legal action will affect the closings is uncertain.

The district is proceeding with its plans for the five schools. And a spokesman for Camden Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard challenged the claim there was no public input, citing several public meetings held before the announcement of the closings, adding that the moves would only benefit city families.

“The NJEA is mischaracterizing the law and diverting attention from the real issue, which is the need to improve our children’s education,” said spokesman Brendan Lowe.

“These improvements are focused on increasing student learning and renovating dilapidated buildings in a city that is sincerely in need of change. Through our continued community engagement, we’ve heard hundreds of students, educators, parents, and community members demand change in our most-struggling schools.State Teachers Union Challenges Legality of Camden Charter Takeover - NJ Spotlight:

California Teachers Union, School Boards Oppose Dyslexia Testing Bill | KPBS

California Teachers Union, School Boards Oppose Dyslexia Testing Bill | KPBS:

California Teachers Union, School Boards Oppose Dyslexia Testing Bill

DOCUMENT SET

Letters in Opposition to AB 1369

• Special Education Local Plan Area Opposition To AB 1369 (PDF)
• California Teachers Association Letter Of Opposition To AB 1369 (PDF)
• California School Board Association Opposition to AB 1369 (PDF)

A new bill would require all kindergarten to third-grade students be screened annually for learning disabilities, specifically for dyslexia.

Kelly Sandman-Hurley and Tracy Block-Zaretski, who run San Diego’s Dyslexia Training Institute, a private dyslexia advocacy and tutoring company, helped draft the legislation put forward by Assemblyman Jim Frazier, D-Oakley, in February.

So far three influential organizations have come out against the bill.

California School Board Association, Special Education Local Plan Area and the California Teachers Association all sent letters of opposition to the state Assembly Education Committee. All the opposition letters echoed similar reasons for their position against the bill, AB 1369.

The groups said screening every kindergarten to third-grade student will cost too much and could lead to over-diagnosis. Reading problems are a normal part of young learners developmental process, the groups said.

Jim Groth, a board member for the California Teachers Association, said the bill isn't realistic.

“Great idea. Now let's look at reality," Groth said. "Realistically, is this the way we take our limited resources in California and solve the problem?"

However, dyslexia advocate Block-Zaretski said if AB 1369 becomes law it could actually save school districts money because they could catch the problems early on.

The groups opposed to this legislation are made up of educators who have little to no training in dyslexia, Block-Zaretski said.

“General education teachers, special education teachers, reading specialists, school psychologists, the great majority of our universities are not training them,” said Block-Zaretski.

The Assembly Education Committee is holding a public hearing at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in Sacramento.California Teachers Union, School Boards Oppose Dyslexia Testing Bill | KPBS:

Teachers group pushes back against proposed dyslexia testing mandate : Ct http://bit.ly/1yMfj3R

A New Dyslexia Law in Wyoming - One Mom's Story http://bit.ly/1yMfn3r

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Texas Dyslexia Law — Decoding Dyslexia Texas http://bit.ly/1yMfpbA

Illinois General Assembly - Bill Status for HB3700 http://bit.ly/1yMfrjY

DECODING DYSLEXIA - NJ http://bit.ly/1yMfvA8

California vaccine legislation spurs legal debate over right to education

California vaccine legislation spurs legal debate over right to education:

California vaccine legislation spurs legal debate over right to education

 SACRAMENTO >> California’s Constitution spells out the right to a free public education, and lawmakers have fortified that guarantee over the years by safeguarding students against discrimination and inequality in the classroom.

But now a debate over that protected access to an education has surfaced in the most contentious legislative battle in Sacramento this year: Does one student’s right to an education trump another student’s right to stay healthy?

That question looms over Senate Bill 277, a controversial proposal that would tighten the requirements that all children be vaccinated to attend a California school.

A vocal group of parents fighting the bill insists the vaccination mandate would deprive their kids of their constitutional right to an education, and that argument has suddenly become a threat to the legislation. But legal experts — including a lawyer who participated in a landmark education rights case — say both state and federal law allow government to protect the health of the community, first and foremost.

“Schools have to be safe, and the state has the power to regulate the schools for safety,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor and vaccine law expert at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

Following a measles outbreak that began in mid-December at Disneyland — which state public health officials attribute in large part to unvaccinated individuals — state Sen. Richard Pan and two other lawmakers introduced SB 277 in February.

If passed, the bill would no longer allow parents to obtain personal belief exemptions, including religious exemptions, and send their children to school without immunizations. Only medical exemptions would be granted, as is the case in Mississippi and West Virginia. At least 13,000 kindergartners in California this school year had personal belief exemptions. The bill would exempt home-school students from vaccinations.

Should SB 277 pass, the only option for unvaccinated children would be home schooling — and some lawmakers in the Senate Education Committee are questioning whether such a limited option is fair.

Many parents who oppose the bill have showed up in Sacramento to argue home schooling would present an undue burden because they aren’t in a position to leave their jobs and teach their children at home.

Palo Alto parent Christina Hildebrand, mother of two unvaccinated children who attend private school, is among Pan’s harshest critics.

“We would like him to remember that education is a right — not a privilege — when he excludes our children from public schools because they are not fully up to date on every dose of every vaccination in the bill.”

On Friday, state public health officials announced that the measles outbreak — that infected 131 people in California and 16 others elsewhere — was officially over.

But during a conference call with reporters, state epidemiologist Dr. Gil Chavez repeatedly emphasized that the outbreak would not have happened if more people in California had been vaccinated.

While at least 92 percent of California kindergartners are vaccinated, Chavez said, that number drops to 50 percent in some schools and even lower in pockets around the state, including Marin County, where many parents have obtained personal belief exemptions. The low vaccine rates eliminate what officials call “herd immunity,” increasing the risk that infectious diseases such as measles and whooping cough can spread.

That poses a risk to schoolchildren whose weakened immune systems prevent them from being vaccinated. Babies who are too young to be vaccinated and pregnant women also are at greater risk.

Last week, 7-year-old Rhett Krawitt, of Corte Madera, who is recovering from leukemia and was immune-compromised at the time of the measles outbreak, urged the Senate Education Committee to pass SB 277, after thanking them “for making sure kids like me don’t get sick at school” from unvaccinated schoolmates.

But his father, Carl Krawitt, remains “appalled that the rhetoric” from the bill’s opponents seems to be overpowering the arguments of the medical community and school boards throughout California that are supporting the bill.

Among other things that mystify Krawitt: “Why would home-schoolers be against this bill if this bill promotes their cause because they get more people to home school?”

Bill Koski, a Stanford University professor of law and education, said the bill raises “complicated tensions between a parents’ right to raise their child as they see fit and a child’s right to education, and the state’s right to regulate public health.”

He believes any legal challenge to the proposed legislation would face “a lot of hurdles.” But he said the “unconditional right to go to school is not unconditional.” One extreme example, Koski cited: Even if a student with a “concealed-carry” permit had a right to carry a gun, “the school could reasonably say: We don’t allow guns on campus.”

Reiss, at UC Hastings, emphasized that SB 277 is not “forcing” parents to do anything. Rather, she said, parents have a choice — to vaccinate or not — and decide the consequences for their children’s education.

“You make your choice and pay the consequences,” she said. “It does not mean you make your choice and someone else has to pay.”

At UC Berkeley, law professor Stephen Sugarman, a nationally renowned expert in education rights, said he does not believe SB 277 violates parents’ or students’ constitutional rights.

“We interfere with people’s liberty in the name of public health in many ways,” said Sugarman, who California vaccine legislation spurs legal debate over right to education:

Inconsistent training leaves special education staff struggling | EdSource

Inconsistent training leaves special education staff struggling | EdSource:

Inconsistent training leaves special education staff struggling

 Every day in special education classrooms across the state, teachers and aides oversee students whose emotional and behavioral disabilities can trigger violent confrontations. In some cases, teachers and aides wrestle these students to the floor, pin them against classroom walls, and escort or drag them into seclusion rooms.

Operating outside the restrictions of general education, special education staff are authorized by the California Education Code to declare a “behavioral emergency.” That determination allows staff members to initiate emergency interventions that are defined only by what they may not be: electric shock, denying access to bathroom facilities, noxious sprays to the face, and interventions that can be expected to cause excessive emotional trauma.

In 696 behavioral emergency reports from 2011-12, the latest data available, obtained through public records requests and analyzed by EdSource Today, narratives describe intense physical and emotional battles between special education staff and students, with both sides reporting cuts, bruises and injuries. Students punch staff members, run out of classrooms or bang their heads against walls or cabinets, according to the reports, which are the most recent available. In turn, staff members may attempt to calm students through conversation but often end up physically restraining students or isolating students in rooms that they cannot leave, known as seclusion.

Debate is fierce over whether restraint and seclusion practices should be allowed in special education, with some administrators, teachers and aides arguing that they cannot do their jobs without the techniques. But investigations, including a 2009 Congressional report, have documented egregious misuse of the practices nationwide, and special education advocates say that skillful use of behavior management strategies, and appropriate placements, would make restraint and seclusion unnecessary.

Yet both sides agree on one point: The key to reducing the use of restraint and seclusion is to provide staff with intensive training.

Teachers and aides “should be experts,” said Eric Richards, a special education teacher in the Sacramento City Unified School District.

Teachers and aides “should be experts,” said Eric Richards, a special education teacher in the Sacramento City Unified School District who has been in the field for more than 15 years.

Instead, the least-experienced staff often serve the most challenging students in California, according to interviews with special education teachers, administrators, advocates and parents across the state. In nearly all of the 696 incidents analyzed, instructional aides, who are typically the least-trained staff members in a classroom, were involved in restraining or secluding students.

The techniques carry significant risks. “The use of restraint and seclusion can have very serious consequences, including, most tragically, death,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in 2012.

Students who are restrained or secluded fall into two general categories: nonverbal children with autism or intellectual disabilities, and students diagnosed with an emotional disturbance, whose definition includes an inability to get along with peers and “a pervasive mood of unhappiness.”

But finding experienced special education teachers and aides who are well trained in behavioral management can be difficult. The state has faced an acute shortage of special education teachers for decades, according to the U.S. Department of Education. And special education teachers leave the profession at nearly twice the rate of general education teachers, according to the National Coalition on Personnel Shortages in Special Education and Related Services.

More than any other area of K-12 education, special education classrooms rely on relatively low-paid and often part-time staff – classroom aides, instructional assistants and entry-level counselors – to work closely with students. Instructional aide positions generally require a high school diploma and, in some cases, passing a test of basic math and writing skills, although some private special education schools require a Inconsistent training leaves special education staff struggling | EdSource:

Islamophobic mailer muddles Twin Rivers school board election - Sacramento News & Review

Page Burner - Blogs - Sacramento News & Review:

Islamophobic mailer muddles Twin Rivers school board election 

By Brooke Purves

Another scandal in the Twin Rivers Unified School District has cast an ugly pall over an upcoming special election.

Murmurs of racism have uglied up May 12’s vote, when residents of the district’s Area 5 will choose between current trustee Sonja Cameron and challenger Basim Elkarra.

Area 1 trustee Michael Baker told SN&R that his parents, who live in Cameron’s area, received something disturbing in their mailbox: a flier branding Elkarra as having ties to religious extremism and terrorism (see below).

The Clarion Project, a Washington D.C.-based organization that proposes to “challenge extremism,” seems to have produced the flier. The mailer calls Elkarra an “outsider,” accuses him of terrorist ties and shows him with women in headscarves.

Elkarra said he does work with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but defends it as a civil rights organization.

Cameron emphatically denies any involvement in distributing the inflammatory material, saying it makes her “sick to even talk about it.”

A Denmark native, Cameron said she herself was treated poorly upon coming to the states 45 years ago, a bride of a black Air Force member. “Why would I put something like that out there?” she said.

This school-board race, however, was heating up months ago. 

Cameron was appointed by the district in December to fill the spot left vacant by Cortez Quinn, who was sentenced to jail for receiving loans and gifts from a district employee and conspiring to obstruct justice in a paternity case.

But the Democratic Party of Sacramento County promptly took issue with the appointment and successfully collected the signatures required to force a recall election.

Cameron has no campaign website, no Facebook page. And she’s sought only local endorsements. “I’m not a politician,” she said. “The school board is nonpartisan.”

Elkarra is endorsed by multiple elected officials, including many high-powered Democrats.

It’s not clear who distributed the materials in question. But why so many people are so invested in candidates who would only serve until the June 2016 election is, according to Cameron, “a puzzle worse that a Rubik’s Cube.”

Islamophobic mailer from Twin Rivers school board race

Basim Elkarra for School Board 2015

Basim Elkarra for School Board 2015: 

Cameron is the chief operations officer and co-founder of the Pacific Charter Institute, which serves 1,619 students. The institute operates the Heritage Peak Charter School, an independent study and home-school program, is authorized to serve TRUSD students, but operates independently from the district.[1]