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Articles for December 2004

Failure to Provide Preschooler Services in Least Restrictive Environment

In Katherine G. v. Kentfield School District, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed hearing officer and district court conclusions that the Defendant school district did not offer Plaintiff (a preschooler) an education in the Least Restrictive Environment during the 1999--2000 school year. The "interaction with 'typically developing' students in the special day class was not the maximum extent to which mainstreaming was appropriate for Plaintiff. Defendants did not demonstrate that, with proper support to provide the structure she needed, Plaintiff could not have developed her skills in the areas of pragmatics and social skills in a regular preschool setting.

Katherine G. v. Kentfield Sch. Dist., Nos. 03-15898, 03-15989 (9th
Cir. Oct. 21, 2004).
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No Clear Failure to Provide FAPE in Absence of Full Factual Inquiry

In Kenton County School District v. Hunt, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision of the district court that Defendant school district failed to provide Plaintiff a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Both the Kentucky Exceptional Children Appeals Board (ECAB) and district court failed to conduct a "full factual inquiry into (1) whether Jason Hunt needed extended school year . . . services to justify summer programs in 1997 and 1998; (2) whether Jason's individualized education program . . .denied him FAPE for the 1999-2000 school year, warranting a private placement; (3) whether the District, with additional evidence presented in the district court, established that the IEP for 1999-2000 was not deficient; and (4) whether that evidence should have been presented in earlier proceedings before the hearing officer and the ECAB.

The case was remanded for a full hearing on the issues. Kenton County Sch. Dist. v. Hunt, 384 F.3d 269 (6th Cir. 2004).
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Injunction Against No Pass, No Play" Rule As School Failed to Implement IEP

Plaintiff, an athlete with a learning disability, seeking a college athletic scholarship, would not be permitted to play football because he did not pass his English class, due to the district's compliance with an Ohio High School Athletic Association No Pass, No Play rule. The court in Ingram v. Toledo City School District, however, granted Plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the school district from enforcing the rule: based on a hearing officer's conclusion that the school failed to implement Plaintiff's individualized education plan (IEP), and in the absence of playing the Plaintiff would likely suffer irreparable injury.

Ingram v. Toledo City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., No. 3:04 CV 756 (N.D. Ohio, Oct. 15, 2004).

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To integrate or not to integrate

To integrate or not to integrate: systemic dilemmas in Hong Kong Journal of Special Education, Winter, 2004 by Kim Fong Poon-McBrayer. This article examines the policies and implementation of and barriers to integration within the parallel system of general and special education in Hong Kong. The article begins with a discussion of the history, organization, and current status of special education. Then, policies supporting integration and efforts to implement integration are discussed, followed by an analysis of systemic problems for integration and challenges to effective integration. Prospects for future special education services are considered. The author concludes that successful integration and quality provision of special education will rely on policies and governmental leadership in eliminating systemics problems such as elitism, a nonaccepting school culture and teacher attitudes, inadequate teacher training and qualifications, and inefficient resource allocation and monitoring.
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Articles for November 2004

10.9% in S.D. High Schools Attempted Suicide

By Daniel J. Chacón
STAFF WRITER

November 30, 2004

About one in 10 high school students in the San Diego Unified School District attempted suicide last year, which is higher than the national average, according to a survey of 1,800 students.

The number of reported suicide attempts among ninth-through 12th-graders was 10.9 percent, compared with 10.5 percent the previous year.

The county ranked above the national average of 8.5 percent of students who acknowledged in a survey that they had attempted suicide.

The data are part of an annual report on youth and families in San Diego County that the Board of Supervisors will receive and authorize for public release today.

The report found that other measures of child and family health and well-being have improved in recent years.

Developed in 1997 at the suggestion of Supervisors Dianne Jacob and Greg Cox, the report monitors health, economic security, educational achievement, access to services and safety for children in the county.

Overall, the sixth annual report gives the county good marks.

Teen pregnancy among girls 15 to 17 years old has declined. But Hispanic girls, who are more likely to have babies than their peers, made up nearly 42 percent of all teens who got pregnant, significantly more than any other ethnic group.

Cigarette smoking and alcohol use among high school students decreased slightly to an average of about 11 percent. The number of youths who reported smoking marijuana stayed about the same at 13 percent, but has dropped nearly 4 percentage points among 11th-graders since 1999.

The rate of substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect decreased from 15 percent per 1,000 children in 2002 to 13 percent in 2003.

About 16.5 percent of children in the county live in poverty, compared with 19 percent statewide. The number of children whose families benefit from state's welfare-to-work program with temporary cash assistance for housing, food and other needs is also below the state average.

The data on reported suicide attempts among students at San Diego Unified came from the Centers for Disease Control's Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The report did not say why San Diego Unified is the only school district in the county that participates in the survey.

We use it to review how effective our life skills program has been and our(guidance and counseling program), and to see where those programs need to be adjusted to better meet the needs of students, Steven Baratte, a district spokesman, said. Alfredo Aguirre, the county's children's mental health director, said the county provides counseling at 230 schools for underprivileged kids. That's gone a long way in detecting these issues early on,he said.

Aguirre said the county has also developed educational videos for minority students aimed at preventing suicide, and a crisis hotline, and is working to identify gaps in the mental-health system. He said bringing public awareness to a problem like suicide is critical.

It does send a message to local agencies and schools to be aware, he said.
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An Un-academic Exercise

With a teacher as helper, advisory classes help kids decompress, learn in new ways

By Maureen Magee
STAFF WRITER

November 30, 2004. There is a new course being taught in high schools in San Diego and across the country, and it has no exams, conventional assignments or even grades.

The class is mandatory. And the syllabus sometimes calls for sleepovers, road trips, goofy games and soul-searching.

In an age when every minute spent in the classroom is often seen as a chance to raise test scores, more and more high schools are setting aside time for students to decompress.

Playing off the old homeroom model, advisory classes are part of a trend to personalize secondary school and prevent students from slipping through the cracks. Similar high school reform efforts are under way nationwide as educators question the effectiveness of the large American high school that many say has failed too many students.

At several San Diego high schools, every teacher is assigned a group of students to shepherd through school in an advisory class, year after year. Depending on the school, the classes are daily, weekly or biweekly.

The teachers advocate for their students on several fronts.

They help them prepare for college, and in some cases require students to complete college applications. They assist them with homework, counsel them on social issues or family problems, and talk with other teachers to check on their progress.

In advisory, a lot of things are hashed out. We want every kid to know somebody has their back, said Raniel Ray Trinidad, director of High Tech Middle School, a charter school in Point Loma.

At the High Tech middle and high schools, advisers also are required to visit students and their families at home at least once a year. For some students, the house call can be an awkward collision of otherwise separate worlds.

At first, I was, like, you're coming to my house? I thought I was in trouble. I'm, like, I didn't do anything, said Amber Ulmer, a High Tech High freshman whose adviser recently visited her family at their Chula Vista home.

Even her parents were taken aback by the visit.

It's not what we are used to. But we appreciate it, said David Ulmer, Amber's dad. In the past, we've run into a lot of teachers who don't care.

The Ulmers served dinner – frozen pizza and cans of ginger ale – to Amber's adviser during the recent Sunday evening meeting. Conversation covered the family's interests, background and expectations of Amber, a talkative teen with a passion for all things Japanese.

High Tech High has required its students to take an advisory class since the school opened five years ago. Advisers have organized sleepovers and lead tours to Southern California colleges.

Another charter school, the Preuss School at University of California San Diego, includes an advisory class for all students.

When the San Diego Unified School District transformed three highs schools into 14 small autonomous academies this year, it added advisory classes to each of the new schools.

Working under the premise that too many students get lost in high school, the district established a smaller, more personal approach to high school. The reform effort also focuses on giving each student at least one solid relationship with an adult, usually their adviser.

Some teachers from San Diego Unified's new academies met over the summer to prepare for the class. It's not something covered in the traditional teaching college. In fact, for some, the idea of a class without academics was nothing short of frightful.

Some teachers are touchy-feely and they like to connect personally with the kids, said Glenn Hillegas, principal of Construction Tech Academy, one of the small academies at the old Kearny High School. Other teachers really want structure and curriculum between them and their kids. Construction Tech infuses architecture, construction and engineering into everyday academics. Students attend advisory classes every other day, often using the class to discuss interdisciplinary projects, assignments that cross over into several courses.

For example, math and science teacher Angie Schu recently led her advisory class through a project that kicked off a ninth-grade bridge-building theme.

The assignment, which also stressed team-building strategies, called for students to work in groups and erect towers – in silence – from uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows.

Smaller schools don't guarantee success, Schu said. It requires a lot of work from teachers. We have to work in teams with other teachers. And we have to get to know our students. Advisory is good for that.

Schu gets to know her students in advisory class and constantly communicates with other teachers about them.

This is also an opportunity for the kids to see a teacher in a different light,she said. I don't have to be the hard-nosed physics teacher in advisory.

At one San Diego High School academy, Communications in a Multicultural Atmosphere, or CIMA, the advisory class, has taken on an even broader role. Most of the CIMA students have yet to master English, and many are new to the country.

I live in this country five months and this class really help me, said Karime Bahena, 16, a native of Cuernavaca, Mexico. I didn't even know about Thanksgiving."

Mary Jewell, who teaches English as a second language, uses the class to help students acclimate to American high school and culture. Last week, she served up pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce as she explained the traditions of Thanksgiving.

I try to connect with them personally during advisory. It's hard to do that in a regular class," Jewell said.

Jewell spends a lot of time in advisory class talking about grades, the importance of good attendance, and the high school exit exam that all California students must pass to graduate. But she also looks for ways to lighten the stress of school.

In addition to dealing with the challenges of immigration and language issues and the culture shock, they are just teenagers, she said. We try to have fun.

It's hard to say if advisory classes will improve test scores or decrease dropout rates.

Either way, the class should be added to more high schools, said Amber, the High Tech High freshman.

At my old school, if you talked to a teacher, you were either in trouble or you needed help, she said. When I first heard about this class, I thought it was a joke. I mean, who ever heard about sitting around and talking to your teacher? It's actually very cool.



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New Program for At Risk Youth

By Blanca Gonzalez
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 20, 2004

ESCONDIDO – Elementary students who may have trouble adjusting and succeeding in school will get extra help thanks to a $1 million grant awarded to the Escondido Union Elementary School District. The three-year grant from the California Department of Mental Health will fund the Primary Intervention Program, known as PIP, at five elementary schools.

Central, Felicita, Oak Hill, Rock Springs and Rose schools will each get a staff member to work one-on-one with children during weekly 45-minute play sessions, said Linda Bailey, director of grants and foundation development for the Escondido school district.

The intervention program targets at-risk children with mild school adjustment problems and is designed to build self-esteem and confidence to keep students from developing serious problems that may interfere with learning and future success in school. Children in kindergarten through third grade are eligible. The program will likely serve about 240 students a year, Bailey said.

Trained instructional aides, under the supervision of a school psychologist, will meet with students for 12 to 15 weeks of play sessions intended to help with issues such as aggression, shyness, inattentiveness, restlessness and poor self-esteem. The aides will offer a supportive, nonjudgmental relationship to help students feel comfortable at school. Students can be referred to the program by teachers, counselors, administrators, or parents.

The grant, which was awarded this month, will allow the district to hire staff, conduct training and set up playrooms at the five schools. Services to students are expected to begin by February.

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Parent Gets Paid for Providing Lovaas to Daughter

Case name: Bucks County Department of Mental Health/Mental Retardation v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Public Welfare, 104 LRP 38808 (3d Circuit 2004)

Ruling: The parent of a child with developmental delays was entitled to payment for time she spent providing early intervention services to her -year-old daughter, the 3d United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. The court determined the award to the parent, who received extensive training in Lovaas methodology, constituted reimbursement for her services, and not damages for the county’s faulty IFSP.

What it means: The court decided that paying a parent for time spent working with a child after a public agency refused to provide services was appropriate relief under Part C of the IDEA. However, the court was careful to limit its ruling to the particular circumstances of this case.
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New Decision! Failure to Include a Regular Ed Teacher on IEP Team is Fatal

On November 5, 2004, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
issued a decision in M.L. v. Federal Way School District (WA). ML is a child with severe autism and mental retardation, developmental delays, and behavior problems.

Two judges found that the failure to include a regular education teacher on the IEP team was a serious procedural error that led to a loss of educational opportunity and a denial of a free appropriate public education (FAPE). One judge applied the structural defect analysis and found that the requirement that at least one regular education teacher be included on an IEP team, if the student may be participating in a regular classroom, is mandatory - not discretionary.

Although the second judge concurred, he applied the harmless error standard of review and disagreed with the structural defect analysis:

In fact, our sister circuits have consistently rejected per se IDEA structural error arguments, and instead have adopted case-by-case, harmless error inquiries similar to our standard . . .

The third judge dissented. He concluded that the failure to include a regular classroom teacher on the IEP team, as required by the IDEA, was harmless error, and did not result in the loss of an educational opportunity for ML, or deny him a free appropriate public education.In his dissent, he wrote of overwhelming evidence that the program developed by the IEP team was the best placement for ML because the academic and non-academic benefits to ML were maximized by placement in a self-contained classroom, rather than a regular kindergarten classroom.

ML v. Federal Way School District includes an extensive list of decisions about violations of procedural safeguards in other circuits.

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Stop yelling, it doesn't help

By Caroline Milburn
November, 2004

Yelling at students does not improve their behaviour, according to a study of teachers and their discipline methods, to be released today.

Teacher aggression, such as yelling angrily, and the use of punishments such as class detention, were ineffective in fostering good, responsible behaviour among students, the study found.

Its investigation of classroom behaviour and discipline styles involved more than 4000 students and 600 teachers from 21 government primary schools and 21 secondary schools in north-east Victoria. Classes with well-behaved students had teachers who were less punishment oriented. The teachers were more likely to discuss misbehaviour with their students, involve them in decision-making and recognise and reward good behaviour.

The study's author, Dr Ramon Lewis, of La Trobe University, said teachers who relied more heavily on punishment and rebuking their students to instil discipline might be doing so in reaction to bad student behaviour. However the study found that in all classroom situations, whether students were badly behaved or not, misbehaving students responded better to more inclusive, less aggressive tactics from teachers.

It also found that teachers who relied on aggressive tactics rarely praised or acknowledged an unruly student when they behaved well.

Many of these difficult kids believe the teacher is playing the man and not the ball and the data from the study supports that," said Dr Lewis, associate professor at La Trobe's school of educational studies. "If any teacher gives them any hint of dislike or rejection they're very quick to pick up on that and their behaviour worsens. It's important for teachers locked in this spiral to recognise that the only behaviour they can control is their own. If they can do that then the child is more likely to co-operate.

The report raised concerns that those teaching irresponsible students were often unwilling to use the types of inclusive discipline methods that students responded to positively. Instead they resorted to greater use of aggressive discipline tactics.

It is problematic to see an increased use of aggression and punishment, given that they are at best, of limited usefulness and, at worst, counterproductive, said the report, to be released in Adelaide at a conference held by the Australian Council for Educational Research.

Dr Lewis said encouraging teachers to build rather than destroy goodwill with badly behaved students was a difficult task, especially when other recent research found that teachers experiencing discipline problems in classes were unlikely to talk about it with colleagues.

He said it was therefore important for schools to instigate a series of staff workshops to create a code of behaviour for teachers that specified how to implement more effective discipline tactics.
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Inside the new SAT
By Edward B. Fiske and Bruce G. Hammond

Peter Dumbadze has heard the hype about the new SAT. A lot of my friends are freaking out, says the 11th grader at Seven Hills School in Cincinnati. But Dumbadze is not worried. He likes the fact that the new test will have an essay--;I can express myself in my own words" --and his only real complaint is the amount of time it will take out of one of his Saturday mornings.

Memo to the class of 2006: The new SAT I, which debuts in March 2005, will be longer--nearly four hours--but not necessarily harder. The scoring will change somewhat: With three sections worth up to 800 points each, a perfect score will be 2400 rather than 1600. But the questions themselves are likely to be more straightforward, so there's little reason to fret.

Most student concerns are focused on a brand-new writing section, which includes multiple-choice questions and a 25-minute essay. But there isn't anything too scary here: The multiple-choice questions will emphasize the rules of grammar and usage, which can be learned (or relearned) without great difficulty. The essay will be a standard state-an-opinion-and-back-it-up-with-evidence deal. Students who are willing to do a bit of practice--and they'll undoubtedly get plenty in 10th- and 11th-grade English classes--should be able to do well. (The PSAT, administered to 11th graders and some younger students in October, will be changed to parallel the new SAT but will not include an essay.)

Old and new. Less attention has been paid to the other changes to the SAT I. The old verbal section, renamed critical reading, scraps the much-loathed analogy questions and includes more reading comprehension items, where you are asked to respond to questions about a passage. There is less emphasis on vocabulary words and more on reading than in the old version. There will still be some vocabulary-based questions, but always with a sentence or paragraph to provide clues about word meanings.

The news about the math section is also encouraging. The old SAT included simple math that was twisted into tricky questions to assess reasoning ability. The new math questions will feature more advanced concepts, including topics that are generally emphasized in Algebra II, from absolute value to radical equations, but these questions will be a relatively cut-and-dried assessment of material that students should have covered in school.

Still worried about the essay? Well, you can always consider taking the ACT (a different standardized test more prevalent in the Midwest), which will be offered with a new, optional writing section beginning in February 2005. The vast majority of colleges accept either ACT or SAT scores, and a few institutions will allow students to take the ACT in lieu of both the SAT I and the SAT II subject tests. Many highly selective colleges, however, are likely to require that students take a test with a writing component, whether it be the SAT or ACT.

A few enterprising souls in the class of 2006 have hatched the idea of taking both the old and new SAT to see which one they do better on. But to do that, they will need to shift gears from the new PSAT to the old SAT, then back to the new SAT. Instead, students may want to lower their stress and raise their scores by taking only the new SAT. Because of the writing section, many testing experts believe that preparation is more likely to pay off on the new test.

The coming of the new SAT has sent many students scurrying to high-priced coaching outfits. But prep course or no, taking the SAT is like any other skill: Practice makes perfect. Taking timed practice tests on your own can teach you how to pace yourself, when to skip problems, and when to guess. To simulate the real test as closely as possible, get a copy of The Official SAT Study Guide: For the New SAT available in October from the College Board. Then find a quiet place to work, and use a stopwatch.

Cramming for the SAT is nobody's idea of fun. But despite all the hoopla about the new test, remember this: It's now truer than ever that a higher score is within reach of every student who is willing to do the work.
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When to invest in a prep class

By Margaret Loftus

In today's ultracompetitive admissions climate, many college bound high schoolers seem willing to go to any length to achieve top scores on their SAT or ACT. And a booming test-prep industry is more than happy to accommodate them. In recent years, a host of new coaching services have joined Princeton Review and pioneer Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, whose business has grown 50 percent in the past five years. Last school year, a record-breaking 2.1 million students sat for the SAT I, and nearly 2 million took the ACT.

While the fairness of the exams and their usefulness as predictors of student achievement in college are hotly debated at universities and on editorial pages, more than 90 percent of schools still require applicants to submit their scores on the SAT I or ACT. And in a recent survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 52 percent of college admissions staff surveyed said standardized test scores were "considerably importantin the admissions process, up from 44 percent in 1989. An overhaul of the SAT I, scheduled to take effect in 2005, is intended to make the test even more valuable to colleges by adding an essay-writing section and additional math and reading problems to the exam.

So how much time and energy– not to mention money– should you devote to preparing for your boards? First, figure out how important test scores are to the schools you're interested in attending. In recent years, some colleges have dropped test scores as an entrance requirement or minimized their weight in admissions.

Rough approximation. Students whose dream schools still value test scores can get a sense of how they'll perform on the SAT I when the big day comes by taking a look at their scores on the PSAT. This exam is divided into three sections–math, verbal, and writing skills–each of which is scored on a 20 to 80 scale. First, add your verbal and math PSAT scores, then tack on a zero. This three- or four-digit number should roughly approximate the combined score you'll earn on the SAT I. To see how that number compares with the scores of kids at schools you're interested in, take a look at the test scores column in the U.S. News rankings.

If your score eclipses those of freshmen at schools you're applying to, you probably don't need to do much prepping beyond reading a couple of test-prep guides to familiarize yourself with the format and pacing of the exam. Guidance counselors caution, however, that if a student is on an accelerated math track in school, it pays to review algebra and geometry–the only high school-level math on the SAT I– before taking the exam.

Should you determine that your score could use a boost, you will find you have many test-prep options. Both Princeton Review and Kaplan charge $799 to $899 (the cost varies regionally) for their six-week cram courses. The courses review material that is likely to appear on the exam and teach test-taking skills, such as guessing techniques and strategies for gauging when a problem isn't worth the time it will take to answer it. You can also practice these skills with private tutors, who charge anywhere from $20 to $200 an hour. Another option is to sign up with one of the growing number of online test-prep services. For instance, TestU (www.testu.com) charges $50 for its online program.

Both Kaplan and Princeton Review say students who take their coaching courses typically see huge score gains. Jeff Rubenstein, head of research at Princeton Review, asserts, for instance, that the combined score of the average student jumps 140 points. Other research reveals less striking gains. A study conducted by the College Board found that students who retook the test without taking a cram course saw their scores rise an average of 43 points. The scores of Kaplan and Princeton Review pupils increased only an additional 19 to 42 points on average, the study found.

While it's impossible to foretell whether prepping will boost your scores significantly, counselors say kids with test anxiety often benefit from a cram course. There's less of a chance of going into the test and clutching" if you've completed a course, says Stephen Singer, director of college counseling at Horace Mann prep school in Riverdale, N.Y. Christian Estrera, a senior at the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology in Petersburg, Va., saw his combined score leap by 150 points after taking a course.The Kaplan prep course built up my confidence, he says. Also, kids who had trouble with the math portions of the PSAT may profit from prep programs because math skills generally are easier to coach than verbal skills. Test-prep pros are less sanguine about the prospects of kids who flubbed the PSAT's vocabulary section. If you haven't been reading your whole life, says Beth Newman, a private tutor in Rockville, Md., "you can't just gain a whole new vocabulary in six weeks.

What learning environment is best for you? Online courses generally cost less than the nonvirtual options, but they're not a good choice for undermotivated students, who need the structure of a classroom. Moreover, many parents are wary of their kids' spending hours online, where distractions like instant messaging are plentiful.

Teens who need a push to study for their boards often benefit most from group classes. I'm not the most motivated student, says Carrie Silberman, a senior from Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md., who took a six-week prep course last year. At first, I didn't want to learn new vocab words. But [that changed] when I saw other kids in my class learning the words. Private tutoring, on the other hand, often makes sense for students who need to focus their prep efforts on specific areas of an exam. Paul Philip, now a freshman at Columbia University in New York City, took a course and studied with a tutor. Private tutoring allows you to go at your own pace, recalls Philip, and it is more geared toward [the individual].

Check it out. Before signing up for a classroom course, Judi Robinovitz, a private education consultant who runs several learning centers in Florida and New York, encourages students and their parents to do some initial investigative work. Start by asking your kids' friends and their parents whom they use, Robinovitz says. Then ask about the credentials of potential instructors. Do they take the SAT I on an ongoing basis and consistently score in the top 5 percent? Good instructors also should be enthusiastic about their jobs–parents usually can tell if this is the case simply by talking with the instructor. Finally, it's important for teachers to use genuine College Board tests when instructing students, says Robinovitz.

Ultimately, prepping itself can become a real distraction, especially during the all-important junior year, when grades matter the most. Whatever you do, caution counselors, don't get carried away and spend more time memorizing vocabulary words than reading George Orwell or studying the Bill of Rights.

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Articles for October 2004

Coping with dyslexia
Published on 27/10/2004

Study: Dyslexic Doris Pearce earned a Diploma in Youth and Community
1 of 2 Prev | Next IMAGINE struggling to read and write at school and having
no idea why. Or spending your adult life unable to remember phone numbers,
tell the time or give directions.

Up to ten per cent of the UK population are dyslexic, with around two million people severely affected.

In the past, it wasn’t recognised as a condition and children affected were labelled as stupid or lazy.

But dyslexia isn’t a sign of low intelligence and it affects people of all academic abilities. It can’t be cured, but people can learn to live with the disorder and find ways to minimise its impact.

John Smith, from Penrith, and Doris Pearce, from Ennerdale, were in their 50s before they were diagnosed with dyslexia.

It was only when John, 64, returned to education at the age of 50 that he
realised there was something seriously wrong. After taking early retirement, he enrolled as a mature student on a full-time Combined Science degree at Leicester University.

“I had no idea I had dyslexia until I started studying again,” he said. “I didn’t do
too badly at school. I wasn’t great at anything that required writing, but I could manage maths.

“At university, I found I couldn’t keep up with the written work. We would take notes from the board in lectures and I would only be halfway through when the
rest of the class were packing up to go home.”

A few months into the course, John saw a notice advertising a dyslexia
awareness event and realized he was suffering from the problems it mentioned. He went along and was sent to psychologist who diagnosed severe dyslexia.

“He told me that over the years I’d devised some complex coping strategies to deal with my dyslexia,” he said. “For example, when doing written work, I would move the structure of the language so I could use words I could spell.

“It wasn’t until I was faced with a situation where the strategies wouldn’t work – such as taking notes at high speed – that I experienced serious problems.”

John was provided with a computer to help with his written work. “It meant I could work much faster and check my punctuation and spellings,” he said. “The university also asked my lecturers to give me more time to take down notes, and I had longer to complete exams.”

He graduated in 1994 after four years of study.

Doris Pearce, 60, faced the biggest challenge of her life when she had to return to education aged 53. A youth worker for 25 years, she had to get a formal qualification for her job.

“My school days were horrendous so I was ” said Doris, who is chairman of the West Cumbria Dyslexic Association.

She received help and qualified with a Diploma in Youth and Community last
year.

“There is a stigma when you say you can’t read or write,” said Doris. “People
think you’re stupid or thick. It’s not a learning disability, but a learning difference. I can’t read a book like other people can and have to find another way of learning.”

Doris, who works at Connexions in Whitehaven, produced a leaflet to help
workmates understand her condition. It outlines ways they can help such as giving instructions in bite-size chunks rather than all at once.

She said: “There are the obvious things like reading and writing, and also the not so obvious like telling the time. I get my left and right confused and never ask me for directions.

“Numbers are a nightmare. I don’t know my own phone number and I had a car for nine years and never knew the registration number. I used to help out at an old person’s club, but they only let me call out the bingo numbers once!”

Doris will share her experiences at a one-day dyslexia conference this Saturday at the University of Central Lancashire’s Newton Rigg campus, near
Penrith.

Her workshop, What Works For Me, is part of a series taking place throughout the day.

The Making Dyslexia Work for You event is organized by dyslexia associations across the county.

Entrance is £12 per person including lunch and coffee.

To book a place phone Alison Spurgeon-Dickson on 01229 776 112.

North Cumbria Dyslexia Association Helpline 01228 560097 or go to www.northcumbriadyslexia.org.

The West Cumbria Dyslexia Association is based at the Lakes College, Lillyhall. For more information phone the Lakes College on 01946 839300 who
will pass on messages to chairman, Doris Pearce.

British Dyslexia Association Helpline 0118 9668271 or go to www.bda-dyslexia.org.uk.

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Viewpoints differ on special education Parents, educators face changes

Susan Hunter, Editor October 20, 2004

SEYMOUR, Connecticut - The methods for educating special needs children in the public school system have undergone dramatic changes in recent years and even in recent months. The practice of inclusion, or teaching special children in a regular classroom setting rather than separating them in self-contained classrooms, is one of the changes that has provoked ongoing controversy between parents and administrators.

To some parents, such as Seymour resident Victoria Reza, inclusion represents the worst of all options. Reza's 13-year-old son has been diagnosed with bipolar obsessive-compulsive psychotic disorder with anxiety.

On the other hand, special educators such as Seymour's Director of Special Education Renie Castellucci see the situation from another perspective. They have come to believe that the practice of educating special education children in the mandated least restrictive environment" can work if handled properly.

The inclusion philosophy stems from the federal Americans with Disabilities Act passed in the 1970s and ultimately led to the mandate that disabled children have to learn with regular students 80 percent of the time.

Moreover, the federal No Child Left Behind law has additionally imposed standardized testing mandates for special education students.

A painful saga

Reza's tortuous saga of finding help for her son culminated in having him out placed in a therapeutic school, Housatonic Children's Center in Ansonia.

Along the way, she claims the school system did not respond appropriately to her son's progressive psychoses, and that keeping him in a separate classroom would have allowed him to learn in a less stressful atmosphere.

Her son's life experience has been a dizzying series of psychological tests, frantic trips to hospital emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals, a variety of
medications and periods spent in and out of self-contained and regular classrooms.

Even as a baby, "He was not exhibiting self-help skills and had an articulation problems, Reza said. At seven months, he was so out-of-control that he broke the spindles on his crib. He began sleepwalking at 2 ½, she said.

Reza had been in a car accident during the sixth month of her pregnancy, and it may have led to an organic brain disorder in her unborn child. He stopped growing inside me," she said.

At age 3, he attended a Head Start program in Seymour, but his education was interrupted when his family moved to Naugatuck.

After testing at the school system, he spent two years in a Head Start program focusing on his speech disorders.

He was exhibiting behavioral problems when he reached kindergarten-ready age," Reza said. "He was extremely wild.

They wanted to place him in kindergarten, but I knew he couldn't be placed. He had problems with numbers and couldn't write his name. They should have placed him in special education."

Rather than put him in school, Reza enrolled him in day care where workers said he was exhibiting attention deficit-type behavior.

After testing and recommendations from a local doctor, the boy was placed in a special education pre-K program in Naugatuck.

He flourished,Reza said. He started learning his ABC's. He was doing great."

But when he was put in a regular kindergarten class. "Everything he had learned, he forgot, she said.

Participants in a Planning and Placement Team session at the school determined that her son should be put back in a self-contained special education classroom.

The boy entered first grade when the family moved back to Seymour, but his problems continued, and doctors at the psychiatric unit at Yale New Haven Hospital "wanted to admit him," Reza said. "I kept him out."

The Yale Child Study Center diagnosed him as having "severe ADHD and psychotic disorder," his mother said. "He was having hallucinations. It was extremely scary. He told me there was a radio and a television inside his brain."

The child remained in a self-contained special education classroom in first grade, but Castellucci recommended that he be mainstreamed for reading, Reza said.

"He had a very hard time, she said.

Results of another PPT with a Yale psychiatrist in attendance determined, He couldn't be mainstreamed, Reza said.

He remained in the special education class in fourth grade, and when inclusion was mandated at the beginning of his fifth-grade year, he entered a regular classroom with an aide and periodic visits to a resource room.

During this time, he began exhibiting symptoms of severe psychosis, his mother said, and he was hospitalized in the fall of 2003

My child could no longer stay in the regular classroom, she said. She then enlisted the help of attorneys from Legal Aid who attended a PPT armed with several written recommendations to have him out placed.

Dr. Castellucci did not believe he had a problem," Reza said, despite the diagnosis from the Yale Child Study Center.

"The aide didn't help him, she continued, and they tried to have a child help him." Her son ended up fighting with the child and was suspended from school.

When children are in a manic state, any stimuli can affect them, she said. "He was humiliated, and he was suicidal. The school didn't know what to do with him.

At the request of the Legal Aid attorney, the boy was tested by the school psychologist, who said he was hearing and seeing things, Reza said.

I highly suggest that parents stay on top of things, she said. She had to insist that some a psychological reports be changed due to inaccuracies. It was awful, she said. It led one to believe he was being mistreated at home.

I knew my son would not be able to handle middle school, but Dr. Castellucci said he would do okay. He had behavioral problems and was afraid to go to school, she said.

Jason Tracy, the middle school guidance counselor and former Principal Paul Porter "were very cooperative, she said. They saw that he was struggling.

He was nervous and scared. He was in and out of the guidance counselor's office four or five times a day and was being educated in regular classrooms.

Things went from bad to worse when he suffered a psychotic episode in the hallway of the school.

He told me he wanted to jump off cliffs, Reza said. Dr. Castellucci said if I didn't send him to school, he would get in trouble with truancy, and he had to be there for testing.

But the crisis point had been reached, and "He lost it," Reza said. He spent 13
days in Hall-Brooke Hospital in Westport.

They recommended he couldn't go to school," Reza said, and Dr. Castellucci agreed to have him home-schooled and receive services through the Seymour Public Library. The school did further testing and, heeding recommendations from three facilities, "we got him out placed," Reza said.

Although out of the regular classroom, her son's situation is not ideal. The school's focus on children with socialization problems is not zeroing in on her son's organic disorder and learning disabilities, she said.

He's also missing out on social activities at middle school, which would have been available to him as a student in his own school.

They need to change the legislation and get these kids back to the self-contained classrooms, Reza said. They are going to drop out of school, or either commit suicide or turn to alcohol. They say 'no child should be left behind,' but there are children who are being left behind.

Reza urges parents who are struggling with special needs children to join on line support groups for children with bipolar or to contact FAVOR, an
advocacy group.

Calling the Info line at 211 will provide names of groups, she said

Tell them you need help with your child,..,she said. You can't sit there and think the school system will help your child. There are so many places out there. You need to reach out.


Another point of view


Castellucci, a 35-year veteran teacher and administrator in both regular and special education areas, looks at situations like Reza's from another perspective.

I am a supporter of inclusion, Castellucci said. I was a 'Doubting Thomas' at the beginning," but she said her long experience has proved otherwise.

As soon as you segregate kids, they regress, she said. A lot of kids who were out placed ended up in jail, because they had negative role models.

All children benefit in having access to the general education curriculum. It allows children to develop to their maximum potential. They are with their peers, who are positive role models. We're preparing them for the real world.

Seymour schools have introduced "differentiated instruction," she said, whereby staff can provide instruction to both regular and special education students in the same classroom.

Much of her time as special education director is spent setting up professional training for staff that is vital to a successful inclusion program.

She wrote a $75,000 two-year grant for staff training and development, and many consultants work with teams of teachers at the schools.

Dr. Richard Villa, a renowned special education specialist, has been one of the consultants, and Dr. Beth Kirker-Strait, has conducted training sessions for paraprofessionals.

There is a continual need for staff development, Castellucci said.

Seymour Middle School students have access to two full time guidance counselors, a social worker and a psychologist, while elementary school students have a full time guidance counselor. High school students may use the services of four guidance counselors.

Castellucci proposes and oversees the special education programs, including
the district's two preschool special education programs.

She oversees staff that serve students, including autism consultants, behaviorists and psychiatrists.

Parents meet with teaching teams and consultants, who make sure that individual programs are being implemented.

Everything is done above board, Castellucci said.

She also focuses on making sure that standardized test scores of special education students show improvement.

According to the No Child Left Behind legislation, 99 percent of all children must take the standard administration of the Connecticut Achievement Performance Test (CAPT), she said.

Only 1 percent of students with intellectual disabilities are exempt from testing.

The federal law mandates that education of all children has to have public accountability," Castellucci said.

She and other educators did not agree with the legislation but had to adhere to it.

"We were vehemently opposed," she said, to administering the same tests to special education and regular education children.

You set kids up for failure," she said. "It's frustrating for them. But we have no choice.

The state has been very pleased with Seymour. We were highly commended, she explained, for the special education program and the emphasis on staff development.

In addition to specialized grants, all school districts in Connecticut receive IDEA 611 grants, based on the number of special education students in the district and how the districts handle the population. Seymour is not a priority district," she said. We don't get a lot of money.


Monumental changes


Castellucci is well aware of the monumental changes that have taken place over the years in educating special needs children.

The practice of merely isolating them from the rest of their peers has been replaced by a complex educational system, and the stability of children's lives is often centered at school rather than in their families.

I feel like I had been living in an Ozzie and Harriet world," Castellucci said, looking back on her early teaching days in the late 1960s.

During a career that led her to Seymour in 1999, she taught high school English and Spanish, and worked as a school guidance counselor, a PPT coordinator and a supervisor of self-contained classrooms in Milford.

As a school psychologist, she evaluated more than 1,000 children from ages 3 to 21. She has earned five certifications.

Castellucci's responsibilities in Seymour also include hiring and managing 24 special education staff members, conducting staff observations and evaluations, monthly staff meetings in the five district schools and arranging bussing for special education children.

I work in collaboration with principals to ensure things are running smoothly with special education, she said. "Anything that goes wrong is my
responsibility. br>
She also updates staff about new state guidelines and criteria for identifying learning disabled and emotionally disturbed children and the paperwork that goes along with them.

Since Castellucci has been in the Seymour schools, the percentage of students identified as disabled and receiving special education services has dropped from 16 percent to 6 percent as a result of intervention based on special education incidence and prevalence statistics.

It is her responsibility also to determine whether special needs students should be out placed. Outplacement is very, very rare," she said. "We have to
follow the mandates of law.

In her opinion, outplacement is "a violation of students' rights. It's the most restrictive setting.

A total of 15 children from the Seymour district are currently out placed, and 10 of the outplacements have been dictated by the courts and the state Department of Children and Families. Some of the children had been out
placed previously.

The low numbers are the result of the system's success with inclusion practices, she believes.
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Special ed parents say dealing with school district adds to their burden
By:Meg Learson Grosso, Staff Writer 10/21/2004

Parents have complained that the Westport school district has repeatedly spent more money on legal fees in order to deny services to their disabled
children than it would have spent if it had actually provided those services. They spoke to the RTM Education Committee when it met last Wednesday at Town Hall.

The parents said that the school system sometimes had a lawyer present at the very first PPT (Planning and Placement Team) meeting - a meeting of parents, teachers, and specialists for the purpose of evaluating a child and discussing what services may be needed.

Further, they said that the school district's lawyer was also present at mediation hearings, even though one parent was told by her lawyer that
Westport was one of the few towns to do this. Parents also spoke of an "attitude" from the administration that it was not willing to work with parents, but was, instead, only too willing to "fight them tooth and nail."


There was loud laughter from parents when one RTM member quoted Schools Superintendent Dr. Elliott Landon as having said that he had never spoken with a dissatisfied special education parent (as was reported in this newspaper and others).

Another parent said that she had spoken to Landon, saying, "Let's try to work this out," but Landon's response had been, "Let's go to due process," (a
binding legal hearing).

None of the parents who spoke at the meeting wanted to give their names. All said they feared retaliation from the school district.

"If you use my name, I'll never get anything," said the parent of an autistic child.

Most of the parents didn't want particular stories repeated that would identify them. However, one pointed out that "sunlight is the best disinfectant," and
went on to wonder what the average person in Westport would think if they knew that the town was spending large sums of money to fight the caretakers of the most vulnerable people in town - children who are disabled. Some of these children, she pointed out, need care 24/7, because they are unable to walk or even talk.

She said it was a disgrace that an affluent town like Westport would treat parents of the disabled so harshly.

One parent emphasized, "We're not asking for frills ... we're not even asking for the optimum, we know we'll never get that ..."

RTM member Hadley Rose, District 3, had brought the matter to the attention of the RTM Education Committee because he had received telephone calls from parents of children with disabilities, both severe and mild, complaining that the town was fighting them even on requests that would cost the school district no money.

Rose said that other school districts did not go to due process as often. As an example, he told of talking to parents who had moved to Wilton with a special needs child. The parents told him that the difference between Westport and Wilton was that every time they had asked for something in Westport, it was a fight, a struggle, a problem. In Wilton, they were told on the first day of school, "We know we're not going to get it right for you on the first try, but we'll keep trying and tweaking it until we get it."

One parent said that the word was out in surrounding communities that one shouldn't move to Westport, if one had a child with disabilities. However, she said: "This is my town and I love it," adding that she did not want to move.

One parent said that at the very first PPT meeting, there was not only a lawyer, but she and her husband were crammed into a small room with eight people in it, some of them looking over the shoulders of herself and her husband, to see what notes they took. "At no point," she said, "did I feel they were there to help me or my child."

Parents said intimidation and stonewalling were common. One described the attitude of the administration as, "You're hitting against a brick wall, so stop asking."

Another parent told of asking for an independent evaluation of her child that would have cost $4,000. It was denied, and she contested it. So far, she has estimated that the combination of her legal fees and the town's fees are over $20,000 and climbing.

Another parent said that she had lived in several towns prior to Westport and had therefore worked with several different school systems. Her children had learning disabilities and she was thankful that her oldest had never been in Westport schools. She said that that child was now in a top college and doing well, but that as soon as her younger child had achieved honor roll in high school, Westport began denying that child the very services that helped him to get there.

The RTM committee met to discuss what questions they should ask the school system regarding expenditures on litigation. It was pointed out by RTM
member, Velma Heller, District 6, that some of the money was spent on seminars for staff to inform them of what records need to be kept or what their legal obligations were.

Rose said, at one point, that whatever amount the town was spending on litigation, it might be better spent on the children.

He also said he found it disturbing that parents could say, "I don't necessarily accept the school district's judgment in this case; let's look into it a little more," and, then, the district's reaction was "Bam! 'If you don't like it, sue.'"

Later in the week, a Minuteman reporter asked three of the RTM Education Committee members about their impressions of the Wednesday meeting.

Jack Klinge, District 7, said the meeting had provided him with new information that was "surprising and concerning," pointing out that communications
between the school administration and parents of special education children are confidential, so that he would have had no way of knowing these things before.

He said he felt privileged to listen to the comments of the parents who came to the meeting, adding, "I thought it took courage to talk about their situations."

Klinge, a parent and grandparent, is retired from the marketing world. Since then, he has been a substitute teacher at both Staples High School and
Bedford Middle School and he has worked with special education students. He noted that he has seen only good things happening in the classroom, adding that the teachers were "dedicated" and "intensely involved with the students."

None of the parents complained about the teachers, only the adversarial and litigious attitude of the administration.

Klinge pointed out that the RTM has only budgetary power over the school system, saying that the RTM can only approve, disapprove or increase the
education budget.

Velma Heller, Dist. 6, and a former principal of Greens Farms Elementary School, also pointed out that "It is clearly not our job to make policy for the
Board of Education."

But she felt that it was important that the committee listen to parents' concerns and said the committee would continue look into it.

Chris Grimm, District 5, said he had heard of "very compelling cases and situations" at the meeting. Asked if he thought that the administration should
have a lawyer at the first PPT meeting, he said, "Until we see what the administration has to say, I'm in no position to make a judgment." He added
that his first reaction was to wonder why it was necessary, saying that he had had a different impression of the administration when the committee had met with them a few weeks earlier.

Of last Wednesday's meeting, he said he sensed that "collectively, the parents didn't feel positive about their dealings with Marsha Moses." She is the lawyer whom the school administration hires for special education cases. Grimm added, "Obviously, the taxpayers deserve to be treated with nothing less than complete respect."

Landon had responded to Hadley Rose's previous allegations with a statement that he read at the Board of Education meeting, the night previous to the RTM Education Committee meeting at Town Hall.
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Teen-age brains need some love, too

The Arizona Republic
Oct. 25, 2004


Here's what parents should know about the adolescent brain:

• Use it. Connections not being used die away. Teens need to get off the sofa and into some activities from clubs, to sports to music. When you learn
something new, it makes the brain work hard and helps it get hard-wired.
• Keep it healthy. It's especially important not to use tobacco or alcohol when the brain is still developing.
• Patience. Another area of the teen brain still developing is the emotional center of the brain. This could explain why teenagers incorrectly read
emotions or react emotionally.
• Stay involved. Teens may say they want independence. But developing brains are pattern-seeking organs and they need structure.
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Deciphering the teen brain Young minds works in progress
Monica Mendoza
The Arizona Republic
Oct. 25, 2004

Parents and teachers have always known that the mind of a teenager is a complicated thing.

Now, new brain research may explain just what is going on inside those teenage heads.

New brain imaging studies show that teen brains are not fully developed, suggesting that teen brains are a work in progress, according to researchers
working with the National Institute of Mental Health.

For parents living through the drama of the teen years, the new research might explain the erratic behavior and emotional responses teens have, said Laura Lamberto-White, a former Peoria school principal who now works with the New Directions Institute For Infant Brain Development in Phoenix and has a 13-year-old daughter of her own.

"We used to blame it on hormones," Lamberto-White said.

Brains are the only organs that get to create themselves. For the past decade brain research has focused on infants, showing that the brain is the least
developed organ at birth. The research has been the catalyst for state and national policy agendas on early childhood education programs.

Research shows that brains develop from back to front. And while brains are about 90 percent hard-wired by age 5, there are brain charges and
reorganizing taking place in the teen brain that can shape and hard-wire it forever. Among the parts of the brain still developing in the teen years are the
prefrontal lobe, the part Lamberto-White calls the "CEO" of the brain, "responsible for making sound judgments, setting goals, planning and organizing," she said.

"It explains why they (teens) have irrational behavior and why they have trouble planning a task," she said.

Another area of the brain not fully developed is the "amygdala," where emotions are stored in the brain. It may explain why teenagers react emotionally and why they read emotions incorrectly, Lamberto-White said.

When it comes to the teen brains, there is still much to learn and the research is in the early stages. But adolescence is no time for parents to have a hands-off philosophy, Lamberto-White said.

"Kids are not capable of making the best decisions. It's parents' job to have open communication and work with their child, setting boundaries and limits
and following through with it," she said. "Really be involved in their lives. It's the least time you should be hands-off."
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Parents use courts to battle bullies-Families take legal action to protect children as schools step up preventive programs

By Marisa Schultz / The Detroit News

His parents sued; one of the defendants was ordered to pay the Galluses $35,000. One year later, the family hasn't seen any money.

Parent tips

• Build social skills early. Teach self-respect and respect for others.
• Teach that differences are to be respected, not rejected.
•Teach effective skills for making friends, such as how to share, compromiseand apologize.
•Teach how to change the topic to avoid conflict.
• Help improve sense of personal power and self-worth. Confident kids areless likely to become victims.
• Teach your child the difference between tattling and telling. Tattling is trying to get someone in trouble. Telling is reporting information when someone is in danger.
• Be involved in your child's life; be around and be available.
• Appreciate and reinforcecaring behaviors.

The bullying escalated so much that Christine DeLorme wouldn’t let her 10-year-old son walk to a friend’s house without a walkie-talkie in hand — her
voice echoing through the speaker, “Are you there yet?”

Her son’s safety had been at the forefront of her thoughts since the 11-year-old bully in her Warren neighborhood delivered a regular barrage of taunting and name calling. One time, the bully grabbed her son off his bike and slapped him. More commonly, though, he would spread rumors her son had AIDS, a tearful DeLorme recalled.

With no end in sight, DeLorme did what more Michigan parents are doing: sought help from the court system. The 11-year-old bully in the Warren case
joined a growing number of minors between ages 10-17 who are ordered by the court system to stop harassing, stalking and being violent.Some 600 Michigan minors were restrained by personal protection orders in 2002 for incidents ranging from bullying to boyfriend-girlfriend harassment. By 2003, that number had grown to 696.

DeLorme wrote her request for a court order out by hand.“All of these episodes are threatening to (my son) because he is afraid of being beaten,” her request read. “It gives (him) the feeling of dying.”

Constant bullying is tantamount to domestic violence, but courts still are more willing to grant protection to an abused spouse than to a bullied child, said Glenn Stutzky, clinical instructor at Michigan State University’s School of Social Work.

“The children who are the ongoing targets at school don’t have any less feelings of pain, any less feelings of fearfulness and any less feelings of hopelessness,” said Stutzky, who researches bullying and who advises parents and kids to go to court as a last resort to stop harassment.Nearly 30 percent of students nationally say they have been involved in bullying — either as the perpetrator, victim or both — according to a 2001 study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which surveyed 15,600 American students in grades six to 10.One victim, Ryan Gallus, spent some of his high school years watching his back after he was jumped by older kids at age 16.

“It had a big impact,” said Gallus, now 18 and a freshman at Adrian College playing basketball and baseball. “You never want to go anywhere without your group of friends. ... We knew stuff could start. And all my friends learned from what happened to me.”

On April 13, 2002, Gallus had just gotten his driver’s license and driven to the VFW Post in St. Clair Shores to fish with some friends.

There, a group of older teens from another high school singled him out, surrounded him and beat him until his face was bloody, he said. “We should kill him and rip his legs off and throw him in the lake,” Gallus recalled one teen saying.

His parents turned to the courts for a remedy. They sued two of the teens for damages, said his mother, Anne Gallus of Roseville.

On Oct. 14, 2003, a Macomb circuit judge ordered one defendant to pay the Galluses $35,000. One year later, the family hasn’t seen any money, but they remain hopeful.

More and more schools are recognizing bullying in light of recent school violence, like that at Colorado’s Columbine High School. Schools have
implemented bully-proofing programs by hiring people like Bonnie Hanes, education director of Oakland Mediation Center in Bloomfield Hills.

Hanes said the programs are necessary to curb bullying, because court filings do little to change school culture and clog the justice system.

While personal protection orders in Michigan are still dominated by adults, the percentage of juvenile cases has increased from 2002-03 — the only years available for accurate comparisons — from 1.7 percent to 2.1 percent of the total state caseload.

Typically, a protection order prohibits assaults, attacks, or interfering with the victim’s job or education. It can also prohibit approaching or confronting the victim, or contacting him or her by telephone. If the aggressor violates the order, he or she can be arrested.

Although Macomb Chief Circuit Judge Peter Maceroni has granted some juvenile personal protection orders to stop bullies, he feels school officials
need to be the No. 1 step in stopping harassment.

Earlier this month, Maceroni granted a protection order against an 18-year-old high school girl who punched a 17-year-old girl at the homecoming football game. The attacker had been bullying the victim throughout high school, according to the court papers filed by the victim.

Eight years ago, Ellison Franklin saw her first child personal protection order when she was principal of Plymouth-Canton’s East Middle School. She and school staff members worked to keep the two middle school girls as far apart as possible: different classrooms, different lunch periods and lockers in separate parts of the school.

“It’s difficult because the school is such a closed community that it’s possible to end up in the bathroom together,” she said.

Today as principal of Plymouth-Canton’s West Middle School, she worked to implement a program to prevent bullying so incidents wouldn’t escalate to
court intervention.

“I think the No. 1 change is that the staff is very conscious of bully behavior,” Franklin said.

For DeLorme, the personal protection order is something she doesn’t regret. Though the scars of abuse are still apparent, her son has a break for recovery, she said.

“My son needs some time to heal from all these actions,” DeLorme said. “It’s finally given him that opportunity.”You can reach Marisa Schultz at (734) 462-2203 or mschultz@detnews.com.

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Stop yelling, it doesn't help
By Caroline Milburn
October 25, 2004

Yelling at students does not improve their behaviour, according to a study of teachers and their discipline methods, to be released today.Teacher aggression, such as yelling angrily, and the use of punishments such as class detention, were ineffective in fostering good, responsible behaviour
among students, the study found.

Its investigation of classroom behaviour and discipline styles involved more than 4000 students and 600 teachers from 21 government primary schools and 21 secondary schools in north-east Victoria. Classes with well-behaved students had teachers who were less punishment oriented. The teachers were more likely to discuss misbehaviour with their students, involve them in decision-making and recognize and reward good behaviour.

The study's author, Dr Ramon Lewis, of La Trobe University, said teachers who relied more heavily on punishment and rebuking their students to instil
discipline might be doing so in reaction to bad student behaviour. However the study found that in all classroom situations, whether students were badly
behaved or not, misbehaving students responded better to more inclusive, less aggressive tactics from teachers.

It also found that teachers who relied on aggressive tactics rarely praised or acknowledged an unruly student when they behaved well.

"Many of these difficult kids believe the teacher is playing the man and not the ball and the data from the study supports that," said Dr Lewis, associate
professor at La Trobe's school of educational studies. "If any teacher gives them any hint of dislike or rejection they're very quick to pick up on that and
their behaviour worsens. It's important for teachers locked in this spiral to recognise that the only behaviour they can control is their own. If they can do
that then the child is more likely to co-operate."

The report raised concerns that those teaching irresponsible students were often unwilling to use the types of inclusive discipline methods that students
responded to positively. Instead they resorted to greater use of aggressive discipline tactics.

"It is problematic to see an increased use of aggression and punishment, given that they are at best, of limited usefulness and, at worst, counterproductive," said the report, to be released in Adelaide at a conference held by the Australian Council for Educational Research.

Dr Lewis said encouraging teachers to build rather than destroy goodwill with badly behaved students was a difficult task, especially when other recent
research found that teachers experiencing discipline problems in classes were unlikely to talk about it with colleagues.

He said it was therefore important for schools to instigate a series of staff workshops to create a code of behaviour for teachers that specified how to
implement more effective discipline tactics.
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A VISION FOR ACTION AND RESEARCH IN MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL LITERACY
A Report from Carnegie Corporation of New York


FOREWORD

During the last decade, this country’s attention has been focused on improving reading education. This focus led to the generation of reports, reviews, revised curricula, redesigned professional development, and the provisions of the Reading First Initiative. The recent interest in reading,however, directed attention almost entirely to early literacy—that is, to reading in the primary grades, defined as word recognition.

Somewhat neglected in those various efforts was attention to the core of reading: comprehension, learning while reading, reading in the content areas,
and reading in the service of secondary or higher education, of employability, of citizenship. It is clear that getting third graders to read at gradelevel is an important and challenging task, and one that needs ongoing attention from researchers, teacher educators, teachers, and parents. But many excellent third-grade readers will falter or fail in later-grade academic tasks if the teaching of reading is neglected in the middle and secondary
grades. In 1950, when opportunities to achieve economic stability and a middle-class standard of living were open to those without a high school diploma, students unable to convert their third-grade reading skills into literacy levels useful for comprehending and learning from complex, content-rich
materials could drop out of high school and still hope to achieve a reasonably comfortable and successful lifestyle. In 2004, however, there are few opportunities for the high school dropout to achieve a comparable way of life; jobs, welfare, and social safety nets will no longer be available as they once were.

Educators must thus figure out how to ensure that every student gets beyond the basic literacy skills of the early elementary grades, to the more challenging and more rewarding literacy of the middle and secondary school years. Inevitably, this will require, for many of those students, teaching them newliteracy skills: how to read purposefully, select materials that are of interest, learn from those materials, figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words, integrate new information with information previously known, resolve conflicting content in different texts, differentiate fact from opinion, and
recognize the perspective of the writer—in short, they must be taught how to comprehend.

Ensuring adequate ongoing literacy development for all students in the middle and high school years is a more challenging task than ensuring excellent
reading education in the primary grades, for two reasons: first, secondary school literacy skills are more complex, more embedded in subject matters,and more multiply determined; second, adolescents are not as universally motivated to read better or as interested in school-based reading as
kindergartners. This is, therefore, not a problem with a simple solution. But we have research-based as well as practice-based knowledge to bring to it.
Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy charts a route for using that knowledge optimally, while at the same
time adding to it. It is a call to researchers in this area to exchange a bit of their self-determination in the service of producing more interpretable findings, and a call to funders interested in educational reform to forfeit a bit of theirprogrammatic autonomy to increase the returns on their investments. If both groups heed the call, adolescent readers and the teachers dedicated to their success will benefit.

Catherine E. Snow
Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Cambridge, Massachusetts
July 18, 2004
Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School
Literacy

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Issue

American youth need strong literacy skills to succeed in school and in life. Students who do not acquire these skills find themselves at a serious
disadvantage in social settings, as civil participants, and in the working world.Yet approximately eight million young people between fourth and twelfth grade struggle to read at grade level. Some 70 percent of older readers require some form of remediation. Very few of these older struggling readers need help to read the words on a page; their most common problem is that they are not able to comprehend what they read. Obviously, the challenge is not a small one.Meeting the needs of struggling adolescent readers and writers is not simply an altruistic goal.

The emotional, social, and public health costs of academic failure have been well documented, and the consequences of the national literary crisis are too serious and far-reaching for us to ignore. Meeting these needs will require expanding the discussion of reading instruction from ReadingFirst—acquiring grade-level reading skills by third grade—to Reading Next—acquiring the reading skills that can serve youth for a lifetime. Fortunately, a survey of the literacy field shows that educators now have a powerful array of tools at their disposal. We even know with a fair degree of certitude which tools work well for which type of struggling reader. However, we do not yet possess an overall strategy for directing and coordinating remedial tools for the maximum benefit to students at risk of academic failure, nor do we knowenough about how current programs and approaches can be most effectively combined.

The Approach

To help address this problem, a panel of five nationally known and respected educational researchers met in spring 2004 with representatives of Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Alliance for Excellent Education to draw up a set of recommendations for how to meet the needs of our eight million struggling readers while simultaneously envisioning a way to propel the field forward. The resulting paper was reviewed and augmented by the Adolescent Literacy Funders Forum (ALFF) at its 2004 annual meeting. Although this report originally was targeted to the funding community, it offers information that will also prove invaluable to others, including researchers, policymakers, and educators.

The Recommendations

The Fifteen Elements of Effective Adolescent Literacy Programs This report delineates fifteen elements aimed at improving middle and high school literacy achievement right now.

1. Direct, explicit comprehension instruction, which is instruction in the strategies and processes that proficient readers use to understand what they
read, including summarizing, keeping track of one’s own understanding, and a host of other practices
2. Effective instructional principles embedded in content, including language arts teachers using content-area texts and content-area teachers providing
instruction and practice in reading and writing skills specific to their subject area
3. Motivation and self-directed learning, which includes building motivation to read and learn and providing students with the instruction and supports
needed for independent learning tasks they will face after graduation
4. Text-based collaborative learning, which involves students interacting with one another around a variety of texts
5. Strategic tutoring, which provides students with intense individualized reading, writing, and content instruction as needed
6. Diverse texts, which are texts at a variety of difficulty levels and on a variety of topics
7. Intensive writing, including instruction connected to the kinds of writing tasks students will have to perform well in high school and beyond
8. A technology component, which includes technology as a tool for and a topic of literacy instruction
9. Ongoing formative assessment of students, which is informal, often daily assessment ofhow students are progressing under current instructional practices
10. Extended time for literacy, which includes approximately two to four hours of literacy instruction and practice that takes place in language arts and
content-area classes
11. Professional development that is both long term and ongoing
12. Ongoing summative assessment of students and programs, which is more formal and provides data that are reported for accountability and research
purposes
13. Teacher teams, which are interdisciplinary teams that meet regularly to discuss students and align instruction
Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School

Literacy

14. Leadership, which can come from principals and teachers who have a solid understanding of how to teach reading and writing to the full array of students present in schools
15. A comprehensive and coordinated literacy program, which is interdisciplinary and interdepartmental and may even coordinate with out-of-school organizations and the local community

Since implementation of only one or two of these elements is unlikely to improve the achievement of many students, this report recommends that practitioners and program designers flexibly try out various combinations in search of the most effective overall program. Furthermore, any combination
should include three specific elements: professional development, formative assessment, and summative assessment. No literacy program targeted at older readers is likely to cause significant improvements without these elements, because of their importance to ensuring instructional effectiveness and
measuring effects. However, they should not be seen as sufficient in themselves to address the wide range of problems experienced by older struggling readers; rather, they act as a foundation for instructional innovations.

Balancing Purposes

This report also stresses that improving the literacy achievement of today’s and tomorrow’s youth requires keeping action balanced with research.The
report outlines a balanced vision for effecting immediate change for current students and building the literacy field’s knowledge base.

Stakeholders should select programs and interventions according to the inclusion or exclusion of the fifteen elements—thereby creating a planned
variation—and evaluate implementation using a common process to allow for comparisons across programs. In line with this recommendation, outcomes and procedures for evaluation are detailed to promote cross-program comparisons. By collecting data according to the recommended design, public and private funders, districts, and researchers will be able to disaggregate students and describe the different sources of their difficulty and the
differentiated effects of programs and program components. Such disaggregation will provide a rich base for experimental research.

The Relevance

We believe that if the funding, research, policymaking, and education communities embrace these recommendations, the literacy field will make
significant strides toward the goal of meeting the needs of all students in our society, while also strengthening our understanding of exactly what works,
when, and for whom.We will thereby strengthen the chances for striving readers to graduate from high school as strong, independent learners
prepared to take on the multiple challenges of life in a global economy.


INTRODUCTION

A Literacy Crisis
High Student Dropout Rate

More than three thousand students drop out of high schoole very school day (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2003).One of the most commonly cited reasons for this is that studentssimply do not have the literacy skills to keep up with the highschool curriculum, which has become increasingly complex
(Kamil, 2003; Snow and Biancarosa, 2003). In the era of ReadingFirst and especially the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Actof 2001, performing below grade level in reading and writingcarries increasingly higher stakes for retention and ultimatelywithholding of high school diplomas (U.S. Department of Education, 2003).

Struggling Readers

The number of students who lack literacy skills is not negligible:there are eight million struggling readers in grades 4–12 inschools across our nation (NCES, 2003a). According to the resultsof the 1998 National Assessment of Education Program (NAEP), 33 percent of eighth-grade students and 40 percent of twelfth grade students performed at or above the “proficient” level,which the NAEP defines as “solid academic performance” for
the assessed grade. Students scoring below this level have attained only “partial mastery” (Loomis and Bourque, 2001, p. 2). If partial mastery is interpreted as performing below grade level, then almost 70 percent of students entering ninth grade and 60 percent of twelfth graders can be considered as reading below grade level. Moreover, these trends have remained remarkably stable over the years, for both more and less recent NAEP assessments.

CAUSE FOR ALARM
• More than eight million students in grades 4–12 are struggling readers (U.S. DOE, 2003).

• Every school day, more than three thousand students drop out of high school (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2003).
• Only 70 percent of high school students graduate on time with a regular diploma, and fewer than 60 percent of African- American and Latino students
do so (Greene, 2002).
• High school students in the lowest 25 percent of their class are twentytimes more likely to drop out than the highest performing students (Carnevale,
2001).
• Approximately 53 percent of high school graduatesenroll in remedial courses in postsecondary education (NCES, 2001).

According to experts in the adolescent literacy field and consistent with NAEP results, as many as 70 percent of students struggle in some manner and
require differentiated instruction in areas where multiple circumstances conspire against students’ chances for success, such as in urban centers. In
these areas, only an estimated 20 percent of students are reading at grade level and thus are prepared to master high school-level content. However,
schools in nonurban areas and even high-achieving schools have struggling readers and writers; in such environments struggling students may be morelikely to be overlooked.

Range of Literacy Needs

Part of what makes it so difficult to meet the needs of struggling readers and writers in middle and high school is that these students experience a wide
range of challenges that require an equally wide range of interventions. Some young people still have difficulty simply reading words accurately, but
these students make up the minority of older struggling readers. Most older struggling readers can read words accurately, but they do not comprehend
what they read, for a variety of reasons. For some, the problem is that they do not yet read words with enough fluency to facilitate comprehension. Others can read accurately and quickly enough for comprehension to take place,but they lack the strategies to help them comprehend what they read. Such strategies include the ability to grasp the gist of a text, to notice and repair
misinterpretations,and to change tactics based on the purposes of reading. Other struggling readers may have learned these strategies but have difficulty using them because they have only practiced using them with a limited range of texts and in a limited range of circumstances. Specifically, they may not be able to generalize their strategies to content-area literacy tasks and lack instruction in and knowledge of strategies specific to particular subject areas, such as math, science, or history. In addition, the problems faced by struggling readers areexacerbated when they do not speak English as their first language, are recent immigrants, or have learning disabilities.

Indeed, a struggling reader may fit all three of these descriptions, making intervention a truly complicated proposition. Meeting these needs will require
expanding the discussion of reading from Reading First—acquiring grade-level reading skills by third grade—to Reading Next—acquiring the reading
comprehension skills that can serve youth for a lifetime.

A full 70 percent of U.S. middle and high school students require differentiatedinstruction, which is instruction targeted to their individual strengths and
weaknesses.

CHANGING LITERACY DEMANDS

Between 1996 and 2006, the average literacy required for all American occupations is projected to rise by 14 percent. The twenty-five fastest growing
professions have far greater than average literacy demands, while thetwenty-five fastest declining professions have lower than average literacy
demands (Barton, 2000).

Incentive and Engagement Is Important

Concurrent with this range of literacy needs, many schools are not engaging students. In addition, students are less motivated to read in later grades. While these problems may coexist with any of the difficulties cited above, a lack of incentive and engagement also explains why even skilled readers andwriters often do not progress in reading and academic achievement in middle and high schools. The proportion of students who are not engaged or
motivated by their school experiences grows at every grade level and reaches epidemic proportions in high school.

Our Changing Society Presents New Challenges

Clearly, there is a need to improve adolescent literacy, and this need is all the more pertinent because of the rapidly accelerating challenges of modern
society. Literacy demands have increased and changed as the technological capabilities of our society have expanded and been made widely available; concomitantly, the need for flexible, self-regulated individuals who can respond to rapidly changing contexts has also increased. The goal in improving adolescent literacy should not simply be to graduate more students from slightly improved schools, but rather to envision what improvements will be necessary to prepare tomorrow’s youth for the challenges they will face twenty and thirty years from now.

America’s schools need to produce literate citizens who are prepared to compete in the global economy and who have the skills to pursue their own
learning well beyond high school. In addition, students need to perform well on their state or local standardized or high-stakes tests, both because these tests act as gatekeepers in increasing numbers of states and because the national emphasis is on improved educational accountability. Most importantly, all young people should graduate from high school able to read and write, so they can continue to pursue education in order to earn a good living and lead richer intellectual lives. Yet 53 percent of all college students need to take remedial courses because they did not gain the skills they should have in their secondary schools (NCES, 2001).

Fortunately, the United States has a powerful array of tools at its disposal for meeting these goals. Some of the most promising of these are presented in this report, together with a framework for considering how to deploy them in a manner that not only improves adolescent literacy in the short term but also offers hope for even greater improvements in the future.The framework is designed so that in the process of using these tools, educators, researchers, and policymakers will hone them, tailoring them to meet the precise needs of individual students in order not only to strengthen the literacy skills of the individual but also to strengthen our nation.

NO COLLEGE, NO FUTURE?

Between 1973 and 1998, in skilled blue-collar, clerical, and related professions,“the percentage of workers who were high school dropouts fell by two-thirds, while the percentage of workers with some college or a college degree more than doubled”; in less-skilled blue-collar, service, and related professions,“the percentage of workers who were high school drop-outs fell by nearly half, while the percentage of workers with some college or a college degree tripled” (Carnevale, 2001, Figures 7 and 8).

A Collaborative Effort

With struggling readers and writers experiencing so many different sources of difficulty as well as rapidly accelerating literacy demands, it is no wonder that teachers and schools are unable to meet the needs of all of these students.To help address this problem a panel of five nationally known and respected educational researchers—Donald Deshler, David Francis, John Guthrie,Michael Kamil, and James McPartland—met with representatives of Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Alliance for Excellent Education on April 22, 2004.The researchers were asked to envision the kinds of changes necessary to improve student outcomes based on current knowledge of the field, while simultaneously envisioning a way to propel the field forward by building a more thorough knowledge base. The researchers agreed that enough is already known about adolescent literacy—both the nature of the problems of struggling readers and the types of interventions and approaches to address these needs—in order to act immediately on a broad scale. The experts also agreed that while action was being undertaken, the work of building the knowledge base should continue, particularly to understand the “value-added” contribution of each of the specific aspects of adolescent literacy programs.

A month later, at the annual meeting of the Adolescent Literacy Funders Forum (ALFF),* a consortium of public and private funding organizations interested in adolescent literacy, reviewed the report prepared by the panel. The ALFF members discussed the details of the vision elucidated by the researchers and added their insights to this vision. This report represents a collaborative effort to specify how the adolescent literacy field might take on the challenge of improving achievement.

This report is an effort to
• disseminate more widely the current state of knowledge about adolescent literacy;
• specify the dimensions of adolescent literacy interventions that hold particular promise for improving academic achievement; and
• posit an approach to evaluating programs and understanding the value-added contribution of each dimension.

No single intervention or program will ever meet the needs of all struggling readers and writers. Yet the components of at least initial solutions for all these problems exist in one form or another. The need is for better dissemination, evaluation, and comparison of interventions that work, so administrators and teachers can better select the interventions that are most appropriate for their* ALFF is a consortium of public and private funders of programs and initiatives linked to adolescent literacy. The group formed in 2003 andmeets annually to discuss challenges and new developments in the field. The 2004 gathering was ALFF’s second annual meeting, and thisreport was the topic of discussion.

Why do readers struggle?

The problem is not illiteracy, but comprehension. The bulk of older struggling readers and writers can read, but cannot understand what they read.

In considering how to improve the academic achievement of our nation’sstruggling readers and writers, it is critical to remember that only 10 percent of
students struggle with decoding (reading words accurately), and thirty years of research by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have provided solutions for these decoding problems. Thus this report focuses on the question of which elements of interventions are mostpromising for the large population of struggling students who already decode accurately but still struggle with reading and writing after third grade.


THE FIFTEEN KEY ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE ADOLESCENT LITERACY PROGRAMS

To establish a list of promising elements of effective adolescent literacy programs, the panel considered elements that had a substantial base in
research and/or professional opinion. After considerable discussion, they determined a list of fifteen critical components. (See Table 1.) Literature
supporting these elements is cited in Appendix A.

In an ideal world, schools would be able to implement all fifteen elements, but the list may also be used to construct a unique blend of elements suited to the needs of the students they serve. This report treats each element as a distinct entity, but it is important to recognize that the elements are often
synergistically related, and the addition of one element can stimulate the inclusion of another. The elements should not be seen simply as isolated
elements in an inventory of potential elements, but rather as a group in which elements have a dynamic and powerful interrelationship. For instance, it is difficult to implement text-based collaborative learning (Element 4) without a classroom library of diverse texts (Element 6).We expect that a mixture of
these elements will generate the biggest return.

It remains to be seen what that optimal mix is, and it may be different for different subpopulations of students.
Table 1. Key Elements in Programs Designed to Improve Adolescent Literacy Achievement in Middle and High Schools

1. Direct, explicit comprehension instruction
2. Effective instructional principles embedded in content
3. Motivation and self-directed learning
4. Text-based collaborative learning
5. Strategic tutoring
6. Diverse texts
7. Intensive writing
8. A technology component
9. Ongoing formative assessment of students
10. Extended time for literacy
11. Professional development
12. Ongoing summative assessment of students and programs
13. Teacher teams
14. Leadership
15. A comprehensive and coordinated literacy program

Instructional Improvements Infrastructure Improvements

THE OPTIMAL MIX

In the medical profession, treatment needs to be tailored to an individual patient’s needs; at times, more than one intervention is needed to effectively
treat a patient. Similarly, educators need to test mixes of intervention elements to find the ones that work best for students with different needs.

Two Categories of Elements: Instruction and Infrastructure

The list of elements is divided into two sections: instructional improvements and infrastructural improvements. While the instructional improvements can
have a tremendous impact, it is important to realize that they would be more effective if they were implemented in conjunction with infrastructural supports. Furthermore, the instructional improvements are unlikely to be maintainedor extended beyond the original intervention classrooms if these
infrastructural factors are not in place. Despite the clear advantage of linking instructional improvements to infrastructural improvements, the list prioritizes instructional improvements because of our focus on the individual learneras the unit of intervention and analysis and on improved instruction as the most important element influencing student outcomes. Improving the overall school climate is undeniably a critical factor in improving adolescent literacy,and school reorganization and reform efforts have helped dramatically in this area. However, it too often happens that the climate improves with little or no impact on achievement. For the biggest returns, stakeholders must invest in school reform, with an eye toward curricular improvement. That is, structure and infrastructure changes should be determined by curricular and instructional considerations. Too frequently, changes in school structure (for example, block scheduling, small schools, and so on) have been adopted without first carefully considering curricular and instructional implications.

The list of the fifteen key elements begins with instruction and then focuses on infrastructure that will support the instructional improvements. Improving
instruction, whether done by an entire school or a single teacher, can have dramatic effects on student achievement. However, improving school
infrastructure to better support literacy teachers and students in addition to instructional improvement will reap the biggest rewards. Ultimately, change
can be top down, bottom up, or middle in, but truly effective change must include considerations of both instruction and infrastructure.

Instructional Elements Direct, explicit comprehension instructionEffective adolescent literacy interventions must address reading
comprehension. A number of excellent approaches have been shown to be effective in middle and high school contexts, but no one approachis necessarily better than another; the ideal intervention will tap more than one comprehension instructional approach. Possible approaches include

• comprehension strategies instruction, which is instruction that explicitly gives students strategies that aid them in comprehending a wide variety of
texts;
• comprehension monitoring and metacognition instruction, which is instruction that teaches students to become aware of how they understand
while they read;
• teacher modeling, which involves the teacher reading texts aloud, making her own use of strategies and practices apparent to her students;
• scaffolded instruction, which involves teachers giving high support for students practicing new skills and then slowly decreasing that support to
increase student ownership and self-sufficiency; and
• apprenticeship models, which involve teachers engaging students in a content-centered learning relationship. Note, too, that these approaches are
not listed in order of importance and have been utilized byeffective readers long before they were ever dubbed and defined as
“strategies” or “metacognition.”From age ten, [Benjamin] Franklin was largely a self-taught reader (he had a tutor for a year).

To improve his reading comprehension, he copied passages, made short summaries, rewrote passages, turned essays into rhyming verse and other
games, and avidly discussed what he read with peers. [Frederick] Douglass was also briefly tutored but then forbidden to read. Forced to learn on his own,he too invented reading and writing exercises, summarized passages, played word games, and practiced giving speeches and responding to issues in debate. (Trabasso and Bouchard, 2002) Many of the existing instructional options utilize more than one of these approaches. Whatever approach is utilized, teachers should teach these approaches explicitly by explaining to students how and when to use certain strategies. Teachers should also explain why they are teaching particular strategies and have students employ them in multiple contexts with texts from a variety of genres and subject areas.

Effective Instructional Principles Embedded in Content

This element has two forms. The first form applies to the language arts teacher. When instructional principles are embedded in content, the language arts teacher does not simply teach a technique (such as outlining) as an abstract skill, but teaches it using content-area materials. Students should receive

DIRECT, EXPLICIT COMPREHENSIONINSTRUCTION: AN EXAMPLE

Reciprocal Teaching is a scaffolded approach to teaching comprehensionstrategies. It was designed for youth at any grade level, typicallyscoring in the thirty-fifth percentile or below on standardized readingmeasures, with the aim of teaching them to actively process the text they read in small groups. The teacher models four critical strategies: questioning, clarifying, predicting, and summarizing. The teacher thentransfers responsibility for implementing the strategies to students byhaving them work in small groups. Students either take turns using each strategy or lead discussions by using all four strategies, in the latter case becoming the “teacher.” By taking turns using each of the strategies
with a series of texts, children learn to independently and flexibly apply the strategies on their own.

Questioning poses questions based on a portion of a text the group has read, either aloud or silently. Clarifying resolves confusions about words, phrases, or concepts, drawing on the text when possible. Summarizing sums up the content, identifying the gist of what has been read and discussed.
Predicting suggests what will next happen in or be learned next from the text. Source: Palincsar and Herrenkohl, 2002.

Instruction and then practice their new skills using these materials. Too often  reading and writing instruction focuses solely on literature and doesnot promote the transfer of the skills into the context of content-area materials.Furthermore, learning from reading in content-area texts requires skills that are different than the skills needed to comprehend literature.

Language arts teachers need to expand their instruction to include approaches and texts that will facilitate not only comprehension but alsolearning from texts. The second form of this element applies to subject-area teachers. When instructional principles are embedded in content, subject-area
teachers provide or reinforce instruction in the skills and strategies that are particularly effective in their subject areas. This instruction should becoordinated with the language arts teachers, literacy coaches, and other subject-area teachers. The idea is not that content-area teachers should
become reading and writing teachers, but rather that they should emphasize the reading and writing practices that are specific to their subjects, so studentsare encouraged to read and write like historians, scientists, mathematicians, and other subject-area experts. Additionally, it is important that all subject matter teachers use teaching aids and devices that will help at-risk students better understand and remember the content they are teaching. The use ofsuch tools as graphic organizers, prompted outlines, structured reviews, guided discussions and other instructional tactics that will modify and enhance the curriculum content in ways that promote its understanding and mastery has been shown to greatly enhance student performance—for allstudents in academically diverse classes, not just students who are struggling.

DIRECT, EXPLICIT COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTION: A SECOND EXAMPLE

Reading Apprenticeship puts the teacher in the role of content-areaexpert, and late-middle and high school students are “apprenticed” intothe reasons and ways reading and writing are used within a “discipline”(subject area) and the strategies and thinking that are particularly usefulin that discipline. In reading apprenticeship classrooms, how we readand why we read in the ways we do become part of the curriculum, accompanying a focus on what we read.

Rather than offering a sequence of strategies, reading apprenticeshipis focused on creating classrooms where students become active andeffective readers and learners. To accomplish this, teachers are encouraged to plan along four dimensions: social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building.

The social dimension focuses on establishing and maintaining a safe and supportive environment, where all members’ processes, resources,and difficulties are shared and collaboration is valued. The personal dimension focuses on improving students’ identities and attitudes as readers and their
interest in reading. It also promotes self-awareness, self-assessment, metacognition, and ownership.

The cognitive dimension is where students are given the reading toolsand strategies they need to read like experts in the discipline. The knowledge-
building dimension focuses on building content and topic knowledge and knowledge of a discipline’s typical text structures and styles.

The main tactic is that of metacognitive conversations that make theinvisible aspects of these dimensions visible and open for discussion.Source: Jordan, Jensen, and Greenleaf, 2001.

Motivation and Self-Directed Learning

This element addresses the need to promote greater student engagement andmotivation. As students progress through the grades, they become
increasingly “tuned out,” and building student choices into the school day is an important way to reawaken student engagement. This is critical, because competency in reading is necessary but insufficient by itself to engender betteracademic performance. Students need to be self-regulating not only to becomemore successful academically, but also to be able to employ their skills flexibly long after they leave school.

One way that motivation and engagement are instilled and maintained is to provide students with opportunities to select for themselves the materials they read and topics they research. One of the easiest ways to build some choice into the students’ school day is to incorporate independent reading time in which they can read whatever they choose. Yet this piece of the curriculum is often dropped after the primary grades. Providing students with additional choices, such as research and writing topics, further stimulates motivated and engaged students. However, self-regulation is only developed when students are given choices and the instructional support and aids needed to succeed at their chosen tasks.

Another way to better engage students in literacy and learning is to promote relevancy in what students read and learn. As a first step, teachers need to
“tune in” to their students’ lives in order to understand what they find relevant and why. Then teachers can begin to redesign instruction so that it is more obviously relevant to students.

EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTIONAL PRINCIPLES
EMBEDDED IN CONTENT: AN EXAMPLE

The Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) provides teachers withan array of Content Enhancement Routines to enable them to teach complex curriculum content in ways that make it easier to understand and remember difficult subject matter. For example, there are routines that help teachers show how lesson or unit content is organized as well as to help them clearly explain the important features of a new concept. Additionally, SIM provides an array of targeted strategies to help students learn and deal with a variety of academic tasks. There are four reading strategies: the Word Identification Strategy, the Visual Imagery Strategy, the Self-Questioning Strategy, and the Paraphrasing Strategy. The Word Identification Strategy helps students to break down multi-syllabic words using three simple syllabication rules and a knowledge of roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

The Visual Imagery Strategy helps students create “mental movies” of narratives they read in order to increase comprehension. The Self-Questioning
Strategy helps students determine a motivation for reading by getting them to create questions about the material they will be reading, form predictions
about what the answers will be, and locate their answers in the text. The Paraphrasing Strategy helps students summarize the text stating the
main idea and major details in their own words. Source: Center for Research on Learning, 2001.

Text-Based Collaborative Learning Another element is text-based collaborative learning, which means that when students work in small groups, they should not simply discuss a topic, but interact with each other around a text. This text might be assigned or self-selected reading, or it might be essays that the students are writing. The former case involves designing learning opportunities for pairs or small groups of students that are similar to
the book clubs or literature circles implemented in primary grades. Learning is decentralized in these groups because the meaning drawn from a text or
multiple texts is negotiated through a group process. In addition, such an approach is not limited to the language arts classroom, but can be
implemented in subject-area classes and with students who have a wide range of abilities. For instance, students might read different texts about the
Underground Railroad—each at his or her own reading level—and then present the ideas (rather than the plots) to the circle. A similar approach can be
used in any subject area, math, by having students work together on the same problem or on a set of similar problems. The important aspect of this approach is that teachers provide scaffolding for engagement at every ability level in the class and promote better oral language and content-area skills by giving the students concrete problems to discuss or solve. Such an approach requires that the teacher provide instruction about how to use time effectively,  which means assigning roles within each group, at least initially, to ensure effective implementation.

TEXT-BASED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING: AN EXAMPLE

Questioning the Author engages upper elementary students in whole-class or small-group discussions of texts (including nonfiction) aimed at improving their comprehension and critical-thinking skills. Through guiding “queries” (open-ended questions without clear right answers) teachers get children to literally question the author’s purpose and choices; students eventually come to regard the text as fallible and as a source of information about the author’s thinking. Notable in these discussions is the degree to which children are engaged in trying to comprehend the text. The technique also gets children to voice their confusions as they arise without fear of being regarded as “stupid” for not understanding, as in the following example, where a small group of fourth-grade students discusses a passage about hermit crabs that includes the line “As the crab grows, it changes its shell for a larger one.”

Michael: Maybe it’s growing or something. It said it’s changing its shell for a larger one. But do they take it off?

Nicole:They get them off with their claws.

Terrence:They exchange them.
 

Investigator: So, what are you saying isn’t clear?
 

Michael: How could they change one shell? I mean, I thought it stuck to the body.
 

Nicole: But they get bigger, too.

Michael: I know, but when they grow I thought the shell grows with them.
 

Nicole: It’s like people. Do you keep your clothes on and when you get bigger you break out of them?
 

Terrence: As the crab grows, the shell breaks and it exchanges for another. It wants a larger shell as it gets bigger than it is now.
 

Michael: It’s like clothes, putting it on.
Source: McKeown, Beck, and Worthy, 1993, pp. 564–65.

Strategic Tutoring

Some students require or would benefit from intense, individualized instruction. This is particularly true of the student who struggles with decoding and fluency, but is also true of students requiring short-term, focused help. Such students should be given the opportunity to participate in tutoring,
which need not occur only during the school day. Furthermore, through approaches detailed above, instruction in general education classes should be differentiated to allow students access to important content. Tutoring is referred to as strategic in this element to emphasize that while students may
need tutorial help to acquire critical curriculum knowledge, they also need to be taught “how to learn” curriculum information. Hence, within strategic
tutoring sessions, tutors teach learning strategies while helping students complete their content assignments. The goal of strategic tutoring is to
empower adolescents to complete similar tasks independently in the future.

Diverse Texts

This element involves providing students with diverse texts that present a wide range of topics at a variety of reading levels. Whether teaching reading and writing or a subject area, teachers need to find texts at a wide range of difficulty levels. Too often students become frustrated because they are forced to read books that are simply too difficult for them to decode and comprehend simultaneously. Learning cannot occur under these conditions. Texts must be below students’ frustration level, but must also be interesting; that is, they should be high interest and low readability. Given the wide range of reading and writing abilities present in almost any middle or high school classroom,this means having books available from a wide range of levels on the same topic. The term “diverse texts” is also used to indicate that the material should represent a wide range of topics. Topical diversity in any classroom (or school)library affords students more choices for self-selected reading and research projects. The range of topics should include a wide variety of cultural, linguistic, and demographic groups. Students should be able to find representatives of themselves in the available books, but they should also be able to find representatives of others about whom they wish to learn. High-interest, low-difficulty texts play a significant role in an adolescent literacy program and are critical for fostering the reading skills of struggling readers and the engagement of all students. In addition to using appropriate grade-leveltextbooks that may already be available in the classroom, it is crucial to have a range of texts in the classroom that link to multiple ability levels and connect to students’ background experiences.

Intensive Writing Effective adolescent literacy programs must include an element that helps students improve their writing skills. Fourteen percent of all
freshmen entering degree-granting postsecondary institutions take remedial writing courses (NCES, 2003b). And at public two-year institutions, 23 percent of entering

WRITING REMEDIATION NEEDED

More freshmen entering degree-granting postsecondary institutions take remedial writing courses than take remedial reading courses (NCES, 2003b).
freshmen take remedial writing. Even the best readers in high school do not necessarily write well enough to succeed in college or the business world—or perform well on the SAT, which will include a writing component as of 2005. Nearly 350 degree-granting postsecondary institutions have alreadydecided to require students applying in 2005 to take the SAT writing component (College Board, 2004). Research supports the idea that writing
instruction also improves reading comprehension.

Many of the skills involved in writing, such as grammar and spelling, reinforce reading skills, and effective interventions will help middle and high school
students read like writers and write like readers. Students need instruction in the writing process, but they especially need that instruction to be connected to the kinds of writing tasks they will have to perform well in high school and beyond.

Attention therefore should be given not only to increasing the amount of writing instruction students receive and the amount of writing they do, but also to increasing the quality of writing instruction and assignments.

A Technology Component

Professionals and lay people are increasingly voicing support for inclusion of this element in a literacy program, because technology plays an increasingly central role in our society. Technology is both a facilitator of literacy and a medium of literacy. Effective adolescent literacy programs therefore shoulduse technology as both an instructional tool and an instructional topic.As a tool, technology can help teachers provide needed supports for struggling readers, including instructional reinforcement and opportunities for guided practice. For example, there are computer programs that help students improve decoding, spelling, fluency, and vocabulary, and more programsare quickly being developed to address comprehension and writing.
As a topic, technology is changing the reading and writing demands of modern society. Reading and writing in the fast-paced, networked world require new skills unimaginable a decade ago.

Ongoing Formative Assessment of Students

This element is included under instructional improvements because the best instructional improvements are informed by ongoing assessment of student
strengths and needs. Such assessments are often, but not exclusively, informal and frequently occur on a daily basis, and therefore are not necessarily suited to the summative task of accountability reporting systems. Data should be cataloged on a computer system that would allow teachers,
administrators, and evaluators to inspect students’ progress individually and by class. These formative assessments are specifically designed to inform
instruction on a very frequent basis so that adjustments in instruction can be made to ensure that students are on pace to reach mastery targets.

Infrastructural Elements Extended Time for Literacy

None of the above-mentioned elements are likely to effect much change if instruction is limited to thirty or forty-five minutes per day.The panel strongly
argued the need for two to four hours of literacy-connected learning daily. This time is to be spent with texts and a focus on reading and writing effectively. Although some of this time should be spent with a language arts teacher, instruction in science, history, and other subject areas qualifies as fulfilling the requirements of this element if the instruction is text centered and informed by instructional principles designed to convey content and also to practice and improve literacy skills.

To leverage time for increased interaction with texts across subject areas, teachers will need to reconceptualize their understanding of what it means to
teach in a subject area. In other words, teachers need to realize they are not just teaching content knowledge but also ways of reading and writing specific to a subject area. This reconceptualization, in turn, will require rearticulation ofstandards and revision of preservice training.

Professional Development

Professional development does not refer to the typical onetime workshop, or even a short-term series of workshops, but to ongoing, long-term professional development, which is more likely to promote lasting, positive changes in teacher knowledge and practice. The development effort should also besystemic, including not only classroom teachers but also literacy coaches, resource room personnel, librarians, and administrators. Effective professional development will use data from research studies of adult learning and the conditions needed to effect sustained change. Professional developmentopportunities should be built into the regular school schedule, with consistent opportunities to learn about new research and practices as well as opportunities to implement and reflect upon new ideas.

Effective professional development will help school personnel create and maintain indefinitely a team-oriented approach to improving the instruction and institutional structures that promote better adolescent literacy.

Ongoing Summative Assessment of Students and ProgramsThis element is listed under infrastructural improvements because of the substantial coordination that such assessment requires and because of its intended audience, which is the local school district administration, the state and federal departments of education, and others who fund and/or supportthe school, such as private foundations, the local community, parents, and students. In contrast to formative assessments, these assessments are designed specifically for implementation with continuous progress-monitoring systems. These systems would allow teachers to track students throughout aschool year and, ideally, over an entire academic career, from kindergarten through high school. In addition, these systems would allow for ongoing internal and external evaluation of the implemented program. These data and more formative assessment data could be catalogued on a computer systemthat would allow teachers, administrators, and evaluators to inspect students’
progress individually, by class, by cohort, and by school. These assessments are more formal than the formative assessments, but should go beyond state assessments and be designed to demonstrate progress specific to schooland program goals, and, if possible, to also inform instruction. Ideally, the assessment results would be generated and shared in a timely fashion so that they might also be of use to teachers in planning instruction and to students in monitoring their success and progress in school.

Teacher Teams

This element ensures that the school structure supports coordinated instruction and planning in an interdisciplinary teacher team. This vision
centers on teachers meeting regularly to discuss students they have in common and to align instruction. In the primary grades students see one teacher; in middle and high school grades, their daily routine changes, and they see many teachers during discrete blocks of time devoted to discrete
subjects. This shift often causes a loss in consistency in literacy instruction.Teacher teams are viewed as helpful for reestablishing coordinated instruction in higher grades and as a way to promote teacher collegiality and heighten the likelihood that no child will slip through the cracks. Teacher teams that meet regularly allow teachers to plan for consistency in instruction across subject areas, which is an important step toward a comprehensive and coordinated literacy program.

Leadership

Without a principal’s clear commitment and enthusiasm, a curricular and instructional reform has no more chance of succeeding than any other
school-wide reform. It is critical that a principal assumes the role of an instructional leader, who demonstrates commitment and participates in the school community. This leadership role includes a principal building his or her own personal knowledge of how young people learn and struggle with reading
and writing and how they differ in their needs.

In addition, a principal who takes on the role of instructional leader will attend professional development sessions organized primarily for teachers. This
knowledge and experience will give a principal the necessary understanding to organize and coordinate changes in a school’s literacy program. It will
further give a principal the proper foundation for making the necessary decisions to alter structural elements, such as class schedules, to ensure
optimal programming for student learning.

This element also applies to teachers, who should assume leadership roles and spearhead curricular improvements. Teachers play a role in ensuring the success of curricular reform, and their involvement is all the more crucial when a principal has not assumed the instructional leadership role. Without someone with an informed vision of what good literacy instruction entails leading the charge, instructional change is likely to be beset with problems.

A Comprehensive and Coordinated Literacy Program

In many ways, this component of a program is not obtainable without the other infrastructural improvements and is especially closely aligned to leadership and the establishment of teacher teams. Included in these teams would be additional school personnel, such as librarians, reading specialists,literacy coaches, and resource room teachers. Often in today’s schools one teacher has no idea what another is teaching; this is particularly true in high schools. The vision for an effective literacy program recognizes that creating fluent and proficient readers and writers is a very complex task and requires that teachers coordinate their instruction to reinforce important strategies and concepts. It is important in a comprehensive and coordinated literacy program that teachers work in teams and are responsible for a cohort of students. This is not to advocate that math, science, and history teachers should becometeachers of reading and writing, but rather that interdisciplinary teams that meet on a regular basis will provide opportunities for reading and writing teachers to better support content-area teachers.

These teams can also create more consistent instruction by reinforcing reading and writing skills, such as note-taking and comprehension strategies.
An effective literacy program should implement many of the instructional elements in a consistent and coordinated way. Because the literacy needs of
adolescents are so diverse, the intensity and nature of instruction in acomprehensive and coordinated literacy program—as well as which teachers
are involved—will vary considerably. Some students need their content teachers to make only modest accommodations or adjustments; other students need learning strategies embedded in content material, explicit strategy instruction, or instruction in basic skills or even the basic language
elements that are the foundation of literacy competence. Secondary schools must recognize adolescents’ varying needs and develop a comprehensive
program that will successfully address the needs of all their students.A comprehensive and coordinated literacy program will also initiate or augment collaborations with out-of-school organizations and the local community to provide more broad-based interactions and greater support for students. These collaborations would further secure student motivation by providing students with a sense of consistency between what they experience in and out of school.

THE VISION: SIMULTANEOUSLY IMPROVE ACHIEVEMENT AND DEVELOP THE RESEARCH BASE

The discussion that follows provides details of an overarching approach to implementing the elements of adolescent literacy programs which not only will improve student achievement in the short run but also will improve the research base defining which factors contribute most to improved student achievement. The factors most likely to yield the desired outcomes are then discussed in depth. Primary among the recommendations to stakeholders in adolescent literacy is to approach the task of intervention with the dual purposes of effecting immediate change for current students and building the field’s knowledge base. Too often these are seen as goals that work in opposition: one must either support a small-scale demonstration project designed to contribute to the research base on adolescent literacy or support large-scale implementations designed to improve current studentoutcomes. Although knowledge can be gained from both approaches, scale-up investigations often provide only knowledge about effective scaling practices rather than effective literacy practices.

However, this perceived trade-off between increasing knowledge and increasing achievement is a false dichotomy. We can learn a great deal about
which literacy elements are effective for which students by attending to the challenges and variations in different implementations and contexts.By embracing the concept of a “planned variation” of elements, which is described below, various stakeholders could coordinate their efforts to address the need to improve the achievement of today’s students while simultaneously augmenting the field’s knowledge base. For instance, funders would set their own priorities for selecting programs but would require funded programs to conduct rigorous evaluations that allow comparisons across projects. Likewise, states and districts trying out new interventions would require consistent and rigorous evaluation across interventions and contexts for cross-comparison. This balanced vision combines action with research and enhances the chances that educators will learn how to select better and more effective interventions to advance literacy.

Evaluations: An Opportunity for Research

To resolve the problem of deciding between the competing priorities of building knowledge and improving achievement—between the two extremes
of small-scale demonstrations and large-scale implementations—policymakers, funders, and educators are urged to envision their choice and
backing of programs as an opportunity to perform controlled, rigorous research. Researchers, too, are urged to reconceptualize how they perform
research, especially by coordinating their research efforts.


A Mix of Intervention Elements

By heeding the inclusion and exclusion of specific promising factors present in grant proposals, stakeholders can select programs and interventions with regard to the mix of elements they represent. In this way, stakeholders—be they researchers, funders, policymakers, or educators in a single school—can contribute to an invaluable universal database that would be useful for studying how certain factors interact when different mixes of elements are implemented with different populations of students. Such a “planned variation” of factors would allow comparison not only of the effectivenessof entire programs, but also the effectiveness of specific components of the programs. Table 2 shows six hypothetical programs that share some elements and not others. Note how hypothetical programs 3 and 4 include many common elements, but only one includes extended time for literacy instructionand practice. Programs 3 and 4 could then be evaluated with regard to the elements they share and also for the main difference between them.
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Study criticizes how reading is taught

By REBECCA TRELA
October 14, 2004


In early grades children learn to read - in later grades they read to learn. At least that's how educators hope school systems work.


But a study released Wednesday argues that educators and policy makers overlook low reading comprehension skills of middle and high school
students. Some children leave elementary school understanding the individual words on the page but not the meaning of what they read.

"Seventy percent of ninth grade students are reading below grade level," said Andres Henriquez of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which funded the study. "By June, 540,000 high school students will have dropped out of school. We can do better than that."

The Alliance for Excellent Education, which conducted the research, identified 15 elements to improve literacy, primarily through teacher training and
comprehension development.

"We're as a country doing very little to reach middle and high school students who have reading difficulties," said Cynthia Sadler, the alliance's interim
president. "In most cases, when kids leave third grade, we're not teaching them to read anymore."

Michael Kamil, professor of psychological studies in education at Stanford University, suggested a national K-12 literacy policy. He stressed training
teachers to "systematically embed" the delivery of reading comprehension in other subjects, such as math, science and history.

"Right now, teachers see themselves as content-area teachers," said Samuel Miranda, literacy coordinator for Bell Multicultural High School in Washington. "If we want kids who are in low-income areas to reach competitive levels, every teacher needs to be a reading teacher."

Bell is one of a few high schools targeting illiteracy through professional development and comprehension exercises, Sadler said. The school is made up of mostly Hispanic and black students. Ninety-eight percent of students qualify for free lunches, a measure of poverty, and the graduation rate is 82
percent, according to the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

The Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington policy and research organization, sees high school as the "missing middle" of federal education
funding - falling behind Head Start for pre-school children, K-8 programs and Pell Grants for college students.

The alliance's studies are the basis for the Pathways for All Students to Succeed Act, introduced by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. It would provide $1
billion for literacy education in grades six through 12. That bill and a similar House bill are being considered by committees.

"The older these kids get without being able to read, the more serious it gets," said Kamil. "We can't afford not to do this."
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Report: Few high school grads ready for college
Friday, October 15, 2004 Posted: 2:38 PM EDT (1838 GMT)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Fewer than one in four high school graduates who took the ACT test have taken the course work necessary to succeed in college, according to a report released Thursday by the not-for-profit company that administers the college entrance exam.

The report by ACT Inc. showed that only 22 percent of the 1.2 million high school graduates who took the exam this year were ready for college
coursework in math, English and science. The number of students tested accounted for about 40 percent of the total number of 2004 high school
graduates, said Ken Gullette, spokesman for the Iowa City-based education company.

"Students need to understand that if they're planning on being successful in college and the workplace, they need to be very serious in high school and
take the most challenging courses they can take," Gullette said.

ACT uses benchmarks to assess a student's chances of success in college.

A student is likely to earn a grade of C or higher in the testing areas if he or she receives a score of 18 in English, 22 in math and 24 in science, Gullette said. The scores are out of a possible 36.

Gullette said fewer students are taking the core curriculum courses important for college readiness -- outlined by government reports as four years of
English and three years each of math, science and social studies.

The number of students taking core curriculum courses in high school rose from 43 percent in the 1980s to more than 60 percent in the late 1990s, but that number has since declined to 56 percent, Gullette said.

Phil Caffrey, senior associate director of admissions at Iowa State University, said there has been concern that a growing number of students are not taking the rigorous college prep courses.

Many students think they can "cruise" senior year, Caffrey said.

"Math is sort of like a foreign language. If you don't stay familiar with it, you'll lose a lot of what you've learned," he said.

The ACT report recommends that measures be taken even before high school to help prepare students for college.

Many students in K-8 aren't learning the foundational skills they need to take challenging courses when they get to high school, Gullette said. "Once you get to high school, if you're not prepared to take challenging courses, it's almost too late.
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Specialist Stresses Enjoyment And Understanding of Reading
Tuesday, October 12, 2004


Lucy McCormick Calkins has been called the Moses of reading and writing education in the United States. Over three decades, she has taught her
methods to hundreds of thousands of teachers -- pioneering workshops in schools, as well as blocks of class time devoted to students doing their own
writing and independent reading.

Calkins founded and directs the Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University's Teachers College, which is building a knowledge base about
literacy and providing professional development. In the past year, she has trained teachers in most of New York City's elementary schools as part of a
literacy effort with heavy emphasis on professional development.

"The most important thing is that kids are reading what they love to read," says Lucy McCormick Calkins of Columbia University's Teachers College. (Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)

Staff writer Valerie Strauss spoke with Calkins, who will be training teachers soon in the D.C. public schools.

Q Making sure that young children can read and write has become something of a national obsession. We hear many politicians and educators say there is a crisis around this issue. Is there?

A There certainly is a perceived crisis. I don't think that the evidence is there that kids are reading and writing less well than they used to, but we know in today's world a higher level of literacy skills is required. And clearly, this perceived crisis is having consequences. The consequences are both
troublesome and important. The troubles are increased anxiety, increased time on test prep, increased surveillance of everything by state legislators and state departments of education and the federal Department of Education.

There is a tendency to reach for quick-fix programs, to script teachers' every move, to systematize everything. But the perceived crisis has also led to new and long-overdue attention to the issue of unequal access to educational opportunities and to the disparity of performance between kids at high-poverty schools [and] high-income schools.

You have seen the country go back and forth in what is known as "the reading wars," essentially a struggle over whether phonics (by which children are taught how to decode language) or whole language (which concentrates on reading for meaning) should rule instruction. Where are we now? Is one
approach better?

Classroom teachers have always known that we need phonics and we need comprehension. We need to put the best of children's literature in the hands of kids, and we also need to teach them the strategies of phonics. I'm sure the battle is not over. I think it was overstated by the media, though extreme versions probably did exist on both sides. Now I think that people's practices for reading have come a little more to the center.

Doesn't President Bush's Reading First initiative stress phonics over comprehension and other kinds of instruction?

Yes.

What do you think are the limits of a strictly phonics approach?

Kids need to understand what literacy is for. The most important thing first is to help them fall in love with books, become accustomed to following and
creating in their minds a story. We need them to understand that the pages of a story go together and create a drama in your mind. We want them to reach for books and carry books with them and value books. That doesn't happen if you only teach phonics. . . . Phonics is important. But standardized tests are more and more challenging. Kids can't excel in them if all they get is phonics. They need to be able to do a lot of high-level literacy.

Is there an age at which children should know how to read?

I wish that we lived in a world where kids could come to reading in their own time. But that's not the world that I see. I think that a lot of schools start
classifying and labeling and categorizing kids by the end of first grade. And therefore, I'd encourage parents to be activist on behalf of their kids from a
very early age.

Do you have a favorite kid's book for early readers?

I think the "Frog and Toad" books [by Arnold Lobel] are fantastic.

Does it matter if kids are reading fiction or nonfiction?

The most important thing is that kids are reading what they love to read. I think it is great that they read fiction and nonfiction. Both are valuable, but they develop different muscles. When you are reading fiction, you are building the world of a story in your mind. It is almost a drama. You are acting it out. Nonfiction can be narrative, too. But with non-narrative nonfiction, you are constructing a knowledge base, almost like putting a machine in your mind, putting the parts together, building a diagram, rather than a movie. It's a different mental process. Kids need both.

Are there differences between what boys and girls read?

We know boys often choose to read nonfiction and girls choose to read fiction, and schools don't support enough nonfiction reading. If that's going to be
your son's entrance ramp into reading, give it to them. . . . There is a widespread recognition that girls grow up loving to read more than boys. It is
exacerbated by teachers, who are mostly women. The women are choosing the books the children read. That tends to be realistic fiction. Libraries are filled with "Junie B. Jones" [by Barbara Park]. . . . Parents need to read to boys. They go out and play sports with boys but don't read to them. They need to read in front of their boys, and to their boys. And they've got to find books boys love. The "Captain Underpants" books [by Dav Pilkey] are great.

And what about girls who want to read all 108 books in a series that a parent thinks is lousy?

Series books provide a lot of support -- the same characters, the same setting. You don't have to build a whole new world each time. You can build habits of a discerning reader with series books, notice a brand-new character or predict what will happen based on knowledge of a character's personality. There is also a social dynamic around them. Your friends are reading them, you are trading them. Series books can help develop a lot of habits of good reading, even if the parent doesn't like them.

How has your work changed over the years?

I used to work with individual teachers who would leave their schools and come for professional development. . . . But more and more we are working
with whole schools and whole districts and whole regions. That is a very important change. The research is clear that kids profit from having
consistency, when the approach they receive in first grade is the same as in second grade. I think that, ultimately, the only way teachers will receive enough professional development is if we start creating schools where professional development is part of the everydayness of what teachers do. . . . You can have all the programs in the world, but the good teacher is what makes the difference.
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When you find your child with the wrong teacher

By Larry Slonaker

Mercury News, October 12, 2004.


Your child's been in school for more than a month. Maybe you've attended Back to School Night,'' or exchanged notes with the teacher. By now you
should be getting a good read on what the teacher is like, and how things are going.

But if you're on the fifth straight week of tears spilling on homework, or the howls of ``That teacher hates me'' haven't died down, you're probably ready to confront one of the touchiest issues in public education.

Do you ride it out, and hope that the situation gets better? Or do you take the drastic step of asking for a switch to another teacher?

Seeking a switch is an agonizing decision for parents and school administrators alike -- one that can have unanticipated effects and should not be undertaken lightly. And even when a parent insists on a change, it's almost certain that school officials will resist, given class-size limits and other
obstacles.

``You can understand the administrator's point of view, but the issue is your kid,'' said Judy Goddess, education author and parent advocate. ``And you've got to get your kid in the right class.''

When administrators draw up classroom rosters, they consider issues like gender, ability, and in some cases even teacher compatibility. But often where a student is placed is just the luck of the draw. And it's entirely possible that you will draw a teacher who -- while being entirely professional, dedicated and a fine human being -- just doesn't click with your child.

``There are some personality types that will never get along,'' Goddess said. For example, Teacher A might have a strict rule against fidgeting. ``If your kid is fidgety, it's just not going to work.''

Logistical difficulties

School administrators typically will ask you to try to make it work. Switching students can be a logistical nightmare, especially in lower grades, where the number of students is limited to 20 per class.

``I haven't yet run across a principal who says no just to say no,'' said Jose Manzo, director of elementary education at San Jose Unified. ``But it's not as simple as, `There's a slot over there -- why don't you just move him there?' ''

Some administrators believe learning to adapt is central to a child's education. ``The bottom line is, the child is going to come across many teachers in school, with many different personalities,'' said Rosemarie Young, a Louisville elementary school teacher and president of the National Association of
Elementary School Principals.

Administrators might resist change for other reasons, some of which are not obvious. For example, parents who seek out certain teachers often are the
same ones who are the most involved in the classroom.

``You end up with one class that's heavy with all the parent support and parent money,'' said parent Kathryn Longtin. She volunteers at her daughter's school, Randol Elementary in San Jose.

``That's one of the unfair things -- you do end up with these powerhouse classes.''

When a conflict arises between teacher and student, parent advocates and school administrators agree it's best to try to manage it first through
communication.

``Just like in any environment, it's hard for somebody to improve in a certain area if they don't know there's a problem,'' Manzo said. The district first asks parents ``to speak to teachers about their concerns.''

Student responsibilities

When they explore the issue, parents might find a problem doesn't lie just with the teacher.

``There are responsibilities my child needs to fulfill in terms of keeping up with work, resolving conflicts and working with his teachers,'' said parent Sue
McAllister, whose son attends Independence High School in San Jose.

But occasionally, in spite of good-faith attempts at resolving conflicts, ``you get to the point where your child is not going to succeed.'' When it has reached that point, McAllister has worked to switch classes both for her daughter, who has graduated, and her son.

Parents don't have a legal right to demand a switch, Goddess said, but they do have the right to be advocates for their children. She recommends being as specific as possible in requesting a new teacher. ``It can't just be that, `Mrs. X isn't a good teacher.' ''

Another key is to be assertive without being aggressive. Many parents -- especially recent immigrants -- ``are not confident,'' said Virgilio Vargas, head
of the Parent Institute for Quality Education in San Jose.

``We tell parents, `You need to be pro-active. Don't just let the school do the job of educating your children.' ''

Because of language handicaps, many immigrant students are wrongly placed in special-education classes, he said. So he tells parents to get involved in placement decisions. Otherwise, ``your child will leave high school on a special-education skill level.''

Many parents don't wait for problems to arise in the fall. They put in requests for particular teachers in the preceding spring.

That is Longtin's approach. She tries to observe classes in grades a year ahead of her daughter's. Armed with that, ``I get a good feel of where my
daughter would be best placed.''

She said administrators have told her they ``don't take requests,'' but she makes them anyway -- and usually meets with success.

But many parents don't have the time or means to observe classes. And even some who do, choose not to get so involved in casting their child's educators.

That's the philosophy of Heather Lerner, who has children at Hacienda and Castillero schools in San Jose. She once considered breaking her policy when her son was assigned a teacher who had conflicts with an older sibling. But she decided to go along with the assignment, and now calls the result ``a dream match.''

She marvels at the ``amazing teachers we would have missed out on'' if she had tried to handpick teachers. ``I am so glad I never went the special request route.''

Lerner's conclusion, she said, mimics an axiom popular among kindergarten teachers: ``You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit.''
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Left High and Dry
by Linda Schrock Taylor

Even after three days, I continue to be angry, shocked, and resentful. Never have I witnessed such unfair behaviors from the very individuals who should have been acting in the best interests of children; from the very individuals who claim that the schools are "child-centered."

Most of us are now well aware that very few children ever test out of the "black hole" of special education. The "speech and language" students get out; the high school drop-outs escape; those who manage to stay the course, do leave with a diploma, meaningful or not. But very few special placements end because of successful remediation. With full knowledge of these depressing statistics, we were therefore elated when the results of the three-year re-evaluation came back that this student no longer qualified for special education services due to having made so many gains in reading, writing, and math.

Fear, however, was the student's second reaction; fear about leaving the support and safety found within my classroom. So we talked for weeks. We discussed strengths, abilities, motivation, and you-can-do-its. We reviewed how swiftly she reads through series of books. We considered comprehension skills solid enough to allow her to "become lost" in a book, despite noise and activities about her. Still, the child was nervous and very worried.

I could certainly understand her reluctance, for I have never forgotten a similar situation in my own life. I had successfully completed a swimming course, but before I could believe in my new competency in this area that I most feared, or have the opportunity for much practice, all supports were removed. An instructor ordered me to shed outer clothing, jump into the shallow end of the pool, then swim rapidly to the deep end – where an adult instructor was pretending to be a drowning victim. I was expected to "save" her. She played her part well, but my new skills failed me. She fought me and pulled me under water several times, until the tables turned. That "victim" had to drag me, drowning, from the bottom of the pool and still, forty years later, I hate to swim.

I did not want this child set up to fail, as I had been.

So we discussed options that could provide her with scaffolding and support while allowing her time to strengthen skills and gain self-assurance. We thought that we had come up with a very child-centered plan – (our district claims to put the children first) – one that would help this child exit special
education, by transitioning from the shelter of my classroom. Our suggestion, that she serve as my teacher's aide for one class, would not only assist the child in successfully handling this large change in her life, but would enable her to solidify her own skills by using them to help younger children learn to read.

This plan was discussed with the certified special education consultant – the same one who had done the testing – and she fully agreed that this shy, quiet child should have support – almost a bridge – from special education services to total autonomy in regular education classes. One month prior to the meeting, a note, explaining the child's needs for incremental changes and support, was sent to the counselor. However, the counselor and principal (the two members of the IEP team who have no training in special education) were offended by our attempts to comfort the child and plan a safety net.
 

The meeting began and the principal told the team that I had "put the district over a barrel" by discussing the child's needs with the child, and he made it clear that he would not agree to any plan that would provide transitional placement or support. We were all (except the counselor) shocked by his unfairness. We were appalled by the fact that such closed-minded behavior would come from a principal who, of all people, should know that special education laws require that such decisions be made by an IEP TEAM, not by an IEP DICTATOR; that such decisions should be based on common sense; that such decisions should be made according to the best interests of the child.

He was true to his word, and stubbornly refused any and all suggestions. He would not agree to a year as an aide; he would not agree to the first semester, only, as an aide. He would not agree to "independent study" in literature, under my guidance, even though I have a master's degree in American Literature. He would not agree to an internship. He pushed for a meeting to be held, after the child had spent 5 ½ weeks in full time regular education, to evaluate how badly the child might be failing. Having ignored parental requests; student preferences; and all advice from the certified special education staff, he walked out of the meeting, leaving the child "high and dry" and set up for failure

As if the child's disappointment weren't already enough, the counselor pulled out a pre-arranged "School to Work" type schedule. Still disregarding the needs of the child, the wisdom of the parent, and the advice of the trained special education teachers, the counselor filled the first two years of high school with difficult, required classes, leaving the final two years open for vocational programming. (Recall that Marc Tucker and the Clintons drafted the School-to-Work legislation so that the offspring of American sheep could be forced, by eighth grade, to choose life vocations based on the projected needs of local business and industry.)

The mother insisted that the child did NOT want to attend the vocational center, preferring, instead, a career in art and design. But, the "I know my child" from the mother was ignored; the skills and goals of the child were ignored; the advice from the "team" members trained in special education were ignored. The counselor forgot the PR babble of a child-centered philosophy, bowed to the dictates of the principal, and solidified a class schedule that allows no transitional support, but retains time for vocational mandates.

This meeting, which should have been conducted as a celebration, ended in frustration and discouragement. After advising the parent to seek advice and advocacy before signing the papers, I returned to my classroom, forgetting to serve the brownies that my husband had prepared as a reward
– a reward honestly earned by a child who had worked hard enough to beat incredible odds and fight her way out of the Black Hole of Special Education.

Instead of the treats serving as a "BRAVO" to the child's achievement, they set, uneaten and left to dry – a sad reminder of a system too arrogant, too dictatorial, and too retaliatory, to be flexible enough, and honorable enough, to provide a helping hand to an innocent child. "She no longer
qualifies for special education services, and that's it!" he maintains.

This cruel and rigid stance may stem from anger over the impending loss of federal "black hole" monies. It may derive, as retaliation for my successful remediation of, and advocacy for, special needs students. But for whatever reason, the fact is that a deserving, hardworking student has been left high
and dry, and the decision was made by one unyielding person, rather than by the legal IEP team.

The repercussions from such actions could cause many teachers to reconsider providing special education programming so successful that children are able to escape the dark, swirling trap. If teachers give in to this type of intimidation – due to fear that students, lacking sensible transitions and supports, will be set up to fail in regular education – all will be lost.

Should large numbers of special education students begin testing out of special classrooms, the financial loss for the schools would be great. However, if the students continue to be retained in dumbed-down classes, the personal, lifelong price paid by the students will be without measure.
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Too Many Cooks Running Our Schools
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
By Nancy Salvato

The curriculum in our schools has been spoiled by the fact that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. The academic agenda of the public school system is as much determined by what is politically incorrect to discuss in the schools, as it is by the basic assumptions about the academic skills necessary to survive in our society.

It is a shame that in Social Studies and History, what one individual might find of value is determined to be unimportant or too controversial to examine
because another group doesn’t feel the same way or might not receive as much positive coverage. If schools were under local control, then the overriding values held by those in the community would be considered when developing the philosophy that guides the school.

Because some subjects have been elevated in importance in terms of academic testing, other areas for study get much less consideration because the school ranking won’t be dependent on student scores in that area. One subject that deserves so much more attention and respect is Civic Education.

Due to the current value on multiculturalism and a global world community, there has been growing support in the academic community for the
International Baccalaureate world history curriculum; a program affiliated with UNESCO (To understand the true nature of the IB agenda, read the following pieces archived at The Rant.us)

At the same time, there has been a devaluation of the importance of Civic Education; a curriculum designed to develop the student disposition to be civically active. There is more to being civic minded than just picking up litter in the park on Saturday. A civically disposed citizen must receive an education in Constitutional Literacy to take a discerning stand on social, economic, political issues.

In some states, the only Civic Education that a student receives is considered part of the broader curriculum of Social Studies. But teaching Social Studies does not require our students to examine the U.S. Constitution in a way that is necessary to be able to apply the document to current events. Worse, not all states test Social Studies because the scores are not considered to receive federal funding. Social Studies is becoming irrelevant in our nation’s schools.

Although the federal government will test students in Math and Science every two years as part of their National Report card with the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP, it will have been 8 years before Civics will again be tested … this is despite the extremely poor scores which resulted in l998. It has been acknowledged that this is a problem, but unless Civics is elevated in importance, it will not receive sorely needed attention. Independent school systems do not have to follow a national curriculum. Parents who send their kids to an independent school can take the time to pick and choose one that reflects their values. More choices would increase the possibility of a much better match between a student and a school. At least parents would have a say over whether their children are going to indoctrinated into a global agenda or learn the value of our Constitution in a Civics program. George Washington said. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." To me, choice is badly needed in the world of education. Copyright © Nancy Salvato 2004

Nancy Salvato is a contractor with Prism Educational Consulting. She serves as Educational Liaison for Illinois’ 23rd Senatorial District. She works nationally and locally furthering the cause of Civic Education. Her writing is widely published on the internet and occasionally in print venues such as the Washington Times. Her opinions have been heard on select radio programs across the nation. Additionally, her writing has been recognized by the US Secretary of

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No Child Left Behind is Leaving Children Behind

Tuesday, October 12, 2004
By Marty Solomon

A Stanford University study shows that in 11 of 15 states studied, student achievement test scores have either leveled off or declined, questioning the validity of the No Child Left Behind law.

But it should be expected that the NCLB law does not work. NCLB is based on illogical assumptions, unattainable goals and employs a one-size-fits-all model. Basically, NCLB is a wish-list of “wouldn’t it be great,” hopes. For example, the NCLB law assumes that every child in America, regardless of mental capacity, emotional handicaps, background, motivation and will, can achieve at the same proficiency level as all other children and that all children can excel in every subject. Where did anyone get such an absurd notion? There is not a single theory or study that has ever even hinted at such a ridiculous idea.

How do such counterintuitive beliefs become law? Most legislators make decisions for other people based upon their own personal positive and negative encounters thinking in terms of what worked for them, not realizing, appreciating or understanding the plight of folks less fortunate, where the motivations and upbringings are so different. Contemporary theory tells us that learning is a much more complex process than is commonly thought. That is, for children who are academically lagging, you cannot open up their brains with a can-opener, pour knowledge in, zip them back up and expect them to be transformed into educated, grade-level students, which is what NCLB assumes. Everyone should know that learning is a step-by-step process. You need to sit height:19px;">up before you can stand up, and walk before you can run. You cannot learn calculus without having first mastered arithmetic and algebra. Children develop a base of knowledge and grow that base at each step, in an accumulative process, starting long before they go to school. This is why so many start school far behind.

Moreover, human beings possess multiple intelligences. Harvard’s Dr. Howard Gardner has theorized that these intelligences include Linguistic intelligence as in a poet), Logical-mathematical intelligence (as in a scientist), Musical intelligence (as in a composer), Spatial intelligence (as in a sculptor or airplane pilot), Bodily kinesthetic intelligence (as in an athlete or dancer), Interpersonal intelligence (as in a salesman or teacher) and Intrapersonal intelligence exhibited by individuals with accurate views of themselves). A striking example of this is a person who might be labeled a savant, who exhibits extraordinary intelligence in one field, such as music, but cannot add two numbers. Or someone who can multiply 5-digit numbers in his head, but cannot tell you today’s date.

In short, all youngsters are different. They learn at different speeds, develop at different rates, are better in some subjects than others and are excited by some subjects while bored by others. One of the silliest assumptions made in NCLB is that all children should be able to excel in every subject. It will never happen demonstrating that NCLB is hopelessly out of touch with reality.

NCLB also assumes that each year, the children coming to each grade perform better than their peers did the year before. Even VJ Sing or Tiger Woods cannot improve their golf scores year after year. And so it is with our children. Finally, under NCLB, most schools in nearly every state will be labeled as unsatisfactory which could result in teachers becoming overly discouraged and children seeing themselves as failures. We must not let this happen. The NCLB law needs to be changed drastically so that every child can be a success story---so that teachers can individually evaluate children’s needs, prescribe the best individual educational plans and allow each child to achieve at his/her highest potential, whatever level that might be.

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Price of 6-Year-Old's Life Put at $20 Million

By CHRIS BRISTOL

YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC, October 12, 2004.

The Sunnyside School District should pay $20 million, not for what it did, but for what it didn't do to prevent the death of a 6-year-old autistic boy who drowned in a canal after he escaped from his classroom, an attorney for the boy's parents said in closing arguments Wednesday.

Wrapping up a wrongful-death trial that began eight days ago, Yakima attorney Jay Carroll accused the district of failing to take adequate steps to prevent Joshua Hui from getting loose and then waiting 45 minutes on Sept. 11, 2001, to notify the police that he had.

John and Fen Hui once owned a restaurant in Sunnyside but sold the place after their son's death and moved to Bellevue, where Fen Hui is being treated for cancer. They are suing the school district for negligence.

Minutes count. Seconds count," Carroll told the jury. "That little boy could run. ... The school district knew, they knew, that Joshua could get out, and that he was in danger if he did.

But an attorney for the school district argued it was total speculation" to say the boy's death was caused by the district and complained that $20 million — a damage figure the jury never heard until the very end of the trial — was an outrageous and unjustified sum to ask for.

That's not about justice, Yakima attorney Robert Boggs said. Asking for $20 million is profiting from tragedy.

The Yakima County Superior Court jury of seven women and four men went home for the night after deliberating about three hours Wednesday. They will resume deliberations today.

Joshua Hui was impulsive and had a history of running off, a common problem for autistic children, and Carroll argued the accident was preventable had school officials at Washington Elementary taken reasonably foreseeable precautions to safeguard his classroom from Carroll also accused the school district of failing to adequately train teacher's aides in Joshua's self-contained classroom about autistic children and for failing to train school staff, in general, about what to do if a child got loose.

But Carroll was particularly vehement that school officials waited too long, perhaps as long as 45 minutes, to call the police after efforts to find the boy on campus proved fruitless.

By then, a nun at the nearby St. Joseph's convent had already been in contact with the boy, as had a Sunnyside police officer. Although they were concerned about what a small child was doing alone on the street, neither knew the boy had run away from school or that he was autistic.

This was critical information that the police needed to know and that (Officer) Cory Rosen needed to know, because he would have grabbed Joshua, and Joshua would have been safe, Carroll told the jury, echoing the officer's Much of the evidence in the case revolved around the confusing sequence of events, known to jurors simply as "The Timeline," that culminated in the boy's death. Boggs countered in his closing argument that ultimately it did not matter how long school officials waited to call the police.

I submit nothing would have changed, because (the police) were already looking for Joshua at that point, Boggs said.

Boggs also disputed the claims that teacher's aides had been inadequately trained or that Joshua had been an extreme escape risk at the school. The boy had a history of running off once outside, Boggs said, but the reason he had never escaped a classroom before was that he had never tried.

Nobody ever said ... that he needed to be restrained somehow, Boggs said.

Although the Hui has suffered a terrible tragedy, juries must render verdicts in a dispassionate way free of sympathy for the plaintiffs, Boggs said.

That's hard to do, Boggs told the jury, but you're supposed to look at this in a rational matter. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Black Students Not Culturally Biased Against Academic Achievement, Duke University Researcher Says

DURHAM, N.C., Oct. 4, 2004 (AScribe Newswire) -- Contrary to popular belief, most black students do not carry a cultural bias against high achievement into the classroom. Instead, new research shows that an anti-achievement attitude time and is most likely to occur in schools where blacks are grossly underrepresented in the most challenging courses, said Duke University public policy professor William Oppositional attitudes are not 'learned in the black community,' as suggested, but are instead constructed in schools under certain conditions, Darity said.

Darity is research professor of public policy studies, African-American studies and economics at Duke's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. He also has an appointment in economics at the The findings counter a commonly held belief, voiced in recent months by such prominent black Americans as politician Barack Obama and entertainer Bill Cosby, that black students are culturally predisposed to limit their scholastic success and worry that excelling will prompt peers to accuse them of acting white, Darity said.

Darity's conclusions are based on research conducted in North Carolina from 2000 to 2001 with Karolyn Tyson, sociology professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Domini Castellino, a research scientist and psychologist with Duke's Center for Child and Family Policy.

Race-related pressure to avoid or disparage academic challenges did not exist at the elementary grades, the research showed. Rather, researchers found that adolescents in North Carolina harbor a general sentiment against high academic achievement, regardless of race. Researchers documented race- related oppositional attitudes at only one of 11 schools where they interviewed students.

Our explanation for this finding centers on the extent to which 'rich' white students were overrepresented in rigorous courses and programs, a situation that breeds animosity and resentment among the many toward the privileged few,Darity said.

The research suggests that animosity toward high- students regardless of race - grows over time and develops from general concern among elementary-age students about arrogance to a more focused concern among adolescents about academic inequities between status groups.

Outsiders who are able to cross the achievement boundary, which is often established during the primary grades through gifted programs, are sometimes seen by others as interlopers, intruding on a world not meant for people like them, the study reports.

The research project, titled Breeding Animosity: The 'Burden of Acting White' and Other Problems of Status Group Hierarchies on Schools,looked at North Carolina course enrollment data, along with results of interviews with students in elementary, middle and high schools, to identify factors related to low minority enrollment in gifted programs, honors classes and Advanced Placement classes.

Interviewers asked students a standard set of questions about their grades, a academic placement, course selections and attitudes toward school, learning and achievement, as well as other aspects of the school experience. Teachers, administrators and counselors also were interviewed. The research report is under review for publication and is available online at www.pubpol.duke.edu/

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School inclusion policies not working, says report

Polly Curtis, education correspondent
Tuesday October 12, 2004

The government's drive to teach more disabled pupils in mainstream schools is failing, despite the fact that teachers think more inclusive education is a good idea, the schools watchdog said today.

In the first major report since the government strengthened the rights of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) to go to mainstream instead of special schools, Ofsted found that the proportion of SEN pupils in mainstream schools had remained static.

The Ofsted inspectors reported that despite having a better attitude to inclusive education, most schools had not improved their provision.

The chief inspector of Ofsted, David Bell, said: The report paints a varied picture of success so far. Most schools have been convinced of the benefits of inclusion. However, against common perceptions, the proportion of pupils with statements of SEN in mainstream schools has not yet been affected by inclusion framework."

The report, Special educational needs and disability: towards inclusive schools, found that although more schools wanted to be seen as inclusive and regarded it as a positive thing, their provision for SEN pupils was no broader than it was before the government legislation.

SEN pupils are those with any condition that might affect their learning. They might be dyslexic, have attention disorders or physical disabilities, which mean they are wheelchair users.

However, it is pupils who have behavioural and social problems that bring the biggest challenges. Headteachers struggled to reconcile the rights of the individual child with that of the whole school or class, which they feared would suffer if appropriate attention was not given to the child, the report said.

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Local authorities were also failing to foster links between mainstream and special schools to create more integration.

Mr Bell added: Continued efforts are called for to ensure that more mainstream schools have the capacity and staff are confident about admitting and supporting pupils with more complex needs, especially those with social and behavioural difficulties.

Until more is expected from the lowest-attaining pupils, improvement in provision for pupils with SEN and in the standards they reach will be slow."

As Ofsted published its report, the woman who pioneered the drive towards more inclusive teaching called for a major rethink of SEN policy. Mary Warnock, who authored a report on special education 25 years ago that first challenged the norm of SEN pupils being educated separately, argued that although SEN pupils were taught in mainstream schools, they were often taught apart from other pupils, and without proper provision could become victims of bullying.

Writing in the magazine of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers union, Ms Warnock said: Such children will not, in any case, be well served if they are taught mainly by classroom assistants, or are removed into units isolated from their contemporaries. And they are likely to encounter bullying."Full report Special educational needs and disability: towards inclusive schools.

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October 12, 2004

Seeking Big Results in Smaller Schools

By JULIA SILVERMAN
The Associated Press

LEBANON, Ore. -- Thinking small may be the next big thing at American high schools.

From Oregon to New York, school districts are scaling down to combat problems that are very big indeed: high dropout rates, sinking test scores and low attendance.

Over the years, plenty of ballyhooed ideas for curing such ills have come and gone. But the "small schools" movement has a powerful
godfather in Microsoft founder Bill Gates and is getting some backing from Washington, too.

Schools strategically designed to have no more than 400 students are in place or starting up in at least 41 states. Some urban districts, like Sacramento, Calif., have converted to all small high schools. In some places, the schools are new; others were created by subdividing large high schools.

Now, as the movement expands, educators are watching the outcome closely.

Oregon's Lebanon High School, with about 1,400 students, opened in September with the building divided into four learning academies," each one specializing in a different academic area, and each with roughly 300 teenagers. The students in each academy will stay together through all four years of high school, with the same corps of teachers.

"We'll get to know more and more about them so we don't lose them down the road," said Aaron Cooke, a history teacher.

Lebanon High, along with a few other Oregon schools in Portland, Eugene, Woodburn and the Medford area, got a grant partially
backed by the Gates Foundation to go small, a decision administrators made after concluding they had reached a dead end.

"We were not serving the needs of 100 percent of our students," said Leanne Raze, assistant principal of Lebanon High. We had a
high dropout rate, underperformance on state tests and low attendance rates. We were looking for an upheaval.

Research had shown that going small can produce higher graduation rates, lower dropout levels and more students attending
college. That has been the case in cities such as New York and Chicago.

For example, a 2002 study done by researchers at the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota singled out El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in New York City. The Brooklyn school has about 165 students, mostly from poor communities, and had a graduation rate of more than 90 percent, far higher than that of large neighboring high schools. Its students also scored near the top of all the state's schools on New York's Regents exams.

In the past decade, the Gates Foundation has poured $745 million in grant money into promoting small schools, including $35 million for the creation of 75 schools in Texas, and $20 million in Ohio. Also, the federal government is operating a $142 million grant program for subdividing larger high schools.

Making the changeover work is not easy.

A lot of schools that launch into this will get stuck, said Tom Vander Ark of the Gates Foundation. "They might spend several years debating schedule options or structural options and never get to the heart of the matter, which is instruction."

A 2003 report commissioned for the Gates Foundation found that many of those working with new small schools were running into
similar roadblocks.

Start-up schools, especially in urban areas, often had trouble finding locations and hiring teachers with the right training. Also, some students were thrown by the independence offered in their new school. Other missed the wider choice of courses available at their
old schools.

At Lebanon, during the first weeks of school, some students complained about being "careertracked into one of the four academies -- biological sciences, physical sciences, information and technology, or social systems.

"I don't think it is fair that the ninth-graders have to make their career choice now," said Kayla Jones, a 16-year-old junior. "In a couple of years they might not want to be a scientist. High school is supposed to be a time to have choices."

Scheduling glitches abounded during the first few weeks of school in Lebanon, and some students found themselves forced to take courses outside their academies because of lack of space. Teachers said it was tougher than they thought to rework the curriculum.
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October 12, 2004

Math WASL not too difficult, study says

By Linda Shaw
Seattle Times staff reporter

A majority of Washington students may fail the state's standardized 10th-grade math test, but not because the math is particularly advanced, according to a new study to be released today.The report, done by Achieve, Inc., says that math on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) is less challenging than tests in six other states studied, mainly because the WASL has less algebra and geometry.

On the other hand, the organization found the reading section of the WASL to be on a par with those of the other states, and said the writing test is the best it's seen.

But Achieve judged the math to be the easiest of the three WASL subjects, and that's puzzling to education officials and Achieve itself. Only 44 percent of 10th-graders passed math this year, a lower rate than the other two subjects. And other studies have suggested the WASL is among the toughest math exams in the nation.

I want to understand how various experts came to different conclusions as to where the assessment ranks," said David Fisher, chairman of a state
commission that today will discuss whether to lower the passing score when the WASL becomes a graduation requirement in 2008.

Achieve was surprised, too, said Matt Gandal, executive vice president.

It's not the high level of content that's making this test difficult for students, because the content demands are relatively low,he said. "There has to be
other factors going into what's making the test challenging.

Achieve is a nonprofit organization founded by business leaders and governors. The board of directors includes Gov. Gary Locke and Kerry Killinger, the chairman, president and CEO of Washington Mutual.

It is a proponent of tests like the WASL, but not blindly so, Gandal said. Much of its work is focused on helping states develop good tests and learning
standards that reflect what students need to succeed in life and work, he said.

The state commission that Fisher chairs, the Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission, asked Achieve to compare the 10th-grade version
of the 2003 WASL to similar tests in the six other states Achieve has studied Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas.

The idea was to assess the WASL's difficulty, which has been questioned since the test was introduced. The student passage rate has gone up over time in all subjects, but many students still fall short. The highest passing rate was in fourth-grade reading, which was 74 percent last year.

The Achieve study, however, may raise more questions than it answers.

To Achieve, the study shows that the 10th-grade WASL is not too hard to expect all students to pass before they graduate. It determined the same about the tests in the six other states.

We didn't find evidence that the standard should be lowered, Gandal said.
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October 7, 2004

School legislation to help students may not be doing so

By Nathan Falk

The Shawano-Gresham School District is one of 30 Wisconsin school districts and 63 schools that failed to meet standards for the first time during the past year under the federal No Child Left Behind Legislation (NCLB).

However, district officials contend many schools will be unable to attain the standards and proposed changes in the legislation, as guidelines get tougher year by year.

The legislation requires states to set a level where they expect kids to score. The ultimate level, in the year 2014, they want 100 percent of all kids who take this test in every school in the country to score proficient or advanced (out of four categories including basic, minimal, proficient, and advanced, said assistant superintendent Bill Prijic.

The program standards for 2003-04 are to have 61 percent or better of students reading at a proficient or advanced level, and 37 percent of students proficient or advanced at math. 2004-2005 standards are to have 67.5 percent or better of students reading at a proficient or advanced level, and 47.5 percent of students proficient or advanced at math.

Shawano-Gresham special education students scored 47 percent for the current year in the reading category, which did not meet adequate yearly
progress (AYP) guidelines. Special education students scored 43 percent in the mathematics category. The math goal was 37 percent. The district faces no sanctions for failing to meet the standards for participation in standardized testing, attendance, graduation rates and proficiency in math and reading. However, the district could face penalties if they continue to miss the required standards.

Federal laws require the annual review of school performance to determine academic student achievement and progress. Annual review of school
performance required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is based on the school's Test Participation, the Other Indicator required (Graduation or Attendance rate for the All Student group), and the proficiency rate on the academic indicators, Reading and Mathematics.

Every school in the district made AYP, but when the schools are combined together and more than the minimum 50 students are in that group, the test
scores were not high enough. However, the testing process for special education students is just the same as that for regular education students --
meaning there is not a special grading scale for those students.

"You need 50 kids in 4th, 8th and 10th grade special education to be a part of this. There were only 115 school districts that had 50 kids in special ed to
include them in the data," said superintendent Rich Hess. It's going to be big school districts. There are only 115 school districts in the state that have that many kids. Of those 115 districts, 58 did not make AYP."

"You could be in a district that had 49 special ed kids, and they could have all failed the test, and you wouldn't be on the list," said Prijic.

Joe Donovan, communications officer at Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, said that testing special ed students at the same level is something new.

That is a fundamental shift with NCLB -- which is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which went into effect during the era of poverty," said Donovan. "It assumes that every single child in every single school can be proficient despite their disability."

As subgroups for testing purposes include 40 students (50 for special education), Prijic said that right now the standards for every school are not the
same.

None of the small school districts are on the list," he said. "There are four school districts in CESA 8 that are smaller than Gresham school, and they
don't have enough numbers to count."

But, the criteria is changing. Next year, Prijic said that the state will add three more grades into the testing process, meaning that tests for reading and math will be administered in grades 3-8, plus 10th grade.

"Those smaller school districts will get to that 40 number, because you add all those grades up," he said.

Donovan said that is the case for next year.

"There will be more students in subgroups, so more schools will meet the threshold," said Donovan.

Shawano-Gresham district officials stressed that the majority of students in the district had good test scores for last year.

When you take all five schools and lump them together as one, 9 out of 10 students are proficient or advanced in reading district-wide," said Prijic. "83
percent of students were proficient or advanced in mathematics."

Prijic said that the standards for the program need to be addressed, because otherwise "every school district in the country will be on that list for special
education.

"What I think is going to happen is that legislators are going to see that part of the law doesn't make sense," said Prijic. "If you have a student with an artificial leg, and in order for them to get an 'A' in physical ed class they would have to run a 14 second 100 yard dash. If they run above 14 seconds they fail the class. Is that fair, is that equitable? This legislation basically holds special ed kids to the same standards as every other student. We can't hold things against students with a disability.

Hess said that even though the district hopes to improve test scores for special ed students, it's not going to be easy to meet the guidelines.

To me, it's common sense that those kids can't do as well or they wouldn't be in a special program. If they do make it, should they be in special ed -- are you over-identifying kids in special ed?" questioned Hess. "It's a more expensive program so you're technically hurting the other students because the state doesn't pick up the total cost. It's a double-edged sword there."

"Even though we did not make adequate yearly progress (with special ed), we're still above the state average," said Hess. "The state average is already 20 percent below the bar."

Donovan said he understands the need for more special ed funding.

"The state superintendent has been on record for more funding for special education. Congress has not made good on their commitment to share
special ed costs. We continue to work with our federal delegation to address these issues," said Donovan. Our federal delegation understands the
concerns about special education. It's also important to note, these requirements are from the Federal government -- it is a federal law. The DPI has
long been concerned about lack of flexibility under federal law.

According to Hess and Prijic, this district needs to get better and it's going to get better.

We have a plan, but the things we're doing are all easier said than done. It's going to take a lot of hard work by teachers and administrators to make these things happen, but we're going to do that and slowly see those test scores improve, Prijic said.

What happens to our greatest success stories in special education? It's when a student takes off, learns and improves, they get dismissed from special
education to regular education, and test scores are now reported in a different subgroup," added Prijic. When we succeed and dismiss a child from special ed, we get penalized because it hurts us. The best success stories we have, we get no credit for in the view of 'No Child Left Behind.'

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October 6, 2004

Charges Dropped Against Autistic Teen
 

A 15-year-old autistic Clovis boy is no longer facing assault charges.

The district attorney's office didn't know Colin Frates suffers from Asperger's Disease, a form of autism, and on Wednesday dismissed the charges.

Last March, a Reybern Intermediate special education teacher contacted police. She reported Colin shoved her and threw two chairs against a wall.

Colin insists he only tapped his teacher's shoulder to get her attention so he could call home.

If the charges hadn't been dropped, Colin's father, Mike Frates, says Colin might have been institutionalized, "The thought that they were going to take him away ... I don't think we slept for days. Just worrying about the possibility of it was a nightmare."

Clovis Unified isn't commenting on the decision and the teacher involved didn't return call from Action News.

The judge did order Colin to see a doctor to work on his social skills.

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Posted on Wed, Oct. 06, 2004

States Claim Federal Funds for Education

BEN FELLER

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - States went on a billion-dollar spending spree in the three months leading up to a Sept. 30 deadline to commit or lose some federal
education money, new figures show.

By law, the states had to commit $2.1 billion left over from 2002 by the end of the budget year in September, or they would lose their right to claim it. States did not have to spend the money by that deadline, but they did have to at least obligate it toward specific expenses.

It's unclear how much of the remaining money was earmarked by the deadline, because the Education Department collects data only on how much federal money was actually spent.

The department still lists $1.16 billion in unspent money from 2002, including aid for poor or disabled students, according to figures obtained by The
Associated Press. But states have likely committed much of that money and have up to two more years to spend it.

Ultimately, money not committed or spent on time reverts to the federal treasury. In total, states have up to five years to spend the money if they satisfy
steps along the way.

It's a complex process, and "you just can't make any judgments about how much states are spending or not spending, unfortunately, until the very end,"
said David Shreve, senior committee director for education at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The recent drawdown of federal education dollars included a withdrawal of about $900 million at the end of June, said Todd Jones, the department's
senior budget adviser. That was about the time the department sent a letter to state school chiefs, pointing out what appeared to high balances of federal cash and reminding them of their Sept. 30 deadline.

"We are hoping that our proactive efforts led to the changes in behavior," Jones said.

States have paid more attention to the federal money process, in part because the department itself is paying more attention to it, said Patty Sullivan, deputy executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

But Sullivan also it was no surprise for states to spend so much money at once.

Some states drawn down all their federal money over the summer, to pay expenses from a recently finished school year or to cover costs of the
approaching school year, she said.

The department issued its warning about cash balances totaling more than $2.1 billion to all the states, the District of Columbia and eight territories. An
updated tally puts the unspent money at $1.16 billion, or four percent of the
total amount allocated.

The money is budgeted for five broad areas of schooling, including special education, vocational education and help for children in poor schools.
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Posted on Tue, Oct. 05, 2004

Mother sues, alleges abuse in special education

BY LARRY SLONAKER

SAN JOSE, Calif. - (KRT) - Today Ann Gaydos looks back in horror, and asks herself how she could have kept sending her child back into that classroom.

Her daughter, Paige, has a form of autism that put her in a special education class in Cupertino, Calif. Over several months, Gaydos says, Paige's teacher subjected her to a series of abuses - ranging from pushing her to the floor and sitting on her, to rubbing a burrito in her face.

Gaydos has filed a civil suit to be heard in November against Cupertino Union School District, for unspecified damages. Neither district officials nor the
teacher, Karen Miller, would discuss the allegations. But in court filings, both parties deny them.

This case, and others across the country, illustrate a growing scrutiny on alleged abuse in special education. Some fear the likelihood of abuse is
enhanced by the peculiar and volatile dynamic of the special education classroom.

Special education teachers deal with some students who have difficulty controlling their behavior. As a result, the teachers wield powers - including the
authorization to physically restrain children - that are unheard of in regular classrooms. Administrators are fiercely loyal to the teachers, because they are hard to find and keep. And the students are in a uniquely vulnerable position.

In the past year, school districts across the nation have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle lawsuits on behalf of special education students.

Studies have shown children with disabilities "are over three times more likely to be maltreated" in school, says Fred Orelove, a professor in special
education at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Orelove cited several reasons why. "People who are abusers go out of their way to find victims who aren't going to tell on them," he said. "And children
with disabilities may be unable to avoid or escape the abuse."

Compounding the problem, he added, teachers and administrators "are loath to squeal on one another."

Teachers of disabled students have earned a special respect in the education profession. They often are revered for their dedication to a very tough job teaching children once thought to be unteachable. In addition, they undergo special training that gives them added credence and authority.

As a result, many parents give them the benefit of the doubt. "There's a strong predisposition to think the people who help these children walk on water," Gaydos says.

Today, Gaydos continually chastises herself for having had that belief - and for sending Paige back to Miller's class, even after some troubling signs surfaced.

Paige, now 10, has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. In some ways she is precocious - her math scores have registered in the "gifted" range. But by her mother's admission, she also could be a handful in the classroom.

"She has had real trouble socializing outside the home," Gaydos says.

In the spring of 2001, Gaydos says, Paige especially was having trouble in Miller's class at Eisenhower Elementary in Santa Clara, Calif. The first indication was when Paige - who at the time weighed about 40 pounds - came home with a bruise on her hip, and "scuffed from head to toe."

When Gaydos inquired, she says Miller responded that Paige had refused to stop wiggling a loose tooth, and a confrontation escalated until the 7-year-old had to be restrained. Under state law special education teachers are allowed to restrain students in danger of harming themselves or someone else, and there are carefully-worded regulations on how restraints should be practiced.

Gaydos says she would have let the incident go at that, but a teacher's aide in Miller's class approached her husband later, and said Miller had lied - instead of properly restraining the girl, Miller had pushed Paige to the floor and sat on her. The aide, Parivash Rezvani, who now lives in Southern California, repeated the story in a May deposition.

Rezvani also recited a litany of other abusive actions, including "timeout" sessions in which one boy was deprived of food and water for several hours -
because he cried and asked for his mother.

The mother of another student claims her son was subjected to the same treatment - for an entire month. Doron Cohen, now 12, landed in Miller's class
five years ago because he had been diagnosed as bi-polar. Today he recounts his daily exiles to the time-out cubicle as if they occurred last week.

I didn't know why she was keeping me in there so long," he says. "I didn't want to go back to school, because I knew she'd put me back in there."

His mother, Lisa Cohen, says she is contemplating suing the district and Miller, too.

Miller declined to respond to Cohen's charges.

After Paige was bruised, others problems followed. In every case, Gaydos says, school administrators fully backed Miller, and reassured her nothing was amiss.

One day, Gaydos claims, a distraught Miller called her. She says Miller reported that Paige had refused to eat her lunch burrito, so she rubbed it in the girl's face and hair.

I'm sorry, I've had an awful day and I lost my temper," she recalls Miller saying.

The breaking point came during summer school in 2002, when officials called her to pick Paige up. She had a bruise on her arm and a lump on her head. She told her mother Miller had kicked her feet out from underneath her, causing her to fall.

Gaydos took Paige to the doctor, who she says reported the injury to Child Protective Services as possible abuse. CPS referred the case to San Jose
police. But Gaydos says officers told her that Paige's injuries were not that serious, and that, since she told them she was going to pull Paige out of
Miller's class, "they saw no urgent need to step in."

Gaydos finally had had enough. She demanded that the district send Paige to a private school - and it complied. Because the district must pay for her
schooling and transportation, the public cost for sending Paige to the Children's Health Council in Palo Alto, Calif., is about $58,000 a year.

Cupertino Superintendent William Bragg declined to discuss the suit. But he did talk about the difficulty of recruiting and retaining special education
teachers.

The job "is more difficult, more stressful, more demanding" than teaching in a regular classroom, he said.

Miller now teaches at an elementary school in Clearlake, Calif. She moved there, she said, because the cost of living is lower. She said confidentiality
laws prohibit her from commenting on the allegations.

Lawyers for each side continue to seek a settlement in the suit. But Gaydos says she will refuse any settlement that prohibits further discussion of the
case.

She warns others to temper their trust in the education establishment. Her entreaties to Miller's supervisors, and ultimately to the district board, were
either dismissed or ignored, she says.

Better whistle-blower protections need to be put in place within school districts," she said. Her overriding message to parents: "Always, always trust
your gut instincts."

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Get your head out of 'IDEA mode' for 504 discrimination
issues

By Brian Caruso 10/5/04


Some districts get so set in "IDEA mode," they don't think about Section 504, says Sue Gamm.

One common misconception about Section 504 is that it only covers the students who qualify for eligibility and are served under the law, said Gamm, an education consultant who worked for 12 years in OCR's Chicago office. In reality Section 504 is a nondiscrimination statute that covers all kids with
disabilities, and even parents who may suffer some form of disability, from disability-based discrimination.

"A good example for districts to consider is if they are starting a preschool or after-school program for supplementary education services under NCLB,"
Gamm said. "Has the district thought to have providers for kids who have severe disabilities? It's not an IDEA issue but a discrimination issue under
Section 504 if these kids aren't given an equal opportunity.

Gamm explained that IEPs and 504 plans are not an issue because after-school or SES-related programs are not part of FAPE, but rather, they are systemic regulatory provisions.

"There is nothing in the law that would eliminate students with disabilities [from these programs]," she said. "These students would rise to the top of the SES list because typically they have the poorest academic performance. If they are denied access to these programs, however, it's not an IDEA issue, but a discrimination issue covered under Section 504."

Don't forget 504 safeguards

Gamm said another area where districts are sometimes shortsighted is discipline.

"[Districts] only check procedural safeguards for kids with IEPs because their compliance systems aren't sophisticated enough to look at 504 kids," she said. "Section 504 is a little different than IDEA in that you can cease services, and if a nondisabled student can be expelled, so can 504 kids [for the same disciplinary offense].

Gamm said before disciplinary action, districts still have to establish whether the behavior was a manifestation of the student's disability.

"If a student has ADHD and is covered under Section 504 and brings a gun to school, you still have to do a manifestation determination, she said.

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Follow proper procedure when expelling Section 504 students 10/5/04

A district must comply with two distinct Section 504 requirements when it expels a student with a disability.

Because an expulsion is considered a "significant change in placement" under the Section 504 regulations, proper procedures include a manifestation determination and a finding that the student's misconduct was not related to his disability.

Equal treatment

OCR has made it clear that a district may not impose upon a student with a disability a disciplinary sanction if the district would not have imposed the
same sanction on a nondisabled student under the same circumstances.

Manifestation determinations

Although the Section 504 regulations provide no direct guidance on the issue of whether a manifestation determination must be conducted before a
disciplinary hearing under Section 504, this appears to be the case. OCR stated that pursuant to Section 504 and IDEA, a manifestation determination
concerning the "alleged misbehavior" must be conducted prior to proceeding with an expulsion hearing. Washington (CA) Unified School District, 29 IDELR 486 (OCR 1998).

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Reading study: Initiative, coupled with services, shows early success

By Anne Checkosky 10/5/04


Participants in a yearlong reading initiative say the study will dramatically change the way educators determine how to teach children to read.

While results won't be released until January 2005, teachers, administrators, parents and students are already calling the Power4Kids study a resounding success.

The reading program had an ambitious goal: get the bottom 20 percent of readers to an average reading level with 100 hours of intense instruction.

The initiative involved 43 teachers, 27 school districts and 50 schools in the Allegheny Intermediate Unit in Pennsylvania. About 800 third- and fifth-grade students took part in the project, as both treatment and control subjects.

"We are glad to be a part of this landmark study," said Donna Durno, executive director of the district. "It signals a sea of change in the way we conduct
research."

Participants received one hour of instruction per day in one of four reading strategy programs for 100 hours selected by principal investigator Joe
Torgesen and his team. Torgesen is director of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University.

Follow-up testing after intervention necessary the student/teacher ratio for the project was 3-to-1. Students in a control group received whatever reading instruction their school was currently providing, including individual help and special education services. The initiative includes follow-up testing one and two years after the interventions to see if the improvements last.

Third grade was selected as the target grade for the study because it's the earliest stage where you can be sure poor readers are unlikely to recover using current methods, Torgesen said.

At the end-of-year meeting, teacher after teacher told stories of courage and victory among their students.

"This was a year that I felt I made a difference in the lives of my students," said Denise Morelli, an Allegheny Intermediate Unit and Power4Kids teacher.

Power4Kids cost nearly $9 million but was underwritten by the Haan Foundation for Children of San Francisco, the Heinz Endowments and 13
other organizations and the federal government, which contributed $4 million.

For more information, contact Barbara Pape at (301) 907-3883.

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Grant right to IEE regardless of parents' notification efforts
By Steven Imber 10/4/04


It would seem reasonable for a parent to seek permission to obtain an IEE prior to doing so. However a review of federal regulations, policy letters and case law reveals that parents can obtain an IEE at public expense without prior notification or permission from district personnel.

The U.S. Department of Education addressed this issue in its Letter to Thorne, 16 IDELR 606 (OSEP 1990). It said: While it is reasonable for a public agency to require that it be notified prior to the parent's obtaining an IEE at public expense, a public agency may not fail to pay for an IEE if a parent does not notify the public agency that an IEE is being sought.

State language vs. OSEP position
 

In the past, some states have included language in their regulations that implied or stated parents were required to obtain permission prior to initiating an IEE at public expense. Alabama, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Vermont included such language in their regulations prior to the implementation of 1997 regulations.

In Rhode Island's case, OSEP maintained its position that while it was reasonable for parents to notify districts, parents could not be denied payment simply because they failed to issue a prior request.

The courts, too, have examined the issue of prior notice.

The 3d Circuit issued clarification on this matter in 1999. See, for example, Warren G. by Tom G. v. Cumberland County Sch. Dist., 31 IDELR 27 (3d Cir. 1999). It stated that parents' failure to express disagreement with the district's evaluations prior to obtaining their own does not foreclose their right to reimbursement.

Advantageous IEEs

This discussion lends itself to a final question: Would there ever be situations in which districts might encourage a parent to obtain an IEE? In the following instances, it may be appropriate:

When the expertise or experience of district evaluators is limited with regard to a particular type of disability. For example, if a district's evaluators have limited training or experience with children who have Asperger's Syndrome, then it would be advantageous for that district to suggest an IEE with a specialist or group of specialists. The district will maintain greater credibility with the parent by offering to support an IEE.

When there is an issue with regard to the differential diagnosis of a disability and that distinction is perceived as critical by the evaluation team.

When a parent is likely to become litigious. Administrators can offer to have a district consultant conduct an evaluation if that consultant is a specialist who relates well with parents and children. A special education director with whom I worked for several years referred cases to me for evaluation. In some of those cases, the parent had already consulted with an attorney. Good rapport was established with the students as well as their parents. A positive resolution was achieved in each case.

When a student is making very limited progress or regressing. When a child with an IQ within the average to above-average range is reading several years below grade level and has made no measurable progress in two years, it may be appropriate to offer an IEE that addresses that student's strengths and weaknesses. While the district must consider the results of an IEE, it is not bound by its recommendations.

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CASE FILE: Disputed records had no impact on grade-schooler's FAPE

By Paula Welker, Esq. 10/4/04


Case name: Council Rock Sch. Dist., 41 IDELR 204 (SEA PA 2004).

Ruling: An alleged failure to provide a timely and complete set of education records to the parents of a student with SLD did not amount to a denial of
FAPE, according to a Pennsylvania appeals panel. The parents also could not prove that the district failed to recognize and address all of their daughter's disabling conditions, specifically diagnoses of ADHD and dyslexia.

What it means: The appeals panel pointed out that "case law is overwhelming that procedural violations that are not prejudicial fail to establish denial of
FAPE." While the panel acknowledged that it was conceivable that a breach of FAPE could occur based solely on a records violation, it wasn't aware of any appeals panel decisions that reached such a conclusion.

Summary: The extent of any failure by the district to furnish the parents with all of their daughter's school records did not prejudice the student's right to FAPE. The appeals panel noted that the parents meaningfully participated in the IEP process and none of the disputed records were outcome-determinative in terms of the child's IEP and placement. In fact, the panel pointed out that the records supported the district's contention that the student's disability was "at most mild specific learning disability in written comprehension." The appeals panel also rejected a charge that the district failed to recognize the student's ADHD and dyslexia, noting that neither ADHD nor dyslexia was separate and sufficient IDEA disability classifications. Also, neither of the two diagnoses was evident in terms of educational need beyond the proposed IEP. However, the panel warned the district not to accept the decision as a commendation, questioning its "laxity in terms of responding to the parents' record requests,
its almost dogmatic position about balanced literacy, and its wishy-washy determination of SLD in language arts."
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CASE FILE: Child with Down syndrome benefits from district's program

By Paula Welker, Esq. 10/4/04


Case name: Newbury Local Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 41 IDELR 205 (SEA OH 2004).

Ruling: Rejecting parents' efforts to "dictate methodology to the district and have their child educated by someone resembling their expert," an Ohio impartial hearing officer determined that the district's IEP provided FAPE to an elementary school student with Down syndrome.

What it means: The IHO said she would have had to rule differently if the law mandated that the district employ the best techniques, but stated that "the law does not require a Cadillac." See Doe v. Board of Educ. of Tullahoma City Schs., 20 IDELR 617 (6th Cir. 1993).

Summary: The district's IEPs provided FAPE and were implemented in a way to reasonably afford the student some educational benefit. Although the parent complained that no one in the district had classroom experience instructing children with Down syndrome, they did not show that such lack of prior experience amounted to the district's inability to educate itself about the disability or that it was incapable of working with the child. It was clear to the IHO that the district did its best to learn about the changing methodologies in educating the student, but she cautioned it to stay vigilant each year in doing so. Additionally, the IHO found that the district did not violate a mediation agreement as alleged by the parents when it ordered a computerized version of the reading program called for under the agreement. The district also provided a computer to the student.

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How to tell if discrimination occurred because of a lost504 planBy Brian Caruso 10/1/04


The key to determine if discrimination occurred because of a lost 504 plan is gauging whether the situation caused harm to the student, says John McCook.

McCook, pupil personnel director and Section 504 coordinator for the Knox (Tenn.) County Schools, offered two possible scenarios: In the first, a student has a Section 504 plan in elementary school and the plan doesn't get passed along to the middle school staff. The middle school treats him as it would any other student and he is successful relative to his peers. Nothing significant related to his behavior or learning has been raised during the time the student has been without a plan. After 10 weeks, the 504 plan surfaces.

"There is no problem that requires compensatory action or any other type of redress in this scenario because there is no harm," McCook said. "The only action that may need to be contemplated is whether the child actually meets the requirements of needing a 504 plan since he is successful without any accommodations other than what are done for all students."

The second scenario is one where there is harm. The child is suspended and is out of school for longer than 10 days, or the child is struggling and has failing grades that cause significant concern. In this scenario, the school has dropped the ball and discriminated against the child by not following the
Section 504 accommodations outlined in his 504 plan.

"At this point, it is the responsibility of school staff to redress the discrimination, and it may take the form of compensatory education or allowing
time to retake or redo assignments during the time period of discrimination," McCook said. "It may also require tutorial services to help the student make up for lost instruction due to a suspension or to the 504 accommodations not being provided."

McCook noted that, simply put, if there is no harm then there is no redress other than to question the need of a 504 plan.

"Typically the need would be determined by how long the student was able to be successful without accommodations," he said. "The greater the harm the greater the redress and compensatory service would be."


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Short on cash: Washington districts sue state over special ed funds
10/1/04

By Stew Magnuson

Eleven school districts in Washington have filed a lawsuit claiming the state has ignored constitutional and court-ordered obligations to fully fund its
special education programs.

The claim is the latest in a spate of recent "adequacy lawsuits" seeking to force states to spend more on education -- but with a twist. Unlike others, it
focuses solely on special education funding.

The plaintiffs claim the state shortchanged special education programs by $101 million in the 2002-2003 school year alone, leaving the districts to make
up the shortfall with local levy funds, which the state constitution prohibits.

The lawsuit will rely on the state constitution, which says education is the "paramount duty of the state."

Every district feels impact

The lawsuit also cites three prior court decisions ordering the state to fund special education students under its "basic education" obligations. The Doran decisions, named after Judge Robert Doran, who made the rulings in the 1980s, designated special education funding as the state's obligation.

Don Saul, superintendent of the Lake Washington School District, said special education funding shortfalls affect every district in Washington. His district was more than $2 million short in special education funding in 2003-2004, he said.

"We're saying the precedents have been set, and [the state] has ignored them," Saul said.

The legislature makes its biennial special education appropriation on a flat, per capita rate, failing to take into account the actual costs of developing and implementing each eligible student's IEP, according to the lawsuit.

The legislature also caps the number of special education students eligible for per capita funding at 13 percent of a district's student population, the lawsuit says.

'Safety Net' not enough to cushion fall

To address the funding shortfalls for students with extraordinarily high costs, the state legislature instituted a "Safety Net" program that uses federal funds. The lawsuit claims districts received only $12 million in the 2002-2003 school year under the program, far short of enough to cover the $101 million deficit.

"The state is unable to pay for the ['Safety Net'] program because the federal government is not paying the state," said Mary Waggoner, spokeswoman for the Issaquah School District and one of the plaintiffs.

Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, a codefendant in the suit, said he had not seen the complaint and couldn't comment on its specifics.

However, he said he didn't believe that special education students were being singled out for budget cuts. The state is suffering from an economic slump, he added.

"We're confronted by declining revenues," Owen said. "There are a whole lot of areas in the state government that could use help, and education is one of them."

Washington's education department did not respond to requests for comment.
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Senate fast-tracks technology bill; House vote comes next
10/1/04

By Kara Arundel

WASHINGTON -- Senators introduced a compromise bill Thursday that would help provide assistive technology devices and services to students with
special needs.

The bipartisan compromise bill -- a combination of legislation previously introduced by the House and Senate -- attempts to align the two chambers'
plans without holding a formal negotiation session.

Popular features of the bill remain, such as a short-term equipment loan program that allows schools to try out devices for students with disabilities
before making purchases. The bill also emphasizes technology training, technical assistance and service planning for all individuals with special needs.

The bill also promises a minimum state grant of $410,000, which is a reduction from $500,000 originally proposed in the Senate bill. Also, lawmakers removed a sunset provision that made the legislation vulnerable to expiration.

The legislation is available for the president's signature once the Housepasses the same version.
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Stakeholders in California sue to fix broken mediation, due process 10/1/04

By Anne Checkosky

As expected, California's county superintendents, school districts and special education local plan areas filed a lawsuit yesterday charging that the California Department of Education and its Special Education Hearing Office, aren't following federal or state laws when conducting special education due process hearings.

Specifically, stake holders say that SEHO "imposes immense and often unnecessary financial burdens upon public school agencies throughout California," according to a press release issued by the superintendent of the Sonoma County Office of Education and two attorneys.

Further, the suit charges SEHO, which contracts with the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento to conduct mediations and hearings, with ignoring the California Administrative Procedure Act. The APA is supposed to govern hearings conducted by CDE.

Due process cost a key factor
The 19 plaintiffs called the hearing process "fundamentally flawed," and said that SEHO and McGeorge employees follow "unwritten or SEHO-drafted rules." The end result, they said, "is procedurally unfair hearings."

"SEHO's conduct ... forces public school agencies to either reach a pre-hearing settlement to avoid a procedurally unfair hearing, or alternatively, to
participate in a hearing which is conducted pursuant to procedural rules that are not known to all parties and pursant to rules that are not legally adopted," said Jack O'Connell, the state's superintendent of public instruction.

Cost is also a factor, said Carl Wong, Sonoma County's superintendent. "The costs associated with due process hearings for special education often result in significant financial obligations to districts, which impacts other vital educational programs."

Panel reaches similar conclusion
An independent panel commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reached a similar conclusion in a report it issued a few months ago. The
California Performance Review commission suggested the state could save $550,000 per year if the states' Office of Administrative Hearings took over
mediations and due process hearings.

To settle the suit, districts and SELPAs want CDE and SEHO, by a certain date
to:

Issue public notice that no matter what agency conducts mediations and hearings that it agrees to abide by the APA.
Provide written copies of all written and unwritten rules and regulations.
Provide written determination of whether SEHO is using any underground
rules and if, it is, to stop using the underground regulations.
Set up a process to monitor SEHO's operations, especially with regard to underground regulations.
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Articles For September 2004

Don't delegate transition plan duties to parents
September 30, 2004
John Norlin, Esq.

Districts cannot unilaterally assign to parents their responsibilities under a student's transition plan. The court made this clear in Yankton School District
v. Schramm, 23 IDELR 42 (D.S.D. 1995).

In Yankton, the student and her parents were assigned various areas of follow-up responsibilities in many plan areas. The court found that "such a minimal approach to school district responsibility for transition services planning and implementation fail[ed] to comport with the expectations of Congress."

The hearing officer in In re Child with Disabilities, 21 IDELR 624 (SEA CT 1994) reached the same conclusion. The district violated the IDEA when it assigned the parents the responsibility to investigate work-study options. Instead, it should have included in the IEP the process it was going to follow to secure the work site and training for the student. Then, it should have followed through on that process to identify a work site.

The issue of appropriate assignment of responsibility is less clear-cut when a district proposes to make a student responsible for specific items in the plan. Assuming the student can perform the task without parental assistance, having him take an active role in planning for post-school life might be a viable concept.

Note, however, that in Thornton Fractional Township High School District #128, 36 IDELR 283 (SEA IL 2002), the hearing officer concluded that it was the district's obligation to assist a student with a specific learning disability in obtaining information about appropriate technical trade schools, communitycolleges and vocational counseling.
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The havoc wrought by today's "modern" math
By Dr. Charles Orms
Friday, September 24, 2004

If you are a parent of elementary school children you've probably seen it: elaborate make-work homework assignments, cutting and pasting extravaganzas, overly complex and roundabout procedures to add or multiply numbers, estimation exercises that won't quit, and the use of calculators in place of traditional arithmetic methods.

You thought: "Of course, the educational professionals must know what they are doing. Once my children catch on to these clever techniques, they will
develop into mathematics geniuses!" Unfortunately, what you discover is that they never learn the core facts and methods, their confusion grows, they lose their self-confidence, they decide they just can't do math, and you are stuck paying for tutoring. Even worse, children who might have become exceptional mathematicians, engineers, or scientists are denied their rightful future.

What went wrong? Years ago the educational establishment decided that teaching mathematics had to either consist of rote memorization (without real
understanding) or students had to discover mathematics through trial and error because it was assumed that only 'if they discovered it themselves'
would they truly understand it. While this view presented a false choice (there are much better alternatives), the educational community was sold on the
second alternative because it had an intellectual cache that was lacking in "rote memorization." What resulted are the various "modern" math curricula
for our children that under emphasize learning math facts, that bend over backward to avoid teaching standard methods for addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division, and that refuse to teach traditional processes for manipulating fractions.

Almost all our public schools today use one of the "modern" math curricula and millions of promising math-based technology careers are being ruined
every year.

Permit me a short excursion. I have a technical/engineering background (PhD MIT '74) that rests largely on advanced mathematics. One reason I followed this path is that, as a student, I always had poor memorization skills and, therefore, subjects such as biology, chemistry, and foreign languages were very difficult for me. I loved math and physics because there was very little memorization; I could derive any formula I needed during a test. "Understanding" was a much more powerful asset for me than memorization. If anyone would be inclined to favor understanding over memorization it would be me. But the modern math is a disaster. I'm convinced that if I had been "taught" math with it 50 years ago, I would probably have become a poet (my English teacher is rolling over

So do I favor just rote memorization? Of course not. Successful math education requires that students learn the techniques that true geniuses have
developed over the last 3000 years. You may think the standard technique used to add numbers is trivial (place value concepts, carrying, etc.), but it was not obvious to the ancient Greek philosophers. Multiplication, long division, and fractions are even more complex. Teaching the techniques first and then exploring the underlying concepts and why these techniques work is the most efficient way to achieve true understanding. If Socrates and Aristotle couldn't invent our modern arithmetic system, why do we think the typical third or fourth grader can?

The impact of "modern" math on students in the US has been devastating. Just look at how the US stands up against other countries.

Place an equal emphasis on method mastery AND conceptual understanding, and you have the makings of a powerful elementary math curriculum. A
curriculum that leads to real learning, that builds self-esteem and, rarest of all, a child that comes home and says, "Hey mom, I really love math!"

This approach to math education is not new. It is what a well-taught traditional mathematics course always emphasized. In some cases, poor teaching may have led to over-emphasis on rote memorization drills, but that is no reason to stop teaching the critically important mathematical methods.

How are we doing with early mathematics education in this area? As the table shows, not very well. While the differences in scores between towns/cities may be accounted for by socio-economic factors, the percent of students who are not proficient (meaning they scored as "Needs Improvement" or "Warning/Failing") in fourth grade (90 percent in Lawrence, 60 percent in Methuen, 50 percent in North Andover, and 34 percent in Andover) cannot be excused. Even worse is the lack of progress after four more years of what passes for math "education".

2003 MCAS SCORES(Percent ADVANCED OR PROFICIENT)

Town/City - 4th Gr - 6th Gr - 8th Gr

Andover -- 66% - 76% - 66%

Lawrence - 10% - 9% - 9%

Methuen -- 40% - 41% - 34%

North Andover - 50% - 51% - 60%

AVERAGE -- 42% - 44% - 42%

The trend towards "modern" math may finally be slowing. Parents are upset with the lack of a rigorous math curriculum and the need to hire tutors or enroll their children in remedial after school programs. A nationwide movement is growing to expose the failures of "modern" math and restore an academically sound curriculum. For information, visit www.mathematicallycorrect.com.

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Long bus rides can put districts on the road to Section 504 discrimination 9/04

When a student with a disability spends significantly more time on the bus, and consequently less time in the classroom, than his nondisabled peers it could create a discriminatory situation.

Neither the IDEA nor Section 504 specifically addresses the appropriate length of bus rides for students with disabilities. However, Section 504 may provide a remedy for students with disabilities who argue they are subjected to excessive travel times to and from school. Lengthy bus rides may be
discriminatory and may result in the denial of FAPE. Letter to Anonymous, 20 IDELR 1155 (OSEP 1993).

Where excessive travel times have been found to have negative educational consequences for the affected child, OCR has directed schools to take
affirmative steps to address the situation. Included among the possible remedies are investigating alternative routes and reassigning students, even if
it requires adding new vehicles or drivers to obtain the desired result.

If a shorter travel time is impossible due to the distance of the educational facility from the student's home, the solution may lay in changing the student's placement. Palm Beach County (FL) Sch. Dist., 31 IDELR 37 (OCR 1998).

In monitoring implementation of corrective actions, OCR has required school districts to submit time logs. Palm Beach County (FL) Sch. Dist. Remedies such as compensatory education also help the student to recoup lost educational opportunities.

Many states regulate the length of bus rides for students by establishing a maximum amount of travel time. State law also may establish a minimum
number of hours for a school day and number of days for a school year. Schools must look first within their own state to determine if such provisions
exist; any failure to comply with such provisions may amount to a violation of state law or policy.
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Understand Section 504's pre-placement procedures 9/04

The pre-placement evaluation refers to the initial evaluation of a student with a disability, prior to his first Section 504 or special education placement.

The child likely will undergo many more subsequent evaluations, termed "reevaluations," throughout the course of his educational career.

Test requirements: Neither IDEA nor Section 504 requires that educational agencies test all children for whom evaluations are requested. Pasatiempo v. Aizawa, 25 IDELR 64 (9th Cir. 1996). Consequently, if a district has no reasonable basis for suspecting that the student has such a disability, it may
refuse to conduct an evaluation.

Parent requests: A district is not required to conduct an initial evaluation upon parental demand. If it does refuse to evaluate, it must provide the parents with a notice of their right to challenge the refusal under Section 504. OCR Memorandum, 19 IDELR 876 (OCR 1993).

OCR interprets procedures to be followed when parent's request for evaluation is denied under Section 504 to be essentially the same as those that apply under IDEA, except it does not explicitly require a written explanation of the basis for the refusal to conduct the evaluation. OCR Memorandum, 19 IDELR 876 (OCR 1993).

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HotLaw: 6th Circuit bounces ESY, private school reimbursement

By Kymberly Pierce, Esq. 9/13/04


Case name: Kenton County. Sch. Dist. v. Hunt, 104 LRP 40801 (6th Cir. 2004).

Ruling: Reversing a lower court, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a Kentucky district provided a fifth-grade student with cerebral palsy an
appropriate and adequate IEP, though the program did not contain the ESY services the parents believed necessary. The court declined to reimburse them for those services or their private school placement.

What it means: A district has an obligation to implement an IEP that will provide parents desiring more than an adequate IEP will have to fund those services themselves.

Summary: The 6th Circuit denied parents reimbursement for ESY services and private placement. The parents failed to meet their burden of proving the ESY services were necessary and further ruled that the student, a fifth-grader with double spastic hemiplegic cerebral palsy and delayed cognitive and communication development, was not denied FAPE as his IEP was appropriate.


Regression/recoupment

The court explained that for ESY services to be included in an IEP they must be necessary so as to prevent the student from regressing to a degree that is "more than adequately recoupable." Although an expert testified the student would regress if not provided with ESY services and would need two months to recoup from the regression, the court found that testimony deficient. The expert did not base his regression opinion on the student but rather on similar students. Nor did the expert testify as to whether the two-month time frame the student would need to recoup constituted adequately recoupable regression.

'Appropriate education' does not equal 'best'

In concluding the student was provided with an appropriate IEP and not denied FAPE, the court noted that "an appropriate education is not
synonymous with the best possible education."

In this case, the court found that given the district's limited resources, it properly balanced the student's various needs and developed an IEP that
would provide the student with benefits.

The court sent the case back to the District Court with instructions that the parents must show the necessity of ESY services and the inadequacy of their son's IEP.

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Temporary, non-chronic impairments shouldn't trigger 504 eligibility 9/04

By Brian Caruso

It's not uncommon for students to show up at school wearing a cast on a broken arm or leg. Just because they may be inconvenienced for a few
months, however, doesn't necessarily mean their injury rises to the level of Section 504 eligibility.

In Maderia (OH) City Schs., 41 IDELR 217 (OCRXII, Cleveland (OH) 2003), OCR found an Ohio district did not discriminate against a student who underwent minor foot surgery when it failed to conduct an evaluation to determine the child's eligibility under Section 504. The district had had insufficient information to suspect that the student was disabled within the meaning of the statute, OCR concluded.

Situations rare when substantial limitation occurs. OCR has consistently stated that temporary, non-chronic impairments that heal normally within a few months are not commonly regarded as disabilities under Section 504. With respect to broken limbs, only in rare situations would the degree of limitation or its duration be sufficiently substantial to conclude that the temporary disability would make the student eligible for Section 504 services. These would usually occur in situation where, for example, the arm broken was the one used by the student to write or a broken leg(s) caused serious mobility problems for an extended time. The key is these situations need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis with careful consideration about whether the student's impairment is substantial enough to warrant 504 eligibility.

Extended absence policy takes effect. In this case, the district was charged with failing to provide appropriate education services to a student during his recovery from foot surgery. However, district officials stated the parent provided no information indicating or suggesting the student had a disability requiring special education or related services. Therefore, they addressed the situation pursuant to the district's extended absence policy, which provided that arrangements could be made for a tutor or homework collection for those students out of school due to an extended illness.

OCR concluded that the district did not have enough information to suspect the student had a disability, which would otherwise trigger its child find
obligation. The district provided services to the student under its extended absence policy, the same as provided to all other students in similar situations.
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SAT performance not among 504's 'major life' activities

By James McKethan 9/04

Parents sometimes request classroom accommodations for their high performing children under Section 504 in an effort to secure SAT accommodations and academic adjustments in college.

Must Section 504 eligibility criteria take into account a student's failure to achieve commensurate with academic potential? Or does Section 504 permit
eligibility based on a discrepancy model?

Even though OCR held in Saginaw City (MI) School Dist., 352 IDELR 413 (OCR 1987) that a student who is succeeding in general education is not
handicapped under Section 504, it later stated that neither Section 504 or the OCR define substantial limitation (See Letter to McKethan, 23 IDELR 504 (OCR 1995).

Nonetheless, the ADA's interpretation states a substantial limitation in a major life activity is based on a comparison to the academic or behavioral
performance of nonhandicapped individuals.
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NCLB handbook can help parents of children with LD 9/04

A handbook is available that parents of children with disabilities can use to help them understand NCLB. www.ld.org/NCLB/NCLB.cfm

Making the "No Child Left Behind Act" Work for Children Who Struggle to Learn: A Parent's Guide was developed by the National Center for Learning
Disabilities and Schwab Learning.

The 22-page guide addresses the special issues, challenges and opportunities facing parents whose children are struggling to learn, officials said. It also provides parents with information about specific actions they can take to improve educational services for their children.

The guide describes several key parts of NCLB that can be used by parents to improve educational services for their children. Highlights include:

The law's emphasis on accountability.
An explanation of adequate yearly progress and how it affects children with learning disabilities.

What parents can do if a school does not make AYP.
"Parents are essential in ensuring that teachers are prepared to help children with learning disabilities, that children with LD receive effective instruction and accommodations when needed, and that the public has a better understanding of the realities and challenges those with learning disabilities face every day," said James Wendorf, NCLD's executive director.

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Learn how 504's LRE mandate applies to placement

By Brian Caruso 9/04

Most 504-eligible students have accommodation plans that can be implemented easily in the general education classroom. However, Jack Clarke,
an attorney with the Riverside, Calif.-based firm Best, Best & Krieger, noted where districts sometimes run into trouble is when 504 students need more
support than what was outlined in their initial accommodation plan.

"When a district starts to consider removing a 504 student from the general education classroom it creates an LRE issue," he said. "The student should be reevaluated and considered for special education services."

Clarke said if the student's Section 504 plan isn't working, the district has to find out why before making a placement that will affect the LRE.

"If it is a behavior-related problem the district needs to look at the cause of the behavior to see if something was overlooked in the initial evaluation," he said. "If it is [a] schoolwork-related [problem], they have to take another look at the identified disability or decide if the problem is not impacted by the student's disability."
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An issue of LRE 9/04

Parents have been unsuccessful in their attempts to argue their children have a right to remain in the regular classroom while receiving routine tracheal suctioning. See, for example, the case of Special Sch. Dist. No. 6, South Saint Paul, 23 IDELR 119 (SEA MN 1994). Here, the parents of an 8-year-old student with severe multiple disabilities who required tracheal suctioning contested the district's decision to conduct that routine suctioning in the health office by a registered nurse, as opposed to in the classroom by a teacher or paraprofessional.

The parents claimed the classroom setting was the LRE. The hearing officer upheld the student's removal from the classroom for that procedure, and the parents appealed.

"In these situations there are a lot of local and state regulations districts need to follow regarding who can dispense medications," Smith said. "At the same time, you have to make sure the student isn't being discriminated against under Section 504."

Key considerations
In the Special Sch. Dist. No. 6 case, a hearing officer ruled against the parent's LRE appeal. The IHO found the following factors justified a district's decision to conduct the routine tracheal suctioning of the student in the school's health office by a registered nurse as opposed to in the classroom by a teacher or paraprofessional.

His susceptibility to infection in the classroom.
The loud sound of the suctioning machine causing distraction to students who had other health conditions. The health services office was the safest and most effective place for performing the procedures. Evidence of the student's medical condition supported his need for a registered nurse to perform the procedure. Section 504 teams can ensure the service provision runs smoothly.

"If the 504 team decides the student needs to leave class for an accommodation, provide it as efficiently as possible so the student doesn't
miss work or significant classroom time," Smith said. "If the student does miss work, that could be considered discriminatory under Section 504.

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Students with disabilities, LEP raising per-pupil expenditures

By Michael Cardman 9/04

Long-term economic and demographic trends, including mounting budget deficits and expanding populations of students with disabilities and limited English proficiency, don't bode well for education funding over the next decade. But advocates hope other factors -- such as increasing legal support for adequate funding and growing public demand for better schools -- will counteract and even overcome those trends.Nevertheless, spending advocates face an uphill battle on a variety of fronts. The fastest-growing student populations are among the most expensive to educate, including those with limited English proficiency and special needs. For that and other reasons, per-pupil spending is projected to rise between 14 percent and 37 percent over the next 10 years, even after inflation.
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School records kept by employer don't get FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) protection

By John W. Norlin, Esq. 9/04

While FERPA was never intended to apply to an individual's employment records, read literally, the language of 20 USC 1232 g(a)(4)(A) would make school records maintained by employers, who are also public agencies or institutions, "education records."

To prevent this, the legislators included a specific limitation to the broad definition of education records. The FERPA statute at 20 USC 1232 g(a)(4)(B)(iii) excludes education records that are contained in the employee personnel files of districts or other public agencies or institutions. Despite the exclusion, a school district employee who wished to protect school records contained in her personnel file from review under the state right-to-know
law litigated the issue of FERPA coverage all the way up to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Klein Independent School District v. Mattox, 830 F.2d 576 (5th Cir. 1987), a teacher who had never attended school in the district refused to consent to a state right-to-know request to review the copy of her college transcripts maintained in the district's personnel records. The district backed her up, both claiming, among other things, the records were protected education records under FERPA. As an education record, the college transcript maintained in her personnel file would have been protected from disclosure under that state's right-to-know law.

Their arguments failed. The court held that the transcripts, in the hands of the teacher's employers, were precisely the types of documents excluded from FERPA's definition of education records.
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From the courts:
9th Cir. adopts High Court's 'prevailing party' definition

Case name: Shapiro by Shapiro v. Paradise Valley Unified Sch. Dist. No. 69, 41 IDELR 147 (9th Cir. 2004).

Ruling: Following the lead of five other circuits, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court's "prevailing party" standards for attorney's fees applies to IDEA actions. It ruled that parents of a child with a hearing impairment were the prevailing party because they succeeded on several significant issues and received a tuition reimbursement award from a lower court.

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Appeals court hikes billing rates, but slashes hours
Case name: Ramon v. Kern High Sch. Dist., 41 IDELR 59 (9th Cir. 2004).

Ruling: Looking to prevailing rates in the community, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals increased the hourly billing of an attorney for parents who
succeeded in their IDEA claim from $150 to $190. However, the court upheld a significant reduction of the number of hours billed, based on the attorney's inadequate billing records and lack of experience.

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FAPE violation entitles parents to reimbursement, attorney's fees.

Case name: Scorah v. District of Columbia, 41 IDELR 178 (D.D.C. 2004).

Ruling: The District of Columbia failed to prove that its IEP and placement were appropriate for a 17-year-old with an emotional disturbance and learning disabilities. After his parents demonstrated that their unilateral placement met their son's emotional and educational needs, the court awarded them tuition reimbursement, granted reimbursement for an evaluation, and concluded that they were the prevailing party for purposes of attorney's fees.

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Parents aren't tardy in filing fee claim
Case name: Justin B. v. Laraway Community
Consolidated Sch. Dist., 41 IDELR 207 (N.D. Ill. 2004).

Ruling: Citing prior judicial precedent, a federal court in Illinois concluded that parents of a 12-year-old with multiple learning disabilities were not prevented from maintaining a suit for prevailing party attorney's fees, despite the district's claim that they were 20 days too late.

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Parents prevail; their DP challenge pushed district to keep promise.

Case name: M.P. by Palmatier v. Noblesville Schs., 41 IDELR 33 (S.D. Ind. 2004).

Ruling: Concluding that a due process hearing was the stick that prodded a district into action, the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana ruled that parents of a student with ED and LD were the prevailing party on issues concerning their child's IEPs and transportation reimbursement.

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IHO's order, district's acceptance grants parent prevailing-party status. Case name: Antonio by Parent v. Boston Pub. Schs., 41 IDELR 32 (D. Mass. 2004).

Ruling: A federal District Court concluded the success of a parent's challenge to her child's IEP at the administrative level, combined with the district's acceptance and implementation of an impartial hearing officer's order, conferred prevailing-party status under the IDEA and entitled her to attorney's fees and costs.

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Court chops fees, chides parents and district for prolonging litigation.

Case name: Troy Sch. Dist. v. Boutsikaris ex rel. Boutsikaris, 41 IDELR 93 (E.D. Mich. 2004).

Ruling: The U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan reduced the attorney's fees awarded to parents of a child with a disability to reflect a
reasonable hourly rate and their limited success on the merits. It also awarded the parents a larger portion of fees for their defense of the district's federal claim, because the impetus of the claim was to avoid the payment of increased attorney's fees, a strategic decision the court found "wholly deplorable."

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Parent wins $25K in attorney's fees, expenses as prevailing party.

Case name: Maria C. by Camacho v. Sch. Dist. of Philadelphia, 41 IDELR 91 (E.D. Pa. 2004).

Ruling: Concluding that the parent of a student with an undisclosed disability was the prevailing party in two administrative decisions, the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania awarded them attorney's fees and costs. In one situation, the district violated a settlement agreement approved by an impartial hearing officer and was ordered by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Special Education to hold an IEP meeting. In the other, an administrative consent decree meeting the student's demands was entered after a due process hearing.
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September 28, 2004

Case name: Board of Educ. of the City Sch. Dist. of the City of Buffalo, 41 IDELR 199 (SEA NY 2004).

Did the Music Therapist need to attend the IEP?

Ruling: A state review officer concluded a district denied a student FAPE by failing to include his special education teacher, general education teacher and music therapist in a meeting convened to consider whether the student's music therapy should continue. The general education and special education teacher were mandated under the IDEA to participate, and the music therapist was an appropriate special education provider under New York law who would add insight to the decision process.

What it means: A district denies a student FAPE when its IEP team is not comprised of the appropriate professionals. The IDEA regulations, at 34 CFR 300.344 , identify both mandatory and permitted members of an IEP team, and many states have laws defining circumstances when other individuals must or should participate.

Summary: The district denied FAPE to a child with Down syndrome when it failed to include his general education teacher, special education teacher and music therapist in his subcommittee meeting where one of the main purposes of the meeting was to determine whether to continue the student's music therapy. The SRO explained the student's general education teacher "would have been able to illuminate the extent to which music content is offered as a part of the general mainstream curriculum to the integrated classroom, and the likelihood that it would meet the child's specific needs." The music therapist, as "an appropriate special education provider to the student," would have added "necessary and valuable insight into whether music therapy as a related service was required to assist the child in benefiting from his special education program." The SRO pointed out that the IDEA's list of related services is not exhaustive and may include music therapy. There is a distinction between "music therapy provided by a board certified music therapist as a related noted. The district was directed to provide the student music therapy until a properly composed team could be convened and formulate a new IEP, which was to consider the child's progress with and without music therapy and determine whether such therapy was required for FAPE. The SRO also ordered the district to conduct a triennial evaluation to develop appropriate IEPs for the
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Improve postsecondary transition with interagency plans

By Kara Arundel, Washington Bureau Correspondent 9/04

WASHINGTON -- States and districts need to coordinate training and services and agree on operating principles as part of an effective postsecondary transition agreement to serve students with disabilities.

Some states and districts continue to struggle to create and use postsecondary transition agreements, despite Congress making the process mandatory seven years ago. The process has especially frustrated teachers, who don't have access to information from other agencies or experience working with other agencies.

An interagency agreement is a commitment between educational and noneducational groups to share responsibility for the learning and advancement of students with disabilities.

Creating an effective postsecondary transition agreement requires coordinated training, services, funding, and operating principles and procedures, according to a new Transition. Successful local and state agreements reduce the gap in service delivery, eliminate duplication of services, and cut out any unnecessary expenses, according to the paper.
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General Questions

1. When personnel from multiple agencies are involved in making educational decisions about a student, which agent has access to the student's education records?

This is tricky because there can be multiple appropriate agents who have access to the child's records. The key for district administrators is to figure out who has access to what. Natural parents, of course, are granted full access, but the situation becomes a little stickier when you have personnel from various agencies such as child welfare, juvenile justice and foster care.Sometimes, it isn't appropriate for a foster parent to have access to education records and a surrogate parent must be appointed. Make sure to check your local and state laws with regard to access questions.

2. Does a noncustodial parent have the right to review a student's education records?

The short answer is yes, unless there is a specific court order preventing the noncustodial parent from accessing the student's records. This is a scenario that crops up frequently in districts, especially when the parents' separation or divorce has been acrimonious. Each parent tries to impose restrictions on access. Most districts hear mom say that she'd be worried or feel unsafe if dad was granted access.

This response can unhinge administrators and make them wary of granting access. But unless there's a court order preventing it -- and that's rare, although it has happened in cases where there was abuse -- the noncustodial parent is entitled to access.

3. Are personal notes made about a student protected under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act)?

It depends. Under the "sole possession of maker provision" in FERPA, if an educator creates a note for the educator's eyes only, it doesn't have to be released to parents.

However, if the educator puts personally identifiable sample, or shares the information with the IEP team or anybody else, then it is fair game for parents. Educators need to be aware that any paperwork you generate on a child may have to be released.

4. Is e-mail considered an education record?

Yes, if it contains personally identifiable information. If an e-mail from one educator to another has the child's name on it, it's fair game. One caveat: if an e-mail has been deleted, consider it gone. It is not reasonable for a parent to request that a deleted e-mail be retrieved.

5. Is it OK to destroy test protocols?

Destroying test protocols is a questionable practice. Guidance from the Family Policy Compliance Office, which interprets FERPA, has suggested that test protocols be treated just like any other educational record.

Still, districts have argued that if a protocol doesn't contain any identifiable information it can be thrown out. I don't think that's a good idea. Instead, educators should do the following when confronted with a test protocol request:

• Communicate with parents. Have the tester contact the parents and ask what they want to see on the protocol. Then, rather than sharing the entire test, the tester can help interpret the scores for parents. Often, parents think scores on tests such as the WISC or the Woodcock Johnson, which measure cognitive ability, are either too high or too low. Either a parent doesn't understand or a parent has a preconceived notion of what a score should mean.

• If that doesn't work, ask the parents if they have a private psychologist who would be willing to review the protocol and interpret it for them.

A test protocol by itself is essentially useless to parents. Most requests to see them are made by attorneys or parents who are dissatisfied with a student's placement or progress.
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Did principal's disclosure breach IDEA privacy rules?

By Steven E. Lake, Esq. 9/04

Parents filed a complaint charging that a principal in a Colorado school district violated a privacy provision of the IDEA, in the course of investigating a disciplinary incident involving two students.

The IDEA privacy provision, at 34 CFR 300.571 (a)(1), states that: Parental consent must be obtained before personally identifiable information is ...disclosed to anyone other than officials of participating agencies collecting or using the information under this part.

The parents contended that the school principal informed the parents of another student that their son was neither on the same cognitive or social/emotional level as the other student.

The principal admitted he made the comment to the other parents.
The district asserted that the principal's alleged disclosure did not violate the IDEA because the information he shared about the child's cognitive and
social/emotional skills was not derived from the child's records. Instead, the
district argued the information was based on the principal's personal
knowledge about the student.

The district also contended that the information shared by the principal was made in the context of following up on a disciplinary incident, thus exempting it from protection under the statute.

Answer:

In Douglas County Sch. Dist. RE-1, 104 LRP 30594 (SEA CO 2004), Federal Complaints Officer Charles M. Masner ruled that the Colorado district violated the IDEA when the principal made comments about a child's cognitive and social/emotional level to the other parents. Masner
concluded the principal would not have made such a disclosure without relying on evaluation information
derived from the student's educational records.

However, Masner refused to address whether the disclosure denied the child FAPE, stating that such an allegation should be resolved at a due process hearing.

Masner noted the principal's disclosure was not to the parents of a victimized child about disciplinary action taken against another student. Instead, the statement was made to one set of parents, and potentially through them to other parents, whose children, if only in theory, might be victimizers rather than victims."

In finding that a violation occurred, Masner added that the IDEA permits allegations of individual instances of disclosure and is not limited to violations of institutional policy and practice.

He noted the nondisclosure provisions of the IDEA are based on similar provisions of FERPA. The IDEA regulation at 34 CFR 300.571 (a)(1) generally requires parental consent before personally identifiable information contained in their child's educational records may be disclosed to anyone other than school officials. Its counterpart is found in the FERPA statute at 20 USC 1232 g(b)(1).
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Litigation

Four students at a school that serves special needs students in the Bronx, N.Y., were forced to endure a humiliating strip search at school, traumatizing the fourth-graders and infuriating their parents, a federal lawsuit charges.The four students at Public School 186X were removed from gym class in April because they were suspected of stealing a ring from a female teacher, the New York Daily News reported.

A male aide brought the boys to a second-floor room and ordered them to disrobe, the paper said. The aide reportedly said that if anyone disobeyed, he would call the police. With each wearing onlyunderwear, the aide patted each boy down. Then the aide ordered the boys -- three 10-year-olds and one 11-year-old -- to jump up and down.

The parents of the four children filed a lawsuit against the male aide and the city Education Department for violating its own policies through "disgusting, humiliating and patently unlawful acts, the paper said.City school officials said the employee has been reassigned to administrative duties and is being closely supervised.
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Abuse lawsuit 9/04

The mother of a child with autism has filed a civil suit to be heard in November against the Cupertino Union (Calif.) School District for unspecified damages. Over several months, the mother says, the teacher subjected her daughter to a series of abuses -- "ranging from pushing her to the floor and sitting on her, to rubbing a burrito in her face, The Mercury News reported. In 2002, the girl had a bruise on her arm and a lump on her head, the paper said. The girl told her mother the teacher had kicked her feet out from underneath her, causing her to fall. A doctor reported the injury to Child Protective Services as possible abuse.

William Bragg, Cupertino's superintendent, declined to discuss the suit, according to the Mercury News. He did talk, however, about the difficulty of recruiting and retaining special education teachers, the paper said. The job "is more difficult, more stressful, more demanding'' than teaching in a regular classroom, he said.

Studies have shown children with disabilities "are over three times more likely to be maltreated'' in school, Fred Orelove, a professor in special education at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the paper. "People who are abusers go out of their way to find victims who aren't going to tell on them,'' he said. And children with disabilities may be unable to avoid or escape the abuse.
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Evaluators who serve as district consultants aren't truly 'independent'.

By Steven Imber 9/04


An IEE requires that the evaluation be conducted by a qualified examiner who is not employed by the public agency responsible for educating the child in question. Keeping this in mind, it is imperative that district When parents inquire about where they can obtain an IEE, districts may provide a list of qualified evaluators as long as the list is exhaustive within the geographic area. See, e.g., Letter to Fields, 213 IDELR 259 (OSERS 1989). It is inappropriate, however, for district personnel to suggest only one or two evaluators or to provide a parent with a selective list of evaluators. The U.S. Department of Education has consistently maintained that a parent has the right to select the independent evaluator. See, e.g., Letter to Parker, 41 IDELR 155 , 2004.

Parents may select their own evaluator without consulting district personnel in advance. See e.g., Hudson v. Wilson, 559 IDELR 139 , (4th Cir. 1987). Yet district personnel can challenge the qualifications of an evaluator if that evaluator's credentials are of a lower standard than those staff members the district utilizes. For example, if a district chooses to use masters-level evaluators for its own educational evaluations and a parent selects an independent evaluator who has a bachelor's degree, the district would be within its rights to challenge the parent's choice of evaluator.

If district personnel suggest an evaluator who serves as a consultant to that district, then the evaluator is not truly independent.

District personnel must be especially careful about excluding evaluators from their lists for arbitrary reasons. OSEP issued a policy letter in 2001 advising the state of Wisconsin that it could not exclude evaluators because they associate with private schools or advocacy groups. Nor can districts exclude evaluators because they do not have recent or extensive experience in public schools.

Further, evaluators cannot be excluded simply because they are not certified by their state department of education. See, e.g., Letter to Petska, 35 IDELR 191(OSEP 2001). Also, clinical psychologists cannot be excluded because they are licensed by the Department of Heath, as opposed to the Department of Education.

District personnel can elect to limit the choice of the evaluator to those who are duly certified within their state if state regulations include such a requirement. However, it is important to keep in mind that evaluators from one state can seek certification in another state. Typically, districts do not preclude parents from obtaining an IEE from a specialist who lives in another state. The state of Maine has issued a policy requiring that independent evaluators be certified in their area of specialty in Maine. OSEP has issued an advisory letter that upholds the right of the state of Maine to use such a policy. See Letter to Anonymous, 20 IDELR 1219 (OSEP 1993).

Parents always have the right to justify using the services of an evaluator who is beyond the geographic region. However, their arguments must address the unique circumstances that apply. Thus, if the child has a low-incidence disability such as blindness, parents may argue successfully that they selected a highly qualified evaluator from another state because there were few, if any, choices of appropriate evaluators within their geographic region.

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