Is My Kid Learning!? What is RTI?!

A new catch phrase in education today is RTI , which stands for Response to Intervention. RTI is part of the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Response to Intervention is supposed to help students who struggle with learning at the same rate and pace as his or her peers. Students who fall behind are indentified and given proper instruction through the RTI process. RTI defines problems by using data. The problems can be addressed in the school setting by a creation of interventions tied to the students’ needs. If a student does not make adequate progress over a period of time then the student is referred to special education.

Test scores, class participation, records and routine progress monitoring are used to identify a student in need. If the student is moderate to high risk, he or she is given specialized intervention or more support that is suppose to help the student make the appropriate gains. Constant assessments are to be given on a regular basis to address the student’s deficits and help modify the curriculum to meet the student’s educational necessities.

This plan is a great plan!! Is it the answer to the problems in education? No. The people who coined RTI had a great idea in theory. If all teachers could be trained to look for nuances in learning, use assessments to drive instruction and know how to motivate and support struggling learners, RTI would not be needed. Just because the plan for RTI exist it does not mean it will work in a struggling school or with all struggling students.

Struggling schools are struggling for a reason. The dynamics and climate is one that overlooks student needs. The needs and educational holes are so great that only the high priority problems get met and the lower needs are shelved. That’s how students that need a little support go unnoticed. It’s a snowball effect and attention should be given to it.

Parents, forget the long teacher conference meetings about nothing. Ask to see the data that proves your child is progressing. Ask to see the portfolio of work that shows a progression. Ask developmental questions as well as concrete questions of your child’s teacher. If you are not satisfied move your child to a better school. Time is too short to have precious years wasted.

Is Waiting for Superman a Big Business Ploy?

I’m not waiting for Superman. Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim’s new educational film is presently receiving a media blitz. Guggenheim (the son of a documentary filmmaker) funded his film about the perils of the current educational system. In the film, Guggenheim, follows 5 students in their educational journey. According to the Waiting for Superman movie website, ”In spite of their rousing determination and grit, the shocking reality is that most of the film’s touching and funny cast of kids will be barred from a chance at what was once taken for granted: a great American education.” The film breaks up the educational problem into several sections of need: kids, teachers, administrators, unions, schools, states and the nation at large. Inevitably, these kids have one hope of receiving a good education, a lottery system to attend a better public school. The implication that a good education in America today can only take place through a lottery system for specialized schools is simply not true.

I appreciate the attention that the Guggenheim’s movie is giving to education reform, although I do not appreciate the big business media blitz to privatize education. Waiting for Superman is the metaphorical surfboard of big business stakeholders to privatize education for financial gains.

This powerful movement of policymakers superimposing structure to the educational system started back in the 1980s. Nicholas Lemann stated in a 1997 issue of Atlantic Monthly that in the 1980s “the idea of raising standards in public education emerged as a national cause.” In 1983 the National Council for Excellence in Education commissioned by the Reagan administration produced a report, A Nation at Risk. This report identified a national education crisis and recommended nationwide administration of standardized testing by states and the local educational systems. The use of the testing data was to better diagnose and evaluate student progress. “The view in the education world (was) that politicians never before tried to dictate specific teaching methods to this extent,”(Lemann, 1997).

With standardized testing came the creation of businesses to produce the books and products for the schools to utilize to accomplish their testing goals. Today, educational concerns are many. For over twenty-five years, big business has been riding on the backs of policymakers’ decisions in the field of education.

The standardized testing market is reportedly a $400 million to $700 million annual business that is largely controlled by three publishers (Harcourt Educational Measurement, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing, a Houghton Mifflin company) and one scoring firm (NCS Pearson). A unified flow of substance and dollars runs directly from policymakers to textbook companies, leaving school districts with virtually no options. The few options available to districts for purchase and to teachers and students for use are dictated by the same policymakers and companies.

The great hope of America’s youth does not lie in privatizing the public school system, because that benefits the same big business conglomerates, not the students. Waiting for Superman and all of the attention it is receiving directly benefit the movement to privatize education.

In contrast, Race to Nowhere, a student-centered documentary, was made on a shoestring budget of $200,000 dollars. Director Vickie Abeles painted the picture of how today’s youth are struggling in the current system and how a collaborative effort of students, parents, teachers, administrators and community leaders is needed to problem-solve the needs of the today’s kids. The movement to privatize education does not directly benefit from such a collaborative approach.

The message of Race to Nowhere is not implying that a new private educational system is needed for kids to be healthy, happy and whole. The student-centered educational message of Race to Nowhere has been ignored by the media. An Internet search of Waiting for Superman yields 944,000 results, while a search of Race To Nowhere yields only 77,200 results. Why has Race to Nowhere gotten little to no attention from major media sources when compared to Waiting for Superman? It is simple; Waiting for Superman is a movie that has a villain and a quick fix provided big business, while Race to Nowhere calls for a collaborative movement of communities.

Big business will not make any money on students, parents, teachers, administrators and community leaders collaborating for a healthier happier educational system. A fear monger message of a poor kid in the Bronx that can not seem to receive an education unless a private system is created beats the path toward a money making venture.

I’m not waiting for Superman and neither is any kid in our country. What we are waiting for is a grassroots collaborative effort that really puts kids first instead of using them to fuel big business profits.

Living or Learning Problem: Do You Care?

Sometimes our kids have living problems not learning problems in education today. Life at times is so complicated. I grew up in simpler times. The students of today have many challenges to face: death, suicide, sexuality, drugs, alcohol, etc. Some kids have challenges just getting to school.

This week one of my most lethargic students warmed up to my class and me. He was a lump. I have tried to engage him in conversation,... nothing. He would sluggishly give me one-word answers to my questions. I’d ask about his life, nothing. Yes or no answers followed without affect or expression. How many months of school has it been? I was pulling out all my stops because I know through experience and research that a relationship is a starting point and cultivation for learning. I would put on my best face on day after day but each day he was ultra flat therefore, non-engaged. You can’t win them all right? Wrong because somehow, someway, something got to him. This week he was Mr. Delightful! I don’t know what turned it but it turned. He worked harder, made positive comments and became an asset to the classroom. Most likely he was having living problems not a learning problem.

According to Eutopia.com,” New America Media, a nationwide network of over 700 ethnic-media organizations, and the University of California’s Office of the President, conducted a survey of young people in California to better understand what young adults ages 16-22 feel are the primary issues impacting their lives.” http://www.edutopia.org/challenges-young-adults The study spoke with 601 young Californians. Here are the results of the survey as they reported in the study.

CALIFORNIA DREAMERS: A PUBLIC OPINION PORTRAIT
OF THE MOST DIVERSE GENERATION THE NATION HAS KNOWN
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_custom.html?custom_page_id=340
Fig. 1



In the graph young people identified family breakdown as the number one problem followed by violence in the neighborhood and poverty.

In another situation I was walking to the office and an educational assistant was having a disagreement with a middle school girl. I stopped and asked the educational assistant what seemed to be the problem. The assistant quickly let me know the girl refused to work and now was refusing to go to the dean. I volunteered to take her. I asked the young lady what was wrong. She blew me off with a simple nothing which means I’m not telling you, you don’t care. I implored her and then she exploded with a river of mind-blowing information. Her brother had been arrested for attempted murder and he was her caretaker. She had a mother but her brother is the one that cared for her. She knew he was in Long Beach but that’s all she knew and she was freaked out. I told her I’d be freaked out too. Then I said the thing that any of you would of said, “we can find him and you can write him a letter”. She melted with hope as tears filled her eyes. That’s all she needed was hope and help. We cannot have an educational system that is not human. Our souls have to touch the young people souls. We have to care about their lives. Is this our job? Who cares? If a kid needs you, step up. It may be a living problem they need help with not a learning problem.

Join the Educational Revolution!

I consider myself an Education Reformer. Through the years I have tried to reform education from the inside out. It has not worked. What makes me so smart, nothing really? I think every teacher wants to assist students with learning to the best of their ability. At least that is my deepest desire, to assist kids that struggled to overcome their challenges. Which in turn, produces more well-rounded, self-sufficient, educated people as citizens for our county. Does this seem far-fetched?

This is my general premise as per my paper, The Multi-Sensory Classroom (Aug. 2004):
“Each child develops sensory/motor preskills at a very young age (e.g., auditory processing, fine and gross motor skills, visual perception, reflexes, tactile processing, sensory modulation). These bottom levels of sensory/motor development are often taken for granted because they are basic and develop automatically in the typically developing child. When we teach a student at school, the child uses these sensory/motor preskills as a foundation for learning. Children in whom these preskills have not fully developed find learning difficult if not impossible; they become our struggling or special-needs children. Without the appropriate developmental foundation, they cannot build the abstract thinking skills we try to teach them in school. “
Therefore, students may struggle in an educational setting and it may not be obviously apparent why the struggle exists.

So here’s my beef. Many students receive the necessary tools to overcome struggles in public education by the support of parents, teachers and interventions. There are a great number of students who do not receive additional support for whatever reason. This fact needs to change very rapidly.

Case in point, let’s examines the test scores for the high school exit exam for California. According to the California Department of Education website’s data for July of 2008, 13, 237 students took the Math portion of the California Exit Exam and 13, 373 students took the English portion of the exam. 29% of the students passed the Math and 30% passed the English portions of the test for the state. That means that 9,423 students failed the Math and 9,420 failed the English! Holy Smoke!

I cannot be the only one screaming in the wildness. Where are you? Please don’t give me the spill about more qualified teachers and incentives. In today’s, New York Times, Week in Review section on page 5 there is an advertisement from the President of America Federation of Teachers. The name of the article which is really an advertisement is called, “ What Matters Most: Words into Action”. In the ad-like article the president, Randi Weingarten explains this problem in education, “ For too long and too often, teacher evaluation –in both design and implementation – has failed to achieve what must be our goal: continuously improving and informing teaching so as to better education all students”. She goes on to give an example from Colorado of the school board and teacher union working together. Then at the end she says that school board members, teachers, union leaders all feel the same way, they want what’s best for the kids. I felt the article was about working relationships in these difficult financial times. Maybe that needs to be the focus for the advertisement that educational higher ups and teacher unions do not need to eat each other alive so they can eventually help kids. Although our students are failing right now and I don’t want any kid to miss several years of learning because people who make a lot of money can’t get along. We are talking about kid’s futures here. Give me a break!

I’m tired of the Infomercial Education. The kind that keeps promising that magic ellixir yet, the product is just so-so. The real conversation needs to be around the individual differences of students or their learning styles and needs. Administrators, school boards, teachers and all school staff members need to be trained in how to recognize a struggling student’s needs: emotionally, developmentally and physically. They also need to know how to build or recognize curriculum for these needs and drive the curriculum based on assessment data, not a hunch or a feeling. I’m not saying that public education can fix it all and is a one-stop shop. But let’s be honest students come to school with all of these issues and as a whole we cannot ignore the numbers. Our students in this state are not making the cut. Our interventions are not making the cut. Identifying student’s needs are not based on each student’s individual differences or assessments yet blanket interventions are thrown on major problems.
So, we need an Educational Revolution…stay tuned how to join the fight.

Cut the Blind? What the Hey?

Is it me? I don't get it! Education needs an enema! Cuts, cuts and more cuts.

Today, I heard about cutting Visually Impaired Services! Visually Impaired or “low vision is a severe reduction in vision that can't be corrected with standard glasses or contact lenses and reduces a person's ability to function at certain or all tasks.” (http://www.answers.com/topic/visually-impaired)

How in the world could anyone think about cutting or reducing a trained professional to work with these students? These services are modifications not actual services someone stated today. Are these people out of their minds?

Blind students need services! These students use glasses, Braille, seeing eye dogs, canes and adaptive computer technology. What could the person been thinking that wanted to cut these priceless services. What degree could they have earned to make it ok to even think about this course of action? What university produces people who do not think but desperately do things that hurt the future of our children, state, and nation?

We’d better wake up and take charge of the yahoos that are running things into the ground in education. The thinkers that want to cut starting with my kids education and social skills for autistic youth need a flush.

PARENTS, GOOD SOLID TEACHERS, ADVOCATES and the COMMUNITY pick up your beds and walk. Open your mouths and complain and let’s make common sense in education. Enough is enough, let’s flush out the waste before it’s too late.

Action Plan

•Look for re-elections and up coming school board meetings.
•Go and see what’s cooking.
•Ask a kid about what’s going on in school and the good stuff too. We need to know what is working.

•Visit a local school.
•Ask for literacy curriculum
•Ask to see computers in the classroom, you might faint at this one
•Ask about vocational track for students
•Report back about what you find and let’s do something before education suffers anymore.