The summarization of the article I read discussed how the schools in the United States are continuing to become more segregated since Dr. Martin Luther King.  The wealthy continue to move to the suburbs creating wealthy public schools while the poor students in the city do not have the same access to such schools.  It is argued this could be changed in the United States Government created an incentive program where schools would receive additional funding

 “for each transfer student, construction funds to make more space available, funds to recruit and employ on-site advocates and mentors to ensure the social comfort and the pedagogic progress of these students, and funds to underwrite their transportation by the same convenient means that wealthy people use to transport their children to private schools.”

In addition to the incentives listed above the government could require the students whom get first choice are form the most crowded, poorest, and underachieving schools.  The author continued by citing an example used in Boston Public Schools describing a 90% success rate and most continuing their education after high school.  He also discussing how minority groups still want and believe in integration and are convinced their children would perform better in such environments.

He believes something needs to be done ASAP.  Charter and magnet schools he feels perpetuate the problem and a system similar to the one in Boston or described above should be implemented.

Implications for a Principal

There are two ways you could look at this problem and the authors’ solution. 

1.)If you were to be the acting principal of one of the “wealthy schools” you could use such a program to benefit all learners in your school.  The additional funding would allow more support and technology in the classroom.  It would also require staff development and training on how to educate students of a different background and how to close the gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged.  It would also have an impact on the school climate.  The additional diversity could cause problems or could add to the overall learning experience for students of different backgrounds.  Depending on how the principal approached the situation different positive or negative impacts are possible.

2.)  If you were to be the principal of one of the underachieving schools I believe it could cause even more problems.  The students who are not going to the wealthy schools would not feel the situation was equitable.  You would most likely lose your best performing students and have little or no student role models left in the classroom.  Teachers would struggle more and the climate and school community could become bitter and angry.  I would definitely the incentive system should consider giving the wealthy schools even more money when the inner city schools are already struggling?  It doesn’t seem there is any positive implications with the schools who are losing students, unless student to teacher ratio decreased and jobs weren’t taken away. Being a principal at one of these schools could become even more challenging.

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Website.  ASCD online Article: No Half Steps, No Equivocation by Jonathan Kozol.  Retrieved online November 15, 2010.
http://ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov10/vol68/num03/Resegregation@-What's-the-Answer%C2%A2.aspx
 

Special Education Challenges

Assistant Principal Interview:

When asked the about difficulties regarding 504’s and IEP’s there were two circumstances that stood out in our conversation. 

The first was a situation unique to our school.  Our school is an IB magnet therefore students have to meet certain requirements to be accepted into our school.  One of the requirements is receiving scores on or above grade level on end of grade tests.  Due to the fact that many EC students struggle on EOG’s we only a few students with IEP’s per grade level.  Because there are few students we have only one person who serves the entire school for all of the following responsibilities: Oversee all IEP’s, testing/eligibility for IEP’s, compliance facilitator, meet the needs of all EC students, and is the teaching assistant for all inclusion class settings.  This is a lot of work for one person to do.  Due to the amount of work placed on one person the administration must be well informed about EC and all of the accommodations and oversee the EC teacher is doing their job in order to meet compliance by law.

The second situation was regarding the testing modifications students require per their IEP.  More students are needed to be testing using the following accommodations: separate room, small group, read aloud, mark answers in book, etc.  Due to theses accommodations staffing the help necessary can be quite troublesome.  A student who needs these accommodations for EOG’s are now able to receive the same modifications during normal formal assessments throughout the year.  Needing all of the extra staff to do this is not funding by anyone and has required the administration to add more work to others case load.

Overall, my assistant principal discussed other challenges they face due to EC accommodations and I’m sure all other responses will vary greatly. Meeting the needs of all students is not easy; however it is absolutely necessary not only morally, but legally due to FAPE.

Supreme Court Ruling on Special Education

Summary of case:

The supreme court ruling regarding special education was about a student who was in high school and suffered from attention issues which his parents believed was a learning disability.  The school evaluated him and decided he did not qualify for special education.  In the students junior year the parents grew tired of the lack of support and pulled their student out of the school and placed him in a private residential school with a tuition of $5,000 a month.  When the parents moved the student from public to private school they did not notify the district in their decision.  The family then hired an attorney to address the situation and decided to sue the school district to pay for their child’s tuition.  Before the case could be heard it had to go to the supreme court in order to determine whether or not the parents could sue the school district for the tuition.

Supreme court justice John Paul Stevens wrote the 6-3 majority opinion: "We conclude that IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) authorizes reimbursement for the cost of special education services when a school district fails to provide a FAPE (Free and Appropriate Public Education) and the private-school placement is appropriate, regardless of whether the child previously received special education or related services through the public school."

The decision did not rule on the outcome case it simply determined that it was legal to try the case in federal district court.  It is now up to the federal judges interpretation of the supreme court ruling to decide if the school district failed to provide the child with the appropriate education and the private school was able to meet the students needs.

The family is suing the district for $65,000 in the total cost of tuition and additional legal fees which is estimated to amount to $500,000.  The case has been appealed by the district because the superintendent (Jack Musser) believes the outcome could be a landmark case and set precedent for future lawsuits.  No ruling has been made on the five year old case and I could not find any information supporting a final decision on the case.

Research used from the following websites:

MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31493504/ns/us_news-education/

Oregon Live - http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/06/us_supreme_court_rules_against.html

Do you support the decision?

In this case based upon the information that I have researched I do not support the supreme courts decision.  I do not support this because of the language used in the description of the majority opinion: “regardless of whether the child previously received special education or related services through the public school.”  This makes an extremely dangerous blanket statement that essentially supports any student and their parents to leave a public school without exhausting all options or opportunities available.  

As a public educator I have experience teaching students with and without disabilities.  Through this experience I can recall numerous examples where parents have asked  for their student to be tested for learning disabilities and were determined to not have a disability.  If the student has continued to struggle and has needed any help to be successful we, as a staff, working cooperatively with the parents have designed different accommodations to ensure success of the students involved.  This has been successful in all circumstances and it has not been necessary to provide special education services for the child to be successful.

  

When ruling in favor of the family the supreme court, in my opinion, supported the lack of collaboration between a students parents/guardians and their teachers/support staff.  Collaboration and open communication between parents and their school is an essential part of the process when educating students.  This ruling allows parents to go around the school district without trying to take other possible steps which could result in success.  Parents no longer need to exhaust their options before leaving a school district instead they have been empowered to leave if they don’t feel their child is receiving the proper support without even needing to notify the district of their frustration and choice.

You Tube Video Addition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

The video that I have posted above is about Sugata Mitra's educational experiment.  The experiment involved putting computers in places around the world (mostly India) where students are able to use the computers for whatever purposes they desire.  He then would go back to each site and assess their knowledge.  His results were truly remarkable demonstrating that children are able to teach themselves by working together if given the access necessary to information.

Schools Role in Social Issues

Schools Role in Social Issues

In my opinion schools are responsible for bullying/social issues that occurs on campus.  I believe that schools are responsible because the most important factor a school must provide is a safe environment for all students.  If a school cannot provide a safe environment, learning will not be optimal.  In today’s society most of the violence that occurs in school, stems from a variety of social issues, more specifically bullying.  If schools do not address how to handle this problems they are refusing to provide a safe environment for students, something that is a right as a United States citizen.  It is not the schools responsibility for bullying/social issues outside of school simply because it is not feasible for the staff to enforce the appropriate behaviors, however the same behaviors in school should always be encouraged off campus.

Regarding whether schools are responsible for solving or handling social issues depends on how you perceive the terms “solve or handle.”  In my opinion “solving” social issues implicates that a problem exists and needs to be changed.  In this case it is absolutely the schools responsibility to solve the problems that exist to ensure safety for students.  When I believe schools are “handling” social issues it implies that there is not necessarily a problem that exists but individual circumstances that need addressed.  When “handling” social issues schools should start to address this situation by implementing bullying prevention or social interaction coursework.  If social issues can be prevented they will not have to be dealt with later, and the volume of individual problems would be far less.  Schools role in social issues and bullying simply should be treated the same as any other responsibility of the school.  

Below is a brief example of the steps schools should take to prevent and handle social issues:

1.)  Set-up a structure/program for prevention   

2.)  Have the resources/training available for implementing the prevention  

3.)  Implement a structure for intervention of social issues that would arise on a case-by-case basis

4.)  Incorporate the discipline plan for instances where intervention doesn’t solve the problem

Decisions At My School

Overview:

       There are probably around 25,000 decisions made each day at my school.  The person making the decision relies heavily on the specific decision.  When it comes to day to day instruction most decisions are made by the individual teacher and the PLC of the content area they are instructing.  However, the more important the decision usually the more people involved.  Most of our safety policies are set forth by the district our general procedures are set forth by each grade level team and their assistant principal.  Therefore each situation is dealt with an a variety of manners some of which will be described below.

Decisions made by my Principal:

1.)  The first decision my principal discussed with me was a decision that she later regretted.  During a back to school retreat teachers voiced their opinion, "they did not want anyone to wear hats in the building."  She decided this was a decision that needed to be a consensus of the entire staff because everyone would be held accountable for the decision.  After much discussion everyone arrived on the decision in which no one would be allowed to wear hats.  A couple weeks into school a few teachers came to the principal voicing their concerns about custodians who had been wearing hats while working during the school day.  This is when my principal came to the realization that she did not arrive on what she thought was consensus of the staff.  The custodians were part of the staff who were going to be affected by the decision and were not included in the decision making process.  For this reason my principal felt foolish because she had not followed the decision making process that she had desired.  

My principal was using the levels of involvement model and was trying to arrive at consensus between the staff, because she failed to reach consensus the end result backfired and caused discourse between the teachers and custodians.  If she would have taken more time and thought about all stakeholders whom were involved in the decision there would have been a real consensus that was reached therefore no problems would have arose.

If I were making this decision in the exact circumstances that occurred I would have not tried to reach consensus among all stakeholders due to the amount of time it would have taken away from the back to school retreat.  In my opinion there would be many more important topics that would need to be discussed before that day was over in order to ensure the staff was ready to start school.  In the interest of saving time I would ask the teachers to meet in within their grade levels for 10 minutes and then arrive upon decision based upon their input.  I would make it very clear they should decide while thinking about what would be best for students.  After hearing their input I would make an authoritative decision and move on expressing the importance of the other items that needed to be discussed and reviewed by the end of the day.  I would inform the other staff involved that the decision needed to be made quickly and that I had gotten as much information and opinions as I could in the given situation and implore them to support the decision that was made.

2.)  My principal discussed many other decisions after the decision above but I chose to write about how she determines the critical issues that need to be put on our School Improvement Plan.  The first step is to gather data from all stakeholders that will be affected by the School Improvement Plan.  She collects information from parent, teacher, and student surveys in addition to standardized test scores and analyzes data to determine the issues or areas for improvement that are seen across the board.  At the end of the school year in a process we call the "Annual Review" we discuss the data as a staff and arrive on a consensus for our critical issues to be addressed in our SIP and discuss the "Now-Next-Future" of our school in general.  The consensus reached is used by our principal to make a first draft of our SIP.  During our back-to-school retreat we review the document and write another draft with staff input.  In each grade level and department, teachers meet and write goals to support the SIP and create their own sub-action plans.  All of this information is then used to create the final draft which is agreed upon by our staff then taken to the PTA, SLT, and all stakeholders before it is made a final document.  Throughout the year the document is revised when necessary.

My principal used a variety of methods to arrive to the final decision of how our SIP would be written she actually used a decision making process that is separate from the ones we discussed called "Shared Decision Making" published by "The Paideia Consulting Group (1995)."  It does involve many of the same terms and steps as the models discussed in class but differs slightly in that a number of processes are used instead of using only one.  Personally I love the way she makes our SIP and I will use the same method when I have my own principalship.  The only thing I would consider changing would incorporate a group of teachers to make the initial draft and write the revisions and I would give my approval.  Many schools make their SIP and never look at it again and couldn't tell you what goals and areas of improvement are on it.  Our staff uses the document to make a concentrated effort to improve our school each year.