More Corrupticut Insider Dirt- The Department of Education
Usenet Supreme Loser ChuckWorth
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Subject:
More Corrupticut Insider Dirt- The Department of Education
Date:
Saturday, January 13, 2007 12:26:41 PM
re: Washington Post article below
=======================================
A CT school "psychologist" (whatever THAT is) told me they were
advised not to detect learning disabilities in children, because that
would cost the State and the towns more money.
She showed me a blue booklet, which I read, which was written by a
CT lawfirm, wherein there were instructions to not diagnose learning
disabilities in CT school children.
I read it.
So, while everyone bitches about the problem we have
with black children and poor children being underachievers
while at the same time ignoring the multiple levels of abuse
we throw at black women (everyone abuses them, especially
the Corrupticut prison guards who are the purest form of racist
and is why they are attracted to the business of being a guard
in the first place-- so they can abuse black people), the State
of Corrupticut has explicitly instructed educators not to detect
children with learning disabilities. The State of CT does not
want to pay for the special ed, so they will fail these
children instead.
The State of CT has no brain expertise; no medical expertise;
UCONN just got nailed for abusing monkeys; Yale put a bogus
vaccine on the market; Lyme is a permanent brain infection
but we are not allowed to detect it early, because that would upset
Yale's monopoly on testing and new vector borne diseases
http://www.actionlyme.org/LYME_CORRUPTICUT.htm
the Corrupticut "US Attorney" is a brainless incompetent suck-up to
the Republican BushCo Corruption Machine; Rowlandgate was about
defrauding Uncle Sam over the numbers of children who need to be
removed
from their parents and placed in institutions; the DCF Hoes never went
to
jail; the State Troopers are all psychopaths; the DCF are lying
whores who
party and screw with everyone including each other and not just the
cops,
http://www.actionlyme.org/05_27_06_Cathy_Elllison_Interview2.wma
but no children should be diagnosed as learning disabled.
Because that would be expensive.
I have a learning disability. 'A well-documented verbal learning
deficit, that I adapted to because my older brother had a learning
disability and my mother bought him those phonics records. I was
the only one who played them. Autistic kids tend to repeat
activities.
I was lucky. I sat behind a chair and played those records over and
over again.... [The entire family - 5 kids - all learning disabled.
And
now 3 grandchildren are learning disabled too, with the same
genetic defect (Neurofibromatosis and Autism)....]
Such a combination of fortunate events other children are
not entitled to per SPECIFIC, PUBLISHED, STATE OF CT,
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION INSTRUCTIONS.
Written by a lawfirm.
Who hired the lawfirm?
NO ONE IN THIS WHOLE COUNTRY is *qualified* to do ^anything*
because of the endemic culture of HATRED and ME-FIRSTism...
And that is why teachers can't learn.
For Teachers, Being 'Highly Qualified' Is a Subjective Matter
'No Child' Standards of Content Mastery Widely Interpreted
By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 13, 2007; A01
To overhaul public education, the No Child Left Behind law required a
massive
expansion of student testing. But it also called for states to ensure
that all
teachers in core academic subjects are "highly qualified" to help
students
succeed -- an unprecedented mandate that has delivered less than
promised.
The law, which turned five years old this week, has held schools to
increasingly
higher standards for student achievement. For teachers, however,
standards meant
to guarantee that they know their subjects are often vague and open to
broad
interpretation.
Legal loopholes and uneven implementation by states and the U.S.
Department of
Education have diluted the law's impact on the teaching workforce,
some
education experts say. They say that meeting the standards of quality
is more
about shuffling paper than achieving two vital goals: ensuring that
teachers are prepared to help students succeed and reducing the
teacher talent gap
between rich and poor schools.
"Meeting the qualifications has become an exercise in bureaucratic
compliance,"
said Andrew J. Rotherham, a member of the Virginia Board of Education
and a
former education adviser in the Clinton administration. "It's not a
process that
gets at the fundamental issues of quality or effectiveness." Congress
may soon
tackle those issues as it considers renewing the law.
The career path of Maria Lewis Ramadane shows what the mandate was
meant to
accomplish and its confusing results. The meaning of highly qualified,
it turns
out, varies sharply from place to place.
When Ramadane started teaching at Graham Park Middle School near
Dumfries in
2003, the special education teacher didn't meet the law's standard
because she
had a provisional license. But after earning a master's degree and
completing a
30-hour literacy class, she obtained full certification, and Virginia
now deems
her highly qualified to teach language arts.
In Maryland and the District, however, Ramadane would be asked for
more: another
standardized test, more professional coursework. Tougher rules are
probably one
reason Maryland and the District report lower rates of classrooms with
highly
qualified teachers: 79 percent in Maryland and 51 percent in the
District,
compared with 95 percent in Virginia. D.C. public schools -- and some
in
Maryland -- also face major recruiting obstacles.
This week, senior Democratic lawmakers discussed an extension of No
Child Left
Behind with President Bush. In the coming congressional debate over
the law,
teacher quality is likely to be a key issue. Some experts favor
shifting the
emphasis from "highly qualified" to "highly effective" teachers,
requiring
states to look not just at credentials but how well individual
teachers help
students learn and perform on tests.
U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the new chairman of the House
Committee on
Education and Labor, said in an interview that teacher quality is one
of his highest priorities. He has proposed spending more money to
recruit and retain qualified teachers, particularly in low-income
districts.
Miller said the current standards for subject matter competence and
certification are the "bare minimum" and said that the government
should
establish systems to increase teacher effectiveness. "The law itself
does not
make you highly qualified," he said.
Some leaders of teacher unions say that raising salaries and improving
working
conditions are better ways to raise the caliber of the workforce.
Princess Moss,
president of the Virginia Education Association, questioned what she
called
"paperwork and needless requirements," particularly in areas with
persistent
teacher shortages, such as special education.
Ramadane said she has not found Virginia's requirements difficult, and
she has
taken extra classes in reading and writing instruction so she can
keep
challenging her Prince William County students. "Most teachers that I
know go
above and beyond," she said.
The Bush administration has pushed aggressively to hold schools
accountable for
raising student test scores and narrowing achievement gaps, but it has
been more
flexible on teacher quality.
In late 2005, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pushed back a
June 2006
deadline for states to reach full compliance with the highly qualified
teacher
requirement, giving them a one-year pass if they could demonstrate
progress.
Spellings said states would not lose federal funding if they submitted
a plan
with an acceptable definition of highly qualified teachers, accurate
data and
steps to ensure that experienced and qualified teachers are spread
equitably
among rich and poor schools.
By August, only Maryland and eight other states had plans that met
all
requirements. The rest, including Virginia, had to make revisions to
address the
equity issue, as did the District.
U.S. education officials and independent analysts cite some advances.
Data show
that about nine out of 10 classrooms nationwide in 2005 were headed by
a highly qualified teacher; in 2003, the rate was
closer to eight out of 10. Experts note that states have created
incentives and
opportunities for teachers to obtain additional training and have
reversed a
long-standing reliance on emergency credentials to fill classrooms. In
some
cities, including the District, school systems have fired teachers who
are not
fully licensed.
Spellings said the drive for content expertise has improved the
workforce.
"The whole notion that you have to have grounding in the subject area
that
you're teaching makes a lot of sense to policymakers and to moms and
dads," she
said. "You know, the old you-can't-teach-what-you-don't-know
philosophy."
According to the federal law, to become highly qualified, a first-year
teacher
must have a college degree, a full state license and some mastery of
content --
provable by coursework or a standardized test.
The first two requirements are straightforward. The third has been
interpreted
in many ways, particularly for veteran teachers -- defined in Virginia
and Maryland as those with
at least one year of experience -- for whom the law is more lenient.
To prove expertise, teachers can choose from a menu of options that
often have
little to do with subject matter.
In Maryland, teachers can show they know their subjects in part by
taking
education courses or earning teaching awards. Virginia offers credit
for
developing curricula, mentoring other teachers or attending a 30-hour
"content
knowledge institute."
Last year, the Bush administration objected to a Virginia policy
allowing new
high school special education teachers to take a less-rigorous middle
school
content test. It also faulted a policy letting veteran teachers assert
that they
are sufficiently knowledgeable if they hold an advanced degree in any
subject,
not just in the subject they teach. Virginia tightened the rules, but
state
officials said the policies in question affected only about 155 of the
state's
99,000 teachers.
Virginia officials report only a small teacher-quality gap, with 6
percent of classrooms in the
state's poorest schools lacking highly qualified teachers, compared
with 3
percent in the richest schools.
In Maryland, the disparity is greater: Nearly 40 percent of classes in
the
poorest schools lack highly qualified teachers, compared with about 10
percent
in the richest schools. Especially in Baltimore and Prince George's
County,
administrators often must resort to hiring inexperienced teachers who
move on
after a few years.
But Maryland has made progress -- the portion of classrooms with
highly
qualified teachers rose from 67 percent in 2004 to more than 79
percent in 2006.
At Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, the compliance rate rose
from 52
percent in 2004 to 76 percent in 2006. But the hunt for highly
qualified
teachers remains intense.
As this school year approached, Principal Karen Coley said she found
herself
waiting for a seventh-grade science teacher to "drop from the sky."
The school system's recruiter, known as the "rainmaker," found a
candidate who was promising but not
rated highly qualified. One recent morning, that teacher quizzed
students about
the difference between chemical and physical properties. "A natural,"
Coley
called her.
But in the future, Coley is hoping to find a more reliable stream of
highly
qualified teachers.
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