More Lies... School Vouchers and the Student With Special Needs

It is shameful anytime craven politicians victimize children.  When those children have special needs, it is almost beyond belief.  But I have learned that when it comes to the strategies that Anti-Public School Politicians are willing to use to further their agenda, there is no such thing as too low.  Consider their current “justification” for enacting school vouchers… Saving poor children with special needs from “failing” public schools.  There are a number of reasons why this is despicable, I’m just going to cover the big two. 

First of all, a significant reason why schools often struggle to meet the needs of students with special needs is due to a lack of funding.  Funding that has been reduced year after year by the same Anti-Public School Politicians that point to school vouchers as the best solution to fix the problem that they created.  Without naming names, my local school district, which was known state-wide for the quality of services it provided to students with special needs was told by a state politician that they were overfunded. In his opinion, the state did not need to fund great service for Students with Special Needs, good was good enough.  This same politician is leading the Special Education School Voucher Charge… For the children. 

Second, there is no need to create a school voucher program for meeting the education need of students with special needs. Why is the case? There already is a process in place that addresses this. Every Special Education Student has an Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD) Committee that meets at least annually to consider the academic needs of the student. If the ARD Committee determines that the needs of the child cannot be meet in a public education setting, the ARD can recommend a private school placement.  If the ARD Committee make a private placement decision, the public school district is compelled to pay the ENTIRE cost of the placement.  Though this is not a common occurrence, it does happen. And just to be clear, the majority of members of an ARD Committee are the employees of the public school.       

Which brings me to my closing question. How does the Anti-Public School Politician get up in the morning and look himself in his face? Maybe he lives in a house with no mirrors so he does not have to. 

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Upcoming Conference Presentations: The Fundamental 5 National Summit (Keynote) 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Top LYS Tweets form the Week of March 26, 2017

If you are not following @LYSNation on Twitter, then you missed the Top 10 LYS Tweets from the week of March 26, 2017 when they were first posted.  And if you are on Twitter, you might want to check out the Tweeters who made this week’s list.

1. Want to know what a church believes? Look at the budget. Want to know the values of a country? Look at the budget. (By @cb_johns)

2. Cutting school meals to poor kids is wrong and asinine and heroically stupid. (By @Doug_Lemov)

3. "The Buck Stops... Over There" is not leadership. (By @LYSNation)

4. Some people act like public education is harming students when in actuality it's the ONLY lifeline for many of them. (By @BluntEducator)

5. Vouchers - Just as racist now as they were then. “60 Years Ago, Resistance To Integration In Texas Led To Voucher Plan” (By @LYSNation)

6. High court rules public schools must do more to educate special-needs kids. (By @caitlinzemma)

7. If you say free lunch programs aren't helping children in poverty, try not eating for a week and see how it affects your performance. (By @ronclarkacademy)

8. Teachers say it's not fair that accountability follows state dollars to public schools but not to private schools. (By @TexasAFT)

9. The main purpose of student assessment data is to highlight the quality of adult practice and help decide on what to do to improve. (By @DrMetz_MHS)

10. When trying to convey an important message, perhaps using a platform that limits you to 140 characters is not the best method of communic... (By @DrJerryRBurkett)

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn... 

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Upcoming Conference Presentations: The National Principals Conference; The Fundamental 5 National Summit (Keynote) 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A School Asks... Common Assessments 101

A campus implementing the LYS Common Assessment model sent in the following implementation questions:

SC,

We have some concerns with the 30-minute time limit on common assessments.  For ELAR, there is a fair amount of reading a piece of text or multiple pieces of text before reaching the ten questions on the assessment.  As a department, we are ready to embrace the ten questions for an assessment.  Thirty minutes is not adequate time to read and annotate the text and then answer and justify/prove the answers.  Our question is can the students spend 20-minutes reading and annotating the passages and then give them the 30-minutes to answer the ten questions?  Additionally, how does this concept work with students who have IEPs stating that they receive extra time on assessments?

SC Response

Fantastic questions, and questions that prove the campus is really committed to making the common assessment process a valuable tool for monitoring and adjusting instructional practices.

The questions you have concerning ELAR checkpoints are not unusual.  You are correct, there can be a lot of reading involved and reading takes time.  Which means for an ELAR checkpoint the passage selection is the driving consideration.  Reading passages that lend themselves to multiple questions are significantly more useful than ones that do not.  Then it has to be decided if a “hot” or “cold” read will be used.  A hot read is a passage that the student has seen before, which means that they can process it more quickly and have time to answer more questions.  A cold read is a passage that the student has not seen before. These passages take longer to process, which means that they have less time for questions.

As you mentioned the 30-minute time limit is an important design element.  30-minutes protects instructional time. Exposure to more instruction is what drives student performance, not exposure to more testing.  A fact seeming lost by most schools, school districts and states.  Because 30-minutes is the driving factor, there will be many checkpoints that have fewer than ten questions.  And that is OK, because the checkpoint is assessing the critical concepts that had to be taught in the 3-week window, not every thing that was taught.

As for students with an IEP, time is a relative concept.  If it takes a student 60-minutes to answer ten questions, I can reduce the checkpoint to five questions for that student.  Or I could reduce answer choices, or I could pre-highlight passages. 

Keep working the process. With every checkpoint cycle things become more effective and more efficient.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Upcoming Conference Presentations: TASSP Aspiring Principal Workshop (Multiple Presentations), Learning for a Change Spring Summit (Keynote and Multiple Presentations) 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Top LYS Tweets From the Week of February 28, 2016

If you are not following @LYSNation on Twitter, then you missed the Top 10 LYS Tweets from the week of February 28, 2016 when they were first posted.  And if you are on Twitter, you might want to check out the Tweeters who made this week’s list.

1. I will vote in support of public education and the 5 million Texas school children. I am committed to vote - I am a Texas educator. (By @texasisd)

2. ...an imperfect plan implemented immediately and violently will always succeed better than a perfect plan. - General George S. Patton (By @famousquotenet)

3. “Great teachers know that words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” (By @DrRichAllen)

4. Dialogue is a conversation where both brains matter. (By @tskuhn)

5. Inclusion is not a place, it is a service. (By @Mr_J_AP_WISD)

6. Great leaders matter even in schools with already sophisticated teachers! The system does not work without leadership and vision! (By @InstructionalLe)

7. The happiest people don't have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have. (By @LifeLimits)

8. If you never make mistakes then you are not on the frontier of discovery, for there is where mistakes are made all the time. (By @neiltyson)

9. I have figured out the employee dress code at the Apple Store.

1. Where whatever you want; 2. And a red t-shirt. (By @LYSNation)

10. Just want all to know what my Dad (Bum Phillips) always believed - You can have fun and win. (By @sonofbum)

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/Fundamental5 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
• Upcoming Presentations: Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Conference (Multiple Presentations); Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association Conference (Multiple Presentations); LYS / TASSP Advanced Leadership Academy (Keynote) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook