Sunday, November 13, 2005

SPECIAL ED ALSO CRUMBLING IN NYC

The Klein fiasco mill is never on hiatus. Today's focus will be on the satellite issue of "special education." During one of Klein's momentous and scripted tours of a local school set up for a spontaneous VIP visit, the chancellor attended a virtual classroom lesson. His head swivelled once around the room of bug-eyed kids. One quick pivot and he pursed his lips to a microphone, declaiming, " I was asked to pick out which kids were special education and which ones weren't and I couldn't do it." Based on this immersion, he ordered that special education children, desperately deserving personalized care, be shoe-horned into already bulging classes. This is the dirty little secret called "mainstreaming."

Klein releases periodic odes to himself, sort of a monogrammed "triumph of the will." He calls them his "School Reform Report Card." In them he luxuriates over the strides made in special education during his stewardship. No sooner did it resonate among his support staff ( including authors of such staff development mags as "Frogs and Toadies", "Guide for Lap-dogs", and "No Show Digest") and the NYC tabloids, that federal judge Charles Sifton certified a class action suit alleging that Klein's school system denied special education students a full year of learning opportunity.

There is more than mere suspicion that Klein withheld services owed to these most vulnerable kids. Perhaps the chancellor doesn't agree that by ejecting them from school they were being denied services. Perhaps his rigorous training as an attorney enables him to make that case. According to Advocates for Children, parents were kept blind to their rights of due process and their children's civil right to an education thereby compromised.

Prior to making it as New York City's schools chancellor, Joel Klein's crowning achievement was as a Justice Department legal beagle, when he expeditiously busted Microsoft. After his victory was reversed on appeal, Klein was drafted as the first schools chancellor with no expertise in education. He seemed to start on the right foot when he proved to be the first chancellor, competent in the profession or not, who knew how many buildings were administered by his own bureaucracy. Now there was a foundation on which to build!

The bereaved public, bemoaning a lost but once glorious educational institution, clamored for its revival and clung to any blowing straw of hope. The need to believe is deep-rooted. For a citizenry steeped in "business as usual" shell games, Klein's zealous vows, combined with his crisp and military-sounding press releases, delivered the formidable zing of an adult beverage.

Klein knew that the school system was a gravely sick though not doomed patient. But he got the diagnosis all wrong. And instead of allowing capable professionals to apply their skilled hands to the prone patient, he rushed the patient to a morgue to be stabilized by no-bid consultants in ice-packing. Klein's revolutionary fiats are all fizzling because not only are they not antidotes to the poisonous truths reposing in the system, but they are compounding the catastrophe with new and unforeseen venoms.

The Aztec and Mayan civilizations have passed on their legacy of human sacrifice to an unlikely beneficiary: Joel Klein and his Department of Education. The difference is that this time, children's hearts and minds are on an agenda, not a menu. He is hitting them hard and all who serve them hard. That is no way to be hard-hitting.

Education is a thoroughbred that cannot be ridden by an army of 400 pound jockeys. Its magic cannot be scripted, like the chancellor's press conferences, to the beat of a metronome and the drone of an hourglass. The relationship between each teacher and every student is inviolable as between doctor and patient. Klein hijacks style and sabotages substance. He has made a mere job of a noble calling. When learning works it is despite, not because of his policies. And he has littered the road to progress with martyrs. Klein's leadership is an embarrassment of myths and fallacies. As he subdues the waves of the educational seas , we know we are on the "Good Ship Lollipop" because he told us so. The truth is that his occupation of what was once the pride and rock of New York, its public school system, is a cruel and furious adventure in failure.

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AUSTRALIA TO INSIST ON PHONICS

Every child in Australia will be tested for literacy when they start school and then regularly over the next three years under a national action plan to help struggling students. A national inquiry has also suggested that children's reading results be available to teachers if the child moves interstate or to a different school. Parents would be given regular updates on their child's performance, with a report twice a year for the first three years of schooling.

The report, Teaching Reading, was commissioned by Education Minister Brendan Nelson amid fears that current teaching methods were failing Australia's children. It contains an explicit warning that Australia's schools should embrace "systematic, direct phonics instruction so that children master the essential alphabetic codebreaking skill required for foundational reading proficiency". The warning follows a controversial, worldwide debate on which of two approaches is better - the phonics instruction method, or the "whole language" method, a "holistic" approach in which children are immersed in language and words, instead of learning first to break down words.

While acknowledging that this year's OECD indicators report Education at a Glance shows Australian school students compare well against overseas students, the report finds "a significant minority of children in Australian schools continue to face difficulties in acquiring acceptable levels of literacy and numeracy". While both phonics and whole-language methods can help some children, the report recommends that phonics be the starting point. "Systematic phonics instruction is critical if children are to be taught to read well, whether or not they experience reading difficulties," it finds. "The inquiry found strong evidence that a whole-language approach to the teaching of reading on its own is not in the best interests of children, particularly those experiencing reading difficulties. "Moreover, where there is unsystematic or no phonics instruction, children's literacy progress is significantly impeded, inhibiting their initial and subsequent growth in reading accuracy, fluency, writing, spelling and comprehension."

The report recommends that the current assessment of students' literacy results against national benchmarks be extended so results of individual children are available for diagnostic and intervention purposes. "To assist the transfer of achievement information as students move from school to school and from state to state, mechanisms are also proposed to make this process a long overdue reality," it states. "The committee recommends ... nationally consistent assessments on entry to school be undertaken for every child, and these link to future assessments. A confidential mechanism such as a unique student identifier should be established to enable information on an individual child's performance to follow the child regardless of location, and to monitor a child's progress throughout schooling."

Earlier this week, Dr Nelson backed national testing on basic literacy skills for trainee teachers when they enter university and when they graduate.

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The education of our children should not be left to the state: "By placing your child in the care of a government-run indoctrination center, you are saying that you trust the government to raise your child, essentially giving up your due process and privacy rights. You are admitting that the government is able to give your child something you cannot provide. When you consider how poorly the government manages everything else, why would any reasonable person think things would be different when it comes to education?"

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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