Hatchets and those who wield them

So again I'm going to digress into politics. 

I know, I know, again! Please stay with me.

One of the things I've noticed since the time of the Karl Rove antics is that the 1% love to make voters form previously nonexistent monitoring groups with their laws. 

A few years back they did it to the farmers in Ohio and got the majority to vote it in (using all sorts of shady manipulations).  It wasn't necessary and it wasn't in the general farmers best interest by any means.

Now the same thing is here again in my face and it's called issue 51 on our upcoming levy.  It's being lumped in with issue 50 which is questionable on it's own.

There is no need for taxpayers to pay for it (either one but I'm talking about 51 today).  It could conceivably override school board decisions (in the future that might not be such a good thing) and well,  the DOE and FBI already do a fine job of internally monitoring the school situation (the FBI only when things go wrong which they certainly have).

Why do we need another set of middlemen?  Or should I say set of Internal Auditors. We don't.

Yet,  this is a strategic tactic being used constantly by the 1%.  Invent a new group and give it power.  Make sure they are people who been "appointed" to be in the position. 

Sort of looks like a familiar business tactic I've seen.  You may know the one where things seem to be running along smoothly and suddenly the company hires this new guy (or woman) and they are polished, slick but strangely don't have the background in the industry that one might expect them to have. And you didn't realize that there was such a need for a new position in the first place.

At first nothing much happens.  Not too many folks ask,  what's going on.  Certainly no one asks the new slickster why they are suddenly working for the company.  That would be rude.  Shouldn't it be obvious.

Then the firings or layoffs start and the reapplying for your job.  That's when the normal folks around the office start to "get it".  A hatchet man (or woman).  That's what the slickster is.  Who knew?

That's what the internal auditors are also. 

Let's not kid ourselves,  although the 1% doesn't see it this way their greed is a bottomless pit and they aren't going to stop until they've exhausted every possibility of making more money and making the laws to facilitate making more money.  I know, astonishing,  I think so too.

Really I'd rather be sitting with some tea and a Jane Austen book yet I'm writing about this sort of corruption. A lot. My husband would rather I be doing housework and sometimes I do but the whole time I'm thinking about what the heck is going on in the world.  Was it always like this?  I have to say I think not but it's like this now.

To me it's like there is a parasite or a plague of parasites in this country and they are coming after every last thing they can get.  Right now their focus is on education but what's next paying to go to a formerly public park?  It could happen.

Parasites don't realize that eventually they kill their host.  They just don't get that fact and the 1% is no different.  No different at all. 

What I see

So once I became a parent in a school for children who are different I began to see similarities in the children I met at that school to children I knew from other places.

Kids who learn differently,  have parents who have done the homework,  have the money for the school, have sought out and found a diagnosis for their children completely form the student body of my daughter's school.

These parents have put in all the effort to get their child into a school that can teach them the way they need to be taught in order to learn.  That is the school my daughter attends.  It's chock full of caring parents who have turned every stone over that they could in order to help their child.  In most cases they are very open about their children's diagnosis and the treatments that are working for those children.

I started seeing some common threads. 

I'm not a pediatric neuropsychologist but I can tell the glaringly obvious signs that a child is a different kind of learner.

Asperger's, for example, occurs in 1 in 110 children according to the Center for Disease Control website. 

I disagree with that statistic.  I would personally put it in as 1 in 20 children,  possibly higher.  At least if I go by what I'm seeing in my children's classrooms.

I'm a person who is not that great at social cues myself so I recognize it when I see the way children in the schools act.

Not surprisingly some of the smartest (think book smart) kids are the ones who find things like playing by the rules of school the most difficult. 

This sort of thing is not a problem at my daughter's school which is set up to take on the challenge of patiently teaching children the way to act/not act in a social setting. 

These kids have been diagnosed for the most part.  They are in a sense out of the woods because they and their parents and teachers know that they are looking at a child with differences. They have the label and it's a road map to helping the weakness and strengthening the strengths.

In the Catholic school there is just not this much awareness.

It pains me to say this but just the other day while I was a lunchroom helper at the Catholic school I saw a small child being made fun of by the workers (I'm hoping the small child was out of earshot). 

Adult who didn't understand that people are different, they see things differently and that this is not such an uncommon occurrence.  Adults who didn't understand that some children are going to need to be told,  to be taught, what is appropriate and what isn't.

A small child in a school setting who isn't all that socially savvy is going to mess up. 

I'm pained by the lack of awareness. 

I'm pained by the shame I can see the children who are misunderstood getting heaped on them.

It's not just dyslexia (although that is my personal focus).  It's all the differences. 

I talked to a mother last night whose child is getting ready to graduate from high school in one of the local suburban districts.  Almost the whole time this child has been in school he has had an IEP for ADHD. 

The saddest thing she said to me was that his whole school experience not one person, teacher, tutor or otherwise has ever, "gotten him". 

To me that meant no one has: understood him, accepted him for who he is,  acknowledged his strengths, found the time to talk to him in a way where he felt accepted and intelligent.  

This is very sad and it's happening to way too many children and young people.

I'm not a teacher but it looks like I'm going to need to be

So my youngest already has his diagnosis of dyslexia although it was termed "mild" which I disagree with.  Dyslexia is dyslexia and it requires a different teaching methodology.

It was going to happen with a two generation family history and those early speech issues as an indicator.

So now it's time to start to learn to read only of course what is he getting pushed on him all day at school- Whole Language with a little bit of phonics thrown in.

I guess that incidental phonics is for all the parents who are like,

"What, is my kid supposed to memorize every word in the whole English language?"

He's coming home with these "books" and of course he isn't going to be able to learn to read that way. 

Bless his heart, he is trying to memorize, but really it's not going to work.

So our expensive private school doesn't have a kindergarten and this year it doesn't even have a first grade.  Which leaves us with what? 

Mommy. 

Only I'm no teacher. 

My mother was a teacher (she started in 1963) but she doesn't want to and wouldn't be willing to do this job.  Plus she's been retired for a long time and I doubt she remembers much.  She's got an active retiree life.  It's not fair to rely on a grandmother to teach your kid anyway (although plenty of them do it around the country when they realize that their grandchild isn't really learning to read).

My grandmother (her mother) was a teacher. She started sometime in the 1950's after her kids were mostly out of the house.  It was one of her non-picture books that started me on the road to really reading but that's a story for another day.

Nearly all my aunts were teachers but before the feminist movement how many choices did they really have anyway? 

These were smart ladies.  I think teaching was a valid (but tiring) option for a career back at a time when there weren't many other paths.

Thank God for the Internet and the public library.  Don't expect any miracles here,  I'm flying blind. 

Still,  I'm not going to let go of this time in his life by not doing anything at all to help him learn to read.  I'm going to try to figure out how to teach him as best I can using phonics.  

Today's challenge

Let's say you are a parent in a school that has no interest in truly making any big changes to help the (20% of the population) dyslexic children that walk through it's doors.

Let's say the school operates with a Whole Language setup and a Reading Recovery based remediation formula (proven not to work with dyslexic children).

Let's say that you are approaching the idea of trying to be an asset to these children by forming a parent group where you talk about things that can be done at home (which wont break the bank). 

Let's say the knowledge about what really would be needed to happen within the school is already there but, because of lack of time, motivation or something else, no monumental changes have taken place.  (Possibly because everyone is a bit overworked already and changing things just doesn't sound too appealing).

Let's say that the parents themselves are a bit on the cautious side when it comes to trying anything new.

What do you do now?

Here's what I'm thinking:

The Barton System.  Perhaps the group buys it themselves to share? 

Having a really outstanding tutor come in and talk to the group about, well, way more than I know about.  Shedding some light on how the whole thing does and can work.

Continuing to work in a rather low key manner to draw out more and more parents.  These things take time but children are suffering needlessly and it's important to start paying attention when they are young.

Step out of the way for the tripping up to continue

One of the pieces of this whole charter school politics that is so interesting is the lengths the money hungry charter school supporters are willing to go to in trying to get their way. 

The more tactics are tried the more easily the underlying unsavory goals are seen by even more people.

The not-so-well-meaning people who have years of history getting by with political tricks have suddenly lost their footing.  That must come as something of a surprise.  So successful in the past, but now, not so much.

Being vague, outright lies, manipulations using surveys.  The more these people try to put into place the more they are failing.

The more regular people are finding out what other parents think about things like Standardized Testing, Charter Schools and the movement to privatize education the stronger the opposition to all the nonsense is getting.

I did have some action steps I was going to take (and I may still) but one of the things I'm going to be able to do soon is simply step out of the way.  These people are doing an excellent job of crushing themselves.

Isn't that interesting.  There must be a name for this sort of phenomenon that I just don't know right now.

I may again soon be able to focus on the one on one trying to be helpful to individual parents with dyslexic children rather than feeling like I need to stick up for public schooling, public schoolteachers and the children who are subjected to all these ridiculous laws. 

The Nestle Boycott: a family story

Back in the late 1970's and into the 1980's there was such a thing as the Nestle boycott. 

On the surface the boycott was a bunch of consumers deciding they didn't like the practices of a big money grubbing corporation. 

But really it was mothers finding out about other mothers with babies dying from formula mixed with dirty water.  The whole concept was intolerable to anyone who had a child of their own.

The whole scheme was advertised and sold to families of in poor countries by the Nestle corporation and it was at fault for countless deaths and lots of serious infant illness in those third world countries.

It was concerned parents around the country deciding that they couldn't be supporters of such a thing.  Disgusted by the thought of it all.

I was a child in those days but my mother explained what was happening to us, her family.   She posted a list products not to buy or have anything to do with on the refrigerator. Right beside the grocery list.

We substituted for products we had once used and everyone in our family knew the reason why.  We pointed out commercials on television to our mother, saying, we cant buy that now because babies are dying.

Even us, children, in our humble home, knew that every little bit of not supporting Nestle was a step in the right direction.  

The boycott was eventually a success. 

I'll never forget that.  To this day I cant see the word Nestle without remembering that time.  

What the politicians who decided to create a game called Standardized Testing, with their intent to use children to fail their neighborhood schools and punish their teachers, didn't realize was that using children to get to adults is never going to be a game they could win.

We live in a selfish adult world that doesn't really understand children, parenting or families.

I can see why the overly confident masterminds at ALEC thought this was a good game to make up pass out to society and call "law" but
politicians should have known better than to mess with a parent's love. 

There is hardly anything more powerful in the world.

 

A short digression into politics

So wouldn't it be nice if school were it's own world and politics had nothing or very little to do with education.

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the way it works nowadays.  Maybe it always was this way or maybe it's just now.

So here is a little stream of consciousness about politics and well, education is part of it.

What is left of the middle class is taking a huge hit.  I was just reading a story about who is currently buying up the houses that are for sale these days.  Investors, not some sweet young couple with good jobs who want their own yard. 

Banks have run rampant for almost a decade now in foreclosure heaven making money off the front, the fees and the back, with very little accountability and certainly no one in the government holding any proverbial gun to their head making sure they do the right thing for the masses.  Nope,  you are on your own middle class home owning folks,  no government protection these days against any banks and it doesn't matter what your story is.

Keep in mind that back in Jan of 2010 our supreme court said that a corporation was entitled to the same sort of privacy that an individual was and that lead the way for as much campaign funding (with all the cushions of privacy) as corporations could muster. 

Since there is not any such thing as election reform politicians even back as far as the 1980's knew that they had to be on the side of MONEY.  The bigger the money the more they were on the side of it.  Oh sure, many of them still gave lip service that they were for the masses and public interest but really if that was the case they knew they wouldn't get elected.  They had to have the money.

Since, without election reform,  elections are all about advertising and media coverage, and well, money.

And since there is so much less diversity in the world of media, well those mega media corporations also have a lot of pull over the politicians.   This is my explanation about why journalism just isn't.  It's fiction writing if it's written and if it's TV then it's entertainment to make someone feel like they are staying informed.  Real journalism is certainly hard to find and at an all time low.

There seems to be a sort of half baked effort at election reform but just like how Occupy Wall street was never given the hearing or the media coverage it should have been no one who is pulling the strings of government right now wants to really do anything to promote election reform.

The politicians apparently like the rules of the game as it is currently being played.  Or at least most of them seem to.  Make it about money,  they understand that.

Democrats,  my party only I consider myself a Progressive Democrat, not to be confused with "New" Democrat (which is all about sniffing out the money and to hell with ideals) are splitting off into fractions but even most on-the-street Democrats don't know this.

Republicans,  I'm not even going to waste my time. 

So what does this have to do with school?  Charter schools are a great way for people who already have money to make more of it.  These edu-business owners are going to get a big chunk of that juicy looking tax money pie and then they are going to share a bit of it with the politicians.  How nice for everyone involved only look out,  teaching school well is actually harder than it looks. 

Who knew?

Parents of children with learning struggles knew because we can tell from experience that not everyone who is a teacher with a Masters Degree or a trained tutor can do the job that needs to be done.  In fact,  those who can teach a child with learning struggles are rare, hard to find, and expensive.

So thinking that some 5 week Teach For America program was all anyone would ever need to teach was like thinking anyone with a knife could perform surgery. 

Wrong. 

That little oversight on the part of the greedy edu-business owners looking to make money was the big mistake that the pro-public school people (like myself) are going to exploit.

A No Homework Charter school and what this means

Here is a photo I took today advertising a Charter school.  This sign was posted at the corner of a deeply impoverished area. 

As a parent who works hard on homework with my children 5 nights a week this does nothing to convince me that the privatization of education in the form of charter and online schools is a good idea.  It's not.

Word games

I have just been introduced to a new (adult) game of words. 

Here are the three terms which seem to be used interchangeably but do not mean the same thing:

1. Grade Level

2. Proficiency

3. National Norms

Grade Level- So if we look back on the local tutoring center that I know is giving about 2 months worth of Wilson (or other tutoring as they see fit) to dyslexic children and sending them on their way calling the child at "Grade Level" then actually this might be accurate.  Grade level at this point in time has a very low bar.  If a large percentage of the country doesn't read well then the idea of grade level is not going to be of much help.  Still,  how great for that center that they can say that positive sounding phrase and be on to the next child in need.   Great for them, but not for the child or parents.

Proficiency is a term that means to have mastered a subject.  This is what most parents are going to be after.  It is the equivalent to an A or B letter grade. 

National Norms is a term that my child advocate uses a lot.  This is where their goal is for the children they help.  This is the standard that they are looking to.  (I'm personally not sure even that is high enough for me).

This word play seems to me to be one more place a parent gets to be left in the dark. 

What a caring parent really wants to know is how is my child holding up next to their peers?  The ones who don't have dyslexia.  The children who are going to have a successful run in a school setting.