All Children – Not All City

Tomorrow the School Board will meet to consider Interim Superintendent Vargas’s proposal for an All City High plan which is meant to serve an unidentified number of students that this district has already failed to educate.

This program was a collaborative effort between the district and the Rochester’s Teacher Union. A committee was formed “to identify issues student’s face in our traditional schools and propose[d] solutions. Each member of the committee identified the ingredients of their ideal school. Each committee member was asked to invite a parent or community member who is interested in our children’s future. Each parent and community member shared their vision and their experiences in regards to our traditional educational process. At each site the schools will utilize innovative scheduling and staffing to create smaller learning communities on the two campuses.”

District staff and teachers created a program and then asked one parent or community member to “share their experiences” not be involved in the process.

A key component of the program is the “Family of Five” theme. “All staff will have office hours 3 times each week for 1 hour totaling a minimum of 3 hours each week and every staff member will be assigned 5 students to mentor and guide.”

Students will be assigned a “family” that will have less than an hour a week to address their mental, physical, emotional, social, and financial concerns.

At the DPC meeting Monday, Commissioner White pointed out that there were several problems with this program. Students, parents, teachers, and community members have pointed out that there are many problems with this program.

Our children don’t need another program that serves the needs of adults. There is no doubt that we have an obligation to find a way to solve the problems for students created by a system of education that initially failed to educate them. However, employing more adults is not the solution.

If the progenitors of this program did not deem it necessary to involve students and parents from the beginning of the process, how valued is their participation in the process?

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Decisions, Derision, Division

BILL NUMBER: S1987B
TITLE OF BILL :
An act to amend the education law, in relation to enacting the dignity for all students act

S 10. LEGISLATIVE INTENT. THE LEGISLATURE FINDS THAT STUDENTS’ ABILITY TO LEARN AND TO MEET HIGH ACADEMIC STANDARDS, AND A SCHOOL’S ABILITY TO EDUCATE ITS STUDENTS, ARE COMPROMISED BY INCIDENTS OF DISCRIMINATION OR HARASSMENT INCLUDING BULLYING, TAUNTING OR INTIMIDATION. IT IS HEREBY DECLARED TO BE THE POLICY OF THE STATE TO AFFORD ALL STUDENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AN ENVIRONMENT FREE OF DISCRIMINATION AND HARASSMENT. THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO FOSTER CIVILITY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND TO PREVENT AND PROHIBIT CONDUCT WHICH IS INCONSISTENT WITH A SCHOOL’S EDUCATIONAL MISSION.

S 801-a. Instruction in civility, citizenship and character education. The regents shall ensure that the course of instruction in grades kindergarten through twelve includes a component on civility, citizenship and character education. Such component shall instruct students on the principles of honesty, tolerance, personal responsibility, respect for others, observance of laws and rules, courtesy, dignity and other traits which will enhance the quality of their experiences in, and contributions to, the community.

When was citizenship taken out of education curriculum?

We now have to pass a law in order to make people accountable for being civil to one another?

If ever there was an indictment of the extent of mis-education in America, this is it.

Unfortunately, mis-education in public schools has been a reality for many generations and those children previously mis-educated by the public school system are now the adults that sit in seats of power and decision making, and they are bullies. With the advent of the internet, we have found one more avenue to lash out against another human being without conscience.

Each day our children witness the bullying of adults. Adults bully and threaten each other and they bully and threaten children. The children of these bullies grow up to be bullies and the viscous cycle has continued until it has become necessary to legislate respect.

We cannot save our children until we change ourselves.

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We Are The Power

Parent Trigger legislation is the hot topic in education today. Some see it as a “knee-jerk” reaction to bad situation while others, a last ditch effort to save our children from an inefficient and ineffective system of education. Prior to parent trigger was mayoral control.

Regardless of the method used, everyone agrees that something must be done to drastically change the way we are mis-educating a certain population of our nations children. It is no coincidence that this population just happens to be poor to middle-income children of mainly Black and Hispanic urban families.

Unfortunately, both “knee-jerk” reactions and “last-ditch” efforts tend to be or become “quick-fix” options that either don’t last or make the situation worse.

So, the question remains, “What is to be done?”

Parents and community members must recognize that they are already powerful. Waiting for the passage of legislation that gives them something they already have is a ruse that will actually diminish their power. Parents in California quickly came to understand this.

It is vitally important for parents and community members to rally, come together, organize, and create change. First and foremost however, they must be heard. This does not mean the hostile takeover of a school district, this means a peaceful demonstration of your rights as parents.

Stop sending your children to school!

Parents don’t have to wait months, maybe years for legislation to stop sending their children to school, they simply need to organize, gather the support of local churches and child care providers and educate children outside of the school building. That is something that can be done now. That is something that shows education leaders that parents know they are the power, not some piece of legislation that regulates their power.

Community members also have the power to stop paying school taxes. Taxation without representation is illegal in this country. Not being able to vote on the district’s budget is unconstitutional.

Adults must role model citizen rights and responsibilities for children. We have rights now it’s time to be responsible.

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Don’t Standardize or Privatize, Revitalize Education

First you fail to properly educate children. Next you blame the teachers for the lack of education the child receives. Then you blame the union for supporting the teachers who are not educating the children. Finally you use data and lack of funding to convince the community that children would be better served in private schools by novice teachers with fewer resources. This is the basic formula for shutting down public education across the country.

Instructional time lost due to standardized test preparation rarely enters the equation as the push to link test results to teacher evaluation takes attention away from the detrimental effects of standardized testing.

Privatizing education doesn’t address the lack of discipline, instructional materials, and a relevant curriculum that supports critical thinking skills and multiple intelligences within the dysfunctional system of education but hides it behind the curtains of controversy covering educational failure.

When parents unite to protest the failure of public education, proponents of privatization solve the problem with “Parent Trigger” legislation which gives parents the right to “fir(e) all or some of the staff, turning the school over to a charter operator, or closing the school.” And, once again, the dysfunction within the system of education becomes a non-issue.

Educational failure has become so prevalent that “inequality in the United States has increased to the extent that the gap between the rich and poor is larger now than [in] 1928.” Teaching children to pass a test instead of thinking critically is one reason for this increase.

Our children are not widgets on an assembly line that have all the same parts that will work in the exact same way. Education cannot be “standardized” into a “one size fits all” delivery system.

Privatizing education only serves to create a larger gap in the social class system separating America.

The answer to the problem of educational failure is to begin to properly educate our children. We must recognize the unique qualities within our children, nurture them and cause them to flourish. When our children are successful, America is successful.

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Take Issue Not Sides

In the Glen Beck interview of Jada Williams it is made very clear that what was done to Jada was wrong, not white.

For years this community has worked diligently to overcome the racial barriers that have kept us from uniting in our efforts to affect change in the failing system of education for our children.

Working together, parents, community members, and educators, have stopped the closings of numerous schools, removed the Brizard threat, forced the district to retain the arts and librarians in our schools, voted a new voice and perspective onto the school board, created a superintendent search committee, stopped the adoption of an unsanctioned high school program, and exposed a fraudulent attempt to increase trade union quotas without increasing women and minority employment in the construction trades.

We now have another, even greater reason to remain united as a community Jada Williams. Jada Williams was not discriminated against, she was silenced. She was denied her rights as an American, she was denied her Constitutional right to freedom of speech.

The issue is a group of adults, who are not only to teach citizenship but should role model and protect the constitutional rights of every child in their purview, chose to harass and bully a child until she no longer felt comfortable attending school.

To reduce this situation to a matter of black and white is to devalue Jada Williams as a human being and as a United States citizen.

To allow this situation to divide this community, pitting parents and students against teachers and administrators is to fall prey to the hundreds of years of ignorance that has brought this country to the educational failure in which we now live.

We must not forget how long we have fought, together, how hard we have fought, together, to bring about change. We must not forget that it is only by working together that change in the system of education for our children can be accomplished.

What was done to Jada was wrong and we must work together as a community to make it right.

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Conspiracy, But More Than A Theory

How can a large urban district continually fail to educate more than half of its students for nearly half a century?

Superintendents were hired, experts in their field, paid an enormous amount of money and their best plans were closing and renaming schools, shuffling students, and changing curriculum. Unfortunately, no matter how many times they tried this, schools still failed.

It was time to break away from the status quo, especially since right down the road from many failing public schools were successful private schools. It was not hard to convince the general public that this was the answer. Public school is a failure, schools must be private in order to succeed.

What do private schools have that public schools do not? Their budgets are much lower, they pay their teachers much less, their instructional materials are not as up-to-date. So, the reason for their success must be because there is no union. Once again, not difficult to convince the public that teacher unions are the reason public schools are failing.

Though this is a very simplistic overview of the educational insanity that exists, it is not total fantasy. We become convinced that a building or books or tests or grade levels educate children. We become convinced that teachers aren’t teaching because they’re holding out for more money. Year after year of failure has allowed us to believe the expert lie spun to explain the educational failure of our country until the truth has become conspiracy theory.

The truth is schools don’t fail children do. The truth is that we are failing to properly educate our children because it is profitable to do so. The more a district fails the more money it receives. Politicians have based their political careers on the education issue. Education is no longer about children and creating a better society. Mis-education has become the cash cow of the greedy and power hungry.

We must recognize the conspiracy and realize the truth. Education is about guiding children toward realizing their potential and using that potential to create a better world for everyone.

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‘Tis The Season

The budget season is upon us and already the State and the district are talking about cutting 35 to 40 teacher positions.

Supposedly this is due to the resistance to using state tests in teacher evaluations. Governor Cuomo says that his administration will be “the lobbyist for the student” when in reality he is being a bully, using his political position to intimidate districts into agreeing to a process that is systemically flawed and counterproductive to student success.

It has been proven, in state after state, the most recent being Georgia that using state test scores as the evaluation process for teachers doesn’t work. It doesn’t properly evaluate the ability of teachers and state testing has little to do with the educational success of students.

In the last few years we have heard much about the “Status Quo” and yet we continue to support a “status quo” mentality when it comes to standardized testing and how best to educate children.

The business model of teaching instructs educators to deliver a scripted message to our students, force feeding them information that they must regurgitate onto a standardized test only to graduate after twelve years knowing little to nothing about becoming and being successful in life.

When educators stand up and fight back against this failing system we are publicly vilified and made out to be the culprit in the educational failure of our children. States withhold crucial educational funding to the neediest districts, and teachers are threatened yearly with layoffs, displacement, and grade and room assignment changes.

Teachers are one of the largest work forces in this country and year after year we are bullied into doing what we know is wrong for our students only to sit back and take the blame for their failure. The only thing these bullying tactics have accomplished is more educational failure. Our federal, state, and local leaders have yet to think of the children in their efforts to destroy teachers.

When will the education community finally stand up and say, “Enough is Enough!”

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Not Me But We

On Saturday the Coalition for Justice in Education hosted a “Teach In” that worked to create a plan of action to address current educational issues. One topic of discussion was “Attacks on teachers and administrators.”

It seems as though we have come to a place in our society where no one is responsible for the education of children except teachers and administrators. No one is to be evaluated except this special group of people who have such a great influence on young minds that they alone are responsible for the success and/or failure of the educational future of our children.

For six hours a day, one hundred-eighty or so days a year teachers and administrators are responsible for pouring knowledge into the minds of children so that they can pour that knowledge out onto a piece of paper to show learning. For the rest of the time the child is not required nor expected to be taught or to learn anything relevant to their success as human beings.

The advent of MeTv makes it quite apparent that this was not always the case. In the early days of television it seems that all of society realized its responsibility for the proper upbringing of our nation’s most valuable resource, the children.

Shows like The Lone Ranger, Superman, The Rifleman, and Saturday morning cartoons, Skipper Sam, and Howdy Doody all had a message for the children; go to school, do your best, do the right thing, try hard, never give up.

Every day children were reminded, “Did you finish your homework?” by Skipper Sam and Miss Rita’s “Romper Room” taught pre-school children as mom’s cleaned the house.

Back then teaching wasn’t just for teachers. Teachers taught the academics, how to speak properly, how to read and write properly, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Citizenship.

Teachers and Administrators weren’t held accountable for a child’s educational failure because a child’s education was everyone’s responsibility.

If a child failed in society, it was understood that society failed the child.

Some things never change.

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