A reminder: The Federal Family Fixing Plan

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION  

DRAFT POLICY STATEMENT ON FAMILY ENGAGEMENT FROM THE EARLY YEARS TO THE EARLY GRADES

"We refer to “family engagement” as the systematic inclusion of families as partners in children’s development, learning, and wellness."

• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires that states and school districts engage parents and families in the work of ensuring positive outcomes for all students. School districts are required to have written parent and family engagement policies with expectations and objectives for implementing meaningful parent and family involvement strategies. They are required to involve parents and family members in jointly developing district plans and to provide technical assistance to build school capacity to plan and implement effective parent and family involvement activities to improve student academic achievement and school performance. The requirement for implementing effective parent and family engagement activities to improve student outcomes can be found throughout ESEA including Title I, sections 1010 and 1116, Title III, Title VI, and 21st Century Community Learning Centers among others.


https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ecd/draft_hhs_ed_family_engagement.pdf

From Utah:

Local School Board Member Asks Parents to Take Action on Federal ESSA 

Wendy Hart, a star board member of my local district, Alpine School District, is so dedicated to transparency that she keeps a blog about her work.

"In June, I attended a training session on ESSA presented by the National School Boards Association (aptly titled: A New Federalism).  The presenter, an attorney, recommended that we work with our legislators to remove the ability of parents to opt their kids out of state testing.  The consequence, she said, would be to jeopardize our federal funding under ESSA.  So, the one avenue parents have to protest and to protect their students is under attack by the ‘new’ supposedly kinder, gentler, less-federal-encroachment law.  Additionally, I asked how they would be able to do this when some states, like Utah, for example, have opting out codified in state law, the state law predates ESSA, and under the 10th Amendment, the states would have jurisdiction in this area that the feds clearly do not.  Her response, paraphrasing, “Since the monies in ESSA are ‘voluntary’, you will not be able to get someone to challenge it on 10th Amendment grounds.”  In short, by taking the federal monies from ESSA, we are subverting state (and natural) law–voluntarily."


http://wendy4asd.blogspot.com/2016/07/feds-and-bonds-summer-happenings.html


https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/local-school-board-member-asks-parents-to-take-action-on-federal-essa/

John Dewey and the Decline of American Literacy

Written by Sam Blumenthal

"In May 1898, Dewey published his seminal essay, “The Primary-Education Fetich,” which was to guide the progressives in their long-range crusade to remake American education as an instrument to bring about socialism.  He wrote:

There is …  a false educational god whose idolators are legion, and whose cult influences the entire educational system. This is language study — the study not of foreign language, but of English; not in higher, but in primary education. It is almost an unquestioned assumption, of educational theory and practice both, that the first three years of a child’s school-life shall be mainly taken up with learning to read and write his own language. If we add to this the learning of a certain amount of numerical combinations, we have the pivot about which primary education swings....

… It does not follow, however, that because this course was once wise it is so any longer. On the contrary, the fact that this mode of education was adapted to past conditions, is in itself a reason which it should no longer hold supreme sway.... My proposition is, that conditions — social, industrial, and intellectual — have undergone such a radical change, that the time has come for a thoroughgoing examination of the emphasis put upon linguistic work in elementary instruction....

… The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school-life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion.... No one can clearly set before himself the vivacity and persistency of the child’s motor instincts at this period, and then call to mind the continued grind of reading and writing, without feeling that the justification of our present curriculum is psychologically impossible. It is simply superstition: it is the remnant of an outgrown period of history."

 http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/12048-john-dewey-and-the-decline-of-american-literacy

Can parents combat the media's tolerance of institutional manipulation?

 Sandra Stotsky | July 22, 2016

"As yet another example, it is widely rumored that the Gates Foundation also paid for the writing of the 1000-page rewrite of No Child Left Behind known as Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). It is public knowledge that Senators Lamar Alexander (TN-R) and Patty Murray ((WA-D) co-sponsored the bill, but the two senators have been remarkably quiet about ESSA’s authorship. No reporter has commented on the matter, or reported asking the senators who wrote the bill and who paid for the bill."

Can parents combat the media's tolerance of institutional manipulation?

"Mathematics, reason and imagination will help reveal the truth."

-Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott Flatland: The Movie trailer from Collection Agency Films on Vimeo.

http://www.flatlandthemovie.com/index.html

“All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”

― Aristotle, circa 384 B.C to 322 B.C.

States' Impact on Federal Education Policy US Department of Education | NY State Archives

Introduction: Federal Aid to Education, 1785-1900

 

It is important to note at the outset that, while the federal role in education has expanded rapidly since World War II, the basic idea of federal aid to education is, in fact, nearly as old as the republic itself. In 1785, two years after the end of the Revolutionary War, the Congress of Confederation passed the first of two Northwest Ordinances, which reserved 1/36 th of the land allocated to each western township "for the maintenance of public schools within the said township." Two years later, in 1787, the recently convened Constitutional Convention passed the second Northwest Ordinance, which reaffirmed the purpose of the first. However, since the Convention left all explicit mention of education out of the new Constitution itself, some have speculated that it saw schooling exclusively as a state or local issue-left, under the Tenth Amendment, as an unenumerated power reserved "to the states . . . or to the people."



http://nysa32.nysed.gov/edpolicy/research/res_essay_intro_fedaid1785_1900.shtml

How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture

"Above all, the one overarching lesson that students receive is the true end of education: the only essential knowledge is that know ourselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference. Our commitment to mutual indifference is what binds us together as a global people. Any remnant of a common culture would interfere with this prime directive:  a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions."

http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/how-a-generation-lost-its-common-culture/

Ethics Without Indoctrination

 Abstract
 
In this revised paper, originally published in Educational Leadership (1988), Richard Paul argues that ethics ought to be taught in school, but only in conjunction with critical thinking. Without critical thinking at the heart of ethical instruction, indoctrination rather than ethical insight results. Moral principles do not apply themselves, they require a thinking mind to assess facts and interpret situations. Moral agents inevitably bring their perspectives into play in making moral judgments and this, together with the natural tendency of the human mind to self-deception when its interests are involved, is the fundamental impediment to the right use of ethical principles.
Paul spells out the implications of this view for the teaching of ethics in literature, science, history, and civics. He provides a taxonomy of moral reasoning skills and describes an appropriate long term staff development strategy to foster ethics across the curriculum"



http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/ethics-without-indoctrination/494

COPAA Files 4th Circuit Brief Involving Case of Student Who is Twice Exceptional

COPAA filed an Amicus brief in support of the parents, Plaintiffs-Appellees in the case of N.P. v. Maxwell. The parents are represented by Michael J. Eig and Paula Rosenstock of Michael J. Eig and Associates.  The parents lost at the Administrative due process hearing, but then prevailed at the District Court level where US Judge F. Motz determined that the compelling evidence presented by the parents mandated placement at the private program designed to address NP’s unique needs as a student who is twice exceptional. Indeed, the ALJ’s decision is neither well-reasoned nor based on the record on this issue.  The parent came forward with compelling evidence that N.P.’s progress in reading, writing and math was less than trivial, demonstrating that N.P. actually lost skills during the years in question.

The IDEA mandates that courts make independent determinations as to whether a school district has complied with the Act based upon the evidence in the record. A child’s IEP must provide meaningful benefit, and be gauged to the Student's potential.  The IEP proposed by the school district must confer meaningful, non-trivial educational benefit on the student.  In this case, the parent provided sound evaluation results indicating that ignoring this expert advice, the school district proposed a continuation of the same program where N.P. failed to make progress and failed to appreciate the nature of this dual exceptionalities: a gifted student and a student with a learning disability.  COPAA urged the Court to affirm the Order of the district court. Selene Almazan and Alice Nelson wrote and filed the brief on behalf of COPAA.
Read COPAA's Brief
Appellant Brief