Oak Ridge Schools Bows to Book Banning Legislation by the Tennessee Taliban

Fifty years ago I was Director of Library Media Services at Oak Ridge High School. I could not have dreamed that 50 years later librarians would be scouring shelves to find school library books to purge in hopes of satisfying the illiterate legislative members of the TN Taliban who passed a criminally-vague and illegal statute last year, which aims to impose unconstitutional restrictions on intellectual freedom and the right to read. 

Here's a sample from over 300 axed titles :

Really!  Rodin, Hopper, Donatello???  Could this capitulation represent another case of unethical (un)professional conduct compounded by cowardice, or have professional standards sunk so low as to allow this kind brazen stupidity to prevail in the hiring of public school educators in a district that once celebrated intellectual freedom and artistic achievement?

The Oak Ridge Schools’ surrender to the political scourge that MAGA embodies could prove costly.  PEN America reported on June 10 that its lawsuit against Rutherford County Schools for banning hundreds of school library and public library books has led to the restoration of some of the titles removed earlier this year. The lawsuit, which is supported by TN ACLU, continues, however, until all the titles removed are restored to the shelves.

Parent Corroborates Abusive and Illegal Conditions at "No Excuses" Charters

Thanks to Norm Scott, some amazing video has been posted that details the zero tolerance penal regimen used at the "no excuses" Achievement First charter schools in New York.  

This clip below, which runs 28 minutes, features a parent who served for four years on Achievement First school board before she finally got fed up and pulled her child before he entered high school.  

The testimony in this video corroborates the conditions documented by former "no excuses" teachers, whose stories form a central part of Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching.

Achievement First Charter School Parents Speak Out: Why they removed their children Part 1 from MORE-UFT/GEM on Vimeo.

No doubt this video will become crucial in a lawsuit that has just been filed against Achievement First in Crown Heights.  Apparently, the "lawsuit waiting to happen" has just happened.

Special education students at a Brooklyn charter school did not get mandated services and were punished for behavior that arose from their disabilities, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday.

• The suit, filed on behalf of five students at Achievement First Crown Heights, described a “systemic failure to provide them a free appropriate public education, in violation of their rights.” It said that students did not get physical therapy and other services for weeks at a time, and that a student with autism was disciplined for not looking in the direction a teacher instructed or for hiding under his desk.

In addition to the charter network and the school, the suit also named the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department, asserting they failed to make Achievement First, a network with schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island as well as in New York City, live up to its responsibilities.

“Kids with special needs not only should be granted accommodations for their needs, but they must be under federal and state law,” said Michelle Movahed, a senior staff attorney at New York Legal Assistance Group, a nonprofit group that is representing the students and their families. “This is not just a question of doing the right thing.”

Charter schools are publicly financed, but privately run, and they are required, like regular public schools, to provide individual learning plans for children with special needs.

The suit comes at a time when charter schools, especially those in the Success Academy network, have come under scrutiny for their enforcement of strict behavior codes, suspending even the youngest students. But advocates and families say that in both charters and traditional public schools, it can often be a struggle to ensure children with disabilities receive the services to which they are entitled.

A spokeswoman for Achievement First said on Thursday that the organization was reviewing the lawsuit. In a statement, she strongly defended the Crown Heights school’s record with special needs students.

“We serve a substantial number of students with both modest and significant special education needs, and our school leaders, teachers and other professionals work tirelessly each day to serve all our students well,” Leonore Waldrip, a spokeswoman for the charter network, said in the statement. “Most of our students who receive special education services are experiencing real growth, and we have high levels of overall parent satisfaction.

“That said, we constantly strive to improve our program and, in particular, have made significant improvements in our special education supports in recent years,” she said.

Dottie Morris, who has two children at Achievement First Crown Heights, said she had been battling with the school for years on behalf of her son, a third grader identified in the suit by his initials, D.W., to protect his privacy.

Ms. Morris said that despite her repeated requests, it took Achievement First more than two years to provide a paraprofessional to help her son. This school year, the suit asserts that Achievement First and the city’s Education Department did not provide D.W. with occupational therapy for about five weeks and physical therapy for two months, and that no makeup sessions have been arranged.

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Achievement First Crown Heights has also punished D.W., who is autistic, for “behaviors that are caused by, or have a direct and substantial relationship to, his disability,” according to the complaint.

D.W. was punished by the school for not looking where he was instructed to, or for “perceived misbehavior in the noisy, crowded cafeteria, an environment that can be overstimulating to children with D.W.’s diagnosis,” the suit said. His punishments have included being sent, as a third grader, to a second-grade classroom.

The complaint describes this approach as part of Achievement First’s strict approach to discipline. It quotes the network’s website, which describes a policy of “sweating the small stuff.”

“In many urban schools, teachers and leaders ‘pick their battles,’ only addressing egregious instances of poor behavior,” the website goes on, according to the complaint. “Achievement First, on the other hand, has adopted sociologist James Q. Wilson’s ‘broken windows’ theory that even small details can have a significant effect on overall culture, and we believe that students will rise to the level of expectations placed on them.”

That approach does not work for her son, Ms. Morris said. “They treat all the kids the same,” she said. “There’s no differentiation if you have special needs.”

A spokesman for the state’s Education Department said it did not comment on pending litigation. A spokesman for the city’s Law Department said lawyers had not yet seen the suit on Thursday afternoon.

Candlelight Vigil in Support of Southside Lawsuit Against SCS Closure

Support communities determined to keep their schools open. Please share and be there.

Rochester Teachers Sue Over Bogus VAM Scores

by Christine Fien:

The Rochester Teachers Association filed a lawsuit today (read the complaint below) alleging that the new teacher evaluations are unfair because they fail to adequately account for the effects of severe poverty on students. 

The suit names John King, commissioner of the State Education Department; the State Board of Regents; the State Education Department; the University of the State of New York; the Rochester school district; the Rochester Board of Education; and Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas.

The suit was filed in State Supreme Court in Albany by New York State United Teachers on behalf of the RTA and more than 100 Rochester teachers, says a NYSUT press release. 

Rochester is the fifth poorest city in the country, and the school district is one of the poorest districts in the state. 

Here's the press release from the NYSUT: 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Suit: State failed to account for impact of poverty in evaluations

ALBANY, N.Y. March 10, 2014 – The Rochester Teachers Association today filed a lawsuit alleging that the Regents and State Education Department failed to adequately account for the effects of severe poverty and, as a result, unfairly penalized Rochester teachers on their APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) evaluations.

The suit, filed in state Supreme Court in Albany by New York State United Teachers on behalf of the RTA and more than 100 Rochester teachers, argues the State Education Department did not adequately account for student poverty in setting student growth scores on state tests in grades 4-8 math and English language arts. In addition, SED imposed rules for Student Learning Objectives and implemented evaluations in a way that made it more difficult for teachers of economically disadvantaged students to achieve a score of “effective” or better. As a result, the lawsuit alleges the Regents and SED violated teachers’ rights to fair evaluations and equal protection under the law.

SED computes a growth score based on student performance on state standardized tests, which is then used in teacher evaluations.

Nearly 90 percent of Rochester students live in poverty. The lawsuit says SED’s failure to appropriately compensate for student poverty when calculating student growth scores resulted in about one-third of Rochester’s teachers receiving overall ratings of “developing” or “ineffective” in 2012-13, even though 98 percent were rated “highly effective” or “effective” by their principals on the 60 points tied to their instructional classroom practices. Statewide, just 5 percent of teachers received “developing” or “ineffective” ratings.

“The State Education Department’s failure to properly factor in the devastating impact of Rochester’s poverty in setting growth scores and providing guidance for developing SLOs resulted in city teachers being unfairly rated in their evaluations,” Iannuzzi said. “Rochester teachers work with some of the most disadvantaged students in the state. They should not face stigmatizing labels based on discredited tests and the state’s inability to adequately account for the impact of extreme poverty when measuring growth.”

RTA President Adam Urbanski said an analysis of Rochester teachers’ evaluations for 2012-13 demonstrated clearly the effects of poverty and student attendance, for example, were not properly factored in for teachers’ evaluations. As a result, “dedicated and effective teachers received unfair ratings based on student outcomes that were beyond their control. The way the State Education Department implemented the state testing portion of APPR adds up to nothing more than junk science.”

Urbanski stressed Rochester teachers embrace accountability, support objective and constructive evaluations, and accept that testing has a place in education. “Tests should be used to inform instruction and can be effective tools to help improve teaching and learning,” he said. “But SED’s obsession with standardized testing and data collection has perverted the goals of testing while, ironically, failing to accurately measure the one impact that matters most: the effects of poverty on student achievement.”