Worth a read this week

 Things I have been reading: 

• This story from The 74 on how Boulder, Colorado parents worked with their district to change (very much in process) how students with autism are worked with in the district.:
  

  Modern practitioners defend the intervention, saying ABA no longer subjects children to physical punishment. Yet documentation of its harms is mounting, as researchers — including autistic adults who underwent ABA as youngsters — gather evidence that the therapy has caused widespread PTSD. Autistic children may no longer be subjected to electric shocks or slaps to the face — and the word “aversive” may sound kinder than “punishment” — but they are routinely denied food, toys and comfort items, as well as adult attention, a strategy practitioners industrywide call “planned ignoring.” ABA providers still frequently restrain children or confine them in isolation — practices recognized as so dangerous and traumatic as to be illegal in most circumstances in Colorado schools.

   I learned from this that the person who created ABA, Ole Ivar Lovaas, also created conversion therapy, which is of course banned many places. 
  
  

• The Boston Globe looks at parents who are organizing for more recess in schools. From this I learned that there is a national "Say Yes to Recess" group. 
  I will say, though, that I'm a little tired of the Globe doing this "in a bill pending before the state legislature" coverage when the Legislature is done with formal sessions. 
  
  

• In the state ballot questions campaigns here in Massachusetts, it's Smith and Wesson bankrolling the "no" vote on question 9 (which would repeal some gun control measures), with the largest funding for "yes," which keeps the legal language, seeing its biggest funding from the teachers' union. You can find that reporting here.
  
  

  

  not hard, eh? Vote yes on 9.

  
  
• Connecticut, which is among the states that allows no religious exemption to school vaccine requirements, just had that requirement upheld in the courts.

What could one do with the Department of Education?

 As the current administration daily posts another round of  nonsense about "returning education to the states"--the place education has been overseen since we have had a constitution*--the framing of an alternative has been kind of weak. "Let's not destroy the U.S. Department of Education" is a good start, but reaffirming the mission of the Department has been rather lacking.

I was intrigued, then, to read Kevin Carey's piece in Democracy entitled "A Department of Education--and then some" which outlines a bigger vision:

The Department of Children and Learning (DCL) would do everything ED is charged with by statute while incorporating children’s programs currently located in other federal agencies, including the school lunch benefits located at the Department of Agriculture and the Head Start and child-care programs housed at the Department of Health and Human Services. As any parent can tell you, health, nutrition, and learning all go together.

The DCL would be organized around three main purposes: funding, research, and civil rights. Its mission would be ensuring that foundational education services and the latest scientific findings and technological advances are available to all students, regardless of who they are or where they come from. Existing programs that don’t contribute to this core mission would be replaced.

What is particularly interesting to me is that Carey actually talks about what very, very seldom is: school districts:

But as it is practiced in U.S. education, “local control” is a false promise. It means that local school districts—and in the privatization era, individual families—are left alone to search and struggle for enough resources to purchase what an indifferent and unforgiving market chooses to provide. It means that students destined to compete in a global economy are tied down by how much money their neighbors happen to pay in property taxes. It condemns teachers to crumbling buildings and outdated curricula. It means that the various institutions charged with the care and education of children don’t communicate, coordinate, or collaborate. “Local control” is a long con. It exploits parental anxiety by pretending to give people power, then leaves them feeling individually responsible for our collective failure.

Local communities have the right and responsibility to decide who will teach their children and lead their public schools. Those accountable for school performance should be as close to parents and voters as possible. Critical organizational decisions shouldn’t be routed through a central bureaucracy in Washington. State governments ultimately determine academic standards for their children. At the same time, all local school districts should have enough money to hire great teachers who are versed in the latest research findings and empowered by the newest education technologies. And all children should have equal rights to a free, high-quality education tailored to their specific strengths and needs, regardless of their race, family income, native language, immigration status, or disability.

As I've just again had the class I teach explore the New America map of segregation and income inequality among school districts, the vivid extremes in inequity and segregation are fresh in my mind.

And we do not talk about it, let alone do anything to actually change it. 

*and happy Constitution Day!