Standardized tests are graded by the state (or possibly by the county), not by teachers at the school site.

Just because that is all they show on the tv… and all some may see around them, does not mean it should be allowed to exist in the classroom or the schools. It is clear a vast majority find this behavior entertaining… and gives them something to talk about in the teachers lounge… but there have to be higher standards required in these schools. The students will conform if only the administration would set boundaries and hold to them.

To each his/her own in this education free for all. All I know is… I got a handle on mines. Do you?

I would prefer the Charters to be made redundant by a revitalized public school system that imposed discipline and structure on public school kids to people can learn in the few years before they have to go to work, military and higher education.

I don’t think that’s going to happen because without mainstream students (whites for example) no one who counts cares how bad the public schools get as long as the kiddies (or their parents) don’t riot often. Pacification is all the ghetto public schools care about and by the time the kids realize they have wasted their childhood it’s way too late and they just blame themselves for being bad students anyway.

I wish I was wrong about this. The unemployable youth will turn into non-formed households and generations of idle men and their baby mammas. Bad scene.

Miss P: I’m sorry if I upset you and was presumptous. Danger of commenting in a context-free environment like this one. Let me say that I was reacting to your post which made it sound like if a child was not reading by first grade then there was by definition a problem. That does not square with what I know as a parent and a teacher about early childhood development. If you see teachers lowering your students’ expectations that is clearly a problem. I well aware of the syndrome where a teacher, told to be obsessed with standards, basically stops teaching/expecting from any kid who already exceeds the standard. A friend yanked her daughter out of an OUSD school the day the teacher told her, halfway through the year, that her child didn’t need to read any more books that year because she was already “at grade level.”

I will add this, though: You could be the best mom in the world and you still can not know all the emerging learning differences a six-year-old has because they have not all been exposed yet at that age.

People seem think a learning difference is a switch — like on/off. No, it’s all about spectrums of abilities which vary wildly within each child. Your post made me think you’d seen too many “My baby can read” commercials and were demanding a refund that the school hadn’t peformed magic. Again, presumptuous, but based in life in this society.

As I said previously, OUSD has MORE than 10% special ed enrollment, commensurate with the national rate of ~13%, actually over.

This conversation has taken a turn toward speculation without any basis in the facts. True, some middle-class parents have objections to labeling their children, but low-SES and culturally/linguistically diverse students are way overrepresented in special ed across the country, and this holds true in OUSD. Almost half of Native American students in OUSD have IEPs, for instance.

We should be talking about *over-representation*, such as the inexcusable percentage of African American boys under the mental retardation (MR) eligibility due to culturally biased testing instruments–and the fact that English language learners (ELLs) are continually diagnosed as having Speech and Language Impairment (SLI).

A small percentage of entitled parents going to private psychologists is not a major problem. Private psychologists still have to have scores indicating a processing disorder and aptitude-achievement discrepancy. A psychological report is based on concrete data, not the psychologist’s speculations out of thin air.

Again, the CST is a norm-referenced test pretending to be a criterion-referenced test, and this is not affected by having or not having an IEP. Test items are chosen in such a way that there is score distribution rather than a concrete finish line that everyone could cross if taught the proper material. Extended time doesn’t give students access to outside cultural references like “Gothic cathedral”–trips to museums and foreign countries do. This is a SES and racial bias issue, not an abuse of special ed issue.

What I am not a victim of is the lowered expectations that most people have regarding the Black children in Oakland.

I started out homeschooling my children, so I personally know first hand where there strengths are. I see how teachers and admin use subtle psychological tactics to teach these children to basically have inherently low expectations for themselves. I refuse to accept them, and do not allow my children (birth and all I work with) to accept them either.

My children do not have any learning disabilities limiting their intellectual abilities, and I will not allow the inequities of others to prevent my children from reaching their full potential. Instead of treating my children like mentally retarded rejects of society… I continue to celebrate their strengths and show them a world of possibilities.

Yes, I dare to expect great things from my children, and express disappointment when I see they are not giving their best. I continue to be proud of the results I receive. Also proud of the beaming smiles I see on their faces when they know they have genuinely done a good job.

As an analogy, individual therapy by a psychologist is sometimes more accepted in certain groups of people. The affluent and better educated may find that therapy is an accepted route to working through problems or even almost a luxury product, while less educated/affluent folks may view psychotherapy as a personal slight (ie. they think I’m crazy), a weakness, or a punishment.

I have no doubt that all parents struggle with the issue of getting their kid tested for an IEP for myriad reasons, but I wonder if more affluent parents feel that the benefits outweigh the costs, while less affluent parents feel that an IEP would be a tool for the school to hold their child down or simply that the cost outweighs the benefit. I mention this as I am a parent who has held more with the latter view and look at the IEP with some skepticism (based on nothing). However, in reading this discussion, I am now starting to think that those Piedmont and private parents who are utilizing the IEPs at 13% vs the OUSD’s 10% are on to something….