The Heartland Institute - Early Intervention Program Aims to Keep Kids out of Special Ed - by Wendy Cloyd

The Heartland Institute - Early Intervention Program Aims to Keep Kids out of Special Ed - by Wendy Cloyd: "
A Colorado Springs, Colorado school district is implementing a pilot program to address one of the greatest challenges classroom teachers face: meeting struggling students' needs as soon as they appear.

Since federal rules and regulations for the revamped Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act have not been sent to the state level yet, Colorado Springs School District 11 is launching a pilot project using a new special education model called Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI).


New Model

Under the RTI model, educators begin giving extra help to struggling students as soon as a potential learning problem is identified, long before a child qualifies for special education. While RTI does not exclude entry into special education at a later date, in many cases special education becomes unnecessary because of early intervention, analysts say.

The National Research Council on Learning Disabilities, a project of the U.S. Department of Education, is currently conducting research on alternative methods of identifying learning disabilities. RTI will be an important part of the evaluation, according to the group's Web site.

Patty Luttrell, special education staffing coordinator at Colorado Springs' Stratton Elementary School, is excited about the RTI pilot program because, she says, it will allow the school to help needy students while providing classroom teachers with much-needed support. Training in the model will be given to all teachers in the school; special education teachers will be used for early intervention and helping regular education teachers identify students' needs.

'We used to have to wait until at least third grade to test them to see if they needed academic or behavioral support,' Luttrell said. 'RTI will allow us to provide research-based interventions before we look at using all the time and money it takes to assess a student for special education services.'

Use the link to read the entire article.


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ASCD

Research Matters / Creating Culturally Responsive Schools

Barbara Bazron, David Osher and Steve Fleischman
During the last 10 years, U.S. schools have experienced a rapid growth in ethnic and racial diversity. In the near future, the young people now filling classrooms will be paying taxes, working in the public and private sectors, and consuming the goods and services that fuel our economy. Given the increased diversity of the student population, how can schools ensure that all students master the social, emotional, intellectual, and technical competencies necessary to fulfill these essential roles?

Use the link to read the entire article.

Program lets children "live" slavery - Education - MSNBC.com

ALPINE, Ala. - The girl stares at the ground, the man looming beside her. Directly ahead is a path for escape. Others stand rigidly with eyes cast downward.

“They’re runaways, ain’t they? You don’t even have a concept of freedom, do you?” the man barks at her face. “You a slave, girl?”

She nods, a few others sniffle.

The 50 children, only one of whom is black, were experiencing the cruelties inflicted upon slaves who tried to escape north through the Underground Railroad.

“Slaves had to go through that every day and I only did it for an hour,” said 11-year-old Nicole Wallis, who was so frightened that she left the living history program halfway through.

The reenactment at the YMCA’s Camp Cosby, about 45 miles east of Birmingham, is one of several nationwide, but uniquely intense. Camp counselors attempt to give a realistic perspective about slavery to fourth- and fifth-grade students by dressing as slave traders, bounty hunters and abolitionist and sending students on a risky journey through the dense woods surrounding the camp.

Use the link to read the entire article.

Authors Challenge Schools to Challenge Students

Authors Challenge Schools to Challenge Students: "wo new books on how to teach students of divergent abilities seem at first to have been written on different planets.

But Deborah L. Ruf's 'Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind' and a new edition of Jeannie Oakes's 'Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality' eventually reveal a similar frustration. Both want children to be given more individual attention and more of an academic challenge than they are getting in most schools."

Use the link to read the entire article.

MindOH! Foundation - Initiatives > Thinking it Through

MindOH! Foundation - Initiatives > Thinking it Through: "Resources for Hurricane Katrina

Earlier this week Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast states. It was one of the most powerful hurricanes in recorded history. Many lost their homes and businesses. Others experienced emotional or physical injuries, and some lost their lives. Thousands need shelter, food, water, and medical supplies.


Thought-Provoking Activities for Young People

The MindOH! Foundation has created lesson plans and activities that can be used in classrooms, youth groups and families. These tools will help young people explore topics ranging from finding the good that can come from a bad situation, to the importance of putting good character into action by serving those in need."

Use the link to access the activities.

CNN.com - Oldest elementary school pupil tours NYC - Sep 14, 2005

CNN.com - Oldest elementary school pupil tours NYC - Sep 14, 2005: "NEW YORK (AP) -- Kimani Ng'ang'a waited more than eight decades for his first day of school. The Kenyan villager wants to make sure nobody else has to wait that long.

The 85-year-old man, billed as the world's oldest elementary school pupil, toured Manhattan Tuesday to promote a global campaign urging assistance for an estimated 100 million children denied an education because of poverty.

Kimani only started his formal education in January 2004.

'Look what school has done for me so far,' said Kimani, standing in Battery Park with the Statue of Liberty behind him. 'Here I am in New York.'

As part of his visit, Kimani traveled around Manhattan in a yellow school bus to spread his message about education for needy children."

Use the link to read the entire story.

SAT Scores Still Differ for Whites, Blacks

SAT Scores Still Differ for Whites, Blacks: "The achievement gap between white and black students on the SAT is five times as large at Annapolis High School as at Southern High School in Harwood, illustrating that the goal of racial parity may be more easily attained in some parts of the county than others.

The SAT achievement gap is essentially unchanged in Anne Arundel County over the past three years, based on a review of scores from 2003 to 2005 for white and black students. The gap has narrowed at four schools in that time span, but it has widened at six others, among the 10 high schools with sufficient numbers of black students to warrant a comparison."

Hear JONATHAN KOZOL

Hear JONATHAN KOZOL
acclaimed author of
SAVAGE INEQUALITIES,
on the release of his new book,
THE SHAME OF THE NATION:
THE RESTORATION OF APARTHEID SCHOOLING IN AMERICA
Saturday, September 17, 2005
2-4PM
Blair High School Auditorium
51 University Boulevard, Silver Spring, MD 20901

BOOKS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE TO BE SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.

This event is brought to you by the
Center For Teacher Leadership
and co-sponsored by the
Equity in Education Coalition in Montgomery County
Montgomery County Education Association
Progressive Maryland
NAACP Parents Council
Blair Students for Global Responsibility
Montgomery County Education Forum

EXCERPTS:

Many Americans who live far from our major cities and who have no firsthand knowledge of
the realities to be found in urban public schools seem to have the rather vague and general
impression that the great extremes of racial isolation that were matters of grave national
significance some thirty-five or forty years ago have gradually but steadily diminished in more
recent years. The truth, unhappily, is that the trend, for well over a decade now, has been
precisely the reverse. Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years
ago are no less segregated now, while thousands of other schools around the country that had
been integrated either voluntarily or by the force of law have since been rapidly resegregating.
* * *
'I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations,' said President Bush in
his campaign for reelection in September 2004. 'It's working. It's making a difference.' Here we
have one of those deadly lies that by sheer repetition is at length accepted by surprisingly large
numbers of Americans. But it is not the truth; and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts.
It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the black and brown and poor,
and if it is not forcefully resisted it will lead us further in a very dangerous direction.
* * *
Whether the issue is inequity alone or deepening resegregation or the labyrinthine intertwining
of the two, it is well past the time for us to start the work that it will take to change this. If it
takes people marching in the streets and other forms of adamant disruption of the governing
civilities, if it takes more than litigation, more than legislation, and much more than resolutions
introduced by members of Congress, these are prices we should be prepared to pay.
* * *
Teachers and principals should not permit the beautiful profession they have chosen to be
redefined by those who know far less than they about the hearts of children. When they do this,
as in schools in which the principals adopt the borrowed lexicons of building managers or
CEOs, they come out sounding inauthentic, self-diminished, and they end up diminishing the
human qualities of teachers. Schools can probably survive quite well without their rubric charts
and numbered standards-listings plastering the walls. They can't survive without good teachers
and, no matter what curriculum may be in place, whether its approved by state officials or by
Washington or not, they are no good at all if teachers are unable to enjoy the work they do and
be invigorated by its unpredictables.
* * *
'ALL CHILDREN CAN LEARN' the advocates for the agenda say hypnotically, as if the tireless
reiteration of this slogan could deliver to low -income children the same clean and decent
infrastructure and amplitude of cultural provision by experienced instructors that we give the
children of the privileged.
* * *
'There is no misery index for the children of apartheid education. There ought to be; we measure
almost everything else that happens to them in their schools. Do kids who go to schools like
these enjoy the days they spend in them? Is school, for most of them, a happy place to be? You
do not find the answers to these questions in reports about achievement levels, scientific
methods of accountability, or structural revisions in the modes of governance.

Teaching for Change Multicultural Diversity & Anti-Bias

Teaching for Change provides teachers and parents with the tools to transform schools into socially equitable centers of learning where students become architects of a better future. Teaching for Change is a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, DC.

Busboys and Poets Books, operated by Teaching for Change, is Washington, DC's newest source for books and films that encourage children and adults to question, challenge and re-think the world beyond the headlines. The bookstore is in the Busboys and Poets restaurant, performance space, and coffeehouse, which features a dynamic events schedule. Busboys & Poets is a new venture of peace activist Andy Shallal of Mimi's and Cafe Luna.