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Upon completion of my masters degree in Curriculum Design and Instruction I aim to be employed as a full time classroom teacher at the high school level. Here I hope to utilize my certification in 8-12 grade social studies to help prepare high school students for the next step of their educational journey by passing along a dedication to lifelong learning and civic engagement.

Classroom [Digital image]. (2016, April 29). Retrieved January 14, 2019, from https://www.stuartkellynz.com/home/why-high-school-classrooms-scare-me

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Option 2: Slide 1: National School Boards Association and Legal Issues

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Option 2: Slide 1: National School Boards Association and Legal Issues

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1. Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): Federal law passed in 2015 with bipartisan support, the ESSA aimed to reduce the federal government's role in educational leadership thus relinquishing it back to the states and local governments. ESSA reversed previous legislation that gave the federal government more control over how districts are held accountable for student learning; the change has had significant impact on student outcomes.

2. National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP) and Digitally Based Assessments (DBA): The U.S. Department of Education aims to transition away from paper and pencil assessments to using digitally based assessments for collecting learning outcome data from "digitally native" students. However, there are concerns with performance gap issues and some students being left behind because of digital assessment primarily driven by social realities of varying degrees of technological access and literacy among diverse students creating legal concerns about changing the way assessment is conducted.

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Option 2: Part 2: National Education Agency

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Option 2: Part 2: National Education Agency

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1. Vouchers: Private school vouchers remain a contentious topic among educators and professional organizations like the NEA. These vouchers threaten the foundation of public education because they strip already scarce funding from public schools that face the challenges of underfunding. Vouchers redirect tax dollars away from cash-strapped schools and funnel it to private schools with little to no public accountability and oversight. The position of the NEA and it's teachers is that this money should be left in the public school system.

2. Gun Violence in Schools: The NEA is actively engaged in lobbying for legislation that aims to reduce gun violence particularly in schools. Classrooms should be a safe environment for learning. As such the NEA advocates stirct gun laws, universal background checks, and assault weapons bans.

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Federal Oversight to Texas Special Education Plan
Texas was found to be in violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; a federal law that aims to protect the educational rights of students with special needs. While Texas developed a comprehensive plan to rectify these shortcomings, the federal government aims to investigate its implementation.

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After a decade of effectively capping the number of students identified for special education, Texas developed an extensive, multimillion plan for how it plans to rectify what was deemed a violation of federal special education law.

But in a review, the federal office of special education programs says it wants to see additional corrective actions by the state, and that it plans to send a team to visit next year to make sure that work is being done.

A disability advocacy group says it appreciates that the federal government did not simply rubber-stamp the state plan and that federal officials plan to visit Texas again.

"We just hope that they will get outside Austin, and visit with parents and educators across the state," said Steven Aleman, a policy specialist with Disability Rights Texas.

Investigative Followup

A 2016 investigation by the Houston Chronicle revealed that special education enrollment in Texas had been declining for years, driven by districts' efforts to meet a state enrollment benchmark of 8.5 percent.

The articles captured stories of children whose disabilities would automatically qualify them for special education services in other states.

For example, a young child with Down syndrome was initially denied special education services because he could read on grade level. Another child, who was born prematurely and was legally blind, was denied services because she could hold written materials close enough to her face to read.

The federal office of special education programs found Texas in violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in January, after conducting its own investigation and holding a listening tour around the state.

In a January report outlining the violations, federal officials said they were told that the state's dyslexia guidelines required that children with difficulty reading must present an additional disabling condition before they could even be evaluated for special education services. This runs counter to federal special education law, which does not require a child to be suspected of multiple disabilities before a screening takes place.

Federal officials also criticized Texas' use of response to intervention. RTI is an instructional framework that focuses on addressing problems early with students who show signs of academic weakness.

Many state educators said they thought a child had to go through multiple levels of interventions before a student could be screened for having a disability. But in 2011, the Education Department informed states that RTI can't be used to delay or deny a special education evaluation. Teachers also said they weren't clear about how much progress children should be making to move out of RTI.

In 2017, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a law that would bar the Texas Education Agency from placing a cap or creating a benchmark on special education enrollment.

In a statement responding to the latest federal missive, Mike Morath, the Texas education commissioner, said the state is already making "significant progress" in carrying out its special education strategic plan.

"We continue to adhere to a commitment to transparency and engagement throughout the plan's implementation," he said.

Funding Needs

Special education enrollment in Texas has now risen to about 9.2 percent of students, higher than the recent past, but still below the national average of about 13 percent. Texas may need to find an additional $3.3 billion over the next three years in order to pay for additional special education services, the Houston Chronicle has reported.

Aleman, with Disability Rights Texas, said that he hopes federal officials will take a close look at student groups he said were hit particularly hard by the old special education policy: English-language learners; students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities; and, students in foster care.

This federal review also comes at a time when the state legislature is not in session. Aleman said it's important that state officials exercise their oversight role when they return to Austin in January. "It's going to be just as essential to us that they're informed and caught up to speed," he said.

Published in Print: October 31, 2018, as Feds Plan Fresh Oversight of Texas Spec. Ed. Plan

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Feds Plan Fresh Oversight of Texas Special Education Plan

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After a decade of effectively capping the number of students identified for special education, Texas developed an extensive, multimillion plan for how it plans to rectify what was deemed a violation of federal special education law.

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Education as a Constitutional Right
A lawsuit filed in Rhode Island argues that an education should legally qualify as a constitutional right. Though this is not explicitly stated in the constitution, it is argued that t be a productive citizen of the United States you must have a minimal education. This legislation could have significant impacts on the educational landscape for all citizens should it pass, but even it's existence challenges the way we view education in the U.S.

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A much-anticipated lawsuit argues that, despite nowhere mentioning the word education, the U.S. Constitution does guarantee the provision of an education for the intuitive reason that it is impossible to vote, exercise free speech, or serve on a jury without one.

Filed last month in federal court in Rhode Island on behalf of more than a half-dozen students, the lawsuit faces very long odds on its way to lawbook fame, particularly given the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court.

But from another vantage point, the timing is spot on, reflecting a resurgence of interest in civics education, as well as general concern over the strength and resilience of America's civic institutions.

"On the one hand, for the legal question, this moment in time may not be the best for the plaintiffs, but the social context might be a really good time to raise this question in the public court, given just how bad people's knowledge of civic institutions are and just how much they are under threat," said Mark Paige, an associate professor in the public-policy department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with expertise in education law.

In the K-12 world, Massachusetts recently became the first state to require secondary students to engage in civics projects as part of the curriculum. And Washington state, Illinois, and New York state have also recently passed laws or convened panels to reassess how they prepare students for citizenship.

Here's a look at the key questions in A.C. v. Raimondo -and what comes next for the plaintiffs.
What's this lawsuit about again? And what are its odds?
The lawsuit is shaped as a class action against Rhode Island. Lawyers for the plaintiffs allege that, among other things, the state doesn't require students to complete any civics or history classes or exams, doesn't provide enough extracurricular civic opportunities for students, and does not provide English-learners with strong instruction, all of which hinder their civic development.

There's one major obstacle to establishing the principle that the Constitution guarantees some level of education: the Supreme Court's decision in a 1973 case, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. In that case, the court ruled that the Constitution's equal-protection clauses didn't extend to school district finance inequities.

But the case also left open the question of whether the document might guarantee some minimum level of education, and the architects of the current lawsuit hope to force an answer to that question. Importantly, the case isn't directly about school finance, although any remedy, like revamping civics education across the nation, would inevitably incur costs.

In addition, federal district courts are often reluctant to read new rights into the Constitution.

And when the legal theories underpinning the case were being developed, the political landscape looked a lot different. President Donald Trump's appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court gave conservatives a majority and makes a victory there unlikely.

Nevertheless, pointed out Derek W. Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, the lawsuit echoes widespread concern about the state of civic knowledge, and so the outcome remains a bit of a wild card. Trump's election "has made an enormous swath of the judiciary concerned about the rule of law, the operation of our democracy, and citizens' ability to make informed decisions far more important than it was," he noted.
After years of state education adequacy lawsuits, why are we seeing federal action again?
Status: Pending

Several other lawsuits are testing out related legal theories, though those cases, like the one filed in Michigan focusing on student literacy, are more narrowly tailored.

Legal experts point to a slowdown in state-level education equity cases following bruising battles in Washington state and Kansas, among other places, as one reason behind the interest in a federal education case.

It's unclear whether the spate of federal litigation could affect potential state-level action, the legal experts said. Some feel that it won't, while others suggest that state courts might not want to make any sudden moves on school finance or equity until the federal question is resolved.
Why do the plaintiffs cite an obscure provision of the Constitution-Article 4, Section 4?
Nearly all previous education equity lawsuits at the federal level have been brought on the grounds of equal protection or due process under the 14th Amendment. This lawsuit includes those claims, too, but also cites this portion of the founding document, which contains a guarantee that every state will establish "a republican form of government."

The clause has been more or less ignored for 200 years, but was the basis of a Stanford Law Review article Black published earlier this year.

In it, he notes that under that clause, and subsequently under the 14th Amendment, the U.S. government forced Southern states to include public education in their own state constitutions as a condition of rejoining the Union after the Civil War.

The plaintiffs' decision to include the unusual historical argument gives the courts additional options to consider-particularly for those judges worried about extending the definition of equal-protection rights, already a well-developed part of constitutional law.

"They may have some concerns about a precedent here, what it will mean for equal-protection cases," Black said. "But the republican guarantee, if they hold it, applies only to education. It's not going to apply to anything else."
What happens if the plaintiffs succeed?
The plaintiffs seek legal clarity, rather than any specific remedy for the students, which means that if the courts uphold the principle in question, they would then require policymakers to develop a program for schools that would supply adequate preparation for citizenship.

"There may well be 50 different approaches, or more than that, taken among the different school districts," said Michael Rebell, the lead counsel on the case and an education law professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. "We're not going to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to come up with a laundry list of what should be in a civics course or what extracurricular opportunity should be afforded to students. A lot of that depends on context, and it's not the kind of nuts-and-bolts work the Supreme Court would want to be involved in."

The plaintiffs' brief contains some clues about what they feel should happen: teacher training; a curriculum that includes media literacy, civic experiences both inside and outside of the classroom; and supports for students learning English.
Could this lawsuit be settled?

Possibly. A spokeswoman for the Rhode Island attorney general said she could not comment on pending litigation.
What happens if the lawsuit is dismissed?
It would throw cold water on the legal arguments advanced in the litigation, making them harder to use for other test cases. That does worry other education law experts.

"The risk, of course, is that a federal court could say no, and then we have another Rodriguez problem," Paige said. "I worry slightly that it would foreclose a theory that might be viable in a different context."

Published in Print: December 12, 2018, as New Legal Strategy: Civics Education Is a Constitutional Right

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Is the Time Right to Make Education a Constitutional Right?

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A much-anticipated lawsuit argues that, despite nowhere mentioning the word education, the U.S. Constitution does guarantee the provision of an education for the intuitive reason that it is impossible to vote, exercise free speech, or serve on a jury without one.

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For this research assignment I will focus on the issue of school vouchers. The justification for this lies in the impact voucher programs have had on schools that face tough budget restraints which ultimately have a tremendous impact on student and teacher success.

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The Dangers of Voucher Programs to Educators

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The Dangers of Voucher Programs to Educators

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Vouchers remain a contentious topic among public school educators, especially teachers, for a number of critical reasons. Most notably, awarding school vouchers strips funding from public schools and redirect it to private schools that in most cases are not held to the same accountability standards. As an educator, priority is always placed on student success. As such, for teachers, one of the biggest questions is how do voucher programs affect learning outcomes?

The key argument by those who support voucher programs is that they allow parents to place children in alternative schooling situations; using public schooling funds to do so. The idea is that the competition created will force public schools to improve their academic outcomes (Spector, 2017). However, prevailing research has found that this is not happening.

Recently appointed U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy Devos is a strong proponent for school vouchers, and has pushed for a nationwide implementation of voucher programs. This has necessitated renewed research into the overall impact of voucher programs on student learning; the results have not been promising. Research conducted by Stanford Graduate School of Education Professor Martin Carnoy found no significant increases in student performance, graduation rates, or college enrollment while at the same time highlighting significant hidden costs associated with voucher programs (Spector, 2017).

The most pressing of these hidden costs, and the biggest impact voucher laws have on teachers and their profession, is “the impact they could have on the teaching pipeline (Spector, p. 13, 2017).” Public school teachers are protected by a system that encourages the nurturing and retention of highly trained teachers whereas private systems “would eliminate the salary and tenure benefits of the public system” only causing a larger teacher shortage (Spector, p. 14, 2017). Voucher systems thus prove to have little to no positive impact on student performance while at the same time threatening the jobs of teachers and the steady growth of fresh educators coming into the profession. As such, vouchers should be a serious concern to public school education professionals, especially teachers, who not only want to keep their jobs, but also want the best educational outcomes for their students.

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Proponents of "school choice" say that voucher programs - which allow parents to use state education funds to enroll their children in private schools - promote learning by providing access to different types of schools and by fostering competition that motivates public schools to improve.

But there's no evidence that voucher programs significantly increase test scores, according to a new report by Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) Professor Martin Carnoy.

At best, they have only a modest impact on high school graduation rates, Carnoy found - and the risks they pose outweigh any advances.

"The evidence is very weak that vouchers produce significant gains in learning," Carnoy said. "They also carry hidden costs, and they're distracting us from other solutions that could yield much higher returns."

Assessing the impact

The report, published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), was initiated shortly after Betsy DeVos was nominated to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education. DeVos, who was confirmed Feb. 7, has pushed for the expansion of school vouchers nationwide.

Carnoy analyzed research conducted over the past 25 years, including studies of programs in Milwaukee, New York City, Washington, D.C., Indiana and Louisiana. Most studies have evaluated the impact of vouchers through test scores (as a proxy for student achievement) and high school graduation and college enrollment rates (indicators of school performance).

In Milwaukee, where the nation's second-largest (after Indiana's more recent) voucher program has been operating for almost 20 years, only a quarter of students attend their neighborhood school. "If choice were the answer, Milwaukee would be one of the highest-scoring cities in the country," Carnoy said.

But test score data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tell a different story. Among black eighth-graders in 13 urban school districts, Milwaukee - where black students make up more than 70 percent of all voucher recipients - ranked last in reading and second-to-last in math.

In cases where test scores did improve, Carnoy said, the increase appeared to be driven by increased public accountability, not vouchers. A four-year study in Milwaukee found no greater gains in state test scores among voucher students attending private schools until the legislature announced that all private schools accepting voucher students would be required to take the test and that the results would be made public. Researchers concluded that publicizing the results for the first time pressed these schools to focus more teaching on elements that might appear on the test, which helped increase their scores.

While research has found some small gains in voucher schools' graduation and college enrollment rates, Carnoy said there's no evidence indicating whether this was due to private school competition - as free-market proponents contend - or to private high schools' willingness to shed less-motivated students.

Hidden costs

The report also disputes the common claim that vouchers cost less per student than traditional public education. "The cost argument is flawed," Carnoy said, because the savings that private schools enjoy couldn't be sustained if voucher programs were implemented much more widely.

For one thing, a private school that accepts vouchers can ease out low-performing students, even if initially required to admit them by lottery. Also, administering a voucher plan is expensive: Carnoy cited research estimating that record-keeping, student transportation and other costs associated with vouchers could raise public educational costs by 25 percent or more.

One alarming long-term cost of a voucher system, Carnoy said, is the impact it could have on the teaching pipeline. Public education's tenure and pension system offers security that compensates for relatively low pay and that helps to retain experienced teachers. Without these benefits, he said, fewer young teachers would be likely to enter and remain in the profession.

Private schools in a largely public system save money by hiring young teachers who seek training and experience and have the option to go on to competitive positions at public schools. A mainly private system would eliminate the salary and tenure benefits of the public system, he said, exacerbating the teacher shortage and diminishing teacher quality on average.

"Supporters make the argument that vouchers are still cheaper, even if they don't produce gains, but they're using a false measure of the real cost of these schools," said Carnoy, who has authored more than 40 books and 150 articles on economics and education.

Proven strategies

The report also draws attention to policies and programs that have been shown to improve student learning.

"There are many policy changes that are likely to have much higher payoffs than privatization," said Carnoy, including teacher training, early childhood education, after-school and summer programs, student health programs and heightened standards in math, reading and science curricula.

These strategies appear to generate far more meaningful results than those estimated for voucher students, he found. And given the potential downsides, he said, expanding voucher programs just for slightly higher graduation rates "seems rather unreasonable."

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Vouchers do not improve student achievement, Stanford researcher finds | Stanford News

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Proponents of "school choice" say that voucher programs - which allow parents to use state education funds to enroll their children in private schools - promote learning by providing access to different types of schools and by fostering competition that motivates public schools to improve.

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The Dangers of Voucher Programs to Educators: Part 2

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The Dangers of Voucher Programs to Educators: Part 2

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School voucher proponents argue that the system creates natural competition among public schools and their private school counterparts. The argument is that if a public school faces losing funding to a competing school it will be incentivized to perform at a higher standard, thus increasing student performance (Bowen & Trivitt, 2014). Does research support the notion that low-performing schools will be incentivized to increase student performance by the threat of losing funding and students through the voucher program?

According to Bowen and Trivitt (2014), Florida's public school system offered a unique opportunity to study this notion when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the voucher program portion of its public school accountability legislation was unconstitutional. What the researchers found was that the removal of the voucher threat had no significant impact on academic performance of schools that received failing grades under the state's accountability legislation (Bowen & Trivitt, 2014).

While it is beyond the scope of this particular research, the impact on education professionals, specifically teachers, is not that difficult to imagine. First, understand that Florida's accountability system closely resembled, and predated, No Child Left Behind. Schools who underperformed would be given a failing grade and thus find themselves under government scrutiny. In Florida's case, before the court’s decision, schools would then face the threat of losing students and thus funding to vouchers. Like NCLB, these programs that placed accountability on standardized test scores had devastating impacts on how and what teachers teach. Emphasis on tests scores creates a dangerous classroom environment where, because of accountability, teachers are only focused on teaching students to score well on tests.

While voucher programs alone do not create curriculum challenges where concern is only on passing tests, and not on fully educating and enriching students, the argument can be made that vouchers directly impact how teachers approach their duties. Removing funding from public schools can also increase class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios making it even harder for teachers to fully serve their students, all with little research to support the claimed benefits of vouchers. The consequences of voucher programs on classroom teachers may be well hidden under the larger debate, but there is little wonder why it’s such a contentious topic for educators.

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Bowen, D., & Trivitt, J. (2014). Stigma without sanctions: The (lack of) impact of private school vouchers on student achievement. Education Policy Analysis Archives,22(87), 1-19.

Classroom [Digital image]. (2016, April 29). Retrieved January 14, 2019, from https://www.stuartkellynz.com/home/why-high-school-classrooms-scare-me

Spector, C. (2017, February 28). Vouchers do not improve student achievement, Stanford research finds. Retrieved from https://news.stanford.edu/