Special Ed For Disabled & Disadvantaged Youth

Persuasive stories, a session with Professor Richard Sherwin

On May 1, a group of students from Wagner's Government 3.0 class had the privilege of participating in a discourse by Professor Richard Sherwin on the application of visual storytelling in court.  By manipulating the sequence of story frames, the audience may be led subconsciously to the desired conclusion.  The genres of such stories include, association, anticipation and suspense, reinforcing an argument, raising queries or simply camouflaging the real issue.

Professor Sherwin deployed many video clips to illustrate the persuasiveness of such storytelling.  Unfortunately I have not yet been able to obtain the links to those videos.  The recollection and plain words do not do justice to the discourse.

An example of association is the case of United Bank vs. PriceWaterhouse in 1985.  PriceWaterhouse was compared to Titanic in visual display, leading to the conclusion that even the mammoth may not escape misadventure that may or may not be the result of human error.  In the case of O.J. Simpson, while the horrendous crime scene was described, a jigsaw puzzle was being assembled on the screen.  By the end of the description, the face of O.J. Simpson was displayed.

In the case of Rodney King beating, the video of King being beaten up by the cops was played in slow motion that time the down stroke of a baton with the rising up of King’s body, implying that cops were merely enforcing the command for King to lie down instead of a malicious intent to beat him up.  A similar video is http://youtu.be/4OauOPTwbqk.

In the case of Oklahoma City Bombing, prosecution used a clock to intensify emotion and heighten suspense.

In the case of Scott vs. Harris, the car chase video http://youtu.be/qrVKSgRZ2GY was displayed to show that the decision of the police to force Scott off the road (resulting in his car hitting a pole and causing him paralysis) did not violate the constitution.

In the trial of Michael Skakel (2002) for the murder of Martha Moxley (1975), powerful uncanny video reenacting the sequence of thoughts in Skakel’s mind led to his conviction.  I could not find the video but the link http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_magazine_home/crimjust_cjmag_19_1_skakel.html leads to an article written by the prosecutor on the video.

Professor Sherwin also displayed medical malpractice trials in which video storytelling is prevalent.  “Scientific magic” is deployed to show internal workings of organs that demonstrate “Christmas light effect” whereby the more colorful the video the more believable the story is.

In summation, Professor Sherwin advised that in any political action, it would be wise to determine the genre of a storyline and make sure that it fits the circumstances.  I believe the same advice applies to business and social actions as well.

 

PEER-LEARN.ORG

This is the abstract of my Project Proposal

PEER-LEARN.ORG is to be established as an online social media platform to incentivize middle and high school students to help each other to improve education outcomes, targeting especially the disadvantaged or disabled.  The high school graduation rate and college readiness of these students are dismal, and improvement efforts, even at high costs to the society, have not been effective.  Based on interactive learning methodologies, students form study circles of not more than six members to learn together on their own.  A study circle that achieves discernable and verifiable improvements will win a prize to be shared evenly among the tutors and tutees within that circle.  Besides prizes, students who demonstrate outstanding improvement or leadership would be granted college scholarships by partnering colleges and philanthropy organizations.  PEER-LEARN.ORG engages students, families and teachers to construct a community of learning and a strong grassroots advocate for a new paradigm of education.  It is highly scalable and cost effective, which afford it great prospects of becoming a successful global social enterprise.

Prizes and Awards

When prizes and awards are mentioned, most people will immediately conjure a picture of success and rewards.  A function of prizes and awrads that might have been overlooked is their effect as an agent of encouragement, even if performance metrics are less than the usual standards.  This is particularly rekevant to disadvantaged and disabled students.  These students are losers, from the view of the society, their peers and their schools.  Most schools focus on the best students that, in the belief of the teachers and adminstrators, can ultimately bring fane and glory to the school.  Those students falling behind are provided a level support the schookl can afford and whether they sink or float is left to the students themselves.  Many of them have never erecieved a praise or kind words, let along prizes and awards, It would be very hard to convince these students, who have been told day in and day out that they are failures, to make an effort to pull themselves out of the rut that they felt they are dumped into by the school.

Nw York City has about 1.1 million public school studnets, abut 18% of which have learning disabilities and 64% black or Hispanic.  The on-time graduation rate of these groups of students are less than 40%.  Efforts by the school system and the city and state governments have not produced significant improvement.  It is time that bottom-up attenpts to motivate stucents and families should be vigorously pursued.

One possibility is to use prizes and awards as inducement for students to make an effort on their own.  As an illustration of the efficacy of prizes and awards, a New Jersey philanthropist have been given out several hundred prizes of $300-1,000 every year to middle school "graduates" of autistic students.  Most of these students have never had any award in their life.  The awards they win give them pride and many of them becomes successful in high school.

The total cost of public education in New York City is about $20 billion a year, of which about $12 billion probably are earmrked for the minority and diabled students.  Of the 800,000 or so Black, Hispanic and disabled sudents, probably more than 500,000 face a hopeless life of crime or societal support.  Would it be worth the City to consider allocating 0.1% of the present cost of educaiton as encouragement and inducement for the disabled and disadvantaged students to make an effort to improve their own education outcome?  0.1% amounts $12 million.  On the basis that each recipient gets an average of $500, 24,000 students will get prices and awards, or about 4% of the disabled and disadvantaged population.  As a comparison, the $12 million is equiavakent to the cost of about 270 students under the individualized education programs, of which only 80 would graduate on-time.  By such statistics, even if only a fraction of the 24,000 prize recipients can improve on their on-time graduation rate, the cost of incentive would still have been worthwhile.

 

Social Media, Special Education, NYC school strike

The month long New York City school bus strike ended on Feb 20 2013.  It cost the City about $21 million to pay for transit cards, taxis abd gas mileage; and bus companies about $100 million in lost revenue (Jake Pearson, Huffington Post New York, 2/20/2013).  However, the gravest victims are the children with special needs and their families, since most of such children are unabke to rravel by public ttranspaort on their own.  The plight of  families with special need children during the bus strike is told by RCSN's Lori Podvesker at City Hall Bus Strike Press Conference (http://youtu.be/VHE7-LdCcHA).  Every day, over 10,000 such children were unabke to go to school  and tens of thousands of parents hads to miss work to get their children to school. To these parents, the live link to guidance, comfort, support and assistance is social media whose focal point is Resources for Children with Special Needs, a nonprofit organization in New York City providing support and advice to such families.

According to Rachel Howard of RCSN, through webinars, twitter and facebook a large group of audience is catered to thgroughout the strike.  Rachel's comment on the use of social media during the stike is availabe at http://vimeo.com/63787642.  

In New York City, most of the families of children with special needs are also disadvantaged.  The effect of social media on these families may lead to more application of social media in reaching these families with respect to their children's education.  New York City school bus strike is a rare event, but if social media can be applied in their daily life towards improvement of edcuation outcome, much greater benefit will ensue from this event.  They now know that through social media they can raech out to organizations such as RCSN, which are indeed are a friend in need.

 

Misuse of 911 in Special Education - Can Smart Data Help?

"[S]chools called 911 a whopping 3,600 times during the last school year to deal with non-suicide-related mental health problems. That means that 17 students a day were sent to the emergency room with emotional problems.", according to  New York Daily News.  Many of these students were sent to the ER because the school deos not have trained personnel or supplemental resources or simply refuse to deal with their emotional disturbance (one of the specific disabilities under the Individuals wth Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004)).  IDEA requires provision of free and appropriate special education in the least restrictive environment, namely, to put students with disabilities in the general education classes as much as possible.  For schools that have sufficient funding, such immersion classes would have additional teaching aide or special educational teacher to look afte the disabled students, but for schools with less fresources, even the special educational teachers may be assigned duties other than looking after disabled students.

On the other extreme, a school delayed calling 911 when there was a real medical emergency and the studsent ended up with permanent loss of the use of some limbs.  The delay purportedly was due to the school trying to reduce its crime rate statistics by forbidding staff to call 911.  One school staged a school shooting hoax to test the reaction of 300 students with learning disabilities, which generated huge panic and elicited  comments such as "If someone staged a "mock massacre" in any other public building, City Hall perhaps, it would be considered an act of terrorism!"

The schools can get away with these kind of actions that victimize students because of the lack of channels to allow concerned organizations, families, and the publc to have access to events in real time or even knowledge after the fact.  The statistics reported by New York Daily News was published by NYC DOE after six months of effort by Resources for Chidren with Special Needs (RCSN) to seek 911 calling data so that it could help the families in need but in the end only an overall statistic was made available.

It is a concern of openning data of minors, particularly of students who have disabilities.  Their privacy should be protected.  However, withoutn real time meaningful data made available to a larger set of stakeholders, the existing infrastructure would continue to dispense injustice to the minors it intends to protect.  It would behoove the system to develop smart data whereby an appropriate and relevant subset would be made available real time to authorized recipients.  This would allow care providers, family circles, and volunteer supporters to provide first hand help and support to the student and the school.

The behavior of school adminstrators, however, should be made open to the public.  Under the NY State law, schools should have medical and nursing personnel and other states have school checklist for emergencies.  These information should be on open data so that the public can judge the peformance and readiness of the school their children are in.  The school adminstrators should be aware that because of a student is in special education he still should be accorded respect and treated with dignity.  They should be held to high moral standards with their acgtions scrutinized by the public.

COPS, a unit of the Department of Justice, has documented misuse and abuses of 911 dialing (mostly accidental) and has published guidelines to help reduce the miscalls.  Our school system should no add intentional misuses to overload the 911 system, which is already trmendously under stress.

Interview: Rachel Howard of Resources for Children with Special Needs

The question of how open government, open data and social media could help 501(c)(3) organizations that provide charitable services was posed to Rachel Howard, Executive Director of Resources for Children with Special Need (RCSN), which provides support for families with special need children to locate appropriate resources for their children, particularly among families that need support to navigate the NYC government.

The inrevirw os posted on Vimeo

Gov30 Special Ed http://vimeo.com/60793598 "Interview Rachel Howard RCSN"

She believes that open givernment and open data is impportant as presently there is a tendency for gvernment agencies to obfuscate data, renering them meaningless to the msision that that data are to be applied.  She also opines that social media make civic activities more effective.

Peer Assisted Learning Strategies

Peer to Patent is one of the collaborative successes that contribute to the opening of government.  In special education, a tool that has been proven to be successful in improving education outcome from early years through high school is PALS: Peer Assisted learning Strategies.  While application of PALS, developed over the last 20 years, has been mainly tutor-tutee dyadic interaction, it may be possible to expand the methodology to an open platform whereby the students of today, who are IT native, can apply PALS themselves not just catering to special education but also general education, particularly towards improving the education outcome of the disadvantaged.  Studies have shown that students can apply PALS themselves (Calhoon & Fuchs, 2003) (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Kazden, 1999) with simple training.  It is proven successful in early education (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Karns, 2001).  Thus a habit of PALS could start early in schooling and persist throughout primary and secondary education, applied as an autopilot routine by the students and regular teachers so that it would not be a financial drain to the education system.   An open platform may attract conscientious students and parents of more privileged background to reach out to disadvantaged students and families to bridge the early year education gap.

It has been postulated that early year development of learning proficiency, particularly in math, is critical for the skills in later years.  The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) had adopted a position paper (Early Childhood Mathematics: Promoting Good Beginnings) in 2002 and updated in 2010 on the implementation of early year math education.  The dismal College Readiness among 12^th graders in NYC, however, attests to the validity of the postulate and the failure of the education system to remedy the early year deficiency.  PALS may motivate the students and families that the education system had failed.

The Center on Education Policy of The George Washington University advocates untraditional approaches to motivate unenthusiastic students, including instilling a sense of autonomy, garnering relatedness to the school and peers, promoting extra-curricula activities and employing technology in learning (Student motivation - an overlooked piece of school reform, 2012).  Motivation is best demonstrated by students reaching out to the teachers, and receptiveness by the teachers to such overture would form a strong bond that promote learning through an ethic of care, which Peele-Eady et al (2007) emphasized to be an important factor in urban school success and reported a number of successful programs. 

A PALS platform may lead to the deployment of special education assistive technologies, including supplementary material and learning tools, in general education.  Some of the tools are open source online learning programs, such as Number Worlds and Khan Academy.  A PALS platform may be effective without the high cost of auxiliary teaching personnel that severely limits the ability of a community to provide remedial education to those students lagging behind. 

 

References

Calhoon, M., & Fuchs, L. (2003). The effect of peer-assisted learning strategies and curriculum-based measurements on mathematics performance of secondary students with disabilities. Remedial and Special Education , 24 (4), 235-246.

Center on Education Policy. (2012). Student motivation - an overlooked piece of school reform. The George Washington University.

Fuchs, L., Fuchs, D., & Karns, K. (2001). Enhancing kindergarteners' mathematical development: effects pf peer-assisted learning strategies. The Elementary School Journal , 101 (5), 495-510.

Fuchs, L., Fuchs, D., & Kazden, S. (1999). Effects of peer-assisted learning strategies on high school students with serious reading problems. Remedial and Special Education , 20 (5), 309-319.

NAEYC. (2002). Early Childhood Mathematics: Promoting Good Beginnings.

Peele-Eady, T., Nassir, N., & Pang, V. (2007). Success stories in urban education: a critical look at the ethic of care in programs, projects and strategies that work from the clasroom to community. In W. Pink, & G. Noblit, Handbook of Urban Education (pp. 883-904). Springer.

 

 

OGP Action Plan: Russia and Indonesia

Putin may feel insulted by a comparison of Russia with Indonesia (Russia has more than twice the GDP and nearly five times the GDP per capita), but the two do have a number of similarities:

1 Both have an autocratic government;

2 Both changed from communism to capitalism, Indonesia in the late sixties and Russia in the early nineties. Indonesia now has built a reasonably diversified economy but Russia is still struggling with basically a planned economy;

3 Both societies are stratified into a small class of elites and a huge mass of "proletariats". The middle class, while growing rapidly, is still largely dysfunctional. Both recognize the need to improve the livelihood of the mass population to maintain stability;

4 Both aspire to attract foreign investments to uplift its economy and introduce greater diversification. Both rely on the technology sector to spur growth. Both see Internet penetration as the first step towards an open government. Presently Russia is about 44% and Indonesia 22%;

5 Corruption is rampant in both countries. According to Transparency.com's 2012 report, Indonesia ranked 118 and Russia 133 among 176 countries in the world (USA 19);

6 Economic freedom is low in both countries. In Heritage.org's 2013 index, Russia ranks 138 among 177 countries and Indonesia 108;

7 Cronyism plays an important role in the business conduct in both countries.

Over the last 30 years, Indonesia had changed its economy from an agrarian and commodity based economy to manufacturing led economy. In 1981, almost 75% of its GDP comprised of agriculture, oil and gas. In 2011, agriculture accounted for about 14%, oil and gas 11%, manufacturing 26%, construction 10% and services 39%.

For Russia in 2011, agriculture accounted for 4%, oil and gas 30%, manufacturing 3%, construction 4% and services 59%. More than 50% of the government expenditure is funded by oil and gas revenue. The almost total reliance on oil and gas brings economic uncertainty and social instability. Russia therefore has a dire need to kickstart its private business sector especially in the manufacturing. It is under such socio-economic backdrop that both countries embrace OGP, particularly Russia, with tremendous vigor.

However, the approach to open government are quite different. While the objectives are primarily similar, namely, to make government operations transparent, to enhance public integrity and allow the public to share in the fruits of an open government, Russia's is a totally top down approach and the action plan is highly infrastructural. The action plan lays out the agenda for each government department. Almost as an afterthought that development of competition and human resources (key factors in the development of the private sector), and the improvement of living standard are mentioned. The action plans related to those are still with state organizations in mind.

The action plan of Indonesia, on the other hand puts improvement of public services as top priority, with education in the lead, followed by health and poverty reduction. There is no mention at all of the desirable conduct of the government machinery. The actions in all aspects of open government are baby steps with no time frame attached, which make them feel humanistic, but may appear insufficient among advocates of opening government in a more rigorous manner.

In contrast, Russia opts for a boot camp forced march approach. Perhaps the difference in approach reflects the national trait. Indonesia has never been extreme in ideology. While ruled by the communist party in the fifties and sixties of the last century, other political inclinations co-existed; while embracing Islam, fundamentalist doctrines are not followed.  Russia always has a Czarist mentality and bureaucratic approach to issues with clearcut single-minded solutions.  the actions plans may therefore dovetail with the temperament of the society.  

It is worthwhile to note that in the document Open Government in Russia, there are lengthy descriptions of the effort of Medvedev to open up the Russia bureaucracy.  The diversification and modernization attempts were made in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis that plunged Russia into deep recession and forcing it to wean from the dependency on oil and gas, which is largely unsuccessful.  The detailed action plan is thus more of a procedural template than a set of targets and principles, which has already been establsihed by Medvedev and blessed by Putin.  The set of procedures is directed mainly towards the bureacrats.  If they can be successfully implemented acording to the time line, Russia may be the first country to have a transparent government.

Both countries place high priority on fighting corruption. In this aspect, both countries have very specific action plan. Indonesia identified police, attorney general's office, prison, tax department and tax court, customs and immigration as targets, but the emphasis is on public access to information as a preventioive measure against corruption. Russia lists courts, state investment projects, utility organizations, legislature, state procurement as targets, and goes so far as requiring state employes to disclose income, expenses and conflict of interest in an attempt to wipe out corruption by edict.  Regardless the approach, the willingness by these countries to admit and disclose specific targets is already admirable and indicates a certain level of commitment to fight corruption. The acid test is the willingness of the targets to cooperate. Let's hope that resistance would not sabotage the entire open government effort.

Given the similarities in the socio-political landscape of the two countries it would be enlightening if each takes note of the action plan of the other and see how its plan can be improved by some of the measures the other is proposing. Despite its insignificance as a world power, Indonesia has come a long way in diversifying its economy, which could at least lend encouragement to Russia.

Introduction

The purpose of this blog is to mobilize concerned educators, students, families and citizens, through the enabling effects of open government, open data and social media advocacy, to seek an alternative education path for those high school students that the present system has failed to “prepare them for further education, employment and independent living" (Reauthorization of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) 2004 Section 601(d)(1)(A)). While the law quoted above pertains only to students with disabilities, the fact that the education outcome of students of disadvantaged background is similar makes such alternative education path equally applicable to the one and the other.

At this moment, there is no definite alternative education path, but hopefully through open discussions a consensus could be reached and trials established to allow these youths a future that they otherwise would not have.

Since 1975, the Federal government has established policies to provide special education to students with disabilities, embodied currently in IDEA, which mandates States to provide free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment under individualized education programs (“IEP”). According to New York City Independent Budget Office (2011, pp. 6, 12), special education accounted for about 13% of the students and about 24% of the classroom and instruction budget. Yet, only 31% of these students graduate high school at the appropriate age (New York City Department of Education, 2011).

It was reported by NBC on September 24, 2012, that only 37% of the Black and Hispanic high school male students in NYC graduate in 4 years, the lowest in the nation. According to New York City Independent Budget Office (2011, p. 37), college readiness in English among Blacks and Hispanics was below 40% and in Math below 10%. GothamSchools.org reported on January 19, 2012 that 75% of the entrants to CUNY’s 2-year courses had to take remedial math or reading classes.

Huge bodies of studies have been made on the outcome of general education. Factors leading to high school dropouts included (1) elementary, middle and high school curricula mismatch, (2) early year scholastic underachievement, (3) insufficient student motivation and peer support, (4) teacher’s attitude and training, (5) socioeconomic resources of families, including housing, education background, wealth, family structure and care. Every one of these factors applies to the disabled and disadvantaged students with one extra factor: they are already deemed to be failures by the system.

What is needed is a bottom-up initiative whereby students, with the support of their families and the community, become advocates for their own future. Students and families need to make a collective effort to demand change in the education process that would (a) focus on developing their strengths rather than simply remedying their weaknesses and (b) generate prospects of gainful employment while they are still in high school.

Students and families could demand comprehensive studies on a new paradigm of education to provide career-oriented education to high school students that would lead to gainful employment upon their graduation, if they prefer not to go to college. Studies show that the scarring effect of early unemployment is indelible and the longer a youth is unemployed the harder it is for him to get into the work stream (Heylen, Leuven, 2011) (Cockx, Pichio, 2011). If nobody else cares, at least the students themselves, and their parents, should.

In advocating career readiness in high school in parallel to college readiness for those students choosing to enter the job market after high school, we can take a lesson from Germany. In 2008, 58% of the upper secondary school students in Germany are enrolled in a technical or vocational program, with the students going into apprenticeship at 15 or 16 years old for 2 to 4 years (Helper, Kruger, Wial, 2012, p. 27). It may be worthwhile to note that the average hourly compensation for the manufacturing sector in Germany is 26% higher than the US (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011), making such apprenticeship worthwhile.

In terms of career prospect, one important concern is job availability. The job market is changing and education system has to device a program to meet the changing demand. Facing and taking advantage of the changing economy require concerted effort by politicians, government officials, business and community leaders, schools, families and students. A successful example of such effort is Charlotte, NC. Brookings Institute reported in a study of selected industrial metropolitan areas that in the period 1980-2005, while nationwide job growth was 42.6%, Charlotte had 96.3% growth (Atkins, et al., 2011). In 1980, 28.9% of the jobs in Charlotte were in manufacturing. In 2005, only 10.4% were manufacturing jobs. Financial services, professional, scientific and technical services, and administrative and support services fueled the growth.

Another concern about entering the work force is take-home pay. From 1970 to 2011, the compounded consumer price index has gone up by about 5 times, while minimum wage in New York City has gone up by less than 4 times, from $1.85 to $7.25. The increase in the cost of basic necessities could have outpaced the basket of commodities that form the CPI, thus exacerbating the hardship of the poor. For example, MTA fare increased by 15 times, chicken about 8 times, gasoline about 12 times and cigarettes about 40 times. The minimum wage today cannot support healthcare or college education (Schmidt & Augier, 2012). With vanishing job prospect and inadequate take-home pay, it is not surprising that high poverty students and families are unenthusiastic about education. However, if school and community only pay lip service to reform with no one truly taking action to change, the educational outcome can never be improved, unless the students themselves clamor for change.

The driving force for students and families to immerse themselves as advocates is the adaptation of a culture of education. Lacour and Tissington (2011) postulate that poverty is a culture and way of life that impact education. That culture, if indeed so, can only be changed by the affected families. They need to instill a faith that through education they can in time change their status. The Harvard Family Research Project (2006) produced a 3-part report on the outcome of family involvement from early childhood to elementary education to adolescence that can be an excellent guide for the disadvantaged families that have to play the catch-up game. No doubt some sacrifice will have to be made when families decide to let the educational tools take precedence over other life essentials and enjoyment. They have to recognize that time to success is not measured in weeks but generations.

The advocacy on education outcome in fact encompasses a wide range of socioeconomic aspects that required concerted community action. It is hoped that through this blog, the issues and potential solutions would emerge. Comments and advice are most welcome and appreciated.

References

Atkins, P., Blumenthal, P., Edisis, A., Friedhoff, A., Curran, L., Lowry, L., et al. (2011). Responding to manufacturing job loss: what can economic development policy do? Brookings.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2011). International comparison of labor hourly compensation cost in manufacturing, 2010. US Department of Labor.

Cockx, E B., Pichio, M. (2011). Scarring effect of remaining unemployed for long-term unemployed school-leavers. IZA.

Harvardg Family Research Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education. (2006). Family involvement makes a difference. Harvard University.

Helper, S., Kruger, T., & Wial, H. (2012). Why does manufacturing matter? What manufacturing matters? A policy framework. Brookings.

Heylen, V., & Leuven, K. (2011). Scarring, effect of early year unemployment. European Association of Labor Economists Conference.

Lacour, M., & Tissington, L. (2011). Effect of poverty on education. Education Research and Review, 6 (7), 522-527.

New York City Department of Education. (2011). Overview of the Special Education Reform. NYCDOE.

New York City Independent Budget Office. (2011). New York City public school indicators: demographics, resources, outcomes.

Schmidt, J., Augier, M.-E. (2012). Affording health care and education on the minimum wage. Center for Economics and Policy Research.