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To: JohnM who wrote (45799)	5/20/2004 1:00:10 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793914

The issue you brought up before about the parents who put their kids in special ed programs just to get the attention is the same as the issue I raised earlier about the proposal for building facilities for the homeless. Whenever you have a program that offers benefits to a certain class, others will find a way to shoehorn themselves in to get the benefits. It's an inherent problem with "entitlement" programs.

To: JohnM who wrote (45799)	5/20/2004 1:01:26 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793914

Navel-Gazing In New Jersey By Captain Ed on Presidential Election - Captain's Quarters Everyone says the same thing about polls in the spring -- they don't mean anything, it's still too early, lots of things could change, yada yada yada. They may not make a good predictor of the eventual outcome, but they certainly indicate how campaigns are performing -- and in heavily-Democratic New Jersey, the Kerry campaign has just received a shock:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040520/ap_on_el_pr/poll_bush_kerry Forty-six percent of the respondents support Kerry, 43 percent back Bush, and 5 percent would vote for independent candidate Ralph Nader. The poll, released Thursday, has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Among independent voters polled, Kerry and Bush are about even in the race for New Jersey's 15 electoral votes. Kerry's favorability is poor in New Jersey, which Al Gore won by 16 percentage points in 2000. Twenty-seven percent approve of the Democrat, 28 percent don't and 33 percent are mixed, according to the poll. Having Bush within the margin of error so early in the race means that far from being able to count on traditionally-solid New Jersey, the Kerry campaign will need to sink valuable resources convincing Jerseyites of Kerry's likability, in a state where Gore trounced Bush in 2000, and Lautenberg snatched from the Republicans in a quasi-legal, last-minute switcheroo with Bob Torricelli in 2002 -- after 9/11. National polls actually don't mean much. Just as in 2000, you have to look at the state-by-state polling to understand the real trends. Kerry not only hasn't taken any of Bush's red states away from him, but he's lost the solid grips that Gore had on some blue states in 2000, including New Jersey and California, where Kerry's lead has dropped to a single percentage point. National polls show this as a dead heat overall, but where it counts -- electoral votes -- Bush appears to be gaining strength as his support remains much more committed than Kerry's. And all of this as the Bush campaign weathers bad news by the bushel. With the economy improving and hoping for a successful transition in Iraq, Bush could pick up a lot more steam, and votes, in these states over the summer, making more and more battleground states out of what pundits assumed were safely in Kerry's corner.

To: JohnM who wrote (45799)	5/20/2004 1:14:10 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793914

The basic premise of it is whether kids with these difficulties are a general social responsibility, something we shall all fund with our tax dollars; or simply a responsibility of the family. There are several models for dealing with the support of special-ed kids. It's not just federal programs vs. tough luck. If we're going to have government programs, then they should be state or local programs. But there are alternatives. What about insurance? I have long-term care insurance. Those expecting babies should be able to buy insurance for nominal amounts depending on how the policies are structured. And then there's charity. If the government didn't pay, do we know that do-gooders wouldn't step in? And then there are co-ops. That could work. It's not Feds or nothing. And then there's the question of policies to reduce the number of kids who need special ed...

To: JohnM who wrote (45799)	5/20/2004 1:36:11 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793914

Fighting the Regents Number two pencil blog Devoted Reader Mary C. discovered a Newsday article on the NY Regents Exams which gives testing opponents a soapbox on which to preach about the "bias" inherent in the tests : Parents and teachers fighting the growing use of standardized tests presented boxes of petitions Tuesday to end what they called a tool of segregation. The group _ which presented 50,000 petitions to key legislators _ said high school Regents exams foster a segregation that was supposed to have been ended 50 years ago under the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. "Extensive reliance on high stakes Regents exams has turned public schools into test-driven institutions that emphasize the most menial skills," said Jane Hirschmann of Time Out From Testing. "This narrow focus perpetuates the educational gap that Brown (v. Board of Education) was designed to fix ... High-stakes testing is a way we keep 'separate and unequal."' The group said minority students _ who attend mostly underfunded schools _ often fare poorer on the standardized exams than their white counterparts because the tests are biased and graded on a curve that could fail them or prompt them to drop out. Now, stop and think here. The group is admitting that minority students are more likely to go to underfunded (read: "poor" schools). By this reckoning, we'd expect an accurate, unbiased test to show group mean differences, and the students who go to poor schools would have the lower scores. That's exactly what's happening, and the activists are angry about it. And they hope that the readers won't realize that removing the tests will do absolutely nothing to equalize the quality of the education for these minority students. Tests are measurements, and nothing more. If group A is undereducated and group B is solidly educated, a good test will reflect that. But if the test goes away, the differences do not. The claims of grading on the curve and of bias are unsupported and outrageous. For starters, the activists want readers to believe that "grading on the curve" means that the the cutpoints are moved each year to ensure a certain number of flunkers (read: minorities). But the cutpoints are set based on content standards. There's no reason every kid in New York couldn't score above a 65 on five Regents exams to pass. The score conversion table from raw score to scaled score will fluctuate from year to year, but that's not the same thing as grading on a curve; all tests which are equated from year to year use this method. Now, someone will always be at the bottom percentiles of the Regents score scale, but everyone could still pass. The reporter should have caught this obvious error. As for bias, group mean differences are neither necessary nor sufficient indicators of bias; bias can exist when group mean differences do not. It is not racist to say that, for some reason, minority students in NYC are less likely to have the skills necessary to pass the Regents. Perhaps they were not taught them; perhaps they were not concerned about being tested on them. It is racist to rush to assume that the Regents tests are biased and that students are, based solely on skin color, unable to handle multiple-choice items that assess basic skills. And it is neither progressive nor compassionate to insist that these tests are not valid for students of certain races or income levels. Luckily, state education officials understand that: State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, however, said the testing proved there was an academic performance gap between racial and ethnic groups that needs to be addressed. The public release of the school-by-school test results forced change, and the result is that minority performance now is rising, dramatically in some areas such as in elementary school, he said... Board of Regents Chancellor Robert Bennett said there's no interest among Regents in scaling back the tests. "We have a fundamental belief that the public needs to know how their children are doing," Bennett said. And the public now does now. Unfortunately for the public, some of them have become convinced that it's better not to know, or that all the methods we have of knowing must be wrong because they aren't getting the answers they want. kimberlyswygert.com

To: JohnM who wrote (45799)	5/20/2004 5:47:45 PM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793914

of course it is serious. i have a grandson, damaged skull in birth, very weak left side, sensitivies ,, didn't each until age three , something about brain not knowing how to use tongue. he is very smart, but always needs time to adjust to new things, people, etc. been through physcial therapy, etc. my daughter has spent three of the first years hours daily going through various routines. I notice him the other day though still adjust for left side, and also no coordination going down stairs. perception off. sensitivities,, crying ,, too much intact at one time instructor told his mother. he still doesn't know how to process the information. It is continuous work.. But he is not qualified for learning disablitity help. there are many more ,, much more serious cases. Now you have other area, the one mentioned was in New jersey and I heard some teachers talking about how parents force thier kids into special education classes. Why, because these kids without special needs still get the same attention as those who have special needs if they are in the class.. I believe this was also going on in Ma. as i know another person who teaches special ed. I am with you.