Anna’s Story (Transgender Youth Interview & Statistics)
Statistics and effects of anti-LGBTQ+ policies on Youth in the United States today
Transgender Child Interview Anna, IN HER WORDS:
FREE COLLEGE FOR MN FOSTERS (Village Gathering Info Session 9.9.22)
School is about to start for students across the state. For many of our Foster leaders, the classroom was a place of refuge, where, unlike their time in foster care, they had agency and connections. Over 80% of high school Fosters want to continue with post-secondary education, but that dream was financially out-of-reach for…
MN Child Daycare, New Moms & Paid Leave
How we value children in MN. 2/3 of new moms take unpaid leave after childbirth. Minnesota is the 4th most expensive state for infant daycare ($16,087/yr). Nationally, single moms and the working poor are often paying over half their income for infant center care and married parents would pay over 100% of their household income for center based care (but they don’t because it just doesn’t work).
Politics & Children – A Zero Sum Game
A recent MN Governor ended subsidized daycare in the state – the waiting list went from 34 families to 7000.
At the time, two percent of MN children were enrolled in high quality early childhood education programs- the national average was 25% and MN had the lowest rate among the 38 states that offer the programs.
Cutting the pie smaller for children is destructive, leads to failing students and schools, troubled communities, and the highest crime rates in the industrialized world.
Free College Tuition For Fostered – Adopted Children
Minnesota’s Free Foster Care College (starting fall of 2022).
Here are recent positive developments in support of free & low cost college for foster and adopted youth;
Nineteen states have at least one Statewide student aid Promise Program
Federal programs for foster/adopted youth in all states
Child Care – Brutal Truths & Best Practices
CHILD CARE COSTS MORE THAN COLLEGE TUITION IN 34 STATES
The School Safety Net
COVID restrictions have locked many more students into toxic homes and made it much harder for teachers to have the relationships necessary to have meaningful conversations and provide help to end the abuse.For many children being able to attend school physically is their only reprieve from an abusive home life and only chance to confide in an adult that can provide a path to safety.
A Lethal Absence of Hope
The inability to read almost ensures a child’s failure in school and in life. School failure, feelings of worthlessness, depression and self-hate lead to giving up and the terrible choices left to children that have no hope.
Struggles for Foster Care Children in Education
America has long failed to understand and address the underlying issues that drive behaviors of traumatized children. Many end up suspended, expelled or in juvenile justice. Teen and preteen pregnancies are significantly more common among them than with their peers also.
Budget Surplus Fund For Children (a Christmas Miracle)
Peter Hutchinson’s recent Star Tribune article points to how the current MN budget surplus could fully fund programs that would make children healthier, better educated and (ALL OF US) safer.
Leaving the Field (teachers disappearing)
Today’s Star Tribune article by Erin Golden should put the shivers into all of us for several reasons.
Early Education (return on investment)
Let’s stamp out homelessness for 2 year old children. .
Let’s change the sad fact that children in many third world nations stand a better change of being vaccinated against preventable deadly diseases than U.S. kids…
Make a resolution to support reading programs and mental health programs that teach children how to cope with their surroundings and insure that they can read by the third grade. This will have a great and positive impact on graduation rates, crime rates, and the overall safety and happiness of our communities.
Le’t’s resolve to promote good public health programs and reduce the prevalence of sexually transmitted disease among our youth (we lead the world in this realm).
Overall, we need to recognize the value of children in our society. As Pliny said 2500 years ago, “What we do to our children, they will do to society”.
Read David Strands Early Childhood Education Manifesto below, it is a first rate strategy for saving the next generation in America;
Healthy Students – Healthy Schools
1/3 of foster children have mental health issues serious enough to be forced onto psychotropic medications.
Of the 2 million youth arrested in America every year, 70% or them have mental health issues – half of them have severe, chronic and often multiple diagnosis.
That’s what teachers and schools face every day with one school nurse if they are lucky enough to have one.
Taxes 2 Year Olds (what the feds know that we should)
It turns out that investing in children and young families provides the highest return on investment a government can make.
It’s apparent how terrible many government investments are and it’s easy to see how providing skills and basic needs for children and you families are superior investments to giving the homeless bus tickets to other states so they would be a burden elsewhere.
Teachers Are People Too
This KARA post from 2005 suggests a significant improvement in graduation rates in Minneapolis schools. No Child Left Behind really did leave behind a great many children.
From our 2005 piece;
Roosevelt High school graduated 28% of its students last year—Minneapolis and other big city schools averaged graduation rates between 50% and 60% nationwide. 25% of graduating U.S. high school seniors are functionally illiterate.
Teachers and school administrators are accused of bad stewardship. That is like blaming the police for who sits in the back seat of a squad car. It’s not their fault.We are all in this together, or as Pliny the elder said 2500 years ago, “what we do to our children, they will do to our society”
Teachers As First Responders
What’s it like to be a first grade teacher frightened by an out of control little boy who kicks, punches or stabs classmates with pencils? Is the principal trauma informed? Are their teams of trauma informed teachers or sufficient mental health resources that can lessen the chances of expelling a seven or nine year old from the school?
Your Tax Dollars At Work (why profit driven schools fail our children)
If you look hard and long at who is hurt the most by the Globes and Trumps of the world, it is almost always poor people that don’t have the education, the background or the ability to know when they are being scammed.
Ten years later, the Federal or State government steps in and after a long and drawn out legal battle forcing the scammer out of business. In the mean time, our society struggles to bear up under the ever increasing numbers of troubled, uneducated people that just can’t get a break.
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children
Here are a few articles about vouchers and the private schools that will become an ever increasing part of our worries as public schools struggle for lack of resources and public support (send us your stories and captured articles on the topic;
Children Paying For Daycare
When I began as a volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem, there were 34 Minnesota families on a waiting list for subsidized daycare. Today there are over 7000. Our prior Governor shifted those dollars into the general fund claiming that subsidized daycare had no value. Why even apply? Your child will be in high school by the time a space opens up.
Today’s Star Tribune hits on two of the most common realities in communities without adequate childcare;
Infants murdered by babysitting drunk boyfriends because working mom could not find affordable daycare (institutional daycare in MN is $14,000 a year). People earning minimum wages don’t take home that much annually. The number of children beaten, raped and murdered by drunk uncles hard to believe (read it here).
The commonality of women forced to leave the workforce because they cannot afford decent daycare hurts poor families, the economy and is a terrific injustice to women everywhere.
Call For Minnesota Children (pick up the phone – write something) PreK, school readiness, early learning, things kids need
The legislature is back in session after their break. That means we are back to work on advocacy. And thank you for all the contacts you have already made. Time for more.
You may have heard that the conference committee was formed and the conferees were named. Here is what that means. The house education committee has passed their bill. The senate education committee has passed their bill. Some elements in the bills are similar. Some are not. Five senators, and five representatives (the conferees) have been chosen to meet and work out the differences. Then, it will be re-passed in the House and Senate and ready to go to the governor.
The conferees of the E-12 Education Committee are:
What’s Wrong With School Choice? (from GADFLYONTHEWALLBLOG)
The proponents of school choice will tell you that they are only doing the will of the people. This is what parents want, they say. Baloney. While there are individuals who support school choice, the overwhelming majority of money behind this movement comes from conservative billionaires actively trying to dismantle the public education system. They want to steal the public system and replace it with a private one. They don’t care about your child. They just want to steal the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we pay to educate our children. This is not philanthropy. It is a business transaction meant to screw you and your child out of your rights.
Dear Elementary School Teacher (I’m sorry for being such a problem)
I may look like the other 4th graders in your classroom, but I am not. I’m very different. My birth family’s repeated traumatic sex assaults and beatings have had a powerful and lasting impact on my body and mind. I don’t love or trust anyone and don’t feel loved or trusted at all.
The reptilian, fear activated part of my brain, the amygdala, is much larger than other children’s. This interferes with my ability to sit still in a classroom and I’m unable to concentrate on the things you are talking about. My mind is always filled with fearful thoughts and anxiety about the next bad thing that’s about to happen. It couldn’t be otherwise. The Prozac I’m forced to take (about a third of all foster children are medicated by psychotropics) makes me stupid and slow and I hate that. Some seven year olds know what the suicidal ideation on the side of the Prozac box actually means (fully formed thoughts of self harm and suicide delivered in waking moments).
I don’t have the coping skills to handle small personal things in the classroom like other children. Certain words and behaviors by others trigger a violent learned fear response in me that other kids don’t seem to have. I can be violent and did not learn social interaction at home, My reactions to minor things do not come from the executive function of my brain. I can’t control myself, things just happen.
Please understand that foster children are not foster children because a parent tired of caring for them or someone hit a child once or twice. At least I’ve not seen that among the foster kids I know. I’ve come to know many foster children through the County system as I’ve moved from foster home to foster home. It is the “Imminent Harm Doctrine”, that let’s a judge remove a child from a birth home. Literally, a child’s life must be in danger before the court will take a child away from birth parents. It really is almost as traumatic to be removed from the home as it is to stay and suffer the abuse. No matter how bad the abuse is, the fear of waking up in a strange place, with no one you have ever seen before is extremely frightening to a seven year old.
I became a state ward because my mother, who had been horribly abused as a child herself, had very violent boyfriends who thought sex with children was acceptable behavior. One of the boyfriends kicked me so hard I went into convulsions & needed an ambulance ride to the hospital (I was seven). The medical staff saw the awful bruises and placed me in child protection.
Let Me Show You The Money
One of my guardian ad Litem boys Alan – not his real name, was tied to a bed, left alone for days at a time (from 4 to 7 years of age – four whole years), sexually abused, starved and beaten so badly that he was covered head to foot in bruises on both sides of his body when I first met him.
This boy’s new adoptive caregiver had a court order in place from another state forbidding him contact with young boys because of what he did to them – but this was not found out at the time and custody of this poor four year old boy was granted to this violent sex offender.
Alan was taken from a perfectly fine foster home to be starved, raped and beaten for four years – until his caregiver first brought him to school when he was seven years old and turned into child protection.
Alan already cost the County/State over 3 million dollars by the time he aged out of foster care. This number does not include the teacher he beat up, a school mate he stabbed, or any of the terrible things he did to the 29 foster and adoptive families that tried so hard to save him or the violence he did to people and things in his daily life.
He also had AIDs and was on one of the most expensive medications I had ever encountered (about $40,000 / year for the pills alone).
Alan has always been a state ward and most likely will always be a state ward. We became friends over a 12 year period and I understood why he did what he did, why he hated authority (you get that way when you are horribly abused by a parent or caregiver) and how the rest of his life was most likely going to play out after he aged out of foster care.
80% of youth aging out of foster care lead dysfunctional lives.
Blaming Alan for violent outbursts and hurting people is like blaming the 35W Bridge for killing and injuring all those men, women and children when it fell in the river a few years ago.
Federal and State engineers said at the time that it was when, not if this bridge would fail for lack of maintenance. The bridge was in the bottom three percent of all bridges in America when it collapsed and it was no surprise to those that know bridges.
Why Schools Fail (another year of bad results)
Another year of disappointing educators, children and parents (Star Tribune 7.28.16)
Don’t blame the teachers (it’s us).
The once a straightforward concept of public schools has morphed into a complex institution unable to respond to the double whammy of a massively changed student body and the unprecedented un-building of support for public education (especially science).
Our student body has changed;
First, immigration and the challenges of language and culture have always turned out well. American education has successfully educated millions of immigrants.
Yes, it’s a struggle, but it is what teachers do and they have always succeeded. My grandparents did not speak the language when they arrived – all of their children successfully finished a public school education.
Second and most critical, generally unknown and poorly understood even by those in the trenches of teaching, social work and justice. The rest of us (including legislators) are clueless.
Identifying and responding to the mental health issues shaping this generation of American citizens is decades late in coming and it has overwhelmed our schools, courts and other public institutions.
The explosion of homelessness, suicides, violence among veterans with PTSD have shown us the long lasting and severe damage trauma does to a person. Untreated or undertreated trauma almost always ends badly (80% of youth aging out of foster care lead dysfunctional lives).
As a 20 year volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem removing children from traumatizing homes it’s impossible not to see how children beaten, molested, starved and neglected need way more help than they are now getting to succeed in school or in life.
The Teachers Dilemna (and what is not talked about in education)
Assaults on teachers, starting with first graders hitting teachers with chairs & stabbing with pencils & knives. In some of the bigger inner city schools, teachers are afraid to walk to their cars after the school day ends and guns are now appearing in classrooms with growing frequency. Too many districts are suggesting that teachers be armed.
*The lack of books & basic resources for educators to complete their tasks is unacceptable. Detroit teachers were threatened this spring with working without pay this coming summer. If they had not reacted as they did, that might have actually happened.
To not support the people engaged in the important work of building our next generation of service providers, business people and lawmakers is an atrocious mistake. We will benefit by or suffer from the things that are happening in our schools today. We build and support those schools (or we don’t).
Minneminds Policy Principles For Early Learning & Child Protection Strategy Work Group Recommendations
PRIORITY SUMMARY: The shortage of early childhood staff, particularly in Greater Minnesota, is a growing crisis not just for the early childhood sector but for employers broadly across the state.
Children, Trauma & School (what’s it like to teach tortured children?)
Today’s Star Tribune article nails it. Thank you Annie Mogush Mason for your clear explanation of how child abuse impacts schools. Coping skills (learning skills) are not brought by the stork. Add to that, the terrible things done to at risk children in the home, children bring fear & high anxiety into the classroom instead of the ability to sit still, play well with others or learn.
Teaching *traumatized children is different than teaching other students. Way different.
The sadness that is child abuse triggers unpredictable and often violent behaviors in the classroom. Many a teacher has talked to me about the larger percentage of their daily efforts being directed toward the one, two or three disruptive students in their classroom. I know educators that have quit their jobs in tears and with genuine fear of going to work every day because of this.
A New Disease of the Wealthy & Powerful
Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan and new Speaker of the House voted NO to federal childcare subsidies, eliminated 16 billion dollars in Social Services block grants, including all child care funding for low income families, No to parental leave for federal employees (4 weeks for a new mother), No to food stamps, Medicaid and Pell Grants, Yes to de-funding Planned Parenthood and removing contraception from employer based insurance requirements, and yes to deporting undocumented immigrants that grew up in the United States. But he cannot and “will not” give up his family time.
Pro family yes (but just his family).
Institutional Argle Bargle – Paperwork vs Meaningful Relationships
As a volunteer guardian ad-Litem, the program forbade me from driving a child to a burger joint for a hamburger or taking a kid horseback riding (insurance reasons). I call it the ten foot pole rule. It makes abused children feel even more unwanted.
Children in child protection come to know that meaningful relationships with this person or that provider are rare and if they happen, they quickly disappear.
As social workers, educators, health workers & other service providers slide in and out of a child’s life and the continued changing of key relationships becomes accepted and predictable, the child learns that they are just a small mechanical piece within a giant unstoppable system*.
Child protection is a State function and state ward circumstances demand “special” treatment that serves a seemingly larger purpose outside of the child.
Through the eyes of that child, the critical parent – adult relationship has been shattered and replaced with 40 new service providers.
Add to that the now accepted overuse of psychotropic medications and often harsh treatment by law enforcement and other authority figures (behavior problems are endemic to traumatized children). Does anyone care if you have suffered rape as a five year old or other horrible traumas or that you are now in your 13th foster home with behaviors that accurately reflect your childhood.
Add to that law enforcement violence against mentally troubled citizens of all ages is on the rise. Expecting law enforcement to manage our societies mental health problems may be an answer – is this reasonable or even possible?
On Handcuffing & Tasing 3rd Graders (and expelling preschoolers)
There is no shortage of disturbing stories about violent children & authorities using violent means to control them. Today, the U.S. expels more children from daycare than any other industrialized nation and the levels of violence in our schools is frightening and harmful to all of us.
There is nothing more disturbing than watching a video of an armed 200 pound police officer twisting the arms of a 50 pound special needs child into a painful behind the back steel handcuffed position as the boy cries uncontrollably in his classroom, unless it is reading about the St. Louis Sheriff’s deputy tasering an 11 year old boy and threatening to sodomize him (Sheriff Mulch “nothing out of the ordinary…, followed protocol)
These stories and recent horrific police shootings of juveniles are a signal of overwhelmed institutions unable to deliver the most basic protection and safety services to the communities that employ them. Don’t blame service providers -it is lawmakers and administrators defending archaic policies that just don’t work anymore. Neither police nor teachers are able to nor should they be required (with the training we give them) to handle the deep and troubling behaviors of very disturbed children). Traumatizing five and six year old children because they have behavioral problems is just awful and it makes things so much worse for the child (and our society).
This story out of Texas, demonstrates how the police might better deal with troubled youth with an approach that recognizes the significance of mental health issues impacting police/child interaction. We need to do a 180 on dealing with mental health issues. Now.
The sooner we the people recognize that this is all about mental health and that schools and police departments are not mental health service providers, the safer our schools and city streets will become.
All adults are the protectors of all children.
Sherriff’s For Pre K (save our children)
Wow and thank you Hennepin, Ramsey and Dakota County Sheriffs. Sheriff Rich Stanek’s “we must make investments in early childhood education for Minnesota kids now to avoid paying far more for the cost of crime in the decades to come” took genuine political courage (thank you from Kids At Risk Action Sheriff).
In the Star Tribune article today I found it ironic that full implementation of the Governor’s Universal Pre School would cost almost as much as we spend on prisons in MN each year (the Sheriff is arguing that we will have fewer people to put in those prisons if we support Pre K education for children).
Sheriff’s Matt Bostrom, Tim Leslie, and Rich Stanek – KARA salutes you.
What follows is probably more than you want to know about the long debate from a law enforcement perspective about education, crime, mental health. Please chime in.
Why Teachers Quit – 2 Perspectives (Finland & Harvard)
When I interviewed teachers for my INVISIBLE CHILDREN book, an art teacher cried as she told me how she had entered teaching because she wanted to make a difference by bringing her love of art and teaching together. No Child Left Behind turned her into a warden with little time for sharing art or her passion for teaching with students that wanted to learn. In her perspective, the school scoring mandate meant that troubled students ended up in her room, because there was no worry about the performance in the “art” class. Fifty students, not thirty. Troubled students with violent outbursts, not seekers of art and beauty. She spent most of her time keeping students safe, not teaching the concepts of color and contour.
She was a dedicated, kind, and generous educator that recognized that the politics driving her chosen vocation were ruining her dream and her life. She told me why she gave up.
She was crying when she told me her story on the curb at a Mayday parade in Minneapolis. I will always remember her.
Her story is repeated in the data and the writings I recommend below.
Minneapolis Public Schools – Ready To Learn Has Real Meaning For At Risk Youth
This data is a pretty good indication that a great many metro children are not ready to learn when they enter school.
Early childhood programs and help for young families could go a long way in improving these statistics.
7$ Child Daycare? (hint – gotta go north)
It’s over now, but for years, universal child daycare has been the rule (at $7.30) in Quebec.
I just can’t help pointing out that some of our neighbors to the North feel very strongly that children’s daycare is worth government subsidy. $75,000 is the low income threshold and $200,000 is the high income threshold.
True, the politics of public service have beat up the program and $20 is becoming the new norm.
Keep in mind that over time, children in quality day care thrive, learn important stuff, and perhaps more importantly, don’t smoke crack cocaine with their out of jail uncle why mom works.
The U.S. expels more children from daycare than any other nation (and has for some time). It’s an issue that bodes badly for the poor educators that later serve these children in public schools and goes a very long way in explaining America’s suffering graduation rates, high crime, and prison populations.
If we valued children half as much as we claim to, there would not be 8000+ children on waiting lists in MN for subsidized daycare.
Do you know who your state legislator is? This will not change until some of us make that call. Share this widely.
We Could Do Better (lowest of the 38 states offering 4 year olds ECE)
While the CASEY Foundation ranks MN 5th in the nation for child well-being, there are serious flaws in our racial disparity and early childhood numbers.
Almost half of MN’s African American children live in poverty. In 2001, half of the adult African American adult men were arrested (no duplicate arrests and 58% of those men went on to be rearrested for a second crime within 2 years).
Our educational performance racial disparity is among the worst in the nation.
From the CURA reporter
MN ranks at the very bottom of states that provide early childhood education to four year old’s (2% vs the national average of 25%). We now have 8000 families on a backlog for subsidized child-care.
Why Teachers Quit Teaching
When I first began teaching more than 25 years ago, hands-on exploration, investigation, joy and love of learning characterized the early childhood classroom. I’d describe our current period as a time of testing, data collection, competition and punishment. One would be hard put these days to find joy present in classrooms.
I think it started with No Child Left Behind years ago. Over the years I’ve seen this climate of data fascination seep into our schools and slowly change the ability for educators to teach creatively and respond to children’s social and emotional needs. But this was happening in the upper grades mostly. Then it came to kindergarten and PreK, beginning a number of years ago with a literacy initiative that would have had us spending the better part of each day teaching literacy skills through various prescribed techniques. ”What about math, science, creative expression and play?” we asked. The kindergarten teachers fought back and kept this push for an overload of literacy instruction at bay for a number of years.
Next came additional mandated assessments. Four and five year olds are screened regularly each year for glaring gaps in their development that would warrant a closer look and securing additional supports (such as O.T, P.T, and Speech Therapy) quickly. Teachers were already assessing each child three times a year to understand their individual literacy development and growth. A few years ago, we were instructed to add periodic math assessments after each unit of study in math. Then last year we were told to include an additional math assessment on all Kindergarten students (which takes teachers out of the classroom with individual child testing, and intrudes on classroom teaching time.)
Suspending 3 Year Olds (race matters)
Even preschoolers are getting suspended from U.S. public schools — and they’re disproportionately black, a trend that continues up through the later grades.
Daycare In America (more sad stories)
A South Carolina woman who allegedly operated an unlicensed daycare out of her home faces multiple charges after a child under her care died. But investigators say that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Pamela Clark Wood, 49, was arrested March 6. Police began investigating Wood last month after Greenville County Sheriff’s deputies received a call about anunresponsive 3-month-old baby girl, who later died.
Drilling For Mass Murder & Arming Teachers Institutionalizes Fear and Insanity In Our Schools (please stop)
All across America, schools are practicing lock downs and pretend mass shootings, arming teachers, bringing firearms and terror into school to traumatize ten year old children and make educators hate and fear their work.
Kansas is requiring its teachers to carry firearms, some states are using fake blood and real automatic weapons fire in their practice drills.
How many teachers signed up expecting to be issued a pistol on the first day of school?
Is this what you want your children to live with? I’ve had a gun pointed at me, it is traumatizing and practicing this on children should be a criminal act.
It is also a false premise that you can turn art teachers into capable crime stoppers.
Police and military personnel receive extensive and very real training to reach a point where they can function effectively under combat conditions. Most people are fooling themselves to expect much out of a few hours of weapons training when the real thing happens. God I hate the NRA.
Kansas is requiring its teachers to carry firearms, some states are using fake blood and real automatic weapons fire in their practice drills.
How many teachers signed up expecting to be issued a pistol on the first day of school?
Is this what you want your children to learn and live with? I’ve had a gun pointed at me, it is traumatizing and practicing this on children should be a criminal act.
It is also a false premise that art teachers become capable crime stoppers with a few hours of weapons practice. Believe me, it takes a special kind of person to draw down and accurately fire a weapon in a life death situation.
Police and military personnel receive extensive and very real training to reach a point where they can function effectively under combat conditions. Most people are fooling themselves to expect much out of a few hours of weapons training when the real thing happens. The NRA sells guns not textbooks (remember that).
A Glimmer Of Hope (push for preschool)
Preschool is having its moment, as a favored cause for politicians and interest groups who ordinarily have trouble agreeing on the time of day. President Obama devoted part of his State of the Union address to it, while the deeply red states of Oklahoma and Georgia are being hailed as national models of preschool access and quality, with other states and cities also forging ahead on their own.
With a growing body of research pointing to the importance of early child development and its effect on later academic and social progress, enrollment in state-funded preschool has more than doubled since 2002, to about 30 percent of all 4-year-olds nationwide. In just the past year, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana and the city of San Antonio have enacted new or expanded programs, while in dozens of other places, mayors, governors and legislators are making a serious push for preschool.
Send A Message For Early Learning In MN (only 9% of MN kids get early learning scholarships today)
Even though the legislative session doesn’t start for another month, the MinneMinds campaign continues to work to ensure more kids have access to high quality early learning. Bills have already begun to be filed and one of the first bills to be introduced calls for more resources for early learning scholarships.
The Gift Of A Good Start (the one thing I like about the military)
there is only one Colin Powell. His TED talk contradicts most of what we think we know about him. It touches the critical issues facing at risk children in America today and is perhaps the most touching TED talk I have ever watched.
Child & Family Advocacy (a new resource)
http://www.voicesempowered.org/ This organization is drawing attention to gaps in the social services system and collaborating with other advocates to support and empower children and families. Anyone with experience with them is encouraged to comment.
Children’s Survival Network (watch this)
Friends, this practical approach of the Children’s Survival Network to dealing with child abuse and the misunderstood and underfunded agencies that treat it impresses me greatly.
Watch this brief video & pass it on to your friends;
Children’s Survival Network, Inc.
Thank you Hayley Foster for showing me the Children’s Survival Network.
Crisis Nurseries & Colleges
From the book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough, I learned that 68% of wealthy high school graduates with at least one parent that had graduated from college went on to achieve their own BA degree, while students in the lowest economic quartile without college graduate parents achieve a BA degree at less than 10%. Gotta admit that is a big spread.
From the Consortium on Chicago Schools Research, one in thirty African American Boys that graduate from Chicago schools will go on to achieve 4 year college degree before they are 25.
Schools Criminalizing American Children
East coast schools are experiencing the mass incarceration and expulsion of student populations.
Using police instead of counselors has lead to a giant leap in overcrowded courts, incarcerated youth, & privatized juvenile justice facilities.
New Jersey eliminated all mental health services from schools and uses the justice system to deal with adolescent problems.
New York students with disabilities are 4 times more likely to be suspended than the non-disabled (New York Times/Molly Knefel) with 69,000 expulsions and 2,500 arrests last year, mostly for infractions that would have dealt with by counselors in years past.
Pennsylvania recently sent 2 judges to prison for 40 years for receiving kickbacks for sending thousands of mostly innocent youth into the privatized youth prison system.
The data is clear that children of color and poverty are grossly over-represented in this newly criminalized society that is sweeping the nation.
In a nation that pays day care workers less than food service workers (the least paid profession in the nation) and has refused to adequately fund crisis nurseries, or subsidized day care, we should not be surprised that our youth are unprepared to learn in school and a source of non-criminal behaviors that trouble school officials.
More Daycare & Crisis Nurseries = Fewer Tortured & Murdered Babies
A 25-year-old man admitted in court Monday in northwestern Minnesota to inflicting deadly head and neck injuries on the 22-month-old daughter of his girlfriend.
Raul Perez, of Ada, pleaded guilty in Norman County District Court to second-degree murder in the death of Ariel Reyes last August.
Perez lived with the girl and her mother.
A doctor at Sanford Medical Center in Fargo noted many injuries to Ariel, including bruises to her jaw, forehead, thigh, shoulder and the base of her spine. Also diagnosed were numerous severe brain injuries and bleeding at the back wall of an eye.
Thank God For The Teaching Militia (arming Arkansas teachers)
To force Arkansas school teachers to weaponize is not much different than arming doctors or social workers. People who have chosen a profession that serve people are being trained to shoot them. How incongruous. How Daft.
Mental Health & Education (thank you Star Tribune for this honest conversation)
The complex needs of abused and neglected children are a giant, and I argue, the primary challenge facing America’s education system today. Different states handle the problem in different ways, but very states make the public aware of the depth and scope of the mental health issues like Minnesota has.
Teachers being forced to become social workers and mental health providers is a severe and growing problem in all American schools. Educators speaking openly about the dangers and fear of recurring outbursts by deeply troubled students injuring themselves or other children is a rarity in today’s media, but the data, including crime, graduation rates, test scores, and international achievement comparisons, would indicate otherwise.
There is little question that this problem is impacting the quality of education in our communities and needs to be addressed with adequate understanding and resources. The full Star Tribune article appears below, and I encourage you to read it, share your comments, and & make it available to educators you know.
Teachers deserve more support and a better understanding of the issues impacting education in America today.
American Exceptionalism; Child Daycare
This extensive article from the New Republic clearly defines the nightmare that is child daycare for so many American children and infants. Not only is this unregulated field filled with underpaid, under-trained service providers, but poor people (about half of U.S. families) can’t afford or can barely afford any day care for their children.
A good percentage of America’s 8.2 million children under five spend part of their week in care outside the home.
America’s weakest and most vulnerable citizens are too often left in the care of drunk uncles and worse because low wage parent just don’t earn enough to pay for daycare.
The only time we read about the pain cause by inadequate daycare is when a baby chokes to death on a condom or has its brains dashed out on a wall.
Subsidized day care not only creates a safe place for the child, but a smarter citizen, and a happier and more productive family living in a better community.
More Cheating Fallout From the NCLB Tragedy (DC Schools This Time)
Teachers that lived through the Bush era No Child Left Behind fiasco understand the impossibility of making students succeed and schools look good with inadequate resources and classrooms bulging with kids that can’t read, Prozac, and violence.
The “Texas education Miracle” that lead the NCLB’S deconstruction of America’s schools proved to be as wrong and dysfunctional as the erasures on thousands of test questions executed by hundreds (if not thousands) of teachers in Georgia and now DC (and there may well be other states as yet undiscovered).
If you study the DC memos being made public you will see just how hard it is to identify and pursue this kind of criminal activity (if it weren’t for excellent journalists at the Atlanta Journal, none of this would have been discovered).