Franklin Schargel’s Blog

NATIONAL YOUTH VIOLENCE PREVENTION WEEK APRIL 4-8, 2016 Special Feature: Teen Dating Violence

Dating violence will affect nearly one in every ten high school students, leaving them vulnerable to a myriad of short and long-term risks.

Teen dating violence is defined as the physical, sexual, psychological, or emotional violence within a dating relationship, including stalking. National studies have shown that approximately ten percent of high school students

reported being purposefully hit, slapped, or physically injured by their partner. Additionally, with teens’ rising usage of technology, including social media, cyber dating abuse and cyber bullying has increase dating violence. Youth victims are more likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety; engage in unhealthy behaviors, like using tobacco, drugs, and alcohol; or exhibit antisocial behaviors and think about suicide.

Once teens experience violence in one relationship, they are at significant risk for experiencing violence in another relationship. It is important that teens who experience dating violence seek help soon after, so they can receive services to protect against the potential psychosocial impacts of violence and reduce the likelihood of future violence.

The ultimate goal of prevention and intervention is to stop dating violence before it begins. During the preteen and teen years, young people are learning the skills they need to form positive, healthy relationships with others.

 

Source: National Institute of Justice

https://nij.gov/journals/273/Pages/preventing-gang-membership.aspx

While statistics show that youth violence has been on the decline in America, it still is one of the leading causes of death for young people.

The term “youth violence” refers to when young people, aged 10-24 years, intentionally use physical force or power to threaten or harm others. Youth violence such as fighting, bullying, threats with weapons, and gang-related violence. It typically involves youth perpetrating violence against other young people. Youth violence is the third leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 15 and 24. Many young people need medical care for violence-related injuries. These injuries can include cuts, bruises, broken bones, and gunshot wounds. Some injuries can lead to lasting disabilities.

Although kids in gangs are far more likely than kids not involved in gangs to be both victims and perpetrators of violence, the risks go far beyond crime and violence. Gang-involved youth are more likely to engage in substance abuse and high-risk behavior and to experience a wide range of potentially long-term health and social consequences. This includes school dropout, teen parenthood, family problems, and unstable employment.

However, communities can help reduce youth violence by developing a city-wide strategy that combines prevention, intervention, treatment, and reentry strategies.

I recently delivered three workshops at National Dropout Prevention Center Forum for Native & Tribal Communities, Oklahoma City, OK March 29, 2016. Here are some of the comments:

“Very inspiring relevant information. Restoring hope in my career that desperately needs it.’

“How the presenter made us think about our school. I love the workshops that get you out of your seat.” S. Blacksmith

“I love the no nonsense approach. Inspirational.” F. Hickman, Principal

“I loved the activities and interaction with the group making the session fun.’

” Franklin provides great opportunities to consider other ways of thinking about current problematic issues in education and possible approaches.” O Hawzipidra, Indian Education Coordinator

“Relevant to all schools. Activities were great!”

“It was engaging and it had me reflecting on what I can do better as an educator.” J. Caspersen, Teacher’s Aide

“Franklin provides great opportunities to consider other ways of thinking about current problematic issues in education and possible approaches.”

Powerful message makes us think about everything we aren’t doing.” C. Daniel, School Board Member

I loved the video, “I am proud to be a public school teacher.”

“Franklin engaged and inspired me through his experience, humor, passion and knowledge.”

“This was an interesting thought-provoking session in which ideas were presented than can be effective in our school.”

 

The workshop suggested various strategies I can use in my classroom.”

 

“Franklin is a passionate, energetic speaker who held my attention.”

 

 

 

The following article is excerpted from the New York Times and was published on March 29, 2015.  It is a dialogue between Arthur C. Brooks and Gail Collins

 

Gail: I’m troubled by Kasich’s record on public education. Ohio has hundreds of privately run charter schools, many of them run by for-profit organizations. State funding has favored the charters over the traditional public schools. None of this has worked out well. Predictably, charters are turning out to be neither a total panacea nor an awful failure. Their successes depend hugely on leadership. So some have done poorly and others have saved kids from failing in traditional schools.

As a general matter, though, charters are really promising. A nationwide study published last year by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that kids in urban charters gained 72 more days of learning per year in reading than in traditional schools, and 101 days in math. Here in Washington, D.C., we have an excellent schools chancellor, Kaya Henderson, who has really gone to bat for charters. And even though D.C. charters serve poorer kids and more minorities than traditional schools, they’re yielding faster improvement and better results.

Gail: Obviously there are some good charter schools. As long as they operate within the regular school system and don’t get any advantage in public funding, I don’t have any problem with them “” even though I do think a lot of the success stories are due to the fact that the students tend to have motivated parents. Some disadvantaged kids get a big boost and succeed; those who don’t do so well often get nudged out the door. But my real concern is the charters run by for-profit companies. The whole idea of mixing profit and public education is terrible.

Arthur: The research on this is mixed. Obviously, for-profit universities “” even those named after presidential candidates “” have not all covered themselves in glory, and that market is really in flux.

Gail: The for-profit idea only works if you assume the customers can make “” well, educated decisions. Have you ever asked a group of college students if they know what the interest rates on their loans are? I rest my case.

Arthur: Good point. Nobody would label most college students as especially high-information consumers (or voters for that matter). But the data on for-profit education at lower levels tell a different story. An interesting study out of Florida State University shows no significant performance difference between for-profit and nonprofit charter schools. As a general matter, the public sector seems to do best in a supervisory role over schools, rather than running them directly. But I’m agnostic on specific tactics; really, I just want lots of experimentation. The one thing we know for sure is that conventional schooling is simply not delivering the goods, especially for poor kids.

Gail: I’ve always been amused by the idea that the major thing wrong with public schools is teachers’ unions. Public schools are as good as their management. If the principals and superintendents are smart and hard-working, the schools will have good teachers and good policies.

Arthur: If only. The major complaint with teachers’ unions is that they protect mediocrity in spite of the leadership. Remember those stories about the so-called “rubber rooms” in New York where terrible teachers would be temporarily parked instead of fired? Almost every public-school teacher I meet has stories like this.

Gail: Well, every public-school teacher from New York. Which should be way more aggressive about getting rid of the rubber room inmates. No school system can afford to tolerate dead weight teachers, but management is often unwilling to put in the time and effort it takes to terminate them properly. It is true that teachers’ unions can make it hard for a school system to make quick, dramatic reforms; they do slow things down. But look at that from the teachers’ perspective. I’ve talked with multitudinous veteran educators. If they’ve worked at one school for a couple of decades, they’ve probably gone through three or four new superintendents, each of whom announced a dramatic new plan for reform that threw everyone into a tizzy for a couple of years, until things quieted down and the next superintendent came in with yet another big idea. So they do tend to be cynical. Idealistic about the kids, but cynical about the reforms.

Arthur: For sure. Changing objectives and unstable leadership make for big problems. And there are so many great teachers. But again, the real issue with many unions is that they focus on protecting adults instead of serving kids. I think this is as much a moral issue as a policy issue, which is why many reformers from both sides are coming together against the status quo. This is a losing issue for the left. You know the conservative rap on Democratic candidates on this “” that they are so in the pocket of public-sector unions that they can’t function as reformers at all. Can Hillary break out of this?

Gail: What reform are you looking for? We’ve been working since the first Bush administration on setting standards for academic achievement. The teachers certainly don’t like all the testing, but I don’t hear Hillary Clinton denouncing the Common Core. It’s the Republican candidates “” who, by the way, also totally misrepresent the entire enterprise.

Arthur: There are lots of good reform ideas out there, but most of the boldest proposals are vehemently opposed by a core education constituency. I always start with expanding education choice “” charters and voucher programs to empower parents. But you have to pair that with a concerted effort to lower barriers to entry and make it easier to open schools. Throw in a plan for ending the near-monopolies on training administrators and certifying teachers and, get serious about vocational and technical training as well as apprenticeships in the trades. Hillary could have a big moment if she stands up to entrenched interests and fights for some of these reforms on behalf of kids and families.

Gail: You underestimate the Democrats. I’ve never heard any of them denounce vocational and technical training. Almost everybody agrees there need to be changes in teacher education. Everybody likes choice, but not at the expense of the system that’s taking care of the vast majority of the students.

The nation is spending $46 billion less each year on school construction and maintenance than is necessary to ensure safe and healthy facilities, according to estimates in a new report.

Schools now are the home to 56 million students and teachers “” more than one-sixth of the U.S. population. The study is meant to draw attention to the condition of buildings

Detroit has made headlines this year for crumbling schools plagued by rats, roaches and mold. But while conditions in the Motor City are particularly deplorable, the average U.S. school is more than 40 years old, and thousands of school buildings nationwide are in need of upgrades, according to the federal government. Another report indicated that schools have excessive lead in their water systems.

Poor communities in far-flung rural places and declining industrial city centers tend to be in a particularly bad situation: School construction budgets rely even more heavily on local dollars than operating budgets. And in many places spending has not recovered from cuts made during the recession, leaving school districts struggling to patch problems.

Source: State of Our Schools 2016

In Philadelphia, which has suffered deep budget cuts in recent years, an elementary school was forced to delay its opening last fall after a worker discovered that the building’s foundation was structurally unsound. A boiler exploded at another of the city’s elementary schools in January, seriously injuring an employee.

The federal government contributes about 10 percent to operating budgets but virtually nothing to school construction or renovation. Some states, such as Wyoming and New Mexico, have strong statewide programs for school construction, but a dozen states offer no assistance, which means the cost of school construction falls entirely on local taxpayers.

Among the states that do not contribute to school construction is Michigan, where Detroit has struggled so mightily to maintain healthy and safe buildings. Others are Wisconsin, Indiana, Oregon and Nevada.

“It’s entirely tied to the wealth of the district,” said Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century Schools Fund, a D.C.-based nonprofit and report co-author. “It’s got inequity built into it.”

There is a growing body of research that shows links between the school environment and a child’s ability to learn, and yet the condition of school buildings remains little-mentioned in discussions about closing achievement gaps.

The federal government could help push for equitable school facilities by providing funding for construction in high-poverty schools, as it now does for teaching and learning through the Title I program. But that would be politically difficult given the GOP-led Congress and its push to shrink federal spending, she acknowledged.

The last time the federal government attempted to survey the condition of the nation’s school buildings was in 1995. At the time, more than 8 million students attended 15,000 schools with poor air quality; 12 million students attended 21,000 schools in need of new roofs or roof upgrades; 12 millions students attended 23,000 schools with inadequate plumbing.

[Read the 1995 GAO report on the condition of schools]

And the list goes on: The Government Accountability Office estimated that it would cost about $112 billion to ensure that all schools were in good condition.

In the two decades since the GAO made that estimate, the nation has spent an average of $99 billion a year on maintenance, operations and construction, according to the new study. And that’s far less than the $145 billion that’s needed, according to the study, which suggested a standard “” a tweaked version of commercial-building standards “” that should be used to estimate the cost of maintaining the nation’s school facilities.

The report calls not only for greater public investment in school facilities, but also for an effort to collect and share more information about the condition of school buildings “” which account for the second-highest level of public infrastructure spending, after highways.

There is no comprehensive federal data source on school buildings, and the quality and amount of information varies widely at the state level. The inconsistency and scarcity of data on schools has contributed to their neglect, Gutter said: “This is a problem that we’ve just made it so easy for ourselves to ignore.”

America reacts to crisis rather than being proactive. If one of the 40+ year-old schools collapses killing children and teachers, politicians will say, “we didn’t know” and will look to fix the blame rather than fixing the problem.

A student in Florida’s public Schools, Ethan Radiske, was dying as the Florida Department of Education harassed his family to get him to take the sate’s standardized. Poor Ethan cheated the state by dying without taking the test.

Valerie Strauss, in the Washington Post writes:

“Now, a mother named Paula Drew is fighting the same kind of battle with the Florida Department of Education. Paula’s daughter, 15-year-old Madison Drew, has cerebral palsy and cannot speak. She suffers from a number of conditions related to her condition and takes several medications daily to prevent seizures, which can affect her cognitive abilities, a doctor’s written diagnosis shows.

“Drew said she sought an exemption from state-mandated testing, but Pam Stewart, the Florida education commissioner, denied the request”¦

“I asked the Florida Department of Education for comment. While not speaking specifically about Madison Drew’s case, Meghan Collins, a department spokeswoman, said in an email: “Florida state law states that participation in statewide standardized assessments is mandatory for students in public schools. However, there are two types of exemptions that can be submitted by a school district to the state: medical complexity and extraordinary exemption due to circumstance or condition (extraordinary exemption). “¦ All requests are considered on an individual basis.”

“That response reflects the reasoning behind why Florida “” and other states, as well as the U.S. Department of Education “” insist that kids with impaired cognitive ability take standardized tests: It is pure boilerplate.

When will states learn that student’s welfare is more important than any test?  There needs to be flexibility in education and the Florida Department of Education should not create a single standard of measurement.  One size does not fit all!

 

 

“They say, nearly every child can learn something and be assessed in some fashion. In a 2014 letter to teachers, Stewart wrote in part: “We cannot and should not return to the days where we tacitly ignore the needs of children with special needs by failing to ensure they are learning and growing as the result of teachers’ excellent work.”

 

 

To those of you who celebrate Easter:

I wish you, your family and your loved ones a Glorious Easter.

Franklin

Diane Ravich has written an article in the New York Review of Books published on March 24, 2016, which must be read by everyone who loves children and education.

The name of the article is “Solving the Mystery of the Schools”.

Solving the Mystery of the Schools