OUR STATE / The Real Disconnect

8/13/2019 OUR STATE / The Real Disconnect

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OUR STATES CONTINUING INEFFECTIVE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

This article is especially written for our sixty-two State Legislators and

Governor as they have our State Constution's legal and moral

responsibility for efficient public schools in our state. All receiving this

information who are involved in our public schools should put priority

on understanding what's in this article. Everyone else receiving this

article should invest the time to read it because they are taxpayers.

Remember, even drop-outs spend over 10,000 hours in formal

schooling so take the time to study this important information about

public schooling in our state's future.

In this article, I will give an overview of two research-proven program

and cost effective school reform systems our state desperately needs

and our educational decision-makers need to explore, understand and

invest in their implementation. These are the Kindergarten through

Grade Three, or the very important Primary Phase of formal public

schooling developed by the National Assocition for the Education of

Young Children (NAEYC) and this reform system interwoven into the

Kindergaren through Grade Twelve Quality District Model (QDM). The

Quality District Model is the ONLY comprehensive program and cost

effective K-12 school system reform plan validated by the prestigious

Program Effectiveness Panel created by the US Department of

Education. The QDM was later re-validated in a number of adopter

school districts in our nation by the same Panel. I have copies of both

validation reports by the Program Effectiveness Panel. Here are some of

the accomplishments our state's public schools will realize if

appropriate Consultant/Trainer teams are brought in to train all school

building level program staff and parents and then empower them for


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ALL program decisions as later explained happened in the exemplary

Kentucky Education Reform Act:

. All of our students will achieve solid, continuous academic and other

personal/social developmental progress with instructional staff and

parents adapting instruction, curriculum and performance-embedded,

authentic, ongoing assessment to EACH student's RATE and STYLE of

learning with progress recorded in individual student portfolios;

. Students needing additional readiness activities and time to

transition from preschool meaningful, functional, concrete learnings to

abstract academic learnings will be given both and eliminating our

current devastating child abuse superimposed by uninformed,

detached decision-makers that causes our state's public schools to have

one of the nation's highest flunking, labeling, sorting and drugging of

students in their first grade of school;

. ALL students are served in the same educational environments,

make individualized progress and all will escape the lifetime damage

done by the superimposition of a useless, costly, detached standardizedtest driven system;

. Each grade level will experience at least a two grade level increase in

academic achievement and other school objectives as already

demonstrated by many QDM reformed school districts;

. Our Delaware public schools will graduate, as other reformed QDM

public school districts have demonstrated, approximately 94 per cent of

their students as now compared to our state's record of graduating 62per cent of all students which includes only 55 per cent of African-

American students and slightly less than 50 per cent of our Hispanic

students;

. This training and empowered decision-making given school building


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principals, teachers, other program staff and parents makes pure

common sense as these adults have one hundred per cent of the

educational interactions with our students and should be given the

decision-making respect and apreciation they deserve: and. This proven total school system reform will prepare our students for

post-high school training in college or trade schools and prepare them

for tomorrow's jobs and eliminate the school house to jail house path

and replace dope with sensible hope.

There are a large number of Delaware organizations that have

demonstrated understanding and support for the kind of public school

improvement reform presented in this article. I will cite three of them.

First, the staff and parents of the Meadowood Special School program I

administered until retirement. When I arrived at the school, I knew

what an excellent program should be like. I went to the University of

Delaware and State Department of Education seeking training help for

the many components we needed training in to implement a quality

program. They had none to offer. I found funds for a two-weekSummer staff/parent training program each year and brought best

knowledge national Consultant/Trainers in to provide needed training.

This wonderful group of staff/parents competently learned and applied

this comprehensive best knowledge and our program was cited as one

of two exemplary programs in the nation. This was in the

national/international text book titled "The Complete Local School"

authored by experts in our area of public schooling. Another example.When Dr. Billy Ross was Director of the Doctoral Program in

Educational Administration for the University of Delaware, he asked me

to teach courses on the Quality District Model to his upstate and

downstate classes. I had taught Doctorate level classes in educational


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reform at five other universities in our nation as a Visiting Professor. I

did this and was asked to help their three-day annual Summer Regional

Education Institute bring in best knowledge presenters. I did and they

gave me their first Transformational Leader award. The next Summerthey brought in Dr. Al Mamaary, Superintendent of the Johnson City,

NY public school district, who gave our nation and others the Quality

District Model. He was given their second Transformational Leader

award. While at Meadowood School, I served on five State Department

of Education Committees. On one, I wrote the staffing standards for our

state's Special Schools. On another, I got the admission age for

moderately and severely handicapped students to enter publicschooling lowered from age six to age four. For these efforts and other

considerations, the Delaware Association for the Education of Young

Children (DAEYC) honored my reform efforts by being the first School

Administrator inducted into their "Administrators Hall of Excellence." I

firmly and strongly believe the vast, vast majority of our state's school

building principals, teachers, other pogram staff, students and their

parents would welcome the opportunity to fully participate in the

development and implementation of the research-proven program and

cost effective public school reform discussed in this article. What

possible reason for not inviting them to do so can be given by our State

Legislators and Governor who have the legal and moral rsponsibility for

enabling this important reform to be realized in all of our state's public

schools. The validity and quality of public schooling is not just important

to our student's well being as children and youth, but for lare numbers

determines the qulity of life for the rest of their adult lives.

I again ask representatives of the House and Senate Education

Committees and a representative from our Governor's office to meet


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with me on a Saturday morning so I can walk through the steps State

Departments of Education and school districts throughout our nation

followed in organizing stakeholders and providing

Consultation/Training in all components within this reformed, effectivesystm. I have research information and written tetimonials from District

Leaders in five states I can give each paticipant. What morning meeting

can be more important? I've had twenty years of experience working

with these reformed public school districts.

All State Departments of Education and school districts had to bring

our Consultant/Trainer teams in to provide the training needed to

implement this continuous progress for all students reform system as

none had a team in their states capable of providing the comprehensive

training required for this systemic change. We insisted on a number of

requirements. One, a stakeholder group in their communities must be

formed and a number of awareness/understanding meetings held to

inform them about the many reform changes and how they would be

made. A communications network had to be in place so anyone couldask questions and receive answers as the reforms were implemented.

The school district had to agree to stay the course until the full reform

was accomplished. Teachers and other school building level saff and

parents were informed no change would be expected until they had

been thoroughly trained in each component interwoven into the total

system change. We informed all involved this was not a typical "Tinker

and Proclaim" peripheral project but the organizational foundation andprocess for long term program and cost effectiveness. If a school disrict

didn't follow our required guidelines we stopped working with them.

Here are some of the required components to be learned and

implemented by district leadership staff and especially school building


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level principals, teachers, other building program staff and parents.

First, training in site-based program management within and between a

district's K-12 school buildings as mandated in Kentucky; team teaching

as opposed to isolated classrooms; use of Bloom's Mastery of Learningmaterials and Guilford's Structure of the Intellect activities to enhance

student creativity and higher order thinking and problem solving

abilities; how to organize instructional groups to provide for the

diversity of student abilities for instruction, curriculum and ongoing,

embedded performance-based authentic assessment adapted to EACH

student's rate and style of learning and kept in individualized student

portfolios; student progress reported that shows the real progressthey've made and not some useless score on a detached standardized

test which has nothing to do with what is taught and learned in our

schools; a dozen Learning Centers for the Primary Phase of schooling to

facilitate self-directed and self-motivated learning all preschoolers bring

into this important phase of learning; cooperative student learning

preferably using the University of Minnesota's model; full utilization of

activities developed by the International Alliance of Invitational

Education; for children in the Primary Phase of schooling, an individual

written contract of learning to be completed each day, recorded at the

end of the day and sent home with each child so parents can see wht

was achieved each day; and full inclusion of ALL slower learning and

handicapped students in all learning settings. Implement and

orchestrate these components and our teachers and other building

level staff, students and parents will have healthier, less stressful lives

and all of our future students will learn and learn well without any life

damaging standardized test driven abuses. In these reformed school

buildings, teachers use their Faculty Rooms for enjoyable exchanges


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with their colleagues and don't use them as Recovery Rooms. After

these school building level staff and parents competently acquire and

successfuly implement all components in this effective reform system,

they are capable of helping train staff and parents in other schooldistricts.

Our building principals, especially teachers, other staff and parents

are all victims along with students of the useless, irrelevant, costly

standardized tests that are superimposed on them by uninformed and

misinformed detached, layered corporate, political and bureaucratic

decision-makers. The school districts and schools I worked with for

twenty years as a part-time national Consultant/Trainer for the US

Department of Education and national/international nonprofit Partners

for Quality Learning organization accomplished research-proven best

knowledge program and cost effective TOTAL SCHOOL SYSTEM

REFORM discussed in this article. This reform was accomplished by

training all building level staff and parents to adapt instruction,

curriculum and embedded, performance-based, authentic, ongoingassesment to EACH student's RATE and STYLE of learning. The amazing

competent self-directed and self-motivated learning all of their

preschoolers bring into their public schools is facilitaed by being

incorporated and interwoven into the instructional process. These

districts empowered Program Committees in each building to make ALL

program decisions within and between the district's school buildings.

The best Program Committee arrangement I've worked with is the onethe Kentucky Education Reform Act legally mandated. It required EVERY

public school building in the state to empower a Program Committee

composed of the Bulding Principal, three Teachers elected by building

level peers and two Parent Leaders elected by building level peers.


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Many children, transitioning from successful concrete, meaningful

learning into academic abstract learning need more readiness activities

and time that standardized test driven schools don't give them. This

involves even some gifted children but especially affects children fromlow socioeconomic backgrounds. These reformed schools give them all

needed readiness activities and time needed to competently use

academic abstact letters and number symbols required in language

arts, arithmetic and other subject areas. Research shows that these

students, before exiting the third grade, or Primary Phase of schooling,

close the academic gap with faster learners and some achieve at faster

learners' level. Instead of the nation's high rate of flunking, labeling,sorting, drugging and other child abuses in the first grade, as our

standardized test driven Delaware public schools deliver, each student

experiences continuous academic and personal/social developmental

progress and are not turned off by continuous traumatic learning

experiences that cause them to drop-out as soon as they reach the

legal age to flee a toxic, hostile environment forced on all within our

public school buildings. This article discusses how we can sensibly stop

damaging our children and youth and have excellent program and cost

effective public schools.

These reformed public school districts have increased academic

scores that show at least two grade levels above previous achievemet

levels. They graduate well over ninety per cent of ALL students

compared to our state's record of approximately sixty-two per cent.They have no school house to jail house path. They have little or no

teacher time lost dealing with inappropriate or disruptive behaviors.

I've worked as a Consultant/Trainer in many of their classrooms and

buildings and not observed a single inappropriate or disruptive


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behavior. Students scurrying around highly motivated and one can't tell

the slower students from the faster learners. A real joyful experience. I

have written testimonials and research information from leaders of five

of these reformed public school districts in Michigan, New York, NorthCarolina, Texas and Utah. The New York district that developed the

Quality District Model for our nation and others is only a four hour

drive from Wilmington. I was first a Consultant/Trainer for their district

and later joined their Consultant/Trainer team for twenty years helping

other school districts learn how to implement their Quality District

Model from Hawaii to Massachusetts. What possible reason can our

State Legislators and Governor give for not investing a Saturday moringto learn about this research-proven program and cost effective total

school system reform model and then visit the New York school district

to learn first hand about what we should provide our students, building

level staff, students, parents and taxpayers. It's their State Constitution

and moral responsibility to provide effective public schools.

Whether intended or not, four layers of uninformed, misinformedcorporate, political and bureaucratic public education decision-makers

continue their movement to weaken and destroy public education with

standardized test projects. The main goal of the top corporate

controlling layers is to weaken and destroy public education so it can

be privatized and use our children and youth as a huge cash cow. Just

as they' re trying to privatize other important social safety nets such as

medicare and social security. The key corporate culprits are formerGovernor Pete DuPont's misnamed Delaware Public Policy Institute

within our State Chamber of Commerce, the National Chamber of

Commerce, the heavily corporate funded and owned American


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Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and, of course, their closely aligned

corporate-owned media.

Our states Delaware Corporate Public Policy Institute controls our

political and bureaucratic decision-makers on public school decisions

and other important civic/political issues such as health care coverage.

They recently realized a cork popping victory be getting our Governor

to appoint one of their staff members as State Superintendent of Public

Education. Last time I checked, the Institute was led by a corporate

CEO and eight of its ten board members were corporate CEOs. Their

Executive Secretary is John Taylor who for years represented their

interests as Editor of the News Journals Editorial Page. Over the past

three decades, this corporate Institute has superimposed on our public

school districts and schools a series of ineffective standardized test

driven projects presented as real school system reform but actually

Tinker and Proclaim projects that have nothing to do with research-

proven program and cost effective total school system reform. These

ineffective projects have been the following: the Sizer Project; Goals2000; No Child Left Behind; Goals 2015; and now, Race to the Top while

mired near the bottom among the states with the Common Core State

Standards Initiative (CCSSI) driven, of course, by destructive

standardized tests. Our state is usually among the top ten states in

annual per student expenditure but below average on student

academic achievement and at the Thank God for Mississippi level on

students who are flunked, labeled, sorted out, drugged and flee asdrop-outs.

Key national corporate organizations contribute funds that cause our

national elected politicians to carry their educational water. The

national Chamber of Commerce and the Room Temperature IQ


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President Bush and his administration gave us the disasterous No Child

Left Behind debacle which should have been named No Child Left

with a Properly Functioning Mind nor a Healthy Behind. The corporate

funded and owned American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) isresponsible for the current Common Core State Standards Initiative

(CCSSI). Of course, again driven by standardized tests. Over the past

seven months, ALEC has sent 46 State Legislatures and Governors 136

proposed legislative acts related to their corporate friendly CCSSI

project. ALEC sends these elected decision-makers laws to enact on

every issue important to their bottom lines. Our national Governors

Association and many State Legislators are members of ALEC, thanks toALEC corporate owners huge campaign contributions.

The core interwoven weapon used to weaken and destroy our public

schools is the superimposition of standardized testing on students,

teachers and other school building level staff. Our uninformed and

misinformed Governor and our State Legislators are given by our

Delaware State Constitution the legal and moral responsibility forproviding efficient program and cost effective public schools. However,

the majority of our State Legislators, Governor and appointed

Bureaucrats continue to dutifully enact policy and other draconian

requirements on school building level staff,especially teachers, given

them by their corporate benefactors. The ONLY way this will change is

for an informed public to insist our elected State Legislators and

Governor take the time to accept the offers our Delaware Coalition hasmade to explore. understand and implement the readily available

research-proven best knowledge program and cost effective TOTAL

SCHOOL SYSTEM REFORM discussed in this article. Anyone

knowledgeable about standardized tests knows the following. They are


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costly, detached barriers to meaningful student learning, irrelevant and

useless. They are designed to create winners and losers. They represent

a narrow one-size-fits-all approach totally opposite from the variability

students bring into classrooms. They significantly reduce all studentscreative and innovation abilities many leading economists inform us are

essential for the jobs in our future. They stifle and reduce higher order

thinking and problem solving abilities. They are responsible for the

highest rate of flunking and labeling beginning in the first grade.

NOTHING is more chronically abusive, depressing and devastating to a

young child than to be told and shown, day after week after month and

years, in verbal and written form that he/she is is an incompetentfailure. No wonder our standardized test driven Delaware public

schools have created one of the highest Attention Deficit Hyperactive

Disorder rates in the nation at fourteen percent of our psychologically

crushed young children. Many more costly outcomes are the result of

this horrendous child/youth abuse. It leads many to the school house to

jail house path. When hope is crushed, many turn to dope whether

using it or selling it on the streets accompanied by guns. Thirty-eight

per cent drop out in Delaware and most of them don't have the

educational ability to acquire the jobs projected in our future economy

and will have difficulty earning a living wage in adulthood. Teachers

have to waste time preparing for these tests and time is wasted

administering detached tests. Insanity plus is now tying teacher

performance to students' test scores on these irrelevant tests. A MUST

read for civic/political responsibility on how standardized tests are

ruining our pubic schools is the short publication "The Case Against

Standardized Tests" by Dr. Alfie Kohn. This valuable publication will be

shipped by Amazon.com for a total cost of around five dollars.


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Along with students, the equally abused group are our states public

school teachers. These uninformed top-down decision-makers impose

standardized test driven policies and requirements that are

disrespectful,unappreciative and place both strait jackets and handcuffson these most valuable public servants. They work hard and long but

under our current and continuing corporate-controlled agenda they are

stressfully and futilely coping, groping and hoping. The corporate

worlds move toward privatizing our public schools has good traction

based on the phase which sees more charter schools and voucher

systems. All one has to do to predict student scores on these

standardized tests is to check each student's postal zip code todetermine where each one lives. As mentioned above, the school

system we need gives all program decisions within and between a

district's school buildings to a Building Program Committee composed

of the building Principal, three Teachers elected by peers and two

Parent Leaders elected by peers as mandated in the Kentucky

Education Reform Act. One hundred and eighty degrees opposite from

our current superimposed standardized test driven costly, ineffective

system perpetuated by the four stratified, strangulating uninformed

layers mentioned above.

For twenty years, I worked as a member of Consultant/Trainer teams

for the US Department of Education and the nonprofit

national/international Partners for Quality Learning organization. In

that role, I helped State Departments of Education and school districtsfrom Hawaii to Maine train school building level staff and parents in

two research-proven TOTAL SCHOOL DISTRICT REFORM SYSTEMS that

are 180 degrees opposite from these top-down layers of detached,

uninformed decision-makers. These two merged reformed systems


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needed in Delaware are discussed on the School Reform page of our

Coalitions nonprofit, nonpartisan DEINFORMEDVOTERS.ORG web site.

All school districts implementing this comprehensive K-12 system

reform obtained waivers from all state and national restrictive policiesand were allowed to totally change public schooling for all of their

students.

From my twenty years of direct involvement on Consultant/Trainer

teams helping our nation and other nations State Departments and

school districts implement these two reform systems and thirty years as

Editor-in-Chief of three national/international professional education

journals publishing hundreds of articles on these reformed districts

program and cost effective results, I recommend for Delaware a

merging of the two aforementioned research-proven program and cost

effective reform systems. Consultant/Training must be brought in to

train all district program staff, especially principals, teachers and

parents at school building levels in ALL components for organizational

arrangements and a teaching/learning process which enables EVERYstudent to accomplish solid, continuous academic and other

personal/social development progress. All components of this TOTAL

SYSTEM REFORM are listed on the School Reform page of our

DEinformedvoters.org web site. In these reformed total systems, all

students learn and learn well without being flunked, labeled, sorted

and drugged which causes large numbers to eventually drop out of

school. Empowering school building Program Teams (Principal,Teachers and Parent Leaders) for all program decision-making will

easily lend itself to millions saved by creating three county school

districts and not needing many administrative and supervisory staff

now in the State Department of Education and our district offices.


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Standardized tests DO NOT drive these systems and we recommended

official burial ceremonies for standardized tests and other

wrongheaded, ineffective practices. These tragic, disrespectful

superimposed assaults on teachers are made by corporate, political andbureaucratic decision-makers who have never had one interaction with

a student and probably have to get directions to a public school

location.

The exemplary Kentucky Education Reform Act legally mandated

three very important requirements. It required a state and regional

training centers be established to provide initial and continuing

educatio for all components needed for research-proven, best

knowledge systemic reform. This was especially required for school

building level program staff and parents. Their reform law required that

the K-3 NAEYC reform system be in every elementary school. Another

very important requirement was that ALL program decisions be made

by an empowered Program Committee made up as mentioned above. I

was the first Consultant/Trainer brought in to provide initialfoundational training on the site based school building management

Program Teams and the K-3 NAEYC reform system. This was a weeklong

training program for over 1,200 State Department staff, all of

Kentuckys Public School District Superintendents, all of their

Elementary School Principals and Lead Teachers.

This research-docomented total SCHOOL SYSTEM reform will maintain

the continuous learning ALL preschoolers bring into kindergarten. All of

these preschoolers, from all backgrounds, learn some of the most

important learnings in life before they reach age five. They all learn to

communicate in the language of their culture, self-help, safety, the

skills of daily living and the social behavior of their families and


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community. We accept that some learn faster than others. We do not

crush their confidence and continuous progress learning competencies

by standardized test influenced requirements. We do not grade them A

through F, nor sort them into Blue Bird, Red Bird and Buzzardgroupings. We label jars, cans and other containers, not our preschool

kids. Their learning is primarily by self-directed and self-motivated

learning. We can't stop them from learning. They all enter kindergarten

beleiving they can continue to successfully learn whatever the public

school offers. BUT the transition from preschool concrete learning to

abstract academic learning is difficult for many children, expecially

those from lower socoeconomic homes and communities. Ourstandardized test driven school systems do not give these children the

additional readiness activities or the time needed to move into abstract

learnings. By far, our highest flunking, labeling, sorting, drugging and

establishing drop-our attitudes are all child abuse practices in the FIRST

GRADE! Then these uninformed top-down decision-makers have

programmed the majority of us to join them in pointing a finger and

blaming the failed children, their teachers, parents and even

communities with "It's her, his or their fault!" Creating psycholigically

traumatized students gives the medical and phatmaceutical industries a

profitable piece of this abusive action treating and drugging these

afflicted students. How many of us understand such outcomes as when

report cards go out, many students are so physically injured by parents

it's the time hospital emergency rooms have to treat their highest

numbers of children. These victim students are NOT the ones who

should be receiving these floggings. One purpose of this article is to

help us examine the THREE FINGERS POINTING BACK AT THESE FALSE

ACCUSERS. Let's take off our strait jackets and change what these top-


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down uninformed decision-makers are wrongfully giving students,

teachers, parents and tax payers. The school system reform briefly

discussed in this article and on the School Reform page of our

nonprofit, nonpartisan DEINFORMEDVOTERS.ORG web site willcontinue the successful learning and personal/social developmental

progress all preschoolers bring into kindergarten. EVERY line of this

needed civic/political responsibility information will hold up in any

court.

Here in Delaware where I, four of my children and six grandchildren

live, I sent informative school reform research evidence on the

comprehensive total school system reform briefly discussed in this

article and offered to meet, free of any charge, with many members of

the four abovementioned corporate, political and bureaucratic layers of

educational decision-makers in our state. Only ONE of our sixty-two

State Legislators and Governor responded! We met a number of times.

He became thoroughly knowledgeable about this school system reform

and did everything he could to try and get his fellow state electeddecision-makers to support changes needed but they turned a deaf ear

to both of us. I can understand why they want this school system

reform information to not even to be discussed as it would expose their

shameful record of perpetuating a corporate-owned agenda which is

damaging and even destroying the lives of a sizeable percentage of

OUR children and youth. One of our nation's greatest intellects aptly

informed us: "It's a form of insanity to do the same thing over and overand expect different results." One purpose of this communication is to

help all of our Delaware citizens to start taking off our strait jackets and

simply understand and help move toward implementing the readily

available comprehensive TOTAL SCHOOL SYSTEM reform discussed in


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this article and help improve the lives of thousands of our annual public

school students.

In my native state of Georgia, in 1960, I had completed my first

Doctorate Major in Educational Ledership and was Director of two

programs for the 60,000 student DeKalb County School District located

partially in Atlanta, GA. AS Head of our county's reformed Democratric

Party, I developed a state school reform plan based on best reform

knowledge at the time and plans for Family and Children Services

Regional Centers to develop more and improved early childhood care

and development programs. Govenor Carl Sanders started

implementation of these reforms and was awarded Governor of the

Year awards by both the National Education Association and the

national Veterans of Foreign Wars organization. The state also named

Interstate 20 Highway the Carl Sanders Memorial Highway for his

leadership on these reforms. Later, Democratic Governor Zell Miller

completed the funding of all of the reform components. These reforms

led to the following: In 1971, all of Georgia's public schools provided afull day kindergarten; taxation for public schools was made more

equitable and all schools in 159 counties received equal public funds

per pupil, including African-American public schools for the first time;

Georgia later was the first state in the nation to provide a full-day

program for pre-kindergartners or four-year-olds; and the really BIG

one came the same year as the pre-kindergarten program began. This

was the Hope Scholarship program. Since it began decades ago, EVERYgraduate of a Georgia private or public high school, with an academic

average of B- (80) or above, can receive tuition, fees and a book

allowance to go as high as possible in college, university or trade school

higher education. As of 2013, ONE MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND


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young Georgians from all backgrounds have taken advantage of these

opportunities. I can show our Delaware State Legislators and Governor

how the total school system reform I've discussed in this article would

save enogh funds to provide these two lower grades Georga has andsupport for higher education like Georgia funds. Think of Delaware

families NOT having to pay for their children's higher education.

I will now discuss two events in 2013 related to the above paagraph's

information about my fortunate experiences in my native state

Georgia. When President Obama made his State of the Union address

the day before Valentine's day, he announced a federal/state initiative

for adding a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten program in all of our

nation's public elementary schools. He cited Georgia as the best

example among states as for decades both lower grades have been

available there. Next day, Valentines Day, he visited Decatur, GA, just

outside Atlanta. A short distance from my office where I developed

plans for these reforms and directed two programs for the then 60,000

student DeKalb County School District, he made another national mediaappearance praising the early childhood programs he'd visited that day.

A true miracle occured this year related to the Hope Scolarship

program. At 86, early this year, I was admitted to the Emergency Room

of the Christiana Care Hospital. A young African-American woman came

over and said she would be my Physician. We had a conversation. I

discovered she had graduated from a high school in the DeKalb County

School District I once worked in. Then she told me she would not havebeen able to attend Emory University in DeKalb County and obtain her

Physician's Degree had it not been for the Georgia Hope Scholarship

program I had in the reform plan written in 1960. I slept well that night.


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Another memorable national and Delaware Act I had a fortunate role

in helping become law relates to all handicapped children and youth in

our nation. In 1970, the State of Pennsylvania hired me, under an

independent contract I insisted on, to accomplish a comprehensiveresearch study and advise the state government on the most program

nd cost effective ways to serve their mentally deficient citizens and

their families. I formed a research team and we accomplished a two-

year research study and developed a comprehensive program and cost

effective commuity-based plan to serve these handicapped and their

families. One major recommendation was that all handicapped

children and youth in the state needed legal access to the state's publicschools for needed training and therapies. The state reneged on it's

pledge to implement our recommendations if our research proved they

were program and cost effective. Parent groups and the Public Interest

Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP) sued the state and counties in the

Federal Court of Philadelphia, only a few feet from Independence Hall

and the Liberty Bell. I worked with them and the evidence and best

knowledge information our research team provided were credited with

winning this monumental case. It quickly became a national class action

victory affecting every state. It led, in 1975, to our nation's first

Education of the Handicapped Act, or Public Law 94-142. As a then

Consultant/Trainer for the US Department of Education, I had input into

the national Act. Then, moving to Delaware shortly thereafter, I had the

opportunity to be the key author of our Delaware Act enabling all

handicapped children and youth in our state to attend our public

schools. At the time, I also researched and authored the Delaware

Special Schools Summer School Act which was enacted and

implemented.


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When public education was started in the states approximately one

hundred years ago, a national Committee of Ten was appointed to

inform our nation about the goals and objectives of public education.

Four major goals were identified with a number of objectives undereach. The four major goals were as follows: Personal adequacy; Social

competency, Economic efficiency; and civic responsibility. I find it

interesting to note that of the 16-20 courses needed for high school

graduation, less than half of our high schools have even one course

required in civics. Political influence not to discuss controversal issues.

Those supporting this needed public school reform in our state ask that

you take the civic responsibility time to understand this reform systemneeded in our public school districts and share this information with all

Delaware adults on your email lists.

Our current and future Delaware children and youth do not deserve

to be molded by standardized test driven public school districts and

schools but successfully unfolded by the research-proven program and

cost effective public schooling discussed in this article. Our minds arelike umbrellas and parachutes. They won't work unless open.

Dr. Floyd E. McDowell, Sr. of 11 Dover Court, Bear 19701 is

Chairperson of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Delaware Citizens'

Information and Action Forum and it's DEinformedvoters.org web site.

He can be reached at (302) 832-2799 or via the email address

[email protected].
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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THE REAL DISCONNECT IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

This is a response to your recent editorial about solving the

disconnect in our public schools.

The disconnect between the excellent teacher evaluation ratings on

our states teacher evaluation tests and student performance is NOT

the fault of our teachers. The huge elephant culprit in every classroom

trampling on everyone involved in public education is the continuing

standardized test driven projects our states elected and appointed

decision-makers are superimposing on school district staff, students

and parents.

All standardized tests are designed to create winners and losers. They

provide a one-size-fits-all requirement that is totally opposite from the

diversity students bring into our schools. They have nothing to do with

what should be taught and learned in our schools. They have little or no

connection to success in later life. They cause the most vicious and life-

harming child abuse in history by causing the highest flunking, labeling,

drugging, sorting, etc. in the first grade. The uninformed, restrictive,

stressful handcuffs and strait jackets these standardized tests forced on

teachers is why many require sick leave, leave the profession and dont

decide to enter the teaching field.

For twenty years, I worked part-time as a Consultant/Trainer with

cool districts and their schools who abandoned these useless tests and

use embedded, ongoing authentic student evaluation of progress kept

in individual student portfolios. This work was on behalf of the US

Department of Education and the nonprofit, national/international

Partners for Quality Learning organization. These districts graduate well

over ninety per cent of students compared with our states slightly over


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sixty per cent. Their student improvement record shows each grade

level gains at least two grade level increases in academic achievement.

These school districts provide research-proven, best knowledge training

to school building level staff and parents, then empowers a buildinglevel Program Committee to make all program decisions within and

between a districts school buildings. As in the legal mandate of the

Kentucky Education Reform Act, the best Program Committee

organizational arrangement Ive worked with is their requirement each

Kentucky public school building have a committee comprised of the

Building Principal, three Teacher elected by building level peers and

two Parent Leaders elected by their building level peers.

Our Delaware State Constitution gives the responsibility for efficient

public schools to our sixty=two State Legislators. Our Governor shares

in this responsibility with the appointments he makes. I have sent

research-proven information on why and how te reforms I worked on

from Hawaii to Maine would change our wrongheaded, destructive,

costly standardized test driven course. I offered, free of any charge, tosit down with them and walk through how we could provide this

proven reform systemic change to our state. Help arrange a visit to one

or two of these successful school districts. No response whatsoever. In

these reformed school districts and schools, flunking, labeling,

drugging, etc. are practically eliminated. Well continue the assault on

teachers, students, parents and taxpayers as we slowly weaken and

destroy public education so it can be privatized as a huge cash cow asmany of our decision-makers have as their goal.

Dr. Floyd E. McDowell, Sr. of Bear, DE is Chair of the nonprofit,

nonpartisan Delaware Citizens Information and Action Forum and its


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DEinformedvoters.org web site. He can be reached by phone at (302)

832-2799 or via email at [email protected].

OUR STATE / The Real Disconnect

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