Who Should Give Guidelines for the Community, Religion or Government?

In the United States, we live under a constitution that was carefully crafted to insure each of us the liberal freedom to worship as we choose. Our government is prohibited from dictating to us a set of religious rituals we must follow.

If the government is prohibited from dictating the set of religious beliefs I must observe, they are also prohibited from dictating that I engage in religious worship at all.

In her work on religion and liberal democracy, Mary Sullivan writes that "[T]he affirmative right to practice a specific religion implies the negative right to practice none." (Sullivan, M. 1992)

Churches can and do set boundaries on many aspects of life from keeping Kosher, the Sabbath, suicide, abortion and marriage. Religious communities, like any other special interest are welcome in our democracy to lobby for their causes. These communities, by virtue of not representing "We The People", may not, and should not, impose boundaries on all the citizens of the United States of America without due process of law.

Reference:
Kathleen M. Sullivan, Religion and Liberal Democracy, 59 U. CHI. L. REV. 195, 197 (1992).

On Altar Girls and Hints of Change.

Our discussion appears, at first blush, to belie the sentiments of Mollie Wilson O'Reilly. Her article, Passing On the Alb, My Career As An Altar Girl, makes the claim that "it is clear enough to most U.S. Catholics that, when the church blesses altar girls, they are in turn a blessing to the church." (O'Reilly, M. 2009)

In her article she notes that it was only recently that the Vatican declared that females serving the priest at Mass was not against canon law. She points out, however, that while wording does not disallow females in this role, it was less than affirming since it didn't explicitly say it was a good thing.

Her personal history as an altar girl is clearly a source of personal joy that revealed to her the junction at which the mundane aspects of her faith, hosts in baggies in the fridge, meet the mysterious body of christ on the table in the center aisle.

Personally, the moral of this tale is an affirmation that most generalizations by definition, deny the individual. It may be slow but the Catholic church is subject to growth and change just like the rest of us.

O'Reilly, M. (2009). Passing On the Alb. Commonweal, 136(15), 12. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier database.

Katrina: The Buck Stopped There, Mr. President

Distilling the complexity of the inter-agency response to Hurricane Katrina into a few hundreds words is fundamentally an impossible task. There are some key facts that one might start with in making the attempt.

First, in the disaster plan for the City of New Orleans, the role of the Mayor is described as “the full spectrum of actions to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover” from incidents involving all hazards (City of New Orleans, 2004, p. 1; DHS, 2004, p. 8).

The Governor of the State of Louisiana is described as being charged with management of state resources to “prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from incidents in an all-hazards context” (DHS, p.8).

Finally, the President of the United States is responsible for “responding effectively and ensuring the necessary resources are applied quickly and efficiently to all incidents of national significance”. (DHS, P.15.).

In Retrospect, Mayor Nagin should have been in the command seat in New Orleans and history demonstrates he was overwhelmed. On can, in hindsight name many decisions that he could have managed more effectively. I personally cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to be on the ground in this situation even if Mayor Nagin had been perfectly prepared. Mayor Nagin, however cannot be held responsible for the entire State.

Governor Blanco, according to accounts, deployed the national guard quickly, achieved national emergency declaration under the Stafford Act and mobilized busses statewide to assist in the evacuation. The Governor appears to have exhibited strong leadership with the possible exception of refusing joint task command that might have gotten more cooperation from the Federal Government. Governor Blanco, however, cannot be held responsible for the way the crisis unfolded in Biloxi Mississippi.

President Bush, according to his press secretary, and in the White House report to Congress states that;

On August 29, 2005, Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane. The White
House circulated an internal memo that a levee breach in New Orleans had occurred, while FEMA Director Michael Brown briefed the President of the potential devastation of Katrina at a morning a morning meeting. During that same day the President called DHS Secretary Chertoff to discuss immigration, shared a birthday cake and photo-op with Senator John McCain, traveled to California to a senior center to discuss the Medicare drug benefit (White House, 2006).

In attempting to answer this question, I am unable to put out of my mind the words of President Truman, "The buck stops here."

References:

City of New Orleans. (2004). Comprehensive emergency management plan. Retrieved
December 10, 2008, from www.cityofno.com/pg-46-18-general-evacuationguidelines.
aspx

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2004). National Response Plan. Retrieved
September 18, 2008, from www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nrp_fulltest.pdf

White House. (2006). The federal response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons learned.
Retrieved December 12, 2008, from WWW-
learned

Cotton, G. (n.d). Hurricane Katrina: An evaluation of governmental leadership and the disaster surrounding the city of New Orleans. Retrieved from ProQuest: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database.

NCLB Misses the Target in Special Education

The ideal that NCLB would "shake out" teachers who are not qualified while rewarding teachers who are may fall short of the mark in the mainstream due to a lack of strength in underlying assumptions about the educational landscape. In the Special Education community, this core misunderstanding may miss the target altogether.

The NCLB solution to teacher turnover is to pull "highly qualified" teachers from the general pool of adults with bachelors degrees in required subject areas, supply them with professional development and plug them into the educational system at the point of perceived failure.

In the case of Special Education teachers we already have a smaller pool from which school administrators have already drawn heavily. We have a student population for whom the core subject area may not be the highest priority challenge to surmount. Additionally, the higher incidences of disability tend to be in areas where resources are thin, the poor and under privileges communities where disabilities due to language deficits, inadequate prenatal care, drug abuse and parental educational apathy are higher.

Given these conditions, it is unreasonable, in my opinion, to apply a single solution to the entire nation of pupils and their teachers.

Reference:
Brownell, M., Bishop, A., & Sindelar, P. (2005). NCLB and the Demand for Highly Qualified Teachers: Challenges and Solutions for Rural Schools. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 24(1), 9-15. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Grading the MCAS-Alt on a Scale

In the State of Massachusetts, children are subjected to the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) in accordance with federal No Child Left Behind mandates. Assuming that the MCAS tests are state of the art student evaluations, then by it's formulation, which includes exceptions to the rule, the MCAS already accepts that notion that standardized tests cannot adequately evaluate the entire spectrum of pupils. Within the MCAS specification is method for the evaluation of the profoundly disabled student known as the MCAS-Alt. My proposal is that if the bottom of the curve deserves a special method of evaluation, perhaps the top of the curve does as well. I would propose a specification called the MCAS-exception which allows educators to nominate exceptional or gifted children who may not adapt well to standard test environments to be tested according to a more subjective guideline and to provide a method by which students and their parents could apply for this more subjective form of evaluation within the standardized testing framework. Perhaps in "Race To The Top, Part Deux"?

Massachusetts Education Gets High Ranks

In the examination of local and state governance of education, one cannot overlook the increasing role of the federal government in setting broad educational agenda that trickle down to all levels. Strong influence over state educational policy began with the plan to implement national testing standards under the administration of President George H. W. Bush. A decade later, his son, President George W. Bush would sign the No Child Left Behind Act into law and impose a national framework under which State and Local Educators and Politician would be required to operate. (1)

Within the context of a national educational policy, a State Department of Education exists to support, assist and regulate the public schools and academic organizations that comprise the state system. It also acts as a collective bargaining entity interacting with the federal congress for funding of educational services through it's state. (2)

The local school districts operate under the constraints of federal policy as well. It is the local government that is chartered with the daily task of putting teachers in classrooms, face to face with their pupils. The local school district pays the water bill, electric, building maintenance, teachers salaries, chalk, and laser pointers. These are the tasks that underpin my local districts vision of working to "foster academic excellence by implementing best practices, improving facilities, appreciating diversity, and requiring accountability."(3)

When asked to assign a subjective ranking It is rare that I cannot envision room for improvement in our schools. Applying the national standards tests, according to our Governor's website, 8th graders in Massachusetts ranked first in the nation, while our 4th graders tied for first place.(4) Given these statistics I am compelled to deliver a ranking of 8 for the state, "with a bullet". Now it's time to "Race For The Top"



1. (n.d). Obama Administration Education Policy. Retrieved from Facts On File: Issues & Controversies database.

2. Website: Massachusetts Department of Education
http://www.doe.mass.edu/mailings/welcome.html

3. Website: Athol-Royalston School District
http://www.arrsd.org/index.php/about-us/splan/68-vs

4. Website: http://devalpatrick.com/accomp.php?idx=4

Town Support for Schools in Tough Times.

On June 14th, 2010, the citizens of Athol Massachusetts, in an open town meeting, voted 127 to 5 in favor of allocating up to $400,000 dollars toward a feasibility study on the options for managing an elementary school that is literally falling down around the teachers and children who attend it. The cost of the study was hotly debated with the school board and parents organization advocated the expenditure. In dissent were two factions, town residents who have no children and those who feel the limit funds could be better spent elsewhere.

One relevant question was why the town needed to spend so much money to study something so obvious. All one has to do is walk through the building to see the plaster falling off the walls, dust dripping from the ceiling and the exposed wires where hangers and wall board have given way. It is obvious to a casual observer that renovating or rebuilding is critically necessary at this school.

The answer to that question is that the State requires the feasibility study as a first step in considering where to assign educational grant money to the individual local governments.

This is a case where the local residents are so close to the problem that they are, at first, unable to realize that, at the state level, the questions a study would answer are necessary to prioritize the granting of monies to Athol over the hundreds of other places the money might be spent.

A useful explanation for why the study is necessary is written by the National Trust for Historic Preservation which provides a comprehensive white paper on the role of these studies in determining the options, refurbishment vs. rebuilding.

In the state of Massachusetts, these studies, while initially funded by the local government, are, if accepted by the state, reimbursed at a rate of up to 80% of the cost of the study. The means that if successful, the town will only have spent a little less than a quarter of the cost of the study. Once the study is completed, the next step is to apply for funding from the state to address the building, which we hope will result in a new school building for the town.