Reblog: Ewww Michigan

So with the bad economy and government budget shortfalls many states have cut their funding for education.  It's the standard less teachers or aides with larger class sizes, less extracurricular activities, even worse special education, and sometimes closing and combining schools.  This has happened everywhere, from California to Maryland and unfortunately (and obviously) it means worse education for children. Currently Michigan is in the lead for horrific cuts. Gov. Rick Snyder released his plan in April and it contains an "unprecedented push toward for-profit schools, dubious online curricula, and budget cuts and anti-union measures that would make the public teaching profession ever more insecure."  Read the Mother Jones article Michigan's Radical Assault on Public Education for more information.

Personally I just can't wrap my head around the logic of defunding education.  It's a necessary service that when done well substantially improves not just the individual, but all of society.  Also we can look at history and other countries to see what happens when we fund, or don't fund education, and a lack of funding is never a good thing.  Or at least it's never a good thing in the long term or for the majority of society, short term it saves governments money and creates a poorly educated working force for cheap labor in factories/corporations.  Is that really what the majority of our states and politicians want?


By the way, I swear at some point I'm going to get back to book recommendations, and lists, and providing information of educational techniques and jargon.  There's just all these time sensitive things going on between politics and education that I feel needs to be addressed. 

The Potential State of Libraries

Cities and states across the country are cutting their library budgets.  Currently the one getting the most media attention is Chicago.  Rham Emanuel's proposed 2012 budget would lay off 363 library employees and cut $11 million from the Chicago Public Library's current budget.  This would reduce the hours of operation for the city's libraries which provide necessary help to students, people searching for jobs, and run special programs that serve over 40,000 children per year.  The group protesting these cuts has a facebook page where you can get updates and offer support for their efforts.

But, as I said, Chicago isn't the only place with Library budget cuts.
Last year New York City Public Libraries lost over 200 employees, however they managed to block further budget cuts because of public support for the libraries and protests against the proposed budget cuts.
In Seattle budget cuts closed all branches of the public library for over a week.
Potential budget cuts of $2.5 million in Denver threaten to close half of the cities public libraries.
In Oakland, CA proposed cuts might result in 14 of the city's 18 public library branches being closed for good.
In attempts to keep open many libraries have had to find creative ways to raise money.

The American Library Association published their 2011 report on The State of America's Libraries.  They found that 65% of people use public libraries every year, 31% of adults and 38% of seniors rank public libraries as the top tax-supported service. 91% of people greatly value the educational and work related information provided at libraries.  93% of people believe libraries should be free.  However, in 2011 US City Mayors reported that cutting library hours, staff, and services was the second most popular way to enact budget cuts.

Public Libraries provide vital services to the community.  Besides housing millions of books for people to borrow or use as references for school work, libraries keep local city and town records of newspapers and politics for citizens to access.  They are often the only place that provides free internet access.  They have free community rooms of groups to use as meeting places.  They have specific resources for students and unemployed people looking for jobs.  Libraries have child services, and sometimes even provide short term child care during specific hours.  They can provide warm places for homeless people in winter and cooling zones during summer heat waves.

You can also visit this sarcastic (warning: uses swears) page for information about all the different things you can use the library for.  

A Child of the Library

Chorus:
I’m a Child of the Lib’ry, it made me who I am,
It taught me about freedom and the fellowship of Man
A sea of story waits for you behind the lib’ry door,
Don’t say we can’t afford them any more.

The Lib’ry’s where I made some friends I’ve known my whole life through
The Walkers and the Blacketts and the Pevensies so true.
Simp the canine cannonball, Galadriel the fair.
The daughter of a pirate king and Paddington the Bear

I’ve travelled South with Shackleton and all his gallant crew
And to the African interior that Mary Kingsley knew
I’ve rode the trackless prairie where the bison used to roam
An travelled round the Universe, not half an hour from home.

And as I grew the libr’y fed my curiosity,
All there for the asking. All of it for free.
It’s there I found the stories that I couldn’t find at home.
It’s where I learned I was myself and not my father’s clone.

So make friends with your library, don’t let it fade away.
Teach your kids the lib’ry’s where you go on Saturday.
Don’t let the bastards tell you they will cost to much to save
While they’re shovelling our taxes down the hole the bankers made

So make a stand for the lib’ry. Stand up while you can.
Stand up for your freedom. Stand for your fellow man.
Ignorance is never bliss, don’t close the lib’ry door.
For a lib’ry lost is lost forever more.

Lyrics © 2011 Piers and Gill Cawley
Music © 2011 Piers Cawley

Licenced under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License.

The Importance of Head Start and Title I

The US Deficit and Budget have been all over the news for the last several weeks and while I have thoughts on a bunch of the proposed or House passed budget cuts one in particular ties into the purpose of this blog.
 Last week Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his colleagues passed $63 billion in budget cuts for the end of fiscal year 2011, with the understanding being that the cuts would continue into 2012.  These cuts are all to non-security programs and don't differentiate between successful and failing programs. The Department of Education is undergoing such cuts, particularly to Title I schools and Head Start.  Over all the Department of Education will lose almost $5 billion.  Source

Head Start and Title I assist people living in poverty and the schools who educate them.

Head Start provides a variety of services, but is most known for their pre-schools and before and after school care.  Most low-income families require both parents or all responsible adults to work, many times several jobs.  Therefore they can't provide care for young children and often don't have the time or energy to educate them on pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills.  (I'll do another post later about the necessity of these skills being learned before kindergarten.)  Head Start provides pre-school care for the children of these families.  They can't reach everyone and Head Start locations are run differently from each other, but once you get in the program you can stay in it, throughout all levels of school.

Head Start teaches skills necessary to academic achievement, they provide safe and supervised places for children of all ages, they provide homework help and academic enrichment.  Head Start even helps with college applications and scholarships.  Children enrolled in the program often achieve better in academics and are more likely to graduate from high school.  Head Start specifically assists children and families who do not have the resources to pay for or find this help from other places.  They combat the cyclical and systematic results of poverty and institutionalized racism.  For more information about Head Start and the affects of the budget cuts visit their web site here.

A Title I school is a school where 40% or more of the students live at a proverty level where they qualify for free or reduced lunches.  Basically this means approximately half or more of the students live at such levels of poverty that their families cannot afford to feed them.  When this is the case the schools receive assistance from the federal government, through Title I, to meet the specific needs of children living in poverty.  Title I started in the 1960s under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) states that schools must make adequate yearly progress to continue receiving funds.

How Title I funds are used is up to the discretion of the school.  They can be used for curriculum enhancement, counseling, increasing parental involvement, more staff and general program improvement.  Generally the funds are used for extra instruction in math and reading as these are some of the most important subjects, and since NCLB the test scores for these subjects affect the Title I funds received by the school.  Millions of children are assisted anually through Title I funds.  For more basic inforamtion visit here. Or the US Department of Education's site here.

Personally, I spent two years working at a Title I school where numerous children where enrolled in Head Start.  At this school over 80% of the children received free and reduced lunches and I helped run an after school program which improved children's literacy.  Parents had to enroll they're children in our program, and Head Start children did not attend as they received after school care and academic assistance through the Head Start Porgram. The school was making adaquate yearly progress so they were receiving the maximum Title I allotment. The school was also receiving grant money for being a community school (meaning they provided help for the whole community) and there were several other grants helping the school meet the needs of all the children.  My program and position was funded by one such grant. 

With these four programs providing extra money to the school they were able to provide 2 meals a day to the students who qualified, health services to the students and their families, run before and after school care with sports, arts, and academic programs.  They also were able to hold occasional events to promote community involvement and find out how they could better help the needs of the community. 

When I compare the kids I worked with at this school to others from similar backgrounds the differences are staggering.  They are more confident and happy, they're less likely to skip school or drop out, they could make goals and figure out how to reach them.  They also tested very high in the state standardized testing.  Which means most of them are at grade level. These children are having their basic health needs met, receiving academic assistance and getting adult support, and it took more then the Title I funds or Head Start to reach all the children in the school.  So the idea of cutting funding to Title I and Head Start, to further limiting the number of children they can help, is horrifying.  The effects of the budget cuts will be staggering and so hurtful to low income families and eventually the rest of the country.  Because everything is connected in some way, and the more one group falls into poverty, crime and illiteracy, the more everyone else does too.

Because of all of this I've signed the petition to save Head Start and I hope others will too.