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“Federal Report: Special-Needs students, English learners ‘significantly underrepresented’ at Harmony Schools”

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Harmony

11.26.14 – Dallas Morning News

 

http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2014/11/federal-report-special-needs-students-english-learners-significantly-underrepresented-at-harmony-charter-schools.html/

 

“Federal report: Special-needs students, English learners ‘significantly underrepresented’ at Harmony charter schools”

 

By Holly K. Hacker 

Updated at 3:19 p.m.: I just spoke with Robert Schulman, a lawyer who represents Harmony. He called the agreement “a very positive thing.” Harmony does not discriminate against students, he stressed. “They had to make the appropriate policy and process changes that were necessary for full compliance, and they did.”

Original post: Harmony Public Schools, one of Texas’ biggest charter school networks, reached an agreement today with the U.S. Department of Education over how it enrolls and teaches children who have disabilities or are learning English.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights investigated the Harmony network and found that English-language learners (ELL) and students with disabilities “are significantly underrepresented in their enrollment in (Harmony) charter schools . . . compared to the enrollment of ELL students and students with disabilities in the public school districts in the same geographic area.”

In the Harmony schools examined, 11.5% of students were learning English, compared to 22.5% of students in the neighboring traditional school districts. Students with disabilities comprised 2.7% of Harmony’s enrollment, compared to 7.3% of students in neighboring districts. Of the four Harmony school districts studied, three are in the Houston area. The fourth has campuses in Fort Worth, Grand Prairie, Euless and Duncanville.

Charter schools, which are public schools run by private non-profit groups, cannot exclude or discriminate against students based on their race, disability or language. They’re supposed to educate the same kinds of kids as traditional public schools — including students who may be more difficult or costly to educate.

The Department of Education did not find that Harmony blatantly tried to exclude certain students. But it did find practices and policies at Harmony that could have that effect. From the department’s letter to Harmony:

OCR (Office for Civil Rights) is concerned, however, that the exclusion from admission and enrollment in HPS (Harmony Public Schools) charter schools of students with a documented history of a criminal offense, juvenile court adjudication or discipline problems may improperly contribute to the lower enrollment of students with disabilities or ELL students in the HPS charter schools. Statistics show that students with disabilities and ELL students tend to be overrepresented among students subject to school discipline in Texas.

In addition, the published enrollment procedures (which require students to provide their birth certificates and social security numbers, among other documents) may chill or lead to the exclusion of students based on their or their parents’ citizenship or immigration status. OCR is also concerned that the publication of these procedures alone may dissuade some parents of ELL students from applying to HPS charter schools.

I called Harmony’s main office in Houston for comment. The voice mailbox is full. I’ve emailed the school system for comment, too. As soon as I hear something from them, I’ll post an update.

The Department of Education’s letter notes that before the investigation was complete, Harmony Public Schools “expressed an interest in voluntarily resolving the review” and proposed an agreement to resolve compliance problems.

You can read Harmony’s agreement with the Department of Education below. It spells out the steps that Harmony will take. Below that, I’ve posted the letter.

Harmony Agreement 11.26.14

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Constitutional Rights Can Be Lost For Felons-And Preschoolers?

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common core

by Karin Piper

 http://politichicks.tv/

Florida mom Lee Kersey had questions about her daughter’s participation in the State’s Voluntary Pre Kindergarten Program (VPK). When looking for answers, she stumbled upon a shocking find: The Florida Legislature had amended the state statute making participating children exempt from certain constitutional rights. By enrolling her child in VPK she would allow the government to harvest and share private information such as “assessment data, health data, records of teacher observations, and other personally identifiable information of an enrolled child and his or her parent.” Teachers’ observations about parental behavior, gleaned second hand from children, become part of the infamous permanent record, with no chance of parental review or redaction. “I am furious,” says Kersey about her findings. “It seems like every day brings a new challenge from the government for my parental rights. How dare politicians think that they can trample all over my daughter and I to revoke her fourth amendment rights? No one should have the right to know her personal information without my express written consent.” And she isn’t alone. Kersey’s find has sparked national effort among parents who are seeking to find out how it is possible for the government to access and freely share such information without parental consent. Family Education Rights to Privacy Act (FERPA) and state laws are changing across the nation to allow the government the right to collect private, personally identifiable information on your children without parental consent or notification. These changes are being made to accommodate Obamacare as well as Common Core Standards, two federal programs that will serve as a conduit for thorough and comprehensive data collection on children and their families. Forty-five states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core State Standards. Parents have already found that state legislature have amended privacy statues for preschoolers in Oregon and Nevada.And in the State of Colorado, the state legislature just passed a law creating a commission that will make annual recommendations for additional legislation on tracking your children from birth through age five- in “the best interest of the state.” The information this commission will be considering for collection includes your children’s school readiness, health care, mental health, parental involvement, family support, childcare, and early learning. In the good ole days we used to allow parents to collect that data in “scrapbooks.” But those were also the distant days when only convicted felons lost a portion of their constitutional rights. Now, with the implementation of both Obamacare and Common Core Standards, data mining will begin in the womb, recognizing the government’s rights to revoke part of your child’s constitutional natural rights before your baby is legally considered as a human being by the same federal government. That shouldn’t surprise however since they’ve been denying the right to life to kids since inception. So one must wonder, is preschool attendance or being born a felony deserving revocation of constitutional rights? If not, how are state legislators exalted to the duty of revoking natural rights of our children?

 

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