If Johnny Can't Read, Who's to Blame?

American Thinker
By T.R. Clancy 10/14/2018

When a federal court dismissed on June 29 the class-action lawsuit claiming that the State of Michigan had deprived Detroit public schoolchildren of "their right to literacy," the left was all set to react in faux shock. The court's key finding hardly came as news to most of us, but the headlines in the New York Times sounded as if someone had denied climate change: "'Access to Literacy' Is Not a Constitutional Right, Judge in Detroit Rules."

These days, when everything progressives want government to provide free is defined as a "right" – health care, housing, a guaranteed income, American citizenship for illegal aliens, etc. – it stands to reason that literacy may as well be thrown in there, too. It's only obvious, provided you've never read the Bill of Rights. Hence this lawsuit, brought by public-interest lawyers (who know better) on behalf of several students of low-performing Detroit schools, claiming that "access to literacy" is a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.

Judge Stephen J. Murphy's 40-page opinion dismissing the case politely but firmly explains why literacy is not a fundamental right, and we can expect that finding, after years of legal dramatics, to be upheld on appeal. The defendants in the case include Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, the state superintendent of public schools, and the members of the State of Michigan School Board. Notably not being sued are any members of the Detroit school district's Board of Education, who are the elected officials actually in charge of managing Detroit schools.

The lawsuit claims that "[d]ecades of State disinvestment in and deliberate indifference to Detroit schools have denied Plaintiff schoolchildren access to the most basic building block of education: literacy." It accuses state officials of "intentionally discriminating against [Plaintiffs] on the basis of race." The plaintiffs demand a boodle bag full of remedies, collectively described in Judge Murphy's opinion as "unquestionably sweeping – and undoubtedly costly."

To support its allegations of "deliberate indifference," the complaint distorts the story of Detroit's troubled school system so it begins only after the state first intervened in 1999. The lawsuit barely manages 13 words about how it was only following decades of failures and malfeasance by the district's former elected school board that, as reported by Crain's Detroit Business, "poor academics, abhorrent graduation rates and low test scores opened the door for the state to wrest control from an elected school board." Republican Governor John Engler had been trying to get the district fixed since his election in 1990, but he was stymied by a majority of Democrats in the state House. When Republicans finally won a majority, they acted to allow Detroit's Democrat Mayor Dennis Archer (with his full support and that of many other Democrat leaders) to take over the district in an attempt to finally turn it around. According to the New York Times, the mayor had had enough of a "school board ... [that] ignored too many proposals over the years to improve its financial management practices and the overall administration of schools." For example:


Despite having classrooms without enough books or supplies, the district has a $93 million surplus, partly because officials have used low-paid substitutes to fill the 1,100 vacancies among 12,000 teaching positions[.]

The school board, invariably re-elected by loyal Detroit residents to govern the district, were manifestly incompetent and entirely ungovernable themselves:


Only $400 million has been spent of a $1.5 billion bond issue for long-term capital improvements approved in 1994. A series of school superintendents have been hired, promising substantial changes, only to end up arguing with the school board and leaving.

That's right: Democrat board members weren't even organized enough to blow $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds. It's not as if they didn't have time while being chauffeured around in limousines.

When the school board was ousted and replaced with an unelected reform board in 1999, Detroit residents were outraged, calling it undemocratic to replace an elected school board and racist that white politicians (Mayor Archer was black) should be making decisions over what happens in majority-black Detroit. Under the reform board, things improved, but not much, as the damage was too deep. Enrollment continued to drop, taking per-pupil funding with it.

In 2004, Detroiters voted to return to an elected school board. But soon, "budget missteps, corruption, financial mismanagement and enrollment losses ushered in" another round of state intervention, this time under a Democrat, Governor Jennifer Granholm. In 2009, when it came to light that "[d]istrict officials, including the school board ... had problems keeping track of how much money was coming in and what was owed," Granholm appointed Robert Bobb as emergency financial manager. He immediately figured out that basic administrative tasks were being screwed up, and "1,545 DPS employees had ineligible dependents on the staff, costing the district an estimated $2.6 million." Looking back later, Bobb said he'd "found Detroit Public Schools to be a magnificent vessel of wholesale theft and graft. Not one area of management escaped the thieves and defrauders." That included food service workers; teachers (and a teacher's mother!); and even members of his security team, who lied about overtime.

By 2016, the "culture of corruption" in the district led to federal charges against a dozen current and former school principals who were "taking bribes and kickbacks from a school supplies vendor and fabricating invoices from the city's beleaguered public schools." The scheme stretched all the way back to 2002 (and even liberal commentator Jack Lessenberry became convinced "that Detroit Public School administrators deserve to be held in contempt"). By the time six of the crooked principals were pleading guilty to their role in the kickback scheme, Michigan's Republican lawmakers were finalizing a $617-million bailout to save the district from bankruptcy. While Michigan citizens watched yet more tax dollars consigned to oblivion, Democrat legislators were griping that the bailout wasn't big enough.

At the end of 2017, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported that per-student spending for the Detroit Public Schools Community District was higher:


... [t]han all but eight of the nation's 100 largest school districts, or $14,259. Even with all that money, the district still generated the nation's worst reading scores among low-income students. The Miami-Dade district spends $8,725 per student (some $5,500 less than Detroit), and children from low-income households there had the best literacy rates among large cities.

So where exactly is the "deliberate indifference" and "disinvestment" in all of this?

Whatever is behind the literacy problems in Detroit schools, it's not lack of money, state indifference, or "disinvestment." Nor did Judge Murphy find any basis for a claim of racial discrimination against the defendants. Not that any of that will matter to the folks who brought this lawsuit, nor to the misinformed segment of the public whose indignation all of this is meant to stir up.



Thank You Mr Clancy and American Thinker.

Democrats Ask Teachers To Destroy Books Written By 'Climate Deniers'

weaselzippers

Must not interfere with indoctrination…


 
Via Daily Caller:

Three senior House Democrats asked U.S. teachers Monday to destroy a book written by climate scientists challenging the environmentalist view of global warming.

The Democrats were responding to a campaign by the conservative Heartland Institute copies of the 2015 book, “Why Climate Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” to about 200,000 science teachers. Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott of the Committee on Education, Raúl M. Grijalva of the Committee on Natural Resources, and Eddie Bernice Johnson of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology all issued a statement telling teachers to trash the book. Keep reading

Thank You DC and Nick.

Keeping it classy.

Report: School Choice Increases Achievement, Reduces Crime

Now what did we just say about Government micro-mismanagent of Your Life being the real underlying cause of Clinical Depression/mental illness?

CNSNews

By Andrew Eicher | January 17, 2017 | 4:43 PM EST

(CNSNews.com) – School choice advocate Betsy DeVos, president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, faces her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee later today following the release of a timely report detailing school choice’s positive societal and economic benefits.

Democrats and teachers unions have harshly criticized DeVos, claiming that expanding school choice would result in the destruction of the public school system.

But the report published last week by the Heartland Institute cites evidence that school choice and the competitive environment it creates among education providers actually improves public education.

Co-authors Peter Ferrara and Lewis Uhler cite years of studies and programs that have provided evidence that allowing parents to send their children to a school of their choice can reduce dropout rates, increase test scores and graduation rates, close achievement gaps between races and income brackets, and catalyze residential and commercial development in competitive school districts.

These findings apply to both public and independent charter schools, according to the report. The net result is reduced crime and increased economic growth.

For example, a study by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2011 found that felony arrests of high-risk students who won education choice lotteries decreased by 44 percent. Additionally, after the introduction of a voucher program in the Edgewood Independent School district in San Antonio, Texas, property values in the district rose by 86.4 percent, which was significantly higher than in districts without such programs.

“Education choice increases human capital by increasing student achievement,” resulting in “a lifetime of higher wages and family incomes” for individual students, and also increased economic growth in their communities, the report noted.


DeVos, the daughter-in-law of billionaire Amway cofounder Richard DeVos, has used her wealth and influence to lobby for the expansion of school choice programs nationwide. She currently chairs the American Federation for Children, the nation’s largest school choice advocacy group.

The group recently released a video endorsement of DeVos on Tuesday by former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, a Democrat who fought for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), a school-choice initiative.

Williams said that high school students attending OSP-participating schools for the 2015-2016 school year graduated at a rate of 98 percent, compared to the 69 percent graduation rate of the D.C. Public Schools.

The former mayor offered his “enthusiastic” endorsement of DeVos, calling her a “compassionate leader” and a “proven reformer” who “will challenge an education establishment that has forgotten too many children.”

Speaking at president-elect Trump’s “Thank You” rally in Michigan last month, DeVos declared: “It’s time to make education great again in this country. This means…expanding choices and options to give every child the opportunity for a quality education regardless of their zip code or family circumstances…letting states set their own standards and finally putting an end to the federal Common Core.“

“The answer isn’t bigger government. The answer is local control. It’s listening to parents and it’s giving more choice.”

The Detroit News in DeVos' home state of Michigan has also endorsed her, stating in an editorial that “the hysteria surrounding the West Michigan native, fanned by teachers unions, is overblown, and much of the criticism overlooks the work DeVos has actually done.”

"The narrative pushed by the left is that the city’s experience with charters is a failure. But Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes has studied charter performance in urban areas and found Detroit to be a model for other communities, despite having one of the highest-poverty urban charter populations," the editorial said.

Detroit has the lowest math and reading scores of all large cities in the country, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which issued the city's public schools a dismal report card after its most recent assessment of student achievement in 2015.

HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) tweeted his support for DeVos, calling her an“excellent choice" to head the Department of Education.

Last week, a group of 20 Republican governors sent a letter to Sen. Alexander in support of DeVos, stating their belief that she will “fight to streamline the federal education bureaucracy, return authority back to states and local school boards, and ensure that more dollars are reaching the classroom.”

However, DeVos’ detractors cite her ardent support of school choice, her history as a lobbyist, and the fact that she has never worked in a public school system as reasons not to confirm her.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, issued a statement referring to DeVos as an “ideological, anti-public education nominee” who has “no meaningful experience in the classroom or in our schools” and who “uses her money to game the system and push a special-interest agenda.”

Six Senate Democrats sent her a letter last month stating that DeVos and her family have “spent considerable amounts of money to influence both federal and state government officials over the years.”

“Your active political fundraising of course does not disqualify you from holding public office,” the letter noted, “but it does raise questions about whether you will be able to discharge your duties fairly on behalf of all Americans, including those without the wherewithal to contribute to causes or candidates you support."

Thank You CNS and Mr Eichner.

GOP Bill Defunds Schools That Ban American Flag

Funny, but we can't seem to recall schools getting enough money to provide the services they're supposed to provide from any other entity with a Flag.

weaselzippers

Also known as sanity.

Via Washington Examiner:

Dozens of House Republicans have introduced legislation that would prevent federal funds from being used to fund schools and colleges that ban the American flag.
The bill was introduced the same week that Hampshire College in Massachusetts decided to remove the American flag from the campus.

Initially, the college lowered the flag to protest President-elect Trump’s election victory, and student protesters burned the flag the next day. The flag was removed entirely as a form of further protest, and eventually raised again Dec. 2.

That started a petition asking asking that federal funds be removed for any college that takes down the flag. And on Friday, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and 52 other House Republicans put forward legislation to accomplish that.

Thank You Wash Ex and Zip.

VIDEO: Common Core III: Exec Says "I Hate Kids . . . It's All About The Money"

"Old White Men, who are frustrated with their lives."

More of that tolerance, diversity and inclusion.

VIDEO: Common Core II: Textbook Publisher "It's Never About The Kids"

"No, I hate kids. I'm in it to sell books. Don't even kid yourself for a heartbeat."

Atlas Shrugged-er: Government Now Preying On High School Graduates

zerohedge

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/27/2015 15:10 -0500

Via Investment Research Dynamics,

A friend sent me a news item from U.S. News and World Report which reported that Louisiana’s board of education is going to implement a new policy which requires all students to fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid in order to receive a high school diploma.

Think about that for a moment.  In order to receive a high diploma, the State of Louisiana is requiring that high school seniors fill out an application which would enable them to go into debt the moment they receive their diploma.

This is a mind-blowing event.  Most jobs available to high school grads do not require a college degree.  But some might require a high school diploma.  I have to wonder what the motive is behind this.  A significant portion of student debt is now being used for corporate-owned “universities” which are largely worthless to everyone except the entities who own the schools.  Goldman Sachs is a big player in this space.   Student debt, backed by the Taxpayer, is just another form of wealth transfer from the public to the banks and big corporations.

The amount of student debt issued and outstanding is now over $1.3 trillion. Obama pats himself on the back because student loan delinquency rates are falling a bit.  But this is because he has made it easier to defer payment. While 11.5% – roughly $150 billion – is in delinquency, about 50% of this debt is in some form of grace period, deferment or forebearance.  Loans in deferment are not part of the delinquency rate calculation.  The true level of delinquency and technical default is probably somewhere in the 35-45% range.

I have to believe that the requirement being implemented in Louisiana is violating some part of the Constitution.  Of course, with the simple stroke of a pen, Obama can override the Constitution with yet another Executive Order upholding this requirement.

This requirement in Louisiana is exactly the type insane laws which were imposed by the Government as described in the narrative laid out in “Atlas Shrugged.”  Acts of mandate which enabled the Government and the corporate friends of the Government to suck wealth from the populace and from productive workers and redistribute the largesse amongst themselves.

We know how the story unfolds in “Atlas Shrugged.”  Unfortunately, I see the same type of story unfolding in the United States.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.  – Thomas Jefferson

Thank You Mr Durden.

Teachers Union Says ObamaCare Hurts Women and Old People But Totally Supports It Anyway

Meet the Edu-Unionistas indoctrinating today's kids into tomorrow's Voters.

Daily Caller;
by Eric Owens

The National Education Association, America’s largest teachers union, released a report on Thursday which is critical of an excise tax on high-cost health plans. The tax is required under the Affordable Care Act.

The steep excise tax is intended to burden people who enjoy generous health plans. However, the NEA’s report asserts, the excise tax actually tends to burden women, older people and people who live in places where the cost of living is already high.

Milliman, an actuarial and consulting firm, produced the report for the NEA. (You can view the full report here.)

The problem, the report suggests, is that the rules for assessing the excise tax erroneously equate high insurance premiums with lavish health insurance benefits. However, people often must pay higher premiums for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the benefits they receive.

“We believe that it’s more accurate to call the excise tax on high-cost plans an ‘Age-Sex-Geography Tax,’” said NEA spokeswoman Kim Anderson in a statement obtained by The Daily Caller. “America’s tax policy should not be a game of chance for working families.”

The report “highlights a significant and damaging flaw in the excise tax,” Anderson said. “The excise tax on high-cost plans can randomly and unfairly cause hardship to American workers and their families. In fact, the excise tax will disproportionately hurt women and older workers.”

Despite the finding that an important Obamacare provision wrongly punishes women and old people with “arbitrary and negative consequences,” NEA leaders are unable to bring themselves to oppose Obamacare, President Barack Obama’s signature first-term law.

“We continue to support the Affordable Care Act because it already has strengthened health benefits for kids and families and provided an opportunity for millions of Americans to obtain quality, affordable care,” Anderson explained.

The teachers union has called on the Republican Congress to pass a law that will “avoid inflicting harm on American workers and their families” while keeping the rest of the Affordable Care Act intact.

Last month, the NEA was in the news because “Wisconsin Jobs Now” — a small, radical group to which the union gave $125,000″ — sponsored a rally at which two protesters unfurled a banner declaring “ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS.”(RELATED: OWN IT: ‘ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS’ SIGN Shows Up At NEA-Funded Protest)

In November, the NEA, which spends millions of dollars each election cycle on campaign speech, zealously endorsed a constitutional amendment that would limit everyone else’s ability to spend money speaking about politics. (RELATED: Teachers Union Wants To Amend Constitution To Limit EVERYONE ELSE’S Campaign Speech)

“Let us not deny the regular people a voice in determining the future of our country,” urged NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, adding that she wants “to turn down the volume on corporate speech.”

In January 2014, prior to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, the union representing over three million elementary and secondary teachers sent a 1,122-word letter to Obama outlining its policy wish list. Almost none of the longwinded letter bothered to mention the needs of American students.(RELATED: National Education Association IGNORES K-12 Students In State Of The Union Wish List)

Thank You Daily Caller and Mr Owens.

"The teachers union has called on the Republican Congress to pass a law that will “avoid inflicting harm on American workers and their families” while keeping the rest of the Affordable Care Act intact."

Oxy, meet Moron.

 Unionistas like these are the people who defacto forced the creation of sites like CampusReform.org

Educational Rot

How did we get to this sorry state of affairs where America openly tolerates the wholesale violations of Federal Criminal Statutes being perpetrated against the Citizenry for their unspeakable offences of having thoughts and moods which a Klatch of Opinion Dispersers Voted into existence as Pathologies, by a democratic show of money grubbing self interest?

Human Events has;

Educational Rot

By: Walter Williams

American education is in a sorry state of affairs, and there’s enough blame for all participants to have their fair share. They include students who are hostile and alien to the education process, uninterested parents, teachers and administrators who either are incompetent or have been beaten down by the system, and politicians who’ve become handmaidens for teachers unions. There’s another education issue that’s neither flattering nor comfortable to confront and talk about. That’s the low academic preparation of many teachers. That’s an issue that must be confronted and dealt with if we’re to improve the quality of education. Let’s look at it.

Schools of education, whether graduate or undergraduate, tend to represent the academic slums of most college campuses. They tend to be home to students who have the lowest academic achievement test scores when they enter college, such as SAT scores. They have the lowest scores when they graduate and choose to take postgraduate admissions tests — such as the GRE, the MCAT and the LSAT.

The California Basic Educational Skills Test, or CBEST, is mandatory for teacher certification in California. It’s a joke. Here’s a multiple-choice question on its practice math test: “Rob uses 1 box of cat food every 5 days to feed his cats. Approximately how many boxes of cat food does he use per month? A. 2 boxes, B. 4 boxes, C. 5 boxes, D. 6 boxes, E. 7 boxes.” Here’s another: “Which of the following is the most appropriate unit for expressing the weight of a pencil? A. pounds, B. ounces, C. quarts, D. pints, E. tons.” I’d venture to predict that the average reader’s sixth-grader could answer each question. Here’s a question that is a bit more challenging; call your eighth-grader: “Solve for y: y – 2 + 3y = 10, A. 2, B. 3, C. 4, D. 5, E. 6.”

Some years ago, the Association of Mexican American Educators, the California Association for Asian-Pacific Bilingual Education and the Oakland Alliance of Black Educators brought suit against the state of California and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, charging that the CBEST was racially discriminatory. Plaintiff “evidence” was the fact that the first-time passing rate for whites was 80 percent, about 50 percent for Mexican-Americans, Filipinos and Southeast Asians, and 46 percent for blacks. In 2000, in a stroke of rare common sense, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found CBEST not to be racial discriminatory.

Poor teacher preparation is not a problem restricted to California. In Massachusetts, only 27 percent of new teachers could pass the math test needed to be certified as a teacher. A 2011 investigation by Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News found that more than 700 Georgia teachers repeatedly failed at least one portion of the certification test they are required to pass before receiving a teaching certificate. Nearly 60 teachers failed the test more than 10 times, and one teacher failed the test 18 times. They also found that there were 297 teachers on the Atlanta school system’s payroll even though they had failed the state certification test five times or more.

Textbooks used in schools of education might explain some teacher ineptitude. A passage in Marilyn Burns’ text “About Teaching Mathematics” reads, “There is no place for requiring students to practice tedious calculations that are more efficiently and accurately done by using calculators.” “New Designs for Teaching and Learning,” by Dennis Adams and Mary Hamm, says, “Content knowledge is not seen to be as important as possessing teaching skills and knowledge about the students being taught.” Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar’s text “Methods that Matter” reads, “Students can no longer be viewed as cognitive living rooms into which the furniture of knowledge is moved in and arranged by teachers, and teachers cannot invariably act as subject-matter experts.” The authors explain, “The main use of standardized tests in America is to justify the distribution of certain goodies to certain people.”

With but a few exceptions, schools of education represent the academic slums of most any college. American education could benefit from slum removal, eliminating schools of education.

Thank You Human Events and Professor Williams.

Cultural Hegemony: How The Politics of Scum Invaded Medicine

Is That Kid Normal? BMS & Janssen/Risperdal BACK IN SCHOOLS: Condemning Kids, Again

CNSNews has;
Is That Kid Normal? Teachers Trained To Notice When Students May Not Be: TRAINING SPONSORED BY DRUG COMPANIES

January 29, 2013

---

By Susan Jones

(CNSNews.com) - If parents can't or won't admit their child has a mental problem, a teacher with rudimentary training may spot the warning signs for them.

In the wake of the Newtown shootings, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation's fourth-largest school district, says it will start training hundreds of school psychologists, social workers and guidance counselors, teachers and school staffers to identify possible mental health problems in junior- and high-school students.

"Teachers, coaches and other school personnel who interact with students every day, are in an excellent position to notice when students may be showing signs of mental health problems," says the American Psychiatric Foundation, the philanthropic and educational arm of the American Psychiatric Association.

The American Psychiatric Foundation (APF) offers schools a training program called "Typical or Troubled." It says the trademarked program – sponsored by three pharmaceutical companies that make psychotropic drugs -- has been used in 420 schools nationwide, the latest being the Miami-Dade system, as The Miami Herald reported on Monday.

“If we are going to seriously address the problem of mental illness, it will take the whole community linking hands and focusing on the teen years, when so many mental disorders first emerge," said Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho in a news release announcing the training. "The 'Typical or Troubled?' program is the best way we know of to do that.”

As part of the training, school officials will get tips on how to approach parents whose child may need professional help.

“Parents can miss the signs of early mental illness during the teenage years, when young people can be moody or rebellious," said Paul T. Burke, APF's executive director. "How do you tell when a teenager’s behavior is cause for concern? This program, by educating parents, helps inoculate them against denial when their child is truly troubled, and gives them strategies for how to respond.”

Nationwide, says APF, approximately 15 million children between the ages of 9 and 17 have diagnosable psychiatric disorders, with about 90 percent of those children exhibiting early warning signs by age 15.  More than 60 percent of young people with mental health disorders are not getting adequate treatment, the APF says.

But with schools acting as a mental health referral service, calls for treatment may increase. And starting in 2014, Obamacare requires most health care plans to cover “essential benefits,” including mental health services.

APF says its "Typical or Troubled" program is sponsored by drug-makers Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, and Shire, and it teaches that effective treatments for mental problems include therapy and medication or a combination of both.

Signs of trouble

Even "typical" teens may have mood swings, distressing thoughts, anxiety, and impulsive behavior, the experts say. APF’s training program is intended to help school personnel understand the warning signs that indicate something more serious than growing pains.

Mental health disorders that can affect teenagers include depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and eating disorders.

APF lists the following as some of the warning signs that may require intervention:

-- Marked change in school performance, sleeping or eating habits

-- Aggressive or non-aggressive consistent violation of the rights of others-- Opposition to authority, truancy, thefts, or vandalism

-- Abuse of alcohol or drugs

-- Self-injury or self-destructive behavior

-- Sexual acting out

-- Threats to run away

-- Frequent outbursts of anger, aggression

-- Strange thoughts and feelings and unusual behaviors

-- Inability to cope with problems and daily activities

Judge Steven Leifman, who sits on the APF board of directors, says school is the "perfect place to bring students, parents, teachers and other school personnel together and ultimately to connect troubled youth to the help they need.”

The Miami-Dade school system says the training of school guidance personnel will begin in late February, after which the counselors will share with teachers and other school staffers what they've learned.

The school system also plans to hold parent education workshops and a public awareness campaign.

Colleen Reilly, director of "Typical or Troubled?“ told The Miami Herald that after what happened in Newtown, "This needs to be a national curriculum and a part of every school.”

The newspaper quoted Reilly as saying the goal of the program is not to have teachers diagnosing students: "We're asking them to learn about and notice the warning signs, and if they see a problem to refer them to someone who has a better grasp.”

And what about normal children who are flagged as "troubled?" Judge Leifman told The Miami Herald, "The worst that would happen is they’ll get evaluated.”

Thank You CNS and Ms Jones

OK: Remember Who is Paying for this, and Who they Are.

DEPOSED: Risperdal, Prolactin & Gynecomastia: The Gorsky Transcript Pt III