Klarinet Archive - Posting 000909.txt from 2004/03

From: ormondtoby@------.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: Re: [kl] not just the music department
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 22:03:26 -0500

Okay, since both Tony and Sue asked, the following is first hand
information, not hearsay.

One of my childen lost 1/4 of her brain tissue during an accident. She
is an ordinary kid in many respects. She walks and smiles normally,
speaks clearly, has no scars, etc. She can think her way through many
word problems, such as: "If you had three buckets, one of them capable
of holding 20 quarts, another 9 quarts, and the third 4 quarts, explain
how you would measure out exactly 18 quarts." But she cannot remember
addition or multiplication tables, nor can she count backwards. Thus
she can solve the problem above if she has a calculator to do the
subtactions.

The "No Chld Left Behind" law resulted in a regulation that any child
who uses a calculator will be penalized. Thus kids who don't need
calculators are not affected, and most kids are not allowed to use
calculators during the tests.

The calculation of the penalty is complicated, so much so that I can't
explain all the details. But just to give you a taste of what happens,
under some circumstances which I am unable to define, the child who must
use a calculator will receive the lowest score achieved by any other
school in the system, regardless of what the child can do on his/her own
with a calculator.

Schools in our district feel that they have been penalized excessively
for having "special education" students in their district, and thus they
have lost funding for reasons over which they have no control.
However, it turns out that if they take calculators away from the few
children who can't survive without them, the district's total score will
not decrease as much as if they had allowed these few students to use
calculators.

So our schools are considering "no calculators for handicapped kids" as
a strategy to get their full share of federal funds.

(By the way, fast food restaurants insist that all employees use the
cash register to calculate the proper change for any purchase.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
klarinet-digest-unsubscribe@------.org if you get the digest.
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.------.org