… and funding becomes unavailable even though the citizens in those states still have to send in tax dollars to support those agencies ..
What is The Federal Department of Health and Human Services?
It is the sprawling agency responsible for administering millions of Americans’ health insurance, approving drugs and medical supplies, regulating food and responding to infectious-disease outbreaks.
At this point in my life and career, I am in favor of centralized programs, information, and research that can be disseminated to the states from federal departments run by those trained in the fields they study and cover. That’s why it is better and more efficient — not wasteful or over-priced “paper-pushers” as too many seem to claim — because the best and the brightest in both their training and their uncanny intelligence to think outside the box and follow scientific protocol centers that such people form an effective network. The issue at this time, though, as we are dropping rapidly into an autocracy and many states are making sure the science behind medicine is still available. The states that keep people from getting good medical care haven’t been in favor of minority groups for a long time. It will get worse before it gets better.
“Americans who relied most on Trump for COVID-19 news among least likely to be vaccinated,” said the Pew Research Center. Trump changed his mind—for a while—after his first term and even sat for ads encouraging people to get vaccinated. https://pewrsr.ch/3ELu76N. And this is important. We should all be able to change our minds when we receive information that makes us think and make different choices.
Here is the difference in political persuasion for covid vaccine usage: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rates-continues-an-update/. People need the clearest, most trustworthy information when it involves their health and survival.
Here is one look at the state-by-state covid death rate (The number of deaths per 100,000 total population):
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_final/COVID19.htm
My point is that leaving some choices and options to each state has a very large outcome difference for its citizens. It’s not the citizens; it’s their state governments who end up making the decisions. Additionally, while Trump was getting the best medical care, he made fun of anyone who got vaccinated. And many of those people died. What didn’t make sense to many at the time makes sense now.
I feel the same way about the federal Department of Education.
How does this apply to meeting the needs of the gifted, you ask?
I don’t know if I’ve shared this in any posts or not, but over the years I’ve become aware that my deep study of Levels of Gifted and “finding the right fit” has become weird for me since I also discovered over time that some groups have been deliberately kept from getting a good education or any “best fit” opportunities. We simply can’t quantify how many people are super intelligent at this point. And once everyone has free and supportive access to what will make them thrive, within their families, communities, and also in their educational settings, there might be far more people who are intellectually and creatively amazing! I believe there will always be differences between and among us … but I now believe that any remaining differences are part of how we decide what we want to do, where our interests are. We don’t need to be competing with everyone for the same job, for instance.
Behind my concerns are the tremendous disparity of outcomes in the different states. The low or high achievement scores reported by the fifty states each year are fairly consistent. It isn’t because the people who live there are so inherently different, though. It’s because of the different access and treatments that hip-hop across one zip code to another as well as the leaders at the top of their state’s governments and what they choose to fund and not fund. The value of your house determines how much tax you have to pay for the local schools in your area. That’s nuts and unfair. We can and should make changes. I’ll talk more about that. I need time to mull it over because although it is peripheral to my work, it hasn’t been at the center of my work. I want to be accurate when I do share.
I am still in favor of federal and state support of public schools for all children, but I am also in favor of school choice until we get the system of schooling brought up and away from a reliance on taxing home and business owners to pay the public school costs. I don’t mean nonpublic or religious schools, though, because we have laws about the separation of church and state. Our public schools should be so good that very few people need to go to private schools anyway.
Again, it probably made sense to have only local control way long ago during the days of small towns and assorted villages coming together for educating the children in consolidated school districts. I’m not so sure, though, that total local control has been as assiduous at giving good education access to all families and students. And this affects low income or marginalized groups’ gifted children, as well.
I have thought for a long time that medical issues are not the responsibility of public schools funding. I agree with the current administration is not totally wrong with that concept. I will be looking out for any attempts to marginalize students with disabilities, though. The costs for serving children with disabilities should fall on the medical community. This is a difficult topic to discuss in a blog, so all I ask at this time is for you to consider what you really think how schools can effectively serve all students as I bring this up.
I specialize in giftedness and the outcome of any “wrong” services, understanding, a good fit, and academic support for such children. Gifted is not part of IDEA, https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/individuals-disabilities/idea#:~:text=The%20Individuals%20with%20Disabilities%20Education,for%20infants%20and%20toddlers%20and. IDEA provides this:
“The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children, supports early intervention services for infants and toddlers and their families, and awards competitive discretionary grants.”
At this time, giftedness is not seen as a disability, although — in many ways — it is a disability for their learning in most schools and yet there is no “right” to ask for more. Families still have the legal option in most parts of the US to homeschool (at their own expense, loss of one parent’s paid livelihood, for example) or to switch to a district that fits them better, or a specialized private school for the gifted, a Montessori School they will have to pay for, etc. It’s a mess at this time and we need all the options we can get.
I am not going after the importance of taking care of disabilities. It is vital that we as a nation at all levels support the families whose children have needs that would bankrupt a family.
I do not believe, though, that IDEA initiatives should be part of the public school budget and local taxing, however. It might belong under Health and Human Services and the delivery system for services will remain in the education realm. Here is a short article that explains what’s going on. For those of you who read it, you will be better prepared to discuss other aspects of how complex this whole IDEA situation has become as parents scramble to meet the needs of their children during their school years. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-special-education-funding-actually-works/2023/04
For those of you who are curious about this, here are a couple examples of funding and how it is handled state by state:
For Gifted and Talented:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/http://funded.edbuild.org/reports/issue/gifted
For children with different disabilities (this one is from 2008, but things haven’t gotten easier):
https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/78/10/7810.pdf
and a more recent one for my state,
Minnesota: https://education.mn.gov/mdeprod/groups/educ/documents/hiddencontent/cm9k/mdu4/~edisp/prod058299.pdf
Summary
Health and Education are really intimately connected for children and families. What they are called and the labels put on them as far as department names are not as important as how we effectively support our children. Our children grow into adults, so what kinds of adults we have depends strongly on what we do for them during their childhoods.
Very few people are aware of what’s going on with these funding issues. School systems might still be the best place to meet the needs of different students, but it is my opinion that the funding for the major costs of multiple or severe disabilities should be elsewhere fully funded, like maybe the health department. And I believe that the disparity in states’ education and achievement results is a clear indication that “where you live” shouldn’t be as responsible as it currently is for whether or not each of us gets the services and support we need.
I would love to see my readers do their own looking and searching to see what they think both about this topic and about good solutions. Let’s work together.
Keep in mind that we have a strong wish in this country that all babies be born. But if it is a societal wish — rather than a choice left to the individual mother or family, must she or her family then also bear the lifelong brunt of taking care of a disabled child or otherwise extremely exceptional child with no societal help? I absolutely don’t want to get rid of IDEA. I want it fully funded but I am not yet sure where else that funding should rightly and fairly come from. What do you think? It’s been weighing on me.
Thanks for reading. Anyone can respond.