It has to be a change, where public education systems are made accountable regarding policy, administration and the educators through the law. Not as a mandate, or a mission statement. Accountable for the individual state of reading, writing and numeracy of the individual student, schools, boards, state and so on. Accountable by inserting an independent agency, that has the authority to make the school accountable for their literacy stats. By making the school accountable, the educators will be less likely to blame the state of Little Suzie's reading to factors that are outside the environment of school, where the focus will be on the curriculum, programs, instruction, and other education factors that has an impact on literacy. The advances and knowledge in the last 20 years on learning, has discredited much of what is currently being done at the school level. The reason being, is that much of the administration, teachers skills and school boards are operating in the same fashion as the 19th century one room school house. The focus is on the management of children, rather than the learning needs of the individual child. Where policies are designed around the educators' needs. rather than the children. It is a system where parents and their children are made to adapt to an education system, rather than the education system adapting to the individual and concerns/environments of families. In other words, families who are in need of help in the education system, must dance through all the rules and regulations, where help is given under narrowed criteria that is often based on subjective data, such as grades. How often are parents concerns of reading and writing ability are brushed aside, due to subjective reasoning on the parts of educators. Reasons such as maintaining a 50 %, behaviour problems, not focus enough, or parents not doing enough at home. The IDEA laws is another example, where it is left up to the individual parents to enforce the laws at the individual schools, but the schools can often ignore the laws, because no one above them is making sure the schools are following the IDEA laws. If the schools had consequences of ignoring the IDEA laws, parents and their children's needs would be address very quickly at the level of the classroom. A school would not want it to go further to the upper levels, where the main focus would be on the school's teachers, methods, reading programs and other things such as assessment tools. The onus would be put on the school, to prove that they have done everything to improve Little Suzie's reading ability, with the tools and resources that are at hand.
In court cases of today, it is often the parents that has the burden of proof on their backsides. It is where very subjective evidence is often used against the parents. In Canada, very few parents have won law suits. Rulings for the most part have favoured schools, based on weak evidence of actions taken by the school, to help Little Suzie. Evidence such as the teacher given Little Suzie, 10 minutes of personal instruction, 2 to 3 days of a school week. Or, a teacher combing the Internet for knowledge and applying the knowledge to Little Suzie. What is not question is the effectiveness of what the teacher or school is doing to help Little Suzie. From what I have read in the Canadian court rulings, the school just needs to prove that they are making an effort to help Little Suzie. The burden of proof, rests in the hands of the parents where parents spend most of their time defending their parent abilities, rather than their efforts in making sure Little Suzie has the basic skills needed to navigate in like.
In today's society, a very important and one of the most essential skills, is to become a good reader, writing and skilled in basic numeracy. The education system can be held accountable, by a simple measure of the literacy rate. The rising illiteracy rate in the last 20 years is rising, and our courts, schools, and society at large are not willing to take the necessary measures to decrease the illiteracy rate. Compared to countries, whose mother languages are not English, they have a much lower rate of illiteracy, because the education systems of those countries concentrate on the foundation skills of reading, writing, and numeracy in the grades of K to grade 6. They also have a much lower rate of identified learning disabilities as adults, because the children are getting the correct help at the level of K to grade 6, and by grade 7 - most if not all have overcome their learning problems. Another factor is the differences between the definitions of learning disabilities between European and North American countries. My child if in Europe, would be automatically considered dyslexic, and not LD. To be LD under the European version, a child has a development delay that affects their cognitive ability and intelligence. Most LD children in North America are dyslexic, and it is where our schools fail our children, by not providing the correct help or even keeping up-to-date on the advances being made in the dyslexic field.
As a result, our leaders and administration of the education system, come to the table with their own misconceptions, biases, and confusion. Often policy is being made for our children, where it is not based on science research, but rather on the collective whole on their personal experience, misconceptions, biases, and the lack of expertise and knowledge. Add to it, is the standard accounting practices to control costs. This is where one-sized-fits-all approaches are used, rather than using methods that takes into account the learning needs of the individual. You see throughout the system, including the text books, where it is the student that has to adapt, rather than the educators, schools, or tools that should be adapting to the individual learner. I often wonder if the health systems adapted the one-fits-all approaches, how the individual who has diabetes or another common diseases would fare out. Would a certain percentage not get treatment because they did not meet a certain criteria? Health systems do not operate in this fashion, or otherwise our citizens would be a lot sicker. It is where, even at the lowest access point, medical decisions are being made taking into account the individual's needs, as one of the priorities. If a person needs to acquire knowledge of diabetes care, it is provided without the patient requiring proof that they are in need of this knowledge. Why is it our education systems, work in the opposite way, where it is the parents and children that must dance to their tunes and demands? Accountability is lacking within our public education system, where no one is responsible for the rising illiteracy rate, the rising LD rate, and other rising concerns. Should not our highly qualified educators and those who work in the education field, be held accountable at the same level, as our highly qualified medical professionals, in relationship to services rendered and outcomes. In the case of education, reading, writing and numeracy services are link to outcomes.
The answer to your question, is courts should be the last course of action and what should be done, is a wholesale change from the bottom to the top, and from the top to the bottom. In order for that to happen, schools need to change their priorities where it is child-centered and all activities and actions are directed towards the needs of the individual child and learning abilities.The change that needs to take place is how our education systems are governed, and more so on the need to eliminate and root out subjective reasoning that often dictates policies, to be replace with objective reasoning based on sound and proven education based-research. Much like our health systems in western countries, where medical procedures change according to the medical science and research and not on subjective data such as their social-economical standing in the community.
Sorry, I went on for a long time. It is really a complicated question, with so many factors at play within the education system. The whole education system needs to be change!