This NYC teacher of children with autism is having trouble teaching her students the Common Core.
Readers, do you have any advice for her?
“I just started teaching full-time in NYC as a special educator for children with autism. Upon arriving my new job, I have not received any support and help from my administration. With the new common core alignment for my students, I know that many of them are just not ready for that kind of learning yet. It is ashamed that my administration is pushing me to teach my kids how to retell details from a text when some of them still need to learn how to hold a pencil, do potty training, or drawing a line. I am absolutely opposed to this common core alignment in NYC. I do see this new standard as a way to set up special educators to fail.
As an educator, I like for my students to thrive in their learning at their own pace, especially for students of special needs. However, the more I get pushed around by the hierarchy and “educratics”, I do not feel like this job is a profession that I can respect any longer. I have put too many long hours to make my students learn but only to have the administration telling me that I am not challenging my students enough.
I feel that there has to be a better solution for making our student learn and be ready for the 21st Century. For every state to get funding for RACE TO THE TOP, that is just setting every child to fail and fall in the bottom.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Do your students take the NYS tests or do they receive alternate assessments? You are legally required to follow whatever it says on their IEPs — it really doesn’t matter what your administrators want you to do other than that. Document EVERYTHING daily — what your students were taught, how far they progressed, and any contacts with parents or your administration. If you have any problem with your administrators — especially any problem regarding following the students’ IEPs — contact you school’s UFT representative or delegate, your district’s UFT person and, especially, Carmen Alvarez, the UFT person in charge of special education. All those numbers, other than those of the people in your building, are on the UFT website.
I believe she said she is new to her position. Unless she is tenured, contacting her union will most likely get her fired. It won’t be too hard for admin to cook up some bogus evaluations. The union can do nothing to prevent it.
If the special ed students are not getting the instruction certified by their IEP and she does not report it she is participating in education malpractice. By going to her union she can report the situation and keep her name out of it. Or are you saying the students should be sacrificed for the sake of her job?
DB,
As long as she has a method of contacting the union without having her name revealed and if the union can take action without implicating her. Whistle blowers have a very poor history of employment post whistling. The students will be sacrificed if she loses her job. There is a lot she can do for her students from inside the system that she cannot do from outside. For her own health and chance of future employment, she may have to leave but on her own terms.
I agree that there is more she can do for her students from within the system then from the outside, but the UFT is collecting cases like this as evidence of massive violation of special ed law by the NYCDOE. The union has a stake in keeping her in her job and I’m sure they will protect her anonymity. The other thing she could do is suggest to the parents or guardians of the children that they make formal complaints to the DOE.
I agree! However, I know first hand several large school systems mandated objectives for sped teachers to use. The computerized IEP goals were the on-grade level objectives ONLY! Could not enter or search for other goals, more appropriate for the the student. Sounds insane, but true. Gen.ed. has mandated this practice to imply that ONLY on-grade level teaching and testing would occur. None of this makes sense. Did not meet needs of kids. Parents were taken advantage of. Not that unusual practice. One of these school systems also practiced systemic testing cheating. Still spending millions of $ on that mess. Now, also has many sped legal cases.
I have noticed that certain educational catalogs are now advertising ways to align IEP goals to the common core. I immediately follow the unsubscribe link whenever such advertisements come to my school year. That is my way of refusing any part of it. I draft IEP goals based on the needs of individual students. There seems to be some sort of current notion that all IEP students are supposed to be served in the same way, such as pushed in to general education classrooms. The push for common core standards seems to be part of that.
Also people who do not teach IEP students or any students may not realize (or care) that special education teachers must legally spend a significant part of the day teaching non-academics. This is in accordance with areas of specially designed instruction. This includes social, behavioral, emotional regulation, executive functioning, and adaptive skills. Anyone with a student who has 45 minute screaming fits, or can’t make it through one recess without some sort of trouble or breakdown, will appreciate what skilled special education teachers can do.
Go where your students are and begin there. The reason your administrators are ignoring you is because they haven’t a clue how to implement the CCSSs, either. The curriculum is static. It’s there as you need it and when your students are ready. You’re in the human growth and development business. Learning is the by-product. Put your educratic blinders on, take your students by the hand and move forward, one day, one student at a time. The CCSSs are not your lead…the students are. When you let them be your guide, you will not fail. BTW…if you don’t love this profession, walk away until you find the one you do.
You would have to be very discrete but have you thought about alerting your students’ parents about this? Things like potty-training are probably a lot higher on their list of goals for their children than retelling a story.
One year the school tried to take my kid’s full-time EA away since he was doing so well (of course the reason he was doing so well was that he had the support he needed, that is, he had a full-time EA). I thought it was very daring of his teacher to write me a series of emails on this — I would not recommend leaving such a traceable paper trail — but armed with the information she gave me, I was able to raise a big enough stink with the administration that Mrs. O was returned to my kid’s side full-time.
Look to the subject curricula. If they have been aligned to the CCSS, then set developmentally appropriate goals along the lines of the content, and you should be fine.
There is no “that kind of learning,” only learning. It is good to see your IEP goals in the context of challenging advanced goals– nothing wrong with aiming a student in the direction of lofty academic achievement.
There was an editorial in the New York Times this week about a woman, diagnosed as a schizophrenic, who became a professor at (I think) the University of California.
Let the student’s development and pace be the limiting factor, not anything external.
CCSS doesn’t need to tie anyone in knots– at least until they start using it as a bludgeon to push through unneccesary testing or start to think that they can just put aligned CCSS content on a program and replace human teaching with online learning and testing. Until then, there is a lot of worthwhile stuff in there.
Here’s Elyun Saks’ Op Ed piece on her experience from Sunday:
Pacing for IEP’s should be flexible, not simply slowed down. Sometimes a student may be ready to accelerate. We must be ready for that and enable it.
The whole public school system is designed to fail. That opens the door for charter schools that are automatically considered better before they even open their doors.
Here is what the authors of the CCSS have to say:
Application to Students with Disabilities
The Common Core State Standards articulate rigorous grade-level expectations in the areas of mathematics and English language arts.. These standards identify the knowledge and skills students need in order to be successful in college and careers
Students with disabilities ―students eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)―must be challenged to excel within the general curriculum and be prepared for success in their post-school lives, including college and/or careers. These common standards provide an historic opportunity to improve access to rigorous academic content standards for students with disabilities. The continued development of understanding about research-based instructional practices and a focus on their effective implementation will help improve access to mathematics and English language arts (ELA) standards for all students, including those with disabilities.
Students with disabilities are a heterogeneous group with one common characteristic: the presence of disabling conditions that significantly hinder their abilities to benefit from general education (IDEA 34 CFR §300.39,2004). Therefore, how these high standards are taught and assessed is of the utmost importance in reaching this diverse group of students.
In order for students with disabilities to meet high academic standards and to fully demonstrate their conceptual and procedural knowledge and skills in mathematics, reading, writing, speaking and listening (English language arts), their instruction must incorporate supports and accommodations, including:
• supports and related services designed to meet the unique needs of these students and to enable their access to the general education curriculum (IDEA 34 CFR §300.34, 2004).
• An Individualized Education Program (IEP)1 which includes annual goals aligned with and chosen to facilitate their attainment of grade-level academic standards.
• Teachers and specialized instructional support personnel who are prepared and qualified to deliver high-quality, evidence-based, individualized instruction and support services.
Promoting a culture of high expectations for all students is a fundamental goal of the Common Core State Standards. In order to participate with success in the general curriculum, students with disabilities, as appropriate, may be provided additional supports and services, such as:
• Instructional supports for learning― based on the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)2 ―which foster student engagement by presenting information in multiple ways and allowing for diverse avenues of action and expression.
1 According to IDEA, an IEP includes appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the individual achievement and functional performance of a child
2 UDL is defined as “a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that (a) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (b) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains

• Instructional accommodations (Thompson, Morse, Sharpe & Hall, 2005) ―changes in materials or procedures― which do not change the standards but allow students to learn within the framework of the Common Core.
• Assistive technology devices and services to ensure access to the general education curriculum and the Common Core State Standards.
Some students with the most significant cognitive disabilities will require substantial supports and accommodations to have meaningful access to certain standards in both instruction and assessment, based on their communication and academic needs. These supports and accommodations should ensure that students receive access to multiple means of learning and opportunities to demonstrate knowledge, but retain the rigor and high expectations of the Common Core State Standards.
Click to access application-to-students-with-disabilities.pdf
UDL seems to be the panacea and magical ingredient that CCSS is hawking here and , as they see it, has also been missing from the low-expectations special education teachers’ arsenals. Coincidentally (?), the advisors to the UDL are all deeply invested in the educational software industry. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but I always remember the admonition to “follow the money” and there’s a great deal of money floating around special education, technology, and UDL. Now that they have the imprimatur of the CCSS, they are guaranteed success, are they not? UDL is the brainchild of the non-profit CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology), and here are who they list as their corporate partners:
Corporations
Don Johnston, Google, Houghton Mifflin, IBM, Measured Progress, Microsoft, Nimble Tools, Pearson, Scholastic Inc., Texthelp Systems, Tom Snyder Productions, Watchfire
http://www.cast.org/about/partners/index.html
Now UDL may be wonderful. It may be a big leap forward in special education. It may be the answer to special education teachers’ prayers and something that the students benefit greatly from. Or not. I always weigh these groups against their funders and the company they keep and they are deeply entrenched with the usual suspects from the reformist industry. Buyer be cautious!
This teacher is describing the exact teaching position most of us are in, especially those of us who have students with special needs in our classes. Common Core is ludicrous. I sometimes feel that I am on Candid Camera or on an episode of Punk’d, as I sit through professional development sessions.
David Coleman, Arne Duncan, President Obama … what is your response to this teacher? WE ARE WAITING!
While we are waiting for a response from the “experts”, my advice would be to …
Let the students’ IEP’s drive your instruction.
Document what you are doing for the students and your rationale.
Communicate with the parents of your students on a regular basis. Develop a positive relationship with them. Let them know of any “new” requirements that are placed upon you. Parents can be your strongest support.
Believe in yourself and the students. Stand firm. I do think that one day common sense will prevail.
Yesterday, I attended my second common core workshop given by the president of CAHSA. It would appear in the field of speech and language, the SLPs are now to become “assessors” and “not fixers’ and that we will NOT be teachers BUT rather we will become experts in modifications and accommodations. Direct services will become a thing of the past in favor of the collaboration/consultation model which if I remember correctly failed miserably in the 1990s.
Coincidentally (or not), over the last 6 months there has been fervent and renewed energy to nail down 504 plans so much so that we are moving away from IEPs in favor of the 504; After my indoctrination, I can see why we are scrambling to put 504’s into place.
Given this new paradigm shift, the IEP may become obsolete.
Do you know where we are headed in terms of rewriting a new IDEA and/or does the IDEA needs to rewrite itself.
It would appear that all is quiet on the Western front.
This teachers letter exposes the “Let them eat cake!” mentality of the naked emperors. The flaws in this part of the Common bore are so obvious that the push to impose them has to be about money or removal of SpEd from schools. Costs too much and doesn’t produce a usable worker. No profit in doing what’s right for all SpEd kids. Push that out of the schools and back on the family. With that additional burden created, how long before we see a SpEd industrial complex similar to the prison industrial one spring up when this designed to fail policy achieves it’s objective? The reformer agenda is resegregating many schools so there should be no surprise when we see a campaign to return to warehousing these kids.
As a parent of a special needs teen in a ROC-area, NY high school, this is EXACTLY how some of us are feeling .CCS fosters ‘inclusion’? Phhht.
Yes, I do have advice:
This teacher should do what she needs to do in order to keep her job for the time being. In the meantime she should get her applications out to districts that appreciate their teachers, if such districts exist at the present time. If not, I hope she sets her sights on a more professional job and works towards it.
I taught for 42 years, most of the time when teachers were treated as professionals, and loved every minute of it. However, I would never have agreed to teach under the conditions described by this teacher and hope no one else does either. When qualified teachers become very difficult to attract and retain, we will see a difference in their treatment. Until then, teachers can do little except teach subversively, unite with other teachers, or move on.
One more point: This teacher should keep very careful records regarding her pupils because most of the fraud against disabled children comes from the district level, and not the teachers. I’d like to see more lawsuits coming from teachers, who see a lot.
I’m strongly against over-testing, in favor of local control, and skeptical of the common core.
I support boycotting testing.
But we can’t stop teaching just because there are flaws in the CCSS or because there is evidence that CCSS is being put in place with ulterior profit motives.
The daily education and development of the student still must be held sacred. We can’t let them suffer, even as chaos swirls around us all in the tempest of this movement of Corporate Reform And Privatization. (C.R.A…..)
… or Corporate Reform And Privatization Of Local Academics….
Linda Johnson and many others:
Great advice! Most administrators are running scared and are passing on their fear in the form of punitive tactics to get you to comply or es ort you out of their school. Very few have the b***s to speak up and be able to defend and know what sped teachers do.
I worked once for such a bone-head and he insisted that a student with an IQ of 57, mainstreamed in a US History class “learn” the same content as typical kids. Could not shine a light on his ignorance, even though I tried. When he entered my class to observe, I was teaching about the Civil War. My sped student was working on discriminating between blue and grey, while my typical students were discussing the Civil War events. Dah! He never approached me again. He understood my point as all kids got what they needed. Did any of this make sense? No!
When you deal with ignorance and people without a spine, then you must get clever when the s**t hits the fan. We can defend all that we do because of our education, the kids’ needs, the IEP, the sped eligibility and the IDEA requirements. One thing teachers have to learn is that we have to have big hairy b**ls to stay in the profession we chose. Done it for 40 years and have no regrets. Remember, NCLB was pushed by one of our most famour “C” students – George W. Bush. All this craziness is now at a fever-pitch and rolling over kids and teachers like giant combines on million acre farms.
Stay strong!
From my understanding this is not a problem with common core but with misuse/misunderstanding of standards/pacing generally. Standards are a set of ideal learning objectives at a certain time in a child’s educational career. Standards are not a curriculum pacing guide, nor should they be used to decide when to teach something if a child is not instructionally ready for that material. I’m not familiar with anything in common core materials that suggests that those variables are ignored, so it seems like user error on the administrative level if this teacher is being forced to teach material before children are ready.
The Common Core has frustration brilliantly built in. The CCSS architects call it “rigor”. This entire untested grand experiment is an oppressive mandate all on its own. I’m living it.
Educate yourself. Learn from the “experts”.
Click to access E0702_Description_of_the_Common_Core_Shifts.pdf
Most administrators in several settings I have worked in insisted that the objectives needed to be ‘at grade level’ even if the student is not at grade level. Even if years below grade level. I know, garbage! But, this is not unusual. Makes no sense to sped teachers, psychologists, or parents. Sped teachers are directed by the same ignorance as other teachers are. So, there are teachers who are squeezed out of their jobs because the students are not performing at grade level, and are not passing the standardized state required tests. Even kids with
IQs standard deviations below average. None of this makes sense, or is legal, but people in authority misuse their power and push sped teachers out of a job.
There is still no cure for the Common Core!
NYC SpEd Teacher: Hang in there. First, are there other SpEd teachers in your building? If so, seek their help. Hopefully, they will be experienced teachers and, as such, they will help you to navigate around the administration and their harmful policies. (And–believe me–it CAN be done–I retired in 2010, so I did have to give “standardized” tests and participate in the very bogus Response to Intervention–LOTS of ways to get around R.T.I. & get those kids on the fast track to evaluation!) They will tell you how to best communicate with parents, who will (and should) be your best allies insofar as helping and advocating for their children (it may be that not every parent will be helpful, but–trust me {35 years in SpEd}–most will).
If there are not any other SpEd teachers in your building, work closely with the school social worker (and I say “the,” because, sadly, your school probably has one for every 400 students {as was always the case in most schools I taught}). Even in that situation, the one social worker always had IEPed students on the caseload, and managed to work very closely with all the SpEd teachers in the building. Should you NOT have any SpEd colleagues in your building, find some in your district (we always had district SpEd meetings), and ask them to help you w/your concerns. Last–but not least–contact your local SpEd advocacy groups, and also join professional SpEd organizations (such as the NY Council for Exceptional Children; any autism/spectrum groups).
They will be collegial, will be happy to give you help and advice and–best of all!–you would have not have to fear the wrath of administration, because you are making these contacts outside of school, gaining some additional professional development
(which can only benefit your students & should make your supervisors happy).
Good luck to you and–above all–DON’T quit/give up. Even if your administration isn’t supporting or helping you (and that IS their job–shame on them!), there are so many people out there who can help you help your students.
Here’s what California has published on the subject: http://www.cdd.unm.edu/autism/handouts/Article%20Constable%20et%20al.%202013.pdf
Boy do I agree. My twins are in second grade and have gone from doing well in first to failing in second because of the damn CCSS!!! They have always been in regular Ed with 20 min of resource time to finish things. NOW they have 45 min of resource time because they are only “summarizing ” stories and not Retelling”. Last I checked, this was a part of their DISABILITY (pragmatic language disorder). And don’t get me started on math. How is this legal? It’s pushing my kids into a more restrictive environment!!! I hope lawsuits are filed by special need families. My kids don’t belong in direct instruction.
And as a parent…thank you teachers for working so har on behalf of our kids. As it was recommended-work with the parents. We are (usually) more than willing to help/step up to the plate with admin if our children are not getting what they need!!! I couldn’t be a teacher in today’s environment!!! Good luck!
As an aside-because of the way this year is starting out with CC, I as the parent ask for IEP teams wrongs every 4-6 weeks. Yes, call me the pain in the ass parent but I call myself advocate. 🙂 It enables me to keep track of what’s happening and help us all troubleshoot. I don’t think parents realize they can have IEPs anytime they want!!! I ask for the data each time. I will always be on my teachers’ side….admin is another story….sometimes my role is to come in and be “the heavy.”
We have been told no-no to a menu of IEP goals, IEP must be individualized. But I am finding tons of pre-made goals to use on IEPs that are common core goals. Why do parents not put together a class action suit and sue? Feds.say that IEPs must be individualized. Everyone learning the same thing in NCLB and CCSS is not individualized.