Peter Greene writes that Arne Duncan has figured out why children with disabilities get lower test scores: Low expectations.
Greene writes:
“In announcing a new emphasis and “major shift,” the US Department of Education will now demand that states show educational progress for students with disabilities.
“Arne Duncan announced that, shockingly, students with disabilities do poorly in school. They perform below level in both English and math. No, there aren’t any qualifiers attached to that. Arne is bothered that students with very low IQs, students with low function, students who have processing problems, students who have any number of impairments– these students are performing below grade level.
“We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel,” Duncan said. (per NPR coverage)”
Tennessee Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman agreed with Duncan.
Greene writes:
“And that’s not even the stupidest thing. We’re not there yet.
“Kevin Huffman, education boss of Tennessee, also chimed in on the conference call, to explain why disabled students do poorly, and how to fix it.
“He said most lag behind because they’re not expected to succeed if they’re given more demanding schoolwork and because they’re seldom tested.
“That’s it. We should just demand that disabled students should do harder work and take more tests.
“When Florida was harassing Andrea Rediske to have her dying, mentally disabled child to take tests, they were actually doing him a favor, and not participating in state-sponsered abuse.”
So that’s the Department of Education’s solution for children with special needs: Give them harder work and test them more frequently. But why should that be surprising. That is the DOE’s idea for pre-K, for K, and for all children. Harder work and more tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Now he’s channeling GW Bush. Low expectations? This man is a clueless idiot.
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Mr. Rhee—err… Kevin Huffman was no better when he was V.P. for TEACH FOR AMERICA, and was embroiled in a financial scandal… covered by CBS News here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/teach-for-america-gets-schooled/
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“In announcing a new emphasis and “major shift,….”
I think there’s a typo in that last word. Get rid of the f.
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Good one and so true.
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The term “disability” is very broad. The number of special education children is directly proportional to the amount of money there to serve them. This is why State and Federal money causes kids to be labeled at an earlier age, actually creating disabilities through social stigma. No child should be labeled before third grade, unless with a serious handicap.
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I agree with Joseph. System-induced disabilities are frequent.
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I can tell that you guys have a lot of experience working with special needs children.
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I read an except once, I think in a psychology textbook, talking about labeling theory. A psychiatrist said that he had a man on his back ward who kept the thumb of one hand inserted in his anus to “keep his brains from falling out”. With the other hand he tore out his hair because “it belongs to his father”. “You’re telling me,” the psychiatrist said, “that he does these things because someone called him a schizophrenic?”
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Evidence please?
I can provide you with a lot of evidence that says otherwise. Unless you are talking about a specific disability, which maybe true. I too have questions on certain “eligibility” but as a whole, system-induced disabilities are not frequent.
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Do you have evidence of this? I don’t see it in my district. Just preparing all of the IEPs is too onerous… The money isn’t worth it.
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IEPs (Individual Education Plans) are mostly nonsense and mostly ignored because they are nonsense. Many kids just need an alternative setting away from the military model and often may be geniuses.
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Actually, I have seen much the reverse: kids who NEED special education services denied them. Did you know that if a child has a lower IQ, between 60 and 80, but they are working and functioning as well as they can without services, that they CANNOT qualify for services? It’s the deficit that’s the key. So a child who is working to his IQ will actually be denied services? These kids fall through the cracks.
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Didn’t we discard these IQ models ages ago. Is Pearson still making them?
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Threatened Out West is correct. The tests are not necessarily IQ tests, but do measure discrepancy. In the biz, these students are called flat liners. Threatened Out West is equally correct that denial of services to these youngsters is a tragedy. I had several of these students come to my room for afterschool tutoring and help with homework. They cared desperately about succeeding in school. I refused to accept a stipend for running after school tutoring so that I had the freedom to accept whoever came through my door. Of course, that’s not nearly enough, but it was all teachers could do.
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Marian
Isolating kids is not as productive as a child being in a supportive classroom, there they can receive support from colleagues and enlightened teachers. Children will only advance with their peers and not the stigma of Special Ed, which narrows their learning agenda and stigmatizes them. Learning happens in numerous ways and some kids just may not be fit for the classroom of nonsense, particularly today..
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The key, Joseph, is “effective supports.” I get NONE of those in my classroom. I get the kid and a copy of what interventions he or she needs. That’s it. Otherwise, I have to do all of the work on my own. It’s a good thing that my husband teaches special education and can give me some pointers, but it’s ridiculous to mainstream some of these struggling students when they get NO help. I feel terrible, but I can only do so much when I have 10 kids with special needs, and 5 English Language Learners, in a class of 35. That happens more often than you might think. So if they’re “pulled out” for reading or whatever, they at least get more one on one help than I can possibly give them.
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Where is your evidence on that?
In order to qualify for special eligibility diagnosis, one has to be assessed by a school psychologist and frequently other professionals. If they meet that criteria, they are diagnosed. There is no evidence people are unfairly being diagnosed at a “significant” rate. Actually, in my school district, there seems to be a lot of non-special education experts (lol) who keep insisting we are diagnosing improperly. However, each and EVERY TIME we look at the data, we find that is not a correct statement. There is no evidence that this is happening in a major way across age, eligibility or grade. Not even by English Learner status, which we looked into as well.
Again, from my experience, people who say stuff like this have very little experience in the Special Education field.
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Which data, and has it been proven? School psychologists have no experience in the classroom. Some kids are just over stimulated by the classroom setting and need a quiet space to work, perhaps under a desk. Natural lighting is also a factor as well as nutrition, Psychologists are just into drugs as evidenced by the data.
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I taught for more than 34 years as a special ed. teacher. Particularly in the past couple of decades, I disagree students are identified too often, and too young. Special Education services are expensive and I don’t know of any districts who wish to take on unnecessary costs. With exceptionalities like Asperger’s Syndrome (mild autism), it is in students’ best interest to be identified early and provided with assistance, particularly in regard to behavioral issues. Role playing potential problems enables to think through in advance likely problems. What no one seems to be taking into account, the number of students who get exited from a program once they have obtained a measure of proficiency or functionality. In Special Ed., we do not get to keep our success.
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Districts will take on the costs if they have the money. Special Ed is a jobs boon for the unions. You have never seen a special ed child that might not be eligible for a main stream classroom? So many special ed teachers are just doing “test prep” nonsense.
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Unions have nothing to do with Special Education placement. I never worked in a district with extra funding, nor have any of my friends. For the most part, students with problems are under identified, not the reverse. Special Education does have mechanisms to take in youngsters under exceptional circumstances. Over the years I had two extremely bright students assigned to my caseload because they suffered from severe and deteriorating diseases. (Both died within 4-5 years of being my student.) They could not have tolerated the physical rigor of being in regular classes full time. Asperger’s kids are frequently very bright, but need Special Ed. services to assist with behavioral issues and working with Regular Ed. teachers on what to do when meltdowns occur. We also see students who perform poorly on formal testing as a result of being traumatized (abandoned, raped, forced into prostitution by parents); witnessing a suicide or murder of a family member, etc.). These are where we sometimes see great growth, and we exit them from Special Ed. Finally, we’ve always had the ability to place students in regular classes when we think they can succeed.
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Whaaa? Do you work for Huffman or Arne because you are talkin’ crazy.
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The dream is over (John Lennon)
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Do you know the loops parents have to go through to show to the school system that their kids have handicaps, not to mention the ‘social stigma’ and the emotional trauma and shame that comes with admitting that your kid is not normal and that you cannot help them by yourself. You make it sound like parents take pride in things like, “Hey look my kid has ****.” Do you know how difficult it is to tell people you know that your kid is not quite right? And how do you define a serious handicap. Is autism a handicap? It is extremely hard to diagnose at an early age. Is one semi-blind eye a serious handicap? One deaf ear? I think the inability to empathize or sympathize or understand what is really going on are serious handicaps and the most prevalent handicaps of our age. But it is okay, you do not have to worry about the ‘social stigma’ for that because I would not want the public to spend a dime on a person like you, it is too late for you.
IEP are very useful. And the teachers typing them up clearly put in a lot of time and efforts given how little they are being pay. Do you know that most special-ed teachers are part-time (aka no tenure, no pension)? Do you know the loops one have to go through to become a special-ed teacher? Do you actually know how much teachers make in general? Have you ever read one of these plans? Seriously, it is people like you that are creating the ‘social stigma’, making it sound like helping people in need is a waste of money. Look elsewhere for savings, corporate welfare, military or higher officials’ (like Mr. Duncan) paycheck — because they don’t need it with all the possible lobbying gigs. Robbing money from defenseless children is just immoral, if not stupid.
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The “cause” of kids being labeled, or anything on earth for that matter, is humans. We are, by our nature, a species that likes to classify and categorize. Sometimes classifying is helpful, sometimes it has no effect, sometimes it is harmful.
As a high school math teacher, there are some “labels” that I need to know about: visually impaired, allergies, prone to seizures. I need to know if someone is allergic to chalk, for example. Likewise, my students need to know that I am allergic to airborne scents such as perfumes, colognes, cigarette smoke. In 14 years of teaching, I’ve been taken to the ER only once because I tell people about my “label”.
Other things, I can see on my own, such as “Sam breaks out in a sweat when I give him a quiz, then scores very low, but he is fine when completing regular practice problems. In order for me to know if/what he has learned, I will need to do something other than cramming him in a room full of peers and shoving a piece of paper in front of him.”
Or there’s the other end of the spectrum such as “Jill gets bored in class to the point of either blurting things out, or falling asleep but still aces problems on her school work. Has she already taken the class? Does she read/study ahead? How can I help her?” In neither case do I need a label, but rather a quick discussion. On the other hand, a “label” might save time for their future teachers.
And, for what it’s worth, I have friends who can identify these and other types of individualized needs clear down to kindergarten. Why? Because teachers pay attention to each of their students daily. I disagree with your “third grade” statement. Each individual child should receive education that is appropriate to their needs, at the appropriate time, not at or until a set grade. AND, it shouldn’t matter if the child has a label that says “IEP” or not.
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A number of years ago I invited the NJ “reformers” Chris Cerf and Andy Smarick to observe special education children (autistic, cognitively impaired and multiply disabled). They passed on my invite. Every test driven evangelist needs to spend a few days working with these kids to understand their struggles. You don’t have to be a Broad graduate to know that special education children learn differently and their progress needs to be measured differently. But then again special education students rarely attend charter schools.
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In Delaware students are qualified as dialed by parents, teachers, and child psychologists after multiple assessments that score abilities as well as academic achievement. The decision of the team is not based on available funding. And the ability of students to access information, store information, recall information and perform tasks, algorithms or critical thinking -does not depend on teacher-set expectations, but on cognitive ability.
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The process for intake is similar in many states including California. If anything students are under identified, and not the reverse. One reason is the population is so mobile. If a student moves to another district, officials need to begin at the beginning. And the process usually begins with regular teachers noticing that a student is not succeeding in as he/she should in a regular environment. And lack of progress cannot be tied to overall lack of effort.
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Actually, it is Peter Greene who apparently doesn’t understand that parents and advocates for children with disabilities have long yearned for what was announced yesterday, as I wrote yesterday. http://systemschangeconsulting.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/results-driven-accountability-raising-the-bar-for-students-with-disabilities/
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Did you even read the article and the points that it made?
For your convenience, here again is the link to the article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-greene/disabilities-testing-education_b_5528835.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education
For your further convenience, here’s and excerpt:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“Arne Duncan announced that, shockingly, students with disabilities do poorly in school. They perform below level in both English and math. No, there aren’t any qualifiers attached to that. Arne is bothered that students with very low IQs, students with low function, students who have processing problems, students who have any number of impairments — these students are performing below grade level.
” ‘ We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel,’ Duncan said. (per NPR coverage)
“And I’m pretty sure we don’t know any such thing. I’m pretty sure that the special needs students in schools across the country are special needs precisely because they have trouble meeting the usual expectations.
“There’s no question that special needs students require more educational attention than simply being warehoused. And it’s true that unnecessarily low expectations are no help to any student. But it is also true that an entire educational sub-specialty, a whole other class of training, has been developed simply to address the challenge of teaching students with special needs. Learning support (what we used to call special ed) teachers team with regular ed teachers to find ways that meaningful and useful educational progress can be made, so that special needs students, no matter how great or small the need, can progress and achieve and become happy, functioning adults.
“It takes a lot of care and effort and understanding of what special challenges each individual student faces. While it’s true for all students, it is doubly true for special needs students that one size does not fit all.
“Yes, expectations must be high. But they must also be realistic. Expectations are not magical.
“But who knows. Maybe Arne is on to something. Maybe blind students can’t see because nobody expects them to. Maybe the student a colleague had in class years ago, who was literally rolled into the room and propped up in a corner so that he could be ‘exposed’ to band — maybe that child’s problems were just low expectations. Maybe that 6-year-old sitting and crying at his desk because he can’t understand the letters like everyone else — maybe that child is just the victim of low expectations. Maybe IEPs are actually assigned randomly, for no reason at all.”
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Yes, I did read the article. Did you read my blog? Are you aware that the vast majority of students with disabilities do not have any cognitive impairments and should be able to perform comparably with their non-disabled peers if they are given the appropriate services and supports? Are you aware that his ridiculous statement about blind children shows exactly how non-thinking Greene is because most blind children should be able to perform fine in school if they receive appropriate accommodations and supports? Finally, are you aware that virtually all disability groups support RDA?
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I am not so sure that he is referring to disabled children who don’t have normal cognitive functions as being those who will be “forced beyond their capabilities”. It is those who do not have cognitive ability who are also being expected to perform ” at grade level”.
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Only about 1% of children with disabilities do not have the capacity to perform at grade level. The deepest misconception about special education is the incorrect belief that students with special needs have severe cognitive impairments. Very few have such severe cognitive impairments, which is why virtually all of them, given the proper services and supports, as envisioned by the IDEA, should be able to succeed at grade level.
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Hmm. Fine. Not in my experience. But believe what you wish. The kids in our school with various nonvisible disabilities don’t perform up to grade level, even with plenty of support. The money for the required support isn’t there. Also, when it takes someone 25x as long as another to perform a task, he/she will not “keep up”.
I am all about getting them to do their best, but not at the same speed as everyone else. And some do not comprehend after 50 exposures to the same skill or concept. I worked with all kids as much as I could but I think some students need smaller class sizes. Some need one on one. And the rest of the class should not be ignored. Also some principals stack classes so that the teacher is overwhelmed. Students need to reach their own maximum potential. ALL students
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These aren’t just my beliefs. The information I provide to you is based on the actual identification of childrens’ disabilities and my 20 years of advocacy for these children. It is also supported by disability advocacy groups, as reported on the front page of today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/us-to-step-up-scrutiny-of-states-on-special-education-b99298027z1-264427401.html
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IF the child has normal cognitive abilities, then of course they can succeed on grade level. They should never be “dismissed” or negected due to someone assuming they are unable to succeed. That is not my issue. There ARE students who have cognitive impairments.
When a child requires an entire morning to complete an assignment or test, he/she misses other activities and instruction. That cannot be denied.
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This entire conversation hinges on what is meant by “normal cognitive ability”, which needs to be put in context. Resource students do have normal cognitive ability, other than in the identified area of disability. In order to qualify for services, they must score in the bottom 2-5% of the population in a specific area/s. This is where systemschangeconsultant confuses himself. In my years as a Resource Specialist, I’ve had students not just succeed, but excel, in academic arenas. One student of my won a top science award in the entire district for one of his projects. I’ve had students who have been near the top of their classes in mathematics. The point is, they never qualified for Special Ed. services in these areas. Where they tested poorly to begin with, they rarely rise above one to two years behind grade level (by middle and high school years). They do learn to compensate; often with excellent organization and study skills.
One other point, Special Ed. students already participate in state testing. On an individual basis they are tested annually as well. Every 3 years they are given a complete battery of testing, including some with the school psychologist. If anything, they are already over tested. Arne Duncan is a buffoon.
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In our district, at least 2 students with identified learning disabilities became valedictorians.
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systemschange – how long did you teach? What grade(s)? How many special needs kids have you taught?
Just because kids don’t have “cognitive impairments” doesn’t necessarily mean they can perform at grade level. A child with dyslexia, for instance, isn’t exactly “cognitively impaired”, but if he can’t read, he can’t perform at grade level. A child with ADHD who can’t sit still is going to have great difficulty performing at grade level because he can’t sit still long enough to learn the material. Similarly with other disorders.
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systemschangeconsulting,
” Are you aware that his ridiculous statement about blind children shows exactly how non-thinking Greene is because most blind children should be able to perform fine in school if they receive appropriate accommodations and supports?”
You can’t just decode the post and say that you “read” it. His point was not about blind children being able/not being able to perform fine in school. The point, clearly, was that merely expecting something will not make it so. If you’d like to argue against that point, please do so, but maybe next time put some thought into it before you write a “non-thinking” post that accuses someone else of being non-thinking.
By the way, your apparent tendency to purposely misconstrue the points of others throws into doubt everything else that you’ve said.
Cheers!
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Oh, SCC, Peter also wrote this: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-should-arne-have-said.html
Perhaps it is more to your liking.
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Systemschange, I assume that by cognitive impairments you are referring to low IQs? There is certainly evidence of functional impairment of various cognitive skills even when IQ is considered to be average or above average. A full case study goes well beyond an IQ test, which tells you little about how a child functions.
I find the push to full inclusion scary. It is like going back to a time when children with disabilities were denied services through the public schools. If they can’t meet the same standards as their peers on the same timeline, then eventually they will be failed out of the system. And whose fault will it be? Theirs and their teachers. The idiots that decided that all the students needed was to be held to high standards and subjected to rigorous assessment certainly won’t take any responsibility.
I find it hard to believe that you have any first hand knowledge of children with special needs that is more than of a highly superficial nature.
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Also, according to your line of thinking—and that of the article you linked to—the problem with say… a quadriplegic lacking the ability to swim… is that no one ever held the quadriplegic to “high enough expectations”, or exposed him to “enough testing and accountability” that would measure and motivate him to swim.
Those fools who claim that his lack of swimming ability are because the nerves connecting his limbs to his spine and brain are severed…. well, they’re just engaging in the “soft bigotry of low expectations”, and of course, let’s not forget to condemn those “incompetent swimming teachers” who are actually one of the main obstacles to success in this case.
SOLUTION: “hold” that quadriplegic “accountable” and “test’ him in a way that “soft bigots” with their “low expectations” have so far stupidly refused to do….
throw him into the deep end of a swimming pool, and watch as the corporate reformers’ “high expectations” inspire him to do the backstroke.
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“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Attributed to Albert Einstein
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No, Jack, I would never suggest that a quadriplegic should be able to do things that s/he is physically incapable of doing. But I do believe that all children with learning disabilities should be able to read as well as their non-disabled peers if they are given the proper services and supports and so does the National Learning Disability Association.
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systemschangeconsultant
Is this the snake oil sales job you give to desperate parents? My dyslexic son CANNOT ever read as well as his non-disabled peers.
Your statement suggests that you have little practical experience or technical understanding of the effects of dyslexia on reading efficiency and comprehension.
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“But I do believe that all children with learning disabilities should be able to read as well as their non-disabled peers if they are given the proper services and supports and so does the National Learning Disability Association.”
———————————————
So you’re admitting the existence of “children with learning disabilities”?
Good, we agree on that. It sounded like you didn’t believe that they exist, and that so-called “special ed” kids were actually fully-functioning students being inaccurately categorized as “special ed,” and were merely victims of low expectations and an not enough testing—Duncan’s asinine analysis and prescription. (Oy vey!!!)
Now here’s where we differ.
You claim that, given enough services and supports, children with learning disabilities…
(and these are YOUR words)
“… all… should be… able to read as well as their non-disabled peers.”
No, no, no, no, and NO!!!
If, like myself and other teachers, you’d sat at a small table for weeks and weeks co-teaching a small class of kids with learning disabilities—kids who truly have a disability and not those full-functioning kids who were mis-diagnosed…
If you had ever done this, you’d see that there is a “ceiling”, or limit to how much they can improve their reading or math abilities—a “ceiling” that varies from child to child, but one that is below that of even the “lowest functioning” mainstream student with no diagnosed learning disabilities.
As with the hypothetical “quadriplegic” I wrote about earlier… no matter how much one-on-one attention, or private tutoring, or innovative whatever, these students won’t ever be able do everything that a child without learning disabilities can—such as read or calculate math… in particular AS FAST as a mainstream child… Certain of these kids often can read, but it takes them three, four, five times as long… the same with Math… and that’s as good as they’re going to get. These particular students won’t be able to handle complex, critical, analytical thinking. They NEVER will… and that’s just fine.
To insist and demand that kids who truly possess learning disabilities “just put their minds to and do it”—even with whatever supports and services—is not only a bad idea. It’s child abuse.
I remember my first experience with special ed. kids—a short-term assignment in a class where kids had mild-to-severe autism. No matter what the regular teacher and I did, the students just couldn’t do more than struggle to focus and then decode and read the simplest of sentences… and it was slow going at that with the student assigned to me at that point of the day.
Eventually, I became overcome with emotion, and left the room, going into a small store room with a window to the class. I turned my back, crouched down out of sight, and started weeping at the students’ plight. As quick as I could, I got myself together to return to working with my assigned student. I was hoping that no one saw me, but someone did.
The veteran special ed teacher, took me back in storage room and asked, “You were crying now, weren’t you?”
“Yeah… I just feel so bad for these kids… ”
Then she just let me have it—as well she should have. “Yeah, well, your maudlin acting out like that is of absolutely no use to my students. Neither they nor their parents want your pity, or anyone else’s pity. You’re now living in the world of ‘Why do they have to be this way?’ or ‘If only they weren’t like this, Boo-hoo, boo-hoo.’ Let me tell you. That is the absolute LAST thing that these children need. We can’t focus on what MIGHT have been, or what COULD have been, and the just wallow in that… We have to accept them AS THEY ARE, and then move forward from there, loving them and teaching them AS THEY ARE.
“Think if it this way, Jack. Just as with a mainstream child, there’s two states regarding their academic outcome— ‘where they ARE NOW’ and ‘where they CAN BE’ if we do everything possible so that they can maximize their abilities. Our goal, your goal, our students’ goals, their parents’ goals… is to close the gap between those two states as best we can… and yes, we have to make peace with the reality that, after they have maximized their abilities, they will never be on a par with their mainstream peers… and that’s okay, and that’s no reason go blubbering away in the closet. And you need to make peace with that reality, and make peace with that NOW! TODAY! And you have to do it before you go back to working with Benny… or I’m going to ask that you be assigned to another classroom. Got it?!”
“Got it.” This led to the several weeks I mentioned earlier—quite a learning experience, let me tell you.
That happened over a decade ago, and I remember that like it was yesterday. We later took the students out for a walk on the nearby and legendary Venice boardwalk. I remember seeing a regular local eccentric—a guy with a robe and turban—go past on roller skates, as he played an electric guitar. The kids were transfixed by him and the other Venice characters they saw, and this contributed to what turned out to an upbeat outing to Venice Beach.
We even went to lunch at a restaurant… on LAUSD’s dime… yeah, baby!
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Ignoring his rip on Petre Greene, “systemchangeconsulting” is absolutely on target. Regardlees of the current expectations advocates truly believe that the least restrictive environment for the vast majority of special needs students is the reg-ed classroom; Including the barrage of testing. This is the main reason why advocates for special needs students are not seeking legal action against NCLB/RTTT/ESEA.
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There should be a least restrictive and least disruptive environment for ALL students. When does one person’s need trump everyone else’s need? I am very frustrated with all this for ALL students.
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Agree 100%. However we are up against the mind set of special needs advocates who have no classroom experience to temper their strong views regarding nedds v achievement
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He also ignores the roles of parents and the child’s own ambition. There are children who are in special education who don’t have parent support, don’t do homework, etc. Often, children in later years are eventually referred to special ed. because they don’t work at grade level (often from years of not doing work, homework, and poor parental support, drug abuse, etc). The schools often are forced to admit them to special ed because woe to the school that doesn’t graduate every child. The intrusion of the federal government in every aspect of education has done nothing but create a bungled mess where schools have to lower standards in order to meet federal requirements. The school had high expectations and standards but the families failed to have the same for their children, thus, the child performs well below grade level and now the feds say the school must be at fault. Who in the hell is up there in Washington coming up with this stuff? There are truly kids who deserve and qualify for special ed. services. But, there are plenty who end up there for reasons I mentioned that had NOTHING to do with the school’s “low expectations”. What teacher or school wants to purposefully lower the bar of expectations?
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I’m not sure why the least restrictive environment (LRE) seems to be the regular classroom by default. Many students do not function to the best of their ability in that environment. That doesn’t mean that they never will but forcing the issue is wrong. And if their best is highly disruptive to the twenty-five other students then they do not belong in that classroom. Districts that are strapped for cash tend to take an overly simplistic view of LRE because it saves them money. The ability of parents to be effective advocates for their children varies with the more educated and/or more well off more frequently having the resources to do so (although they are not always the most realistic).
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Perhaps there are new methods or ways and excellent teachers to bring out the best in them, but I can assure you putting pressure on then to pass a test above their abilities is not the answer. Were Arne to suggest really excellent funding, extra aides and materials, new training for teachers we’d all jump for joy, but to suggest pushing the kids harder scares us to death because they have been pushed and pressured to be better all their lives and they still fall short due to their disability.e is not suggesting that these kids get special help, he is suggesting that they get extra pressure. It’s like taking a baseball bat to a person who has a broken leg and say go faster. What is needed isn’t going to be provided by Arne or the federal government.
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I agree that test pressure isn’t the solution by itself, but for too long schools have been allowed to let students with disabilities slide, so I believe that RDA is a step in the right direction.
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Actually, Systems, if we carry out your understanding that LD students should all be able to meet the same standards as their peers then shouldn’t we be able to say that all students should be able to reach the same standards as students who have shown above average abilities or talents? What meaning does average have if everyone can meet an average standard? If I am not mistaken an average performance of any kind is no longer average if everyone can do it to the same level.
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You missed the point. Arne doesn’t give a flip about children with disabilities- he wants to spend less money on them and open up SPED to Teach for America temps, hence his alliance with Huffman.
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The point isn’t whether Arne gives a flip out students with disabilities. I’m not a fan of Duncan. However, he has appointed excellent heads of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS) which I do give him credit for. I have gotten to know the OSEP director, Melody Musgrove, who cares deeply about children with disabilities (as do I) and strongly supports RDA (as do I).
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I feel like far too many of your assumptions are wrong and therefore cloud your position on this issue.
Firstly, standardized test data is not a valid measurement of student learning, unless you strictly define what “learning” looks like. Therefore, any Federal legislation that looks at this data to attempt to measure how a state is serving students with disabilities will be misguided.
Secondly, I’m not sure where you get your research claiming that just one percent or less of students have cognitive disabilities that may impact academic achievement to the point they score poorly on tests. In my anecdotal experience as a SPED teacher, far more than that would qualify. Are you arguing that students with mild intellectual disabilities or spectrum disorders should “achieve at grade level” (eligibility category of IDMI, not SLD). I’m not suggesting it’s impossible, but it is not reasonable to EXPECT all students in the category to “achieve at grade level.” Should it even matter is a better question–test scores, again, are a dubious metric if we’re talking about student learning.
Thirdly, I would argue that this obsession with students being on “grade level” is not helpful for any student. It assumes that all students should be more or less equally skilled at precisely the same moment in time. Therefore, trying to get students on “grade level” is itself a misguided notion for any student, as individual differences (not the school, parents, teachers, etc) in each student will inevitably create a situation where some kids learn some skills at a slower rate than others in response to the same instruction. Change the instructional style or the content, and that speed and learning and the student’s position relative to peers may change, but the point is, “accommodating” students in the hopes that they reach “grade level” is a fool’s errand. Every child is different and trying to make every child learn the same thing at the same time is our public education system’s greatest failure for students with and without disabilities. Any policy that perpetuates this objective is garbage.
Lastly, I promise you, as someone who actually works with students with IEP’s and knows damn well that they deserve better, this policy shift by the DOE will not help our students. It will not. We will be forced to focus more on test prep and test scores as opposed to actual learning and remediation. We will be forced to do more BS grade level, common core assignments even though we know that helping our kids annotate some BS common core text won’t help them recognize phonemes or blend words together.
You (and the DOE) are right in saying that students with disabilities are not being wholly served in our schools, but just as with the current reform debate, change for change’s sake won’t necessarily help the students. We do need to reform the way we serve students with IEP’s and provide greater support, but holding states accountable based on test scores is more of the same, misguided, reformy-nonsense. Oh, and it also hasn’t worked anywhere for the last decade, so there’s that.
I would argue that most student with disability advocates who support this shift from the DOE do not understand teaching and learning or educational policy. Banging the drum on “high expectations” doesn’t mean they’re looking to hold the state accountable for the way we serve students with disabilities. A test score is a number, not an outcome, and students are neither outcomes nor bullet-points.
Final note: Don’t generalize. I’m a teacher and the fiercest advocate my kids will likely ever have outside of their parents. I had an IEP growing up and now I write them for a living. This new approach is not the solution and I oppose it with every fiber of my being.
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Thank you! You have said it all, you are one of my heroes.
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Yes, this is one of the stupidest and cruelest things to come from the DOE. Duncan is now targeting the most vulnerable student population. To be identified as having a learning disability, students need to score in the bottom 2-5% of the population on independent assessment in a specific academic area. Now, instead of extra help, they will get added testing? The Obama administration has reached a new low.
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And most kids in special education ALREADY HAVE EXTRA TESTING!!! That’s the most asinine part of this.
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When is self-serving cluelessness in a position of authority another name for cruelty and abuse? When…
😡
As a former SpecEd TA, I stop before I start using language that violates Diane’s quite sensible “Rules of the Road” on this blog.
😎
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When your only tools are hammers, all your problems become nails….
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OK…my sister takes care if her husband’s brother. He is 61 years old. He is blind. He was one of the babies who were blinded by being exposed to too much oxygen in their incubators in 1953. He is low functioning. He is likely autistic in that he has certain routines that he must have in place or he pitches tantrums and he performs repetitive actions such as rocking or pounding or picking at wall paper. As a boy he was placed in a school for education and training. He was not educable. His top function is at a 5 year old level. His mother had trouble believing he couldn’t be educated. No one was lazy. No one had low expectations for him.
He is given tasks to perform at home and goes to a Day School that he calls work. He is picked up and returned home via a school bus daily. But he must be on medications to control his behaviors and temper.
He is one example that shows just how wrong Duncan’s thinking is. But in order for him to receive government support there are monthly and other meetings that he and his caretakers must hold and goals are planned at each meeting. They expect him to do some things that aren’t reasonable or possible. But they are goals. Example: he can count coins but he can’t add coinage. He can’t make change. He can fold wash cloths. He can’t fold hand towels. He could nitvlearn braille although he was taught braille. He did not learn it. He likes to listen to music. At some meetings it has been criticized that he has never dated. He has the mind of a 5 year old. It is not an option. He goes to a yearly “prom” for special needs adults held at a church. He lives to go because of the unlimited food. (His diet is restricted at home). He doesn’t care to dance or show an interest in dating. He doesn’t remotely qualify for living in a group home.
My point: he is well cared for. He is happy. He is clean. He is loved. But he would have never been on “grade level”.
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I’m a HS science teacher who teaches mainstream non-AP classes that always have a mix of special ed and 504 students with various IEPs and so forth.
This is just beyond ridiculous. What are we….Lake Wobegon where all children are above average?
Perhaps we should create a special world for Duncan and Huffman where the lowest performers are the ones who perform their surgeries, fly their planes, manage their investments, and design their computers.
Two years ago I spent many many many hours before and after school working with one very sweet girl who just could not get passed the barrier of the science TAKS test that was required for her to graduate. After failing her 4th attempt and time running out in her senior year her parents were finally forced to transfer her to a local private school for the last 2 weeks of her senior year of HS which is what the students of means are forced to do in Texas to get around the punitive testing requirements. Private schools take these students in for a week or two, take a tuition check from the parents, transfer all the child’s public school courses and give them a HS diploma.
Of course the parents of children who lack the means to write a check to a private school are just out of luck and won’t ever earn a HS degree.
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I’ve been waiting since I heard this story to see the response. I believe my initial response was “oh, f***” this year was struggle enough having to assess Dre (5th grade,severe ID, working at a low preschool academic level) on 5th grade general ed content via the VAAP. Now what? I think Mr. Duncan needs a huge shot of reality! Where do I sign to oust him?
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And just how much money do the reformers want to spend bringing these children up to speed? Because that’s what it is going to take.
And yes, I have relatives with children with special needs and I teach children with special needs, although I wasn’t trained to do so, nor was I ever asked if I wanted to.In certain classrooms they get most of my time. We go at a much slower pace for a reason. Not because I have low expectations, but because it takes some students longer to absorb material. I have to hope that the general population of students understands the concepts we go over.
Inclusion for many of the children is a joke. We aren’t given the resources or the time.
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“And just how much money do the reformers want to spend bringing these children up to speed?”
Not a dime, except maybe on private charters that specialize in students with disabilities which can take the extra funding for those students and pocket it while parking said students in front of their “individualized learning” computer stations.
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7th grade teacher… and Dienne,
There is a war going on in politics right now, and we are being forced to take sides that don’t hold true to rational beliefs.
Pro-public education: Vote Democrat…… BUT that angers people who adamantly don’t want their religious beliefs being tampered with or their gun rights being violated or the military left un-funded.
Pro-gun rights: Vote Tea Party…… BUT they are funded primarily by the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family (owners of Walmart) who want to privatize all education and kill mom-and-pop small businesses by having a Walmart Super Center every 5 miles all over the US.
Pro-stay out of my church and doctor’s office: Vote Republican (non-Tea-Party)…… BUT that will keep the minimum wage low, health care monetarily inequitable (you get care if you can afford it), students over-tested everywhere.
There needs to be a middle-ground somewhere. We should be able to fund public education, allow for private education for those who think they need it, allow each citizen to live peacefully un-disturbed in their religion, fund military to both keep our country safe and provide humanitarian services to nations who ASK us for it, and so forth.
Unfortunately for America, no such political party exists!
YET???
I’ll keep praying! And I’ll keep teaching!
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I can’t stop crying. I think part of it is nicotine withdrawal (Day 2 after 40+ years of smoking) and then I think not. I’m so exhausted, so tired of trying to fight this stupidity. So tired of people that do not have kids with disabilities, do not teach ANY kids, and just look to make $$ off of this insanity like the so-called advocates (not mentioning any names like systemschangeconsulting that think they have ALL the answers and speak for us all. Spoiler alert!! You do not speak for me, my kids, or their parents) Maybe I need to wait until I calm down to write a sensible, professional response, since I rarely do on this blog. In the meantime, I will cry.
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Dear My Kids,
It’s all good! You go ahead and cry. But, I would like to go on record as agreeing with your message!
My school board of 5 had 3 seats taken over by anti-public-education folks. One has grown children who went to a parochial school. One has one child who got her GED after being home-schooled. And the third has one has a child in SpEd in a neighborhood school.
Now, one would think that this third one might be of sound mind when it comes to making decisions that are in the best interest of all schools in the district.
On the contrary, this third had a campaign funded by the notorious anti-public education group ALEC, takes pride in being a supporter of guns, and wants to turn as many neighborhood school into charter schools as possible. Why charter schools? Because of money. Because they don’t have to update their curriculum to keep up with changing technology or new findings in science or newly found historical documents. Because they are allowed to teach religion over biology. Because they don’t have to accept all children, and can be picky-choosey. This third person even nixed a motion that would have provided additional resources to their neighborhood school for SpEd.
Can you say MORON?
We are all in this together. As long as we don’t let them turn ourselves against each other, we can outlast their idiocy!
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FYI. I know why America is in economic trouble, people like Arne D. are making decisions for the rest of us and we are sitting back and doing nothing! Educational Historians will write that this past 15 years were the lowest point of intellectual thought by our Presidents and their appointed Educational Staff!
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I am simply furious. If this bird brain, Arne, is any indication of the direction of the educational leadership, I am disgusted and frightened.
I worked my rear off trying to accommodate students of a huge span of learning abilities. The ones I had least contact with were those who were the most able. I had no time.
Does he have one clue how much work it is to practically plan an IEP for every student? To act as if teachers are lazy, esp with ever-increasing class sizes, and frozen or lowered pay, is so insulting that it makes me nauseated.
Do these people realize what it takes to do this job? Oh, I know, just let a computer program magically find the students’ levels and adjust for each one for continuous progress while an IT monitor stands by. At the end thectest will evaluate the teacher as to whether Johnny improved from grade level 1 to level 5 because that is where he should be …because he is 11… And he should be functioning on 5th grade level…no matter his disabilities. Ridiculous. Absurd. Insulting. Ignorant. I could scream.
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I’ve often thought about how this era will be viewed decades from now. If you could get in the BACK TO THE FUTURE DeLorean and go ahead to the 2020’s or 2030’s or beyond, I predict that you would see the following.
This “Education Reform Era” will be viewed with the same disgust and shame that we now view
— the Salem Witch Trials
— the Japanese internment during World War II
— the hysterical, anti-Communist blacklist
— the Vietnam War
— Gulf War II, or George W’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and all that followed
or, to go to another country…
— the mid-1960’s “Cultural Revolution” in Communist China.
Regarding the blacklist comparison, Arne Duncan and his ilk will be viewed in the same light at Joe McCarthy and his enablers.
Regarding the Vietnam war comparison, Arne Duncan will be viewed in the same light at Robert McNamara (and others) who claimed that he was fighting the spread of god-less Communism, yet fronting for DuPont, the Defense industry, and other corporations that were enriched by the U.S. occupation of Vietnam.
In Arne’s case, he’s claiming that unlike the greedy, lazy teachers, he and his allies are the people who truly care “about the kids” (i.e. his sickening statement in support of the Vergara lawsuit), when he’s actually doing the bidding of the money-motivated privatizers and union-busters.
These vulture capitalists constantly need more and fresh “financial flesh” devour. After enriching themselves during the dot-com era and the dot-com bubble exploded in the late 1990’s, they moved on to Wall Street, demanding de-regulation and decreased oversight (and we know how well THAT turned out … Remember the meltdown of September 2008?)… and then also pushed George W. to implement de-regulation and decreased oversight of the housing and loan industry, and they got rich during the sub-prime loan bubble… and now that they’ve drained every drop from those spheres, it’s those same folks who now see the trillion-dollar public education sector as ripe for raping.
Go watch the DVD of “THE WOLF OF WALL STREET”… those are the folks that seek to profit from the privatization of public education… witness their motives, greed, mocking cynicism, and despicable tactics… and they’ve got Arne Duncan, neo-liberal Democrats, and the media (idiots like Campbell Brown) fronting for them… claiming that these billionaires and Wall Street hedge fund managers care more about the well-being of children of the middle and working classes than the over-worked, poorly-compensated teachers who spent 7 or more hours every ding-dong day dedicating their lives to those same children.
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Well said. We must spell out the names in Duncan’s “ilk”. It is not just Duncan who is doing all these horrible “reforms” in special ed, but his great buddy, Obama, who is no friend of mine, as I am a special education teacher too. I just retired this year, but we need to organize busses, like they did in the civil rights era, to our state capitals, write letters to congress and our state representatives, to get Duncan out, and all the bums like him. They will set our children back without funding and all the other anti intellectual meanderings and fatuous statements they make. Obama and Duncan were never teachers of special education and they simply want more charter schools and blame great teachers as being not caring…it is a great way of attacking teachers in the press, to divert attention away from the miserable foreign policies that we have. Get us out of these crazy wars, where the Maliki’s of this world hate us, but love our money ,and let us finally invest the money in our children, fixing our dangerous roads and using the money in positive ways, like free university education for the non-private schools. Also we need to have government programs, like the CETA program, to help people learn to go through programs, for free, that may not want to go to college. (Not every university fits everyone.) I originally went through this program, became a welder, and enjoyed this work, until I was ready to go back to the university, a number of years later. Regan ended this wonderful program that educated kids to pass their GED, and taught them trades or nursing. We need to get rid of Duncan and maybe vote, as I did for the first time, for the Green Party. If enough of us vote any bums out, they may need to think next time of treating great teachers as non caring and lazy, which has never been the case.
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The final stage, race to the end. This is one way to guarantee that all teachers in public school are failing teachers. When resource rooms are gone and all kids are mainstreamed, guess what, disabilities will not just go away. The story of King Canute is relevant, reality is not impressed by idiotic decrees. My young alternately certified super teachers were pulling their hair out when they had to deal with the resource kids in their classrooms. Their magic did not work! The kids in first and second grade did not just peacefully sit at their computers, they destroyed them. I can’t wait to see what happens when the children my wife works with are sent to the regular classes. As it is now she accompanies them to specials because the regular teachers know nothing about autism and can not control these kids. Let’s see what happens when they do not have her help. Let the lawsuits fly. Send in the lawyers, the fifty million may wind up there in the end.
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The cruelty of impossible expectations. Duncan is uneducated about education, but he knows how to spend federal dollars–the tutoring industry is applauding along with parents who hold out the hope that there is an educational fix for their special needs child. Of course, there is no quick educational fix.
I taught in the olden days when special needs children were called handicapped, segregated in special schools, and also segregated by race.
A former student recently retired after spending a lifetime opening opportunities for others in a program he dubbed G.O.A.L. his acronym for “get out and live.”
He did not his let severe cerebral palsy prevent him from breaking barriors for others.
His main mentors where teachers at “Roosevelt School for the Handicapped” and a whole lot of adults iin his community–not his parents who never help out hope for him.
I was his art teacher there and I remained on his mailing list for GOAL until his retirement.
He remembered me with unabashed glee as the teacher who enabled him to make his first crayon drawing, at age 12. It depicted a boy swimming in the ocean–with great kinetic energy in the waves.
In that low-tech age I simply reinforced a thick kindergarten crayon by taping a pop stick to it. That prevented the crayon from breaking, a longstanding problem. I also attached the crayon to his palm with an elastic band. The prevent the crayon from flying out of his hand. I taped the large paper to the desk to secure it.
These simple steps helped to create a memorable moment for him and clearly for me. The picture did not need a written description of what it portrayed. He then presented it as a gift to me. I still have the drawing.
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Those are the moments they can’t take from us. I hope those moments won’t become distant memories. It is becoming harder and harder to find ways to revel in learning.
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If Arne Duncan were capable of scientific thinking, he might focus on cause and effect:
The CCSS elementary school environment of authoritarian “Behaviorism” is causing “learned helplessness” (conditioned defeat) for children on a grand scale in the form of learning disabilities and psychiatric disorders, especially anxiety and depression.
With enough chronic stress in their environment, any person or child can develop a “disability”. Forcing children to function in a chronic state of hyper vigilance (from fear, intimidation, boredom, frustration, mental and physical exhaustion) as in the CCSS environment, will change a child’s brain chemistry, which can lead to permanent mental and/or physical disorders.
Arne Duncan’s deficit of leadership and delusional thinking (using childlike coping -“avoidance” and “denial/dissociation”) is perpetuating an increase in disabilities for many children. Duncan should be evaluated for his own “learning disability”, as well as his “abuse of power”.
Duncan’s ignorance of children’s developmental learning needs, and his failure to acknowledge the damaging impact of CCSS chronic stress on millions of US children’s mental health, needs to be investigated by Congressional Hearings.
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Let me give an illustration by Torey Hayden, one of the best special ed techers I’ve ever had the good fortune to read about. Her books are amazing. She had a student in her class who couldn’t read at all. She was in the first grade with an older teacher who thought the child was just lazy and unwilling to work. Over and over she humiliated the child in her class, using her as an illustration of what happens when you don’t work. In the resource room Tory tried everything to help the child. She used kinesthetic, oral, manipulatives,, tapes, sandboxes, she pasted the letters on the floor and they danced on them, nothing no recognition. The child had been beaten by her father before being removed and put into a foster home and the damage was done. One day she had had enough. She threw up all over her books, ran to the resource room, hid under a cabinet and refused to come our for hours and hours. Finally Tory pulled her out and she was catatonic, gone to another world where the impossible isn’t asked of her. Tory had to slowly put this child back together. The child was home for months and refused to come to school. Tory had to beg her back and promise she would never have to read. And there you have an example of pushing and pressuring those students that have already been pressured to be normal their whole lives. Do we need more resources, aides, materials, training, you bet. Do we need more pressure on the most vulnerable and fragile of our student? No we don’t., How much damage is Arne doing by saying what you need is to work harder and make them succeed,? How much more good would he have done if he’d actually met with say a 100 special ed teachers from around the country and asked what do you need to succeed with these kids? What do we need, help, resources, training materials and support. Pressure to pass tests that even the non special ed kids struggle with, no not needed at all thanks for asking.
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I taught 4th grade. My last 2 years were exhausting but interesting. I had a boy who came to my class from a charter school from another area if the state. He was such a sweet boy. But he had a speech impediment that had never been dealt with and it was nearly impossible to communicate with others. He had had no services. I had our speech teacher assess his needs and she worked with him. He was smart. He could read but not aloud. He was practically afraid to try. But he performed well on written tests if given enough time. He had writing issues, also. His writing was an inch and a half tall and only manuscript. He “drew” his letters neatly and he slowly.
He was new to the area and had trouble making friends. I found other kids from other classes at recess to try to expand his friendships. He needed friends. In my class, we were all friends. I didn’t like jealousies, cliques, name-calling, insults, or bullying. I believed that by being their friends and not bullying them, I would be trusted. They felt loved. And they were!
As it turned out, I had a breakthrough with him by using Readers Theater and microphones. He had some difficulties at first but then he suddenly became interested in being an entertainer when reading the theater scripts. Kids started to laugh and reach out to him. He became more comfortable and gained more friends. He became happier. I was thrilled.
He ultimately passed the Achievement Test by the skin of his teeth. Having no accommodations, I consider that to be an accomplishment. But having friends was key to that boy’s personal victory.
No one had better ever call me or anyone else lazy or uncaring. But it wasn’t easy and each child has special needs, even if he/she hasn’t been “identified” as such.
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More importantly, what does success look like? Is there some model out there that we all must emulate in order to claim success? Do all children have to meet some arbitrary standard in order to be considered successful? Do all children need to meet some arbitrary standard in order to FEEL successful?
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Bottom line: there are essential academic standards that are needed to function in society and to get some sort of job. Unfortunately, there are some people who won’t attain that level of skill. Some people don’t want to accept that, but there are people who cannot be independent.
Should they feel inferior, left out, shunned, given no opportunity to learn to their maximum potential? Of course not! They should be appropriately educated to do as much as possible.
College ready standards for every single person? Preposterous. Not everyone is adept at everything. Some people aren’t interested in higher education. Some people aren’t interested in all academic subjects. Some aren’t interested in the arts, music, sports, agriculture, nutrition, sciences, literature, history, economics, business, math, engineering, or computer science. So what?
IF there are common standards that are necessary, those would be the skills necessary to simply function…read the news, pay bills, add, subtract, multiply, use fractions, measure, follow directions, make change, tell time, understand how to get along with others, be responsible, care about the world, the government, others, communicate in whatever way they find easiest, and pursue whatever interests them. Reaching that should be a minimum requirement since those things make participation in society independently. But some people don’t know those things by the time they graduate. That is a travesty for any one who has attended k-12 with regular attendance and coming from a home that provides food, cleanliness, and a place to sleep. Even if the family can’t provide educational backup, the essentials I mentioned and others that I left out can be taught by the time a child finishes schooling.
That may seem like a low bar to set. But, think about it, how many people do you run into at work every day that do not know these things! Yet, many want to insist that prior to mastering these things, they should be expected to do so much more.
Sometimes this is the fault of the child. Sometimes it is due to environment, poverty, a learning disability, poor attendance, or many other issues. Sometimes it may be caused by a series of bad teachers, but seldom will a child have that problem repeatedly.
For this ed-reform group to place “blame” on teachers and to design a plan of requirements that every child must achieve in order to prove that the school functions correctly is absurd.
Let’s get real. Let’s make sure all kids can do as much as possible, sequentially, developmentally appropriately, and without punishment.
If we must have these so-called rigorous standards, let them be appropriate and obtained when each child is ready, not injected into curricula nationwide as the definitive “be all and end all” “answer” to the misguided comparisons drawn from scores of students from totally different types of social agreements. I am all for rigor and interest driven learning I am for providing each child opportunities to learn as much as possible, but let’s not pretend that we can or should force feed a particular curriculum into every child’s head. It won’t work.
I know my own limitations and I am pretty good at assessing others’ limitations. I know when I reach the tipping point, when I am bored, when I don’t see relevance in something being presented. I believe most people have that same “switch off” button in their minds and a recognition of their skill limitations. You know, when you reach boiling point, are fed up, are turned off due to frustration or disinterest.
We all learn differently and at different speeds. We all have different interests and skill levels. We all have different aspirations and lifestyles. The idea that a nation as diverse as this one aspires to be should have a straightjacket “assessment” of all students is unreasonable and wrongheaded.
Knowing full well that districts across the nation have not obtained technological parity with each other, to slam dunk computer driven tests and scoring into the laps of all districts at an expense that causes local budgets to force people out the doors for early retirement is conscienceless and cruel. It is not a conspiracy that I am afraid of. It is the misguided direction of tax dollars into for-profit schemes that sickens me. I don’t want the middle class to evaporate.
Allow teachers to guide students to achieve to their maximum potential without resorting to using Pearson to provide the guidelines.
I am truly fed up with Arne Duncan et al. I will not vote for any candidate of any party that does not stand behind public education that is guided by compassion and common sense.
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Pretty much the way I feel, too.
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Thanks for reading.
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I don’t know if they are considered ‘special needs’, but the US has clearly done a superior job with its dull IQ citizens. Many are in high level government office and work in high paid management positions as flunkies. Surely if they were just a little bit smarter, they could think of something a little less ridiculous than the nonsense they spew.
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It takes people who still have qualities of humanness to work with Special Needs children. Empathy and Compassion are lacking in the CCSS Environment, since it was designed by “Robots” who have no hearts.
Will Arne Duncan be designing a “Warsaw Ghetto ” for all the
“disabled” children who can’t “measure up”!
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Great comment Sheila! Compassion is the key. Unfortunately, it is not measured by a Danielson rubric.
Yesterday, a parent came in for his son’s report card. He spoke so little English that he couldn’t understand when I told him to sit down. Through an interpreter, he said that he knew how hard it was to teach children and he was grateful to me for having taught his son English. He had given his son $200 to participate in the eighth grade graduation, but he had refused the money. The kid was a royal pain in the -, but I persisted. I never expected any acknowledgement. The father knew that I had shown his child compassion even though he resisted my efforts almost daily.
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Sheila, he wants the Warsaw Ghetto for our children and we special education teachers. Duncan has a plan to kick all great special education teachers out, and put more charter schools in and have inexperienced teachers come in, and he is hoping they will burn out, or quit. Why? So they are paid less and the Feds can give schools even less money, so his buddy, Obama can have more money to extend his crazy wars…both these guys are no friends of our special education students. We teachers, like you and most who are writing here, need to see most other teachers not remaining ostriches, putting their heads in the sand, falsely thinking all will be fixed, because Obama and Duncan want this ostrich mentality to destroy all of us, the children and teachers, for their profit driven methods and strategies.
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Arne Duncan has no idea what else he would do, your point is well taken.
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TAGO!
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Reposting a comment I made on the previous thread on the same subject:
RE: Arne Duncan Proposes New Accountability for Special Education
Let me start by saying that I am an ESE teacher. I teach students with learning disabilities and language impairments. The students I have are in the unit they are in because they are at least two grade levels below their regular ed peers in reading.
Currently, in Florida, we already have to give these students access to the same standards that their on-grade level peers enjoy. That has been the case for years. We already know that Florida tests pretty much everyone, no matter their disability. Again, this has been the case for years. I can’t believe that in this education environment that there are many other states that are significantly different. And yet, Arne is going to say that these students aren’t getting a quality education? That they aren’t held to high expectations?
To me, it is pretty obvious that these students are held to much higher expectations than their regular ed peers. It would be like telling two mountain climbers that they have to reach the same peak, but one of them will do it with both hands tied behind his back. Sure, he can have some accommodations. Someone can hold his rope steady. Someone else can yell out supportive verbal encouragement. He can even take longer breaks, and we’ll take away any time requirement (as long as he finishes in the same day that he started).
The world of special ed was already insane. I’m not sure where this takes us. As I said, in my class, the students are all at least two years behind in reading. What I didn’t tell you is that I teach in an elementary school. What this means is that many of these 3-5th graders are non-readers. The few that can decode are either doing so at a kindergarten/first grade level or at a level approaching grade level but without any comprehension whatsoever of what they have just decoded. Despite this, they have the same designation on paper (or computer) that other LD kids have who are just slightly behind their regular ed peers.
In Florida, as I imagine is the case in other states, we already track academic progress. You might think it would be as easy as seeing what they are capable of doing at the beginning of the year and then comparing that with what they are capable of at the end of the year. Not so. Remember, they are working on the same standards as their regular ed peers. And, so, they are tested with the same tests that their regular ed peers take. This means that a fourth grader who cannot read anything above “see sam run” is being tested on those “rigorous” non-fiction passages that are on a fourth grade level (not the fourth grade level of yesteryear but the new, improved 6th grade, I mean 4th grade level of today). And then we track their progress on a graph. If you’re thinking that these graphs look like random peaks and valleys, you are correct. When you cannot read and you are given a test, you are just going to guess. Which is what these students do. Sadly, they have become so inured to this that they guess on the few items that they actually are capable of doing.
The federal government is already involved through NCLB, etc. These students count towards AYP. They count towards the school’s “grade.” The schools have every reason to give these students everything they’ve got, so why aren’t the slackers doing anything to give them a “quality education”? Well, they are. Florida is an RtI state. To get an ESE label, a student has to show that they are “resistant to interventions.” That is, they have to show that they require extensive interventions, that if they are weaned off of the interventions, they regress. Or, they have to show that despite intensive, research-based interventions, they are still showing no progress. In other words, before these students come to me, they have already received every intervention imaginable. In addition, even after they are found eligible for ESE services, they are usually started in a less restrictive environment. If none of this has worked, why should it work when they get to my class? Indeed, it had to be shown that it did not work in order for them to get into my class in the first place.
Alas, I’m afraid I do not have a magic wand or a bag of pixie dust with which to work miracles. So, what is an ESE teacher to do? Most of us actually work with the studennts where they are at. And we move them forward from there. There is no huge spurt of growth (very rarely anyway), but they do make academic gains. None of these gains will show up on the regular ed grade level assessments, but they are there nonetheless. We’ve often wondered why these students aren’t given meaningful assessments that will show growth and that will actually tell us where these students are still struggling (thanks, FCAT, I already knew they couldn’t read on grade level). Now we know why. It’s to show that these students aren’t getting a “quality education.”
I would tell you that these students, who are as bright as you or me, struggle immensely with academic subjects. That they are usually Language Impaired as well. That most of them are also ESOL students. That most of them come from low SES homes. That most of them come from single-parent households. That many of these parents come in to thank us because their child used to hate school and now they want to go. That their regular ed teachers in the past told us that they wouldn’t do anything in class, that they would shut down when anything was required of them, and now they are working in class. That through a lot of hard work and effort of both the teachers and students, the students get to a point where they stop saying, “I can’t do this, I’m stupid.” That non-writers become independent writers (legible despite the many spelling, grammar, and convention errors). That non-readers become readers (yes, still way behind their regular ed peers) and learn to enjoy reading. I would tell you these things, but it doesn’t matter because none of it shows up on the tests. The tests show that these students are not making any gains. And, as we all know, there are no excuses.
Thank you for bearing with me through this over-long post.
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Excellent post. That is “how it is”. Thank you.
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Heartbreaking to the cruelty to special needs children. They are becoming scapegoated as much as are the Homeless.
Question: Why do teachers refer to special needs kids as being in a “unit”. Sounds like the school version of ” Death Row”. Why not put Special Needs kids in a farm or garden environment with animals and plants where they could get Nature Nurture that is how they relate best?
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Heh, all of the students, regular and ESE, are in “units.” I don’t know why we use the word; it’s really adminspeak. Instead of saying we had to let a teacher go because we don’t have enough students, they say “we lost a unit.” So, the unit refers to, in a way, the teacher, the students, and the classroom. So, a unit might have all regular ed, all ESE, or a mix of both.
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cyn3wulf,
I am with you. The situation is the same in NJ. I was working with a seventh grader with a 70 IQ reading on a third grade level. He is also an ELL. His classification is Communication Impaired and he receives Speech Services. He works diligently to improve his skills. Is he approaching grade level? NO.
A few years back, I worked with a multiply disabled student who was of Mexican origin. Whenever he didn’t understand what I was talking about, he would yell out, “Mexico!” When I administered a standardized test, he had a scribe who was a teacher aide. She wanted to bubble in the correct answers for him, but I wouldn’t allow it.
I am sure Duncan is taking note of all our anecdotal evidence.
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It is sad, I just don’t think Green has the skill set to be addressing education and wonder why Diane is always posting him, except that they are two authors of books on “education”. Diane really needs to get into a classroom and then she would not support Common Core, with real experience on the ground, even parents are ahead of Diane.
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Just curious. What do you see Greene’s skill set as, and where do you see it as deficient in addressing education? Also, when you say that Diane supports common core, what are you using as the basis for that statement?
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To clear up any uncertainty, I wrote a post in spring 2013 called “Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards”: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/why-i-cannot-support-the-common-core-standards/
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Indeed, that’s why I cannot figure out where Joseph is coming from. My troll meter is going off though…
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Diane,
You said recently that common core just needs to be adjusted by teachers, I welcome a change. Will that be transmitted to Randi?
Please don’t challenge me for the truth. David is sensitive and can not mix it up with alternative views without using the word “hate”.
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Diane DOES NOT support Common Core. She has said so a million times. If you don’t think her information is good, DON’T read her blog!
The same goes for Peter Green, who IS a teacher AND a brilliant writer.
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Joseph, I post Peter Greene because he is smart, insightful, funny.
As for the Common Core, read this: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/26/why-i-cannot-support-the-common-core-standards/
I repeat, you make things up. Please stop. If you don’t like the blog, don’t read it.
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Thanks Diane, and you are opposed to testing and Opting Out?
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Joseph,
Maybe you should take a remedial reading course over the summer. Please ask your teacher to focus on your reading comprehension skill set.
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NJ Teacher, I have completed my doctoral course work in Literacy Studies and was an adjunct in Queens College Graduate School and Long Island University with the United Federation of Teachers, where am I deficient?
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Joseph, please do a CCSS close reading . . . . .
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Please read, sign and circulate this petition: Arne Duncan Must Go!
Here is the link to the people’s petition to rid the nation of this one man disaster:
http://www.petition2congress.com/15679/arne-duncan-must-go/
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Please read, sign, and circulate the amended petition. For some reason the first one I posted was cut short. Thank you.
Here is the link to the people’s petition to rid the nation’s public school system from this one man disaster:
http://www.petition2congress.com/15685/dump-arne-duncan/
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Ignore this first attempt; see below.
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Stupid people in positions of power who think they are smart are very dangerous. We do wisely to keep a close eye on them.
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Arne might be taking this approach because it shuts people up who complain about IDEA never being funded. When the Federal role requires services –but does not provide corresponding financial support it makes sense to take Arne’s position. “All those kids need is higher expectations,” protects Arne and the Feds from having to answer questions about resources that align with IDEA mandates!
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Well, yes. It I$ all about the money. Note, also, that while IDEA is never funded, even more $$$ will be spent (on Pear$on) to te$t the very same kids who aren’t being appropriately served (&, thus, will fail those inappropriate tests). Now, what is it that Einstein said about insanity?!
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