Archives for category: Special Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Do Bobby Jindal and John White Hate The Poor and Disabled?

By dianerav
April 11, 2013 //
23

I read this post by Louisiana’s Crazy Crawfish with a sense of disbelief.

I could not believe that any human being would expend so much effort to crush the poorest and neediest citizens of his state.

Can you believe that John White is going to apply value-added assessments to determine the funding for students with disabilities? If they don’t get higher test scores every year, they lose funding. He will do the sameto gifted students.

Is this mean or mad?

Read Jindal’s spending cuts. Unbelievable. For example, he cut the budget for higher education by more than half. He proposed a tax plan to raise taxes on the poor (by raising the sales tax) while eliminating taxes on the rich (by eliminating the personal income tax and the corporate income tax). He closed most of the state’s mental hospitals and all of the charity hospitals.

Louisiana is rapidly retreating to the industrial era, where there were no protections for workers, no safety net for the needy. It may be 2013 in America, but it’s 1913 in Louisiana and the clock keeps moving backward.

Categories Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Special Education

Parents Debate How to Opt Out

By dianerav
March 14, 2013 //
33

This is part of an email conversation that I received. It is an exchange between two parents:

The first one writes:

“Hello Everyone!

“Well…it is that time of year again…TCAP testing. I really hate this time of year.

“As I have done for the past TEN years for all of my children, I opted my daughter out of the test. I sent my letter to the school district and of course, I am met with anger and tons of letters from the superintendent of Colorado schools saying that it is illegal for me to take my child out of this test. My daughter’s teachers are threatening her that she will be put in all remedial classes next year if she doesn’t take it and I am required to sign something that says I am aware of how wrong my actions are. Last year, my youngest daughter was met with such criticism and animosity that she begged me to take the test so people would leave her alone. Her teachers and the principal were so mean to her that she was afraid to go to school and afraid to not take the test. My youngest daughter has an anxiety disorder which comes with terrible panic attacks. The children are under so much pressure to do well on this test that she is up puking and crying before every testing day. I am so excited to do that again this year. :0(

“My question to all of you is….do you all have to deal with this? Does the admin at the schools that your children attend give you a hard time over this? The people at my kids’ school make me feel like an uneducated ignorant horrible parent. I’m just getting so tired of it and wondered if anyone out there feels the same.”

“Thanks for listening,”

Here is one of the answers she received:

“First of all, I wouldn’t sign a damn thing for that school.

“Secondly, if your child has an anxiety disorder then your child qualifies for a 504 since she has a ‘hidden disability’ under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ask your child’s therapist and/or pediatrician for medical documentation recommending she not be tested. This is what I have established for my kids and it is written into the 504 they are NOT taking TCAP or any other standardized district, state or national test.

“The school doesn’t bother me.

“Then, I would take my husband, brother or big burly male neighbor with me and tell the principal that if one more person at the school threatens my child you are going to sue and follow that up with a call to the district. Talk to the teachers at conferences and tell them the same thing. Tell them you will sue them individually; it’s child abuse.

“Next, those jerks have to leave school sometime; be waiting for them off school grounds. I saw my son’s ex-principal in Barnes and Noble and she couldn’t get out of that store fast enough when she saw me coming. She knew I’d make a scene and I would have.

“Lastly, tell your story of child abuse to the media and tell the principal and superintendent you’re doing it. Tell the principal and superintendent you’re going to picket outside the school and hand out leaflets telling parents how to refuse testing. Intimidation works both ways.”

Categories Parents, Special Education, Testing

Why Not Vouchers for Special Education Students?

By dianerav
March 11, 2013 //
19

One of the model laws promoted by ALEC creates vouchers for students with disabilities.

ALEC is the far-right group that brings together big corporations and very conservative state legislators to figure out strategies to advance privatization and protect corporate interests. ALEC does not like public education, does not like regulation, does not like unions, and does not like teacher professionalism. It likes vouchers, charters, online learning, all as unregulated as possible, and teachers who can enter the classroom with little or no certification or training.

ALEC pushes vouchers for students with disabilities as a way of establishing the legitimacy of vouchers, using the most vulnerable children as the poster children for their favorite anti-regulation, anti-government ideas. Once vouchers get a start in one sector, they reason, it is easy to make a case for vouchers for all. As states are slowly discovering, the more charters and  vouchers schools there are, the more difficult it is to supervise what happens in them or where the money goes.

Florida has a voucher program for students with disabilities. It is a sham. Florida journalist called it “a cottage industry of fraud and chaos.” Gus Garcia-Roberts won the Sigma Delta Chi award for public service journalism–one of the highest honors of the profession– for this series about the abuse and neglect of students with disabilities who receive vouchers in Florida.

Categories ALEC, Florida, Special Education, Vouchers

New Jersey: Save Money By Cutting Staff for Special Education

By dianerav
February 28, 2013 //
15

Just when you think the corporate reformers have run out of ways to hurt children and kneecap educators, they pull another trick out of their bag.

In New Jersey, the state board of education proposes to cut staff trained to identify and manage the cases of special education students and turn the job over to classroom teachers.

Jersey Jazzman delineates what is happening:

“The New Jersey state Board of Education wants to give districts the option to fire Child Study Team members and have teachers take over the management of special education cases.

“I understand that we are all looking for ways to save money, but this is perhaps the most egregious cost-cutting scheme imaginable: the NJBOE wants school districts to balance their budgets on the backs of our most vulnerable and needy students.

“Case managers spend hours testing, coordinating services, working with parents, and – most importantly, perhaps – holding districts accountable for providing the services that special needs children must, by law, receive. It is outrageous that the NJBOE wants to move this critical function over to “any staff member with appropriate knowledge.” What is “appropriate”? Why won’t the NJBOE clearly delineate this?

“If this regulation is adopted, it will be nothing more than an excuse to fire CST members at-will. Without question, it will gravely affect districts with greater numbers of at-risk kids, but it will also severely impact every district in the state. All of you parents with special needs children know what a big deal this is: imagine if the person you’ve been working with all throughout your child’s school career was suddenly fired and replaced by a teacher who already has a full workload.

“And if you don’t have a special needs child, think about how your child’s classroom teacher will be affected when the responsibilities for overseeing IEPs are dumped into her lap. Do you think she will have time to actually teach when she has to test and fill out paperwork and counsel parents and coordinate services?”

This is an assault on the state’s neediest children.

This is not reform.

Bring in the lawyers.

Categories Budget Cuts, New Jersey, Special Education

Illinois: No Class Size Limits for Special Education?

By dianerav
February 26, 2013 //
86

Please don’t say this is school “reform.”

The state superintendent of education in Illinois wants to remove class size limits for special education.

Time to ask why the richest nation on earth can’t afford to provide a free and appropriate education for children with the greatest needs.

Categories Illinois, Special Education

How Pearson’s Connections Academy Cheated a Blind Student

By dianerav
February 24, 2013 //
28

Online charter schools are, with few exceptions a sham. They waste taxpayer dollars and, worse, they waste students’ lives.

Here is an especially egregious example. Pearson’s Connections Academy graduated a blind student who could neither read or write. they took the state’s money, but the young woman did not get an education nor did she get appropriate accommodations for her disability.

Where are the lawyers for students with disabilities?

Who will stop these zombie schools from gathering up dollars intended to educate the state’s children?

Categories On-Line Education, Pearson, Special Education

Naison: A Letter from a New Teacher

By dianerav
February 22, 2013 //
7

Mark Naison received a letter from a first-year teacher who is working in a school that the New York City Department of Education is closing because of low test scores. How would you advise this teacher?

This is the letter Naison received:

“I wanted to touch base with you about the chaotic and seemingly fatal
status of my school. Tonight, I attended a Joint Public Hearing between
the DOE and the School Leadership Team, along with an opportunity for
public comment. All 3 proposals that were introduced [all including
charter schools] seem to lead nowhere fast. Sheepshead Bay HS has taken
in the lowest performing students from across Brooklyn; students who
are no longer able to go to their local community high school because
the large high schools [Tilden, Canarsie, South Shore] were broken down
into smaller schools that screen their students before admission and do
not accept these low performers. SBHS has a huge population of ELL
students, students with multiple and profound disabilities, and those
who live within the traumatic world of poverty. If these students are
not going to be admitted into the charter schools that are housed
within the corpse-like building of former public community schools,
where are they to go?

“I know that you feel as passionately about this issue as I do [we are
facebook friends], so I’m sure you can accept and witness the
pain of a first year teacher who is struggling to hold on to her
idealism”

Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University

“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, New York City, Special Education, Teachers and Teaching

Should a Child with Autism Be Compelled to Take the Tests?

By dianerav
February 15, 2013 //
58

A reader wrote to ask for advice. The situation she describes is outrageous. Does anyone know of a group that can help her fight this and protect her child?

I am a special education teacher and mother of a 3rd grader with Autism. I am trying to excercise my parental right to opt my son out of high stakes testing in New York State. These tests are detrimental to all children, but even more so for children like my son who will not be able to read the exam or understand why he is being asked to do something that he cannot hope to be successful with.

Imagine his confusion and frustration. Presenting a child with a test that is not developmentally appropriate and is inaccessible due to his or her disability is not only educational unsound, but morally as well.

I have been told that my son will be tested against my will if he walks through the door on any day within the testing window. The only way to opt him out is to keep him home for 12 days.

This violates his right to a free and appropriate education and is tantamount to educational blackmail. I have contacted our state and local representatives, the ACLU and The Autism Society.

Can you recommend any other advocacy groups that might be able to help us or offer any words of advice?

Categories New York, Special Education, Testing

Exclude Students with Disabilities to Raise Test Scores

By dianerav
February 10, 2013 //
14

This is not a new trick. It is proven to work. Remove students with disabilities from the mandated tests and the scores go up.

You won’t be surprised where this is happening. Read about it here.

After all, what matters most? Kids or test scores? In another era, we might have said without thinking twice that kids mater most. But in the age of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, that’s no longer true. The fate of schools, principals, and teachers depend on test scores.

This is sad. It’s wrong. It’s unethical. It’s malpractice.

Categories Special Education

More About Vouchers in Wisconsin

By dianerav
February 10, 2013 //
4

A reader who is a parent in Wisconsin notes that the far-right group American Federation for Children is reaching out to disability groups to get their support for vouchers. AFS is committed to privatization, and they know full well that vouchers for special education students is a first step. It is also high on ALEC’s agenda. It arises not from concern for the students, whose rights are protected by federal law in public schools, but out of concern for their own political agenda, which is anti-public education, anti-union, and anti-professionalism.

Writes the reader:

More about Wisconsin and vouchers — I and two other parents of students with disabilities have just had a column published in Wisconsin’s Capital Times:

http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/column/parents-why-we-must-stop-special-needs-vouchers/article_1d0779cc-151a-53d2-b575-62de8feadfbe.html

Amanda’s link above, about expanded vouchers expected to be part of the budget plan, also holds true for special needs vouchers, although the Walker administration has been silent on that aspect so far. Just this week, however, the national American Federation for Children lobby has begun contacting disability groups across Wisconsin, with a pitch for putting the vouchers INTO the budget.

This although no statewide disability group in Wisconsin is asking for these vouchers, and we particularly DON’T want them in the budget where they wouldn’t get a separate public hearing. Such a controversial statewide policy change, full of problems and pitfalls, must be debated and exposed and voted on separately!

Stop Special Needs Vouchers, a statewide grassroots group led by families of students with disabilities, is spreading the word: we need to keep special needs education strong in Wisconsin public schools. We’re on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/StopSpecialNeedsVouchers — please join us!

Categories Special Education, U.S. education, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 57,176 other followers