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.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t worry…. the lawyers will be there soon… I recall when the school board of a colleague in MD thought there were too many case managers in the central office and he was directed to cut some of them… a year later and several lost lawsuits later they were back in the budget… Ask any superintendent, they all have special ed lawyer stories to share
A new specialty field for the out of work lawyers as well as the charter schools chasers.
As a parent of a daughter with Down’s Syndrome, I’ve seen Special Ed take the brunt of budget cuts for years. Great lesson in priorities.
As a teacher, I know that dealing with the paperwork required for 504 students and documenting for students with IEPs in the classroom is overwhelming. Adding having to write IEPs on top of that…ridiculous and unfair to the teacher, the SpEd student, and the students in the classroom.
Let me suggest to those from afar, the NJBOE does whatever the BROADIEs tell them to do. When State Education Commissoner Christopher Cerf (the Apple of Papa BROAD’s eye) wants input from the The NJBOE, he gives it to them. (Right after he gets it from Papa Eli or ALEC).
This should come as no surprise to those who know BROAD.
This is already going on in Georgia. Some regular education teachers have up to 15 SWD in a class with 15 regular Ed students with a paraprofessional to help. Imagine what that teacher is dealing with.
In Utah, too. My husband, his first year of teaching Special Ed., had 45 files he had to manage. Half of those required re-evaluation testing, which was hours of extra work. That was on top of his regular teaching duties. I was teaching part time and we had an infant son. My son and I barely saw my husband that year.
Do they have any idea how much of a burden this would be on a regular ed teacher? They have too much to do already!!!!!!!! Get a clue NJ board of Ed. This country has lost its mind?
Diane is right, it’s time to bring in the lawyers, not only in this truly horrendous situation, but on the whole “reform” movement. I’m not usually in favor of further enriching the legal establishment, but that will be what it takes. Teachers are too petrified for their livelihoods, and administrators and state boards of ed are either in the tank with the “reformers,” with their demands for data, data, data, or solely controlled by them, to do any good. Of course, state legislators are completely in the pockets of the most destructive interests to be of any recourse. That leaves us with the lawyers.
This is Eugenics, pure and simple. The elite want to weed out the weak and vulnerable because they do not fit with their warped vision of efficiency and productivity in the corporate state.
Yes, everyone. Another school population picked on and, of course, it’s special ed.–and all across the country (read the Illinois item from a few days ago). Rest assured, the parents will scream and the lawyers will come.
That’s how we did it in the ’50’s. (Imagine–we are traveling back in time–first, attempts to repeal the Voting Rights Act, and now this.)
Wait, are you telling me that in NJ all sped students have a case manager who follows them from year to year AND writes all of the IEPs? That sounds a little too good to be true! I’ve always had to do it all for 30+ kids in WA state: academic testing, write IEPs, collect data, attend sped referral meetings (and test those students as well). And of course I am also supposed to teach all day. I am jealous, for now.
Another example of short-term planning. We can reduce payroll costs this year and next, let’s not think about the lawsuits we’ll have to defend for the next ten years…
Please see my comments about the diaster of RTI/SRBI on another thread. All students suffer when the teacher is asked to provive more services for more children.
Does anyone know the outcome of the NJBOE’s vote today? Is Special Ed. Law changing to include teachers and other school personnel as case managers?
SD, I have been teaching in NJ for 16 years. I am currently writing 27 IEPS. Our CM’s DO NOT write the IEPS for us. All of the case managers I work with are hard-working,caring professionals, who are managing a large number of complicated cases, while guiding many families through the difficult and overwhelming process of building an appropriate educational program for each child. We all collaborate before and after school in order to support our students. It is a system that works very well. Why would they break it?
SD, on another note,we need to work together if we are to slay this dragon. Please try refrain from stabbing others slayers, or being sidetracked by perceived jealousies.Just make up your mind that you are going to choose to believe that most teachers work as hard as you do. It doesn’t behoove us to think otherwise. The other way just leads to divide and conquer; and that is what the other side wants, because it works. Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt; we are all on the same team. Thanks. 🙂