This is a letter written by a mother in Louisiana. She sent it out widely.
“Academic Standards and Individualized Education Programs”
How are schools supposed to get every student to meet the same academic standards and meet the individualized education programs (IEP) for children with disabilities — both are required by federal law?
The following is a letter written from the heart of a mom with a son with autism.
It is not meant to expose any teacher or district. On the contrary, both are working hard to support the student. It is simply written to express an opinion of the situation we are all in at this time.
Dear “Is Anybody Listening?,”
Several weeks ago I sat down with my son’s teacher and listened to her tell me what her priorities are for him for this year. She revealed that she is largely focused on reading comprehension and, to a lesser extent, writing. It is indisputable that those are areas of high need for him. But what she had forgotten and said very little about, until I mentioned it, was language and social interaction. I could see a light bulb go off in her head. Suddenly she understood. Yes, of course, I must work on those too. Then I saw something else. It was something I can only describe as concern, although an insufficient descriptor. She started talking about all of the third grade standards. She handed me copies of the standards which she had already printed out, tucked safely inside page protectors. The teacher began to ponder, how will I address the core deficits of his disability in the midst of teaching the standards? Oh, maybe there would be a few minutes during group work or perhaps during a pull out session, but there’s so much to work on academically…
We are over half way through the first nine weeks and, although every member of his team is working hard, Jackson is so lost. He’s lost in a sea of standards and expectations for him to think critically and explain every answer. It takes much more than raising the bar or saying you believe students with disabilities can achieve for them to actually achieve. You see, he has only answered a why question a handful of times in his life. Now he’s asked why, how and explain your answer all day long. What do you think is going to happen when you test and assess him? He is going to fail. It will look as though he cannot and has not achieved.
Let me tell you what he has done, though. Jackson had been permitted to isolate himself from all the children on the school playground for the last 2 years. We were less than one week into the school year and Jackson was no longer standing next to the wall, far away from his peers. He was under a tree next to the playground. Fast forward a few more weeks and he has played on the equipment a few times, but more spectacularly, he is engaging and playing a game of “I see you” with a little girl in his class. She enjoys him. She likes him. He likes her. They play together for a few minutes every day. No standardized assessment he will take this year or any year will reflect that progress. No teacher or related service provider will be rewarded for their role in facilitating this achievement. After all, it’s not one of the standards. It’s not on “the test.”
As an advocate, some days are very challenging when both working and living in the disability world. There are no breaks. There is no escape. I sit in rooms with educational leaders who make statements about the 43% (of students with disabilities who passed the tests last year) and then I come home to the sweetest little boy who falls in the 57%. A boy who has an amazing ability to tolerate the world around him, but who no longer wants to go to school. How will it get any better? When will it get any better? It only seems like we’re heading in the opposite direction of improving outcomes for kids like Jackson.
Rebecca Ellis
Mandeville, Louisiana
504-261-342
ellis.rebecca@gmail.com”
This form of contradictory legislation is purposeful.
Here is an example of purposeful legislation with a non-educational issue. In many towns, cities, counties and states there are contradictory fire department and police department rules regarding front door locks. Fire departments require or suggest a lock with an outside key and an interior latch/knob. If a fire occurs, people can leave easily and quickly and might even have the opportunity to take valuables with them. Police departments require or suggest a double key lock, a key is necessary for both the inside and the outside. In the event of a burglary, exit by burglars who entered from a small nearby window. would be thwarted from walking out carrying bulky and heavy objects. Insurance companies often attempt to pay-out less if either type of lock is used. The contradictory laws exist for that purpose.
If specific teachers do not comply with one or the other of contradictory laws, they will be scapegoated for their dereliction of duty as school boards evade the issues. I have personally witnessed attempts such as this in the past as a union representative. One situation required teachers to be the first out of the classroom as they lead classes out during fire drills and actual emergencies. The teachers were also required to be the last out of the classroom to assure that no children were left behind. The large city where these rules were in place is known for these contradictory rules and regulations – laws with a purpose.
Requiring children to meet identical standards is as insane as requiring them to all run the same distance at the same time – without the use of guide dogs, wheelchairs, etc. for those who need them temporarily or permanently.
My heart goes out to this mom, her son, and his teacher. As a special ed teacher, I deal with this dilemma all the time. We are required to write IEP goals on using grade level standards…it’s insanity. But if we protest, we are made to feel that we must not expect very much of our students. To quote Commissioner Huffman, “We will not sit back and write off 14% percent of the population”. He says we’re “writing them off” because students with disabilities are “not achieving at levels we would consider acceptable”. Commissioner Huffman is also determined to do away with the alternative assessment and make sure that almost all students with disabilities take the same high-stakes standardized assessments as their non-disabled peers. Commissioner Huffman claims that our state has been trying to “hide” students with disabilities by giving them the alternate assessment.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130718/NEWS04/307180039/
Heh, I wrote my comment before reading yours; I could have saved myself the effort. It is, indeed, insanity.
Commissioner Huffman should be forced to take this course at MIT; would hate to see low expectations hold him down.
6.046J Design and Analysis of Algorithms
______
Undergrad (Fall, Spring)
(Same subject as 18.410J)
Prereq: 6.006
Units: 4-0-8
URL: http://math.mit.edu/classes/18.410
Lecture: TR11-12.30 (26-100) Recitation: F10 (36-153) or F11 (36-153) or F12 (36-153) or F1 (36-153) or F2 (36-153) or F3 (36-153) or F11 (36-156) or F12 (36-156) or F1 (26-168) or F2 (26-168) +final
______
Techniques for the design and analysis of efficient algorithms, emphasizing methods useful in practice. Topics include sorting; search trees, heaps, and hashing; divide-and-conquer; dynamic programming; greedy algorithms; amortized analysis; graph algorithms; and shortest paths. Advanced topics may include network flow; computational geometry; number-theoretic algorithms; polynomial and matrix calculations; caching; and parallel computing.
C. E. Leiserson, M. Goemans
Textbooks (Fall 2013)
You are a Hoot!!
Have my morning smile!!
Very Well done NY Teacher!!!
I forgot to mention that his parents get a letter telling them he is a a failing student in a failing school taught by a failing professor.
As Freud once said, “There’s no such thing as a joke.”
Actually this class might be more relevant to Commissioners apparent level of ignorance regarding lea9.181J Developmental Neurobiology
______
Graduate (Spring) H-Level Grad Credit
(Same subject as 7.69J)
(Subject meets with 7.49J, 9.18J)
Prereq: 9.011 or permission of instructor
Units: 4-0-8
______
Considers molecular control of neural specification, formation of neuronal connections, construction of neural systems, and the contributions of experience to shaping brain structure and function. Topics include: neural induction and pattern formation, cell lineage and fate determination, neuronal migration, axon guidance, synapse formation and stabilization, activity-dependent development and critical periods, development of behavior. In addition to final exam, analysis and presentation of research papers required for final grade. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
E. Nedivi, M. Heimanrning disabilities:
Love it
🙂
There is a feeling of Catch 22 about this type of situation. It happens not because of malevolence or indifference but from the nature of bureaucratic systems and bureaucratic rule-making. The key is obviously trust. But, to continue the Catch 22 theme, trust quickly evaporates with concerns about people playing the system – as in identifying more special ed cases than is strictly justified. Why wouldn’t the powers that be grant the local school district the discretion to make exceptions for such obvious cases?
” It happens not because of malevolence or indifference but from the nature of bureaucratic systems and bureaucratic rule-making.”
It may not happen because of those factors but the results are still malevolent and indifferent to the needs of the child. So when the processes have violent and evil results the intentions of those in the system absolve them and they have no responsibility? Torquemada/Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot/Mao/and all the other tyrants throughout history (including the current president who has ordered the hit on a 16 year old American and his teenage cousin) should be absolved because they had good intentions?
When the results are evil the actions no matter how well intended are evil and all effort should be put forth to fight that evil.
Duane:
Your comparisons are utter nonsense and it is entirely inappropriate to make such comparisons. My point is that regardless of the philosophies and the policy goals, bureaucracies create these double binds and Catch 22s by their very nature, whether under a tyrant or a benign government.
As to your point about evil outcomes, your argument is way too simplistic. It leads to an equating of Hitler and Truman, Stalin and Churchill. Tojo and Roosevelt.
Bernie,
I guess our differences on this one comes down to what you consider to be a tyrannical or “benign” ruler. Even in a tyranny most of those carrying out the policies believe, for whatever reasons, that they are “doing” good or turn a blind eye to the evil for expediency. No, I don’t expect everyone to be able to sacrifice their lives to stand up to tyrants and supposedly “benign” rulers but in a country like ours continually voting for the two sides of the same coin that are the neoliberals in the dem party to the tea partiers in the rep party defines turning a blind eye.
And one can legitimately equate Hitler and Truman, etc. . . . in certain ways. The arguments are not “way too simplistic”.
Refusing to see the evil and harm that comes from the sorting and separating, the standardization and classification of students is simplistic thinking.
Duane:
I said “benign government”.
The rest of your argument remains hyperbolic, outrageous and destructive of your credibility. You essentially equate the current education reforms to genocide, concentration camps, mass starvation, and mass political assassinations. For shame!! Godwin’s Law applies in spades.
Comparing is not equating.
“Why wouldn’t the powers that be grant the local school district the discretion to make exceptions for such obvious cases?
Because the “the powers that be” aren’t interested in the individual child, only on forcing their ideologies on others as they are the “high priests on high”. High on their own ideologies.
Duane:
You do not know their rationales. They may be as you say, they may be obduracy, they may be insensitivity, they may be laziness, they may be intellectual blindness or they may be fear of setting precedents that may be exploited – or all of them in some mixture.
Or one of many other reasons not listed.
I don’t need to know their rationales, other than I see most as being GAGA with little instinct to question the results of their policies, to discern the harm, violence of person and evil that RESULTS from their policies.
Let me ask you this. Are manifestations of “Bullying” (a term so dearly thrown out there at the students but never at the powers to be) only physical. . . . ? I think not. Bullying is a form of violence of one person directed at another. The reason behind the bullying makes no difference, only that the action/results are the diminishing of another’s personhood through overt domination. And that is what educational standards, the concommitant testing and “grading” of students serves to do, to lesson their personhood by labelling them with certain terms (whether A,B,C. . . F or proficient, beginning, etc. . .) based on one setting. And the threat that if one doesn’t comply (how about be a good german-ha ha) then one’s future and or present is threatened in some fashion-bullying manifested.
“I sit in rooms with educational leaders who make statements about the 43% (of students with disabilities who passed the tests last year)…”
This is a real issue. Kids who are disabled in ways that don’t overly affect academics (speech only, mildly SLD coupled with a high IQ, etc.) pass the high stakes tests. Their scores are then used to squelch “excuses.” If you hint that a student might possibly not be capable of catching up to grade level, eyebrows go up and you are under immediate suspicion of not believing that “all kids can learn.”
The expectation is that you will simultaneously teach grade level standards and remediate. There is no perfect balance and one or the other is going to be shortchanged. The pressure is on to teach the standards, so it’s usually the remediation that gets the short end of the stick. So, instead of making progress, students flat-line. At some point along the way, they give up. And that’s the real tragedy.
Families and teachers of exceptional students find themselves in this predicament because the people who are driving this corporate “reform” train ( Obama, Duncan, Bush, Gates, Coleman, et al.) are so laughably removed from the reality of the public school systems they aim to “reform”.
The current president is a tabula rasa with regard to American public education. He has zero experience as a student , zero experience as a parent, and zero experience as a teacher. It would have been a sign of wisdom then, for him to select as his Education Secretary ( and presumably chief advisor) someone with the requisite heft to compensate for the president’s own limitations. Instead, he selects Arne Duncan, quite possibly the only living adult in the United States with *less* insight into public education than the president himself.
It is well within the realm of possibility that these people are not even aware that autistic children… and other categories of exceptional youngsters …are now educated in public schools. Their rhetoric… as well as their “solutions” ( the Common Core State Standards, for example) certainly suggests that this is the case. Utter and complete obliviousness.
The whole situation has the makings of a good comic novel if it weren’t so damned *tragic*. Alas, the situation won’t change anytime soon. Too much money invested ( not to mention too much ego) and too much money yet to be “earned”.
http://paulvhogan.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-district-75-danielson-pilot-crash-burn-fizzle/
“It would have been a sign of wisdom then, for him to select . . .”
Well we know there is no will to wisdom with “him” only a will to power.
I teach special ed students and was told that some of them are “worth more” than others because some of them have the potential to move up to a different quartile on the standardized tests. If they do that then they count double towards school progress (and teacher progress) measurements. So we should “concentrate” on them.
We have gone down the rabbit hole and it is a very very sick place.
You got it….we focus on the “bubble” kids….the ones who aren’t yet proficient but are closer than some. Better chance of getting those kids to show proficiency on the test! Woo-hoo!
Yes, indeed. He mixes the kool aid. Arne peddles it. The public schools drink it. They make love to it. They glorify it. It is so obvious that Obama is a false prophet. Why are so many still following him, especially those in public education?
Well I’m in public education and I’m certainly not following him. I SURELY do not glorify in ANY of this! But I do what I have to do to keep my job, while doing as much as possible to make learning a joyful experience….and, you’d better believe THAT”S getting more difficult all the time! Hardly a day goes by I don’t consider ending this career and doing something else with my life. One reason I stay to try to have some positive impact on students….and, call me naive, but I keep feeling hopeful about the recent awareness and public outrage that is taking place.
Have to concur with your last statement/question, HU, even though we come at the problem, Obomber, from quite different yet at times on certain things similar viewpoints.
I don’t disagree, but what do you think either McCain or Romney would be doing differently? Vouchers rather than charters, probably. In other words, deck chairs on the Titanic.
Making love to Kool Aid?
That’s sounds difficult, and kind of yucky, Harlan.
I wonder if there is anything in IDEA about special education teachers being required to write IEP goals to grade level standards? I attended a compliance law refresher seminar all day last Saturday, and nary a word was mentioned about having to write goals to grade level standard. Not that is will make me change my practice of drafting IEP goals in accordance to the needs of my students and the wishes of their families, but I will send an email to the presenter from last Saturday and ask for clarification about this disturbing directive.
I fully believe that this is yet another way to steal money from education. Those who claim that we aren’t expecting enough of our special needs and second language kids as an excuse for placing unrealistic demands on them that leave them hating school and making no progress at all are simply despicable. My daughter has special needs and I will make sure everyday that her IEP goals are the priority, she can’t read and think critically about grade level texts if she can’t read at all. This puts teachers in an untenable situation in which they must decide between their jobs and their students.
I agree with you…..it’s just an excuse for cutting the special education budget further.
Beginning with NCLB to the present, these models have been out of compliance with IDEA’s philosophy which is to serve students who qualify free and appropriate education.
De Blasio won and we have a pretty good chance of a rejection of Bloomberg’s policies!! Huzzah!
1. Common Core and Standardized Tests…”Education = Robotic Clones”
“One Size Fits All”
“My way or the Highway”
“Handicaps not considered..you must all race each other and the First One to the
Finish Line Wins”
Real Education- Individualizing –
1. “Let’s find the right size for each Student”
2. “Be the Best that You can Be and you WILL Be a Success”
3. There is a place in the world for everyone..Let us help you to find yours
The social is the real work for many young students, with or without IEPs. Until a child is wholly at rest, feels seen and supported in the classroom, by teachers and peers, academic learning will be painfully slow. Of course, loving, supportive, proactive parents — like “Is Someone…” — are not always part of the package. Children with greater needs are admittedly harder to teach because you can’t hide behind a grade book. Success is about relationship. The more rigorous the standards, the more streamlined the curriculum, the more vendors with the ideal curriculum, the more bells and whistles technology has: the less time a teacher has to make sure their students’ needs are met because that relationship is strained and replaced with material things.
It is so intuitive for a teacher to want their children to progress that the ‘accountability’ argument is laughable. I think it is the standards that hold children back. For most students, having one negative experience, where they feel stupid or slow or last, delays them significantly. That tape plays over and over and brain pathways are closed to thoughts of hope, success. Having a teacher and parent working in tandem, out of relationship is a great thing. It is the children you teach through relationship whose success is the most rewarding. Like the mother said, you notice the little steps, conversations, gestures that will never be categorized on a test. Moreover, this is the kind learning I truly believe that teachers want to experience, which in turn reflects positively on the profession. This is what master teachers are made of…not junk science stats.
Here is what Arne Duncan has said about this, in his own words…..http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27/arne-duncan-special-education_n_3819045.html
What negative effect, exactly, do these so-called advocates of students with disabilities believe came about due to their taking a modified assessment?
Thank you for sharing this letter. I am going to read it to my daughters, who came home from school yesterday complaining about Alex. Alex, from their point of view, is just a kid who must have the swing every day at recess and runs to the teacher if he doesn’t. It is a struggle to teach empathy for a kid who looks “normal” but lacks basic social skills as an autistic child. I’ll keep trying and hopefully my kids will help Alex have a few moments connecting with his peers.
As an education advocate across MI and the US, I see the mass hysteria and confusion with the CCSS every day. I sit in IEP team meetings and have to draft goals and objectives for students’ IEPs. Like this parent, I have to address “all areas of a student’s needs” and that includes, social thinking, social skills, cognitive skill building, communication, sensory processing, emotional development and academics. Respectfully, the CCSS don’t have to be the enemy; nor do I believe they are the source of all education evil as I believe that America’s children ALL deserve equal educational opportunities and instruction. The CCSS will fail largely because our teacher preparation programs have not evolved to produce a teaching force that is recognized as the content experts (content includes social, emotional, cognitive, communicative, adaptive daily and academic) they need and deserve to be.
To Rebecca Ellis: Please feel free to contact me, Marcie Lipsitt at marcielipsitt@outlook.com or 248-514-2101 if I can offer assistance with your child’s IEP.