This comment from a reader in response to a post about “pre-school readiness” for children 0-3 with special needs, with “measurable and rigorous targets.”
The reader writes:
“I spent 19 years in infant special education- even before we even called it early intervention, I was teaching children in the 0-3 age range. Yes- I visited mothers the week their babies came home from the hospital because because they sought and wanted that support. I was in that first group of teachers in the nation earning a MS Ed in Early Childhood Special Education right after the passage of PL 94-142. My program was home-based and holistic- the goal was to help the parent(s) understand how their child’s medical condition/syndrome/extreme prematurity/ brain damage/sensory disorder impacts development, and to help that parent care for the baby’s physical, sensory, cognitive and social needs.
“I went to homes twice a week where there was no heat, no food security, overcrowding, broken windows, little furniture or toys, vermin infestation, poor lighting and broken cribs. And sometimes also there was abuse and domestic violence. I also went to homes with maids and luxury cars- any everything in between. My expertise and support made a difference for those families- but how much more of a long term difference would there be if all the children had prenatal care, safe and secure shelter, food security and access to needed medical and dental care?
“As a teacher, my job was to help the child and parent move from one step to the next developmental step, and celebrate each milestone, whenever it came, with joy. It was about attunement, attachment, engagement and play- not testing, pressure and grit. That is how babies learn- though touch and interaction and play. My job was to help the parent see a child as lovable and capable which might sound unnecessary, but learning that your child has a significant problem is a crushing blow to many parents- it is traumatic, it is a shock, and a nightmare. But yes. I recorded new milestones on a checklist of developmental skills to help the parent understand and delight in the sequence of skills as they developed- not to quantify and get a “score.”
“Rigor? Does Duncan realize we are talking about babies with poor oral-motor tone learning how to suck on a nipple? Or a baby having hundreds of seizures a day learning how to make eye contact with her mother? Or a baby with cerebral palsy lifting his head to see himself in a mirror? What Duncan is proposing is clueless, but also despicable and sinister. Is there anything in this world he cannot reduce to a data point? Grief? Laughter? Love? Acceptance? Health? Comfort? Pride? What is YOUR score Mr. Duncan?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Beautifully stated.
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Diane- these are my words, and I am grateful you have shared them. I have a version where I’ve edited out the typos if you would like to have it.
Terry Kalb (Teka21)
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Duncan is deranged.
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Duncan: empathy score = 0
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Peter Greene had something like this covered back in July:
Memo to Three-Year-Old Slackers
To: American Three-Year-Olds
From: America’s Education Reform Thought Leaders’
Re: Get to work, you lazy slackers
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/07/memo-to-three-year-old-slackers.html
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Excellent reply…….We always knew they would keep pushing to the baby stage. Piaget, you have rolled over plenty in your grave. What happened to babies being who they are: babies? You can’t hug a data point!
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Thank you, Terry, for expressing this so eloquently. I was a Parent Infant teacher for deaf infants and toddlers at the RI School for the Deaf in the ’70’s. Parents of babies and young children with disabilities do need intervention, but that intervention needs to be in the best interest of the unique child and family, not in the service of a grand workforce scheme. They certainly do not need to be further traumatized by being hammered with “results” that show that their children are not measuring up to an arbitrary standard. This abuse of children and families reaching down to birth is so maniacal that surely more practitioners will speak out against it?
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One big difference….Parents used to do their part. We have become a nation of babies having babies and the vast majority of those children are left to advocate for themselves. For me, a responsible government has to step up to the plate. Just like us teachers, those elected officials have to walk a fine line between doing what is right for the child and insulting the parents/voters for their failures in parenting. The best way for them is to create programs that identify these children as early as possible so that they have the best opportunity to be successful in school and in life. Not always the best method, but if we look inward we will find that some of our teaching methods are so out dated they have become part of the problem, but we hold onto them as tried and true. What we fail, over and over, to consider is that a 5 year old today is not the same 5 year old of 10 or 20 years ago. Every expert in the world agrees that 0-6 are the child’s greatest learning years…The data collection does not hurt them, does not embarrass them, their parents and us maybe, and it does follow Madeline Hunters model. So why rob them of opportunities for success?
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Q, we are in terrible trouble if we expect a federal program to deal with the needs of babies with disabilities. Provide funding for trained professionals, yes. Provide benchmarks, data, and rigorous targets? Go away.
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Little kids need to be little kids, including those in pre-school and kindergarten. Duncan is guilty of child abuse.
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It may be even a bigger program than you realize. The quality rating systems that some states have adopted come with efforts to collect data on ALL children who enter child care from 0 on up. It also includes efforts to track all childcare workers by insisting that they present sensitive documentation not only to their employer but to the data base. This is an effort that has gone under the radar and is not critically discussed anywhere.
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Duncan,
Your ideals have sunken
to an all time low
you seem not to grow
and really don’t know
how quickly
you make
young minds
pained and sickly.
You are a beast, Duncan.
Yes, You.
A hideous depraved beast
who on children’s dignity
you feast ,
and at the very least,
you can’t even give
a decent speech,
for who could expect articulation,
from such a leech?
Give it up, Duncan
and find a new job
for our children’s future,
you never can rob.
Might we suggest
you stick to a ball and hoop,
for your thoughts on education
are nothing but
stinky,
rotten,
poop . . . . . .
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If someone could post the USDOE proposal for this, that would be great, since I cannot find it on the web, anything recent, that is. This has been policy for a long time, as someone noted in an earlier post. Having appropriately high expectations for all children is good. To set a goal for communicative competence by first or third grade is good (see http://www.ncscpartners.org). To recognize that just because a child doesn’t speak doesn’t mean a child doesn’t think and it’s incumbent upon educators to find ways for a child to show what he or she knows. Too often children are segregated in preschool, never to join their same age, typically developing peers for the rest of their lives–they go from segregated preschool to segregated elementary school to segregated high school to a sheltered workshop as an adult, only to be included in the community when they go bowling or to the mall. In New York state, one SIX PERCENT of students served under the IDEA category of intellectual disability are included in gen ed 80% or more of their day (the federal marker for inclusive education), with a national average of 17% (although some states, such as Iowa, include students served under this category 60% of the day). There is virtually NO research that shows that segregated placements lead to improved academic and post school outcomes for students with complex support needs and there is a LARGE BODY of research that shows that inclusive environments DO lead to improved academic and post school outcomes for individuals with complex support needs. So, in my opinion, we are directing our outrage at the wrong issue. I live in Rochester, NY, which is #5 in child poverty in that nation and has the worst graduation rate in the state/lowest performing school district, while two of the highest performing school districts are ADJACENT to the city school district. Pittsford and Brighton have no charter schools, they might be outraged at the testing schemes, but their ratings are not being affected.
Instead of being outraged at requiring educators to monitor and record student (at whatever age) progress and plan for communicative competence and expect engagement in academics (and the research also shows that “functional” skills can be embedded in academic skills, which leads to greater maintenance and generalization), can we please be outraged at the racial and economic inequities within a 10 mile radius and at the fact that New York segregates 94 percent of their students with intellectual disability???????
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Julia M. White, this is a discussion of 0-3, not preschool. I invite sharp-eyed readers to explain how the USDOE started demanding “measurable and rigorous targets” for children from 0-3 with disabilities. Bureaucracies have a way of becoming self-justifying.
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What happens from 0-3 impacts where kids go to preschool (and in many cases directly impacts their post school life, see above), so it is relevant. Communicative competence is a rigorous target for toddlers with complex support needs. And again, misdirected outrage.
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Julia, please understand that there is a wealth of research showing that stress and frustration in infants causes long term problems. Listen to the expertise of infant developmental specialists and pediatricians. I taught parents how to read the cues from their babies that show stress, anxiety, over-stimulation, withdrawal, even panic. Communication is a two-way street. It is not built on externally imposed benchmarks. Teaching with babies is as much about teaching parents as it is the children. Parents who try to impose and/or rush “competence” will be incompetent in reading the usually non-verbally communicated needs of their atypical and delayed infants. I would NEVER model “rigor” to parents. Stop back-mapping and take the children forward from where they are developmentally. That is a far better approach to helping children become all they can be.
Terry Kalb
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This whole thread is a fundamental misunderstanding of the law (IDEA). This is not about stressing babies. These “benchmarks” are for states and an assessment of their provision of services/early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities. The benchmarks measure whether states provide services in a timely manner, whether they inform parents of their rights/keep parents involved. It is not an assessment of the types of services provided to children, just that appropriately rigorous services that help students develop appropriate social, academic, and communication skills. This can ABSOLUTELY be done in culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate ways. I would urge you to look at the research of Thurlow, Kearns, and others, around communication. I never talked about imposing or rushing competence. I simply stated that communicative competence is very important to a child’s social and academic life, and I do not mean “verbal” communication–communication takes a variety of forms (AAC, etc).
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“Rigorous” services are a terrible model for parents, whose interactions with their infants are far more important. EI is an hour or two at most a week. Parents carry over what they learn from watching us. Data drives instruction. I want the child’s own progress and readiness to drive it. Do you thin a mother isn’t aware that most babies are walking by 15 months and her child with CP cannot hold up his head or pick up a block? Do you think the mother of a child with autism is unaware of what her child does not do that others can? Focus on typical benchmarks and deficit data is exactly how NOT to teach a mother that her baby is capable and will be more capable.
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The problem with back-mapping addressed so well here- and the younger you go, the more developmentally inappropriate the expectations…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/29/a-tough-critique-of-common-core-on-early-childhood-education/
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What a beautiful post Teka21, and a really interesting thread. Thank you for posting Diane.
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