Nancy Bailey reports that special education is in jeopardy in Seattle.
She writes:
You can’t put your guard down. Rest assured the wheels of ugly education reform continue to churn. Here is a recent Seattle Times headline, “Special Education is Ineffective and too Expensive, Report Says.”
Why? Well, students with special needs, 54 percent to be exact, aren’t managing to get their diplomas on time. They also aren’t going on to college as much as their non-disabled peers. They fail to always reach their NCLB goals on their IEPs. Students with emotional disabilities, I’m guessing with no real SPED services, are getting suspended 2 to 3 times more often than the students without disabilities. Second language students aren’t being served well, and parents have become concerned that their students won’t be employable.
I would argue that the reforms that have taken place since the reauthorizations that formed IDEA, along with NCLB and RTTT, have not been in the best interest of students with special needs across the country. The harsh budget cuts haven’t helped either.
But instead of fixing the problems in Seattle, and without reassessing the terrible reforms that have been foisted on schools and students with disabilities for the last 20 years or more, this is what the rubber stamped Blue Ribbon Commission Report from the Governor’s office, came up with:
The evidence is clear that disabilities do not cause disparate outcomes, but that the system itself perpetuates limitations in expectations and false belief systems about who children with disabilities can be and how much they can achieve in their lifetime.
“System,” of course, implies teachers. Hey, you teachers quit sitting around painting your nails and raise those expectations! And while you are at it—embrace Common Core! Why doesn’t the news say what they all really mean?
And this is how the Seattle Times puts it:
But the vast majority of children in special education do not have disabilities that prevent them from tackling the same rigorous academic subjects as general education students if they get the proper support, so those low numbers reflect shortcomings in the system, not the students.
And where does this all come from? What revolutionary research study have we missed? Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education!
You see, with higher expectations and plenty of rigor, most if not all of the students with disabilities can achieve excellent results. And that is where the Common Core comes in: Rigor for all. No exceptions, no excuses.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s obvious that Common Core is a battering ram designed to force square begs in round holes even if the pegs have to be crushed and destroyed to make them appear to fit.
LikeLike
This is crap! I taught Special Education for 21 years following a career in Nursing. Some of the students surpassed my expectations and I encouraged their progress and success. Some did well with much scaffolding to insure their success. All did the best they could. I am weary, no, I am sick and tired of the ridiculous expectations Common Core places on children. It saps creativity, is blatantly age inappropriate and discourages too many. Blooms taxonomy does not start at analysis. Understanding, comprehension must come first. What ever happened to commom sense?!
LikeLike
The common core is a disaster waiting to happen. Sped students (as well as gen Ed) will fail in droves due to ill conceived standards promulgated by book publishers. The kids will fail and drop out. Teachers will be blamed and will be let go en mass, with the false belief that new ones will come in and work miracles. Then people won’t enter the profession. This will be a catastrophe and a national shame.
LikeLike
You are so right, Lloyd. As the pegs are crushed and destroyed by the evil politicians, teachers will be blamed for much lower test scores. These lower test scores will result in lower teacher evaluations, which will eventually lead to dismissal. As all of these factors come together, privatization will become easier and easier for the evil politicians to accomplish. It is all scary to watch, and to be honest with you, I cannot believe how much the evil politicians have accomplished in their quest to destroy public education as we know it. I am so afraid that I will see the day that charter schools will have the power to decide which children get educated.
LikeLike
Sadly, politics will always trump pedagogy.
LikeLike
One thing that I’ve been wondering, in Massachusetts students with IEPs are the ones included in the “students with disabilities” category. In order to qualify for an IEP and services they (usually) have to be a few grade levels behind in a subject. Once they do improve and manage with 504 accommodations or without special ed services at all, then they’re no longer in this category. Same thing with English Language learners. By definition this subgroup is all students learning English. Once they do learn English after a few years and are successful they move into the “former ELL” and so the scores of these groups never really change, but the kids do well and move out of the category.
LikeLike
The report says nearly 60% of students have the same cognitive abilities as regular students. I’m actually going to disagree with that part. If we are assuming cognitive includes performance, then almost 70% of students do NOT have the same cognitive ability. At my school district, I’m adding Autism, IQ Deficit, Learning Disability and Brain injury to come up with that. Obviously, they are using different categories or definition.
LikeLike
Even “cognitive ability” can’t compensate for lack of vocabulary, the need for more time to learn, the more time needed on task, and other variables.
LikeLike
This might be true. Children are dumped into programs for numerous reasons, to meet a budget surplus, misguided parents, a surplus of Special Ed teachers that need work and are assigned to a school, etc.Labeling children is disastrous for them and learning from and being with their peers would save a lot of money and prevent ruined educational identities for children, who may need a little more time to deal with the nonsense of the school system and it programmed and conditioned teachers and administrators. Teachers should have the ability to deal with all children in their classroom at every level, like with the little red school house paradigm before the invention o the public school “system”. We are all conditioned to the beast.
LikeLike
It’s all about destroying public education by setting insanely impossible expectations in order to bamboozle the public into quitting on public schools and replacing them with profit-driven schools. And wait until then to see how expensive SPED gets!
LikeLike
Wonder if parents realize they will be taking out $35,000 loans for grade school. Talk about student debt. It will be Corinthian College only with elementary.
LikeLike
I’m sorry if it’s been said before but all this ‘same same same’ for everyone reminds me of Nazi Germany. From the 25 Points: “The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.”
LikeLike
This is part of the “run the schools like a business” mindset. Classrooms become portfolios of students. The students are analyzed for the best return on expenditures. If the return is not at market expectations, then the portfolio needs revised and the poor performing assests (students) are eliminated. If that is not possible, then blame the portfolio manager (teacher) for poor performance, fire, and bring in another. Teachers are forced to focus precious few resources and valuable time only on those assests (students) that produce a positive return. That is what the investment CEOs (DOE) want. Of course the option is there to combine portfolios such that the overall return is higher – not unlike the slice and diced mortgage backed securities that destroyed Wall Street. Wonder what is the classroom equivalent of a derivative? It is how these Reformers think.
LikeLike
I’ve written countless IEPs over the years. We always use multiple assessments (lots of data…), and the IEP goals are determined by a committee of professionals (i.e. teachers, psychologists, social workers, administrators, etc.), the parents, and sometimes the student. This looks like a case where people do not know about the things they don’t know, while simultaneously thinking they understand all there is to know about it.
LikeLike
“We have experienced nearly 40 years of a special education system that is largely procedural”
And surely, the solution to this problem will involve more mandatory procedures from the state and federal level.
LikeLike
This initiative came from USDE and it is based on the (unstated) premise that states have been jacking up the numbers of students with IEP plans to qualify for extra funds.
The new plan for funding is outcome-based only with the usual iron-fist penalties in federal funding to states that do not comply with the agenda. This is not just about Washington.
The plan in Washington looks like it is intended to throw out everything and start with a commission that is appointed by the governor. The Commission would go through the motions of getting “stakeholder” input, but it is clear that some decisions have already been made. People with expertise in special education play a minor role. And the plan is to put the screws on Seattle schools to be a demonstration for the whole state of an entirely new asset-based funding scheme (not clear what that means). There is also much in the Committee report about basic education for all, meaning common core and SMARTER tests in Washington, the rigor thing, and the rest. http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/new-accountability-framework-raises-bar-state-special-education-programs
LikeLike
” it is based on the (unstated) premise that states have been jacking up the numbers of students with IEP plans to qualify for extra funds.”
From my limited experience with IEPs as a teacher, I’ve generally seen that many time parents/guardians have to really push hard to get an IEP for their student as the SPED resources in most districts are scarce. For the feds of the DOE to purport that states are inflating their IEP figures goes against that fact and is risible and ludicrous.
LikeLike
This is a long thought-out plan to shift money from special education to rent-seeking profiteering.
Here in FL I’ve been warning my colleagues that this was coming. We have a new ALEC/Jeb Bush law requiring all teachers to undergo new Special Education training as part of recertification, signaling to me the ending of standalone classes and specialist teachers.
We have a longstanding campaign that claims that special education designation is racist because more black males are labeled than others, ignoring the effects of generationsl poverty and poor living conditons, poor diet, poor medical care, and lack of support on brain development and learning outcomes.
The result is that it is nearly impossible to get a child of color any special education services now. Combined with Florida’s peculiar implementation of Response To Intervention and the repeated lawsuits brought by the USDOE for noncompliance, all mandated as part of NCLB, and driven by anti-teacher behaviorists from UF who blame poor teaching for every problem that manifests, the atmosphere is now ripe for eliminating ESE altogether.
The reformist/CCSS connection is just part of the puzzle. Be warned! It is coming your way sooner rather than later!
LikeLike
To me, this is just another way for corporations to cut the costs of education so that they can pocket the money themselves. Why spend it on a kid when Bill Gates needs to buy a diamond studded toothbrush?
LikeLike
I really appreciate the timing of the appearance of this article…….The st. Louis post dispatch presented a ridiculous editorial today…..they think st. Louis city school district and the dozens of districts in the county should be merged into one district……(presumably with an appointed school board)…..I reminded them of my letter from a few months ago to compare how things work in the city schools regarding special needs children, including the typical attitudes they face from charter schools, with the one system for all special needs students in the county….and consider whether the city should be a part of it. The St. Louis Post Dispatch cannot even write a report about what is happening to that 16 percent of the school population, including how the standardized testing results are used in the county. I am not sure how many places are like St. Louis regarding information available about special needs students……..the PD and Public radio simply treat it as not exactly a taboo subject…just a subject not worth reporting about.
LikeLike
Newark Public Schools has been out of compliance with regard to Special Education for years. In my school, we have nonverbal autistic kids and in a previous position I worked with multiplidisabled kids. They want to reroute tax payer funding to the corporate bottom line and have no interest in the challenges of educating all of our children.
LikeLike
I think what you are all describing is already happening in our schools. In a lot of schools the resource classroom has already been eliminated completely, and the special needs child has to function in the regular classroom sometimes with an intervention specialist and sometimes not. The resource classroom is now looked down upon…and I never could understand that…The students were getting effective instruction in a small group setting at their developmental level.
It is all beginning to make sense to me now. This plan in the long run is to redirect dollars to another place – and not to help our special needs kids anymore. Honestly, this practice is taking our schools back to 50 years ago when the special needs kids were ignored and put in the corner of the classroom. Regular classroom teachers try to do the best they can, but when you have close to 30 or more kids in the regular classroom as it is…..it is a challenge for one teacher to meet everyone’s educational needs.
LikeLike
Sad Teacher, you are correct! The money spent on special education students is exponentially greater than that spent on general education students even with IDEA perpetually underfunded.
Of course that’s where the grifting reformers go looking for more dollars to steal from our children!
Until people stop being so charitable and giving the grifting reformers the benefit of the doubt regarding their motives we will not see substantial progress in driving them back into the dark holes from whence they come.
They are grifters, thieves, liars, hucksters, snake oil salespeople, and otherwise low-life representatives of the human race. And yet the USA has allowed them free range as rentiers and skimmers.
Call them out, like the naked emperor, and they too will hide in shame.
LikeLike
That all being said the state of Special Education in Seattle Public is terrible leaving it very vulnerable to any reform that is proposed.
1. The most recent head of department was just fired and there has been no consistent leadership.
2. We’re out of compliance with IDEA and under the gun to write a correction plan or lose all federal funding + implement a corrective policy with OSPI.
3. Parents are generally very unhappy with the services provided and there’s no consistency across the district (which is part of the reason the district is in such serious trouble even under the existing framework)
This is the latest report from July:
Click to access 014%2007%2021%20Combined%20_Report%20Version%208-final%20%282%29.pdf
I’ll just copy the intro:
” First, SPS and OSPI agreed that four root causes have contributed to SPS’s current
determination level of needing substantial intervention to meet special education compliance. These root causes include (a) de-centralization of SPS’s Special Education Department, (b) lack of consistency in SPS’s Special Education Department leadership personnel, (c) problems in successful transition to a new IEP system, and (d) an increasing student population with stagnant personnel resources. The Special Education Comprehensive Corrective Action Plan for the Seattle School District (C-CAP),
approved in October, 2013, was designed to correct noncompliance with the individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and move SPS’s status determination toward meeting the requirements and purposes of IDEA. Previous reports noted in the C-CAP have documented special education noncompliance in 2011 through 2013 and the need to create a culture of system-wide accountability. While recommendations have been consistently provided in these reports, no plan for strategic execution, no commitment to execution, no acknowledgement of the need to incorporate implementation science in corrective actions, no actionable strategies for implementation, and no action plan for leadership capacity building were included in prior reports. “
LikeLike
WOW! Right here in Ohio, today, I subbed in a class for a Special Ed inclusion teacher. I was helping some students make up work they had missed. This was 5th grade and they were working on long division. Never mind that htey can’t really multiply well, or subtract without using fingers, they have so much difficulty putting the steps for the division algorithm on their papers. It is sad that they are expected to work “on grade level” when, obviously, they can’t. But, that is the “expectation” … no excuses … they are 11, so they should ALL be able to do “thus and so”. I say, baloney.
Then, I was helping with a science “test” that was a “reading” about Japanese knotroot. The scientific name was used, as well as many vocabulary words that were difficult for anoyn with a high school diploma to read, yet she was expected to understand what was being said. I read and explained it to her as best I could, but if she had been expected to read and comprehend this on her own, she would not have understood enough of it to even write any logical answers. One question was not even on the page … it was about “How the Japanes knotroot got introduced to the United States.” Of course, I knew the answer, but I wasn’t at liberty to point this out … It was just simply an inappropriate activity for a 5th grader, and certainly not what should have been used on a TEST.
LikeLike
Connecticut schools embrace or Spec Ed students. In fact, without them many of the schools earning an “excelling” or “Maintaining” status/report card would have lost those labels moving down a notch.
LikeLike
In what way would they be “moving down a notch”?
LikeLike
This is Arne’s backdoor scheme to do SPED on the cheap and circumvent school level IEP decisions & IDEA.
First, the feds & Duncan have FAILED in their responsibility to fully fund IDEA yet now they decide they’re spending too much money? IDEA has NEVER been funded from 40% federal dollars as was promised in 1975. As congress & the administration have embraced austerity, the states and local districts are more & more responsible for funding all but a small %age of SPED costs.
Second, students with IEP’s may stay in public schools until they reach age 21 so the argument that they are not graduating on time is setting up students to fail. Many SPED students need more time to matriculate, master transition plans & whose IEP’s require they reamain in school until they reach age 21 (or age 22 if their birthdays fall in the school year.)
Finally, Arne dismantled state level compliance on IEP requirements in 2011and is only monitoring SPED test scores in DC. He & his OSEP director have no idea if students are making progress as every student’s IEP is individualized. Progress is determined at the school level by the IEP team.
LikeLike
Let me start by saying, I am not a fan of Common Core. As a Texas resident, it’s practically illegal to use the term! That being said, I am concerned by some of the comments. They reflect common misconceptions regarding children receiving special education services. A child does not have to be failing, performing below grade level or have a cognitive disability to qualify for special education and related services. For more information on these requirements, check out my blog: http://www.enabledadvocacy.com/index.php/my-blog/the-theory-of-eligibility-or-e-qualifying-disability-educational-need-2
For purposes of IDEA, cognitive ability does not include performance. It is more about what a child is capable of in terms of ability to think, reason and problem solve. It is often used interchangeably with intelligence. According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities, a learning disability is not a deficit in cognitive ability. In fact, the term was originally coined to describe a group of children who, despite normal intelligence, experienced severe problems in learning. Additionally, autism does not necessarily involve a cognitive disability as any parent of a child with Asperger’s (myself included) will tell you. The 60+% most likely comes from child count figures of students served under IDEA aggregated by disability category.
LikeLike
So now Special Ed teachers are labeled as well – Munchausen Education Syndrome. What a slap in the face to professionals who dedicate their teaching careers to children with special needs.
LikeLike
Thank you, Diane. I appreciate the many rich comments made here. I taught special ed. for many years and was always proud of my country which chose in the early 70s to focus on the individual schooling needs of children. It saddens me deeply to watch as those protections are stripped away.
LikeLike
And here, in ILL-Annoy, the Senate passed a bill (didn’t & isn’t going to the House, so dead for now–HOWEVER, another similar/same one w/a different # {“baffle ’em w/your B.S.”} will come up in January, after new legislators & governor sworn in–& it will add a “pension cost shift” to the local school districts, PLUS take funds away from special ed. Also, R.T.I. (Response to Intervention)–being mostly improperly implemented in the majority of ILL-Annoy’s largest school districts–has created a slow-moving system, resulting in less identification/diagnosis of students in need of special ed. services.
Yes, folks, it’s happening all over the country–“the life & death of” P.L. 94-142 & IDEA.
(If you live in ILL-Annoy, read “Fred Klonsky’s Blog” for updates from Beverly Holden Johns, Chairman of ISELA (the IL Special Ed. Coalition).
LikeLike
God knows how many SPED students in Indiana quit school because they could not pass the ISTEP test, and yet they were expected to have the same passing score of children labeled high ability. I often wonder what happened to these children — held to the same standards as everyone else and with no supports during testing — just extra TIME! The whole thing makes me sick. Indiana is well into 10 years of this relentless reform — what has it gotten us? A group of test scores on an inappropriate curriculum, students under extreme stress, and no creativity or critical thinking skills. Special education is disability, friends — they are not like other students and need to be both taught and assessed differently. Indiana now bases teacher pay on how well their students do on this test. How many teachers do you think want a SPED student in their classroom? When are we going to stop this insanity and take back our schools. They were never broken to begin with.
LikeLike
Special Education is a bit of a horror, where children do not have an obvious handicap,
but go with the moniker “learning disabled”.
Governments need to reduce its funding in many ways. It has become a make work program for teachers and unfairly labels children and separates them from their peers at an early age. The number of children and teachers in Special Ed is directly proportional to the money that is provided. there is no Special Ed money sitting around.
Except for really handicapped children, all children should be mainstreamed. New York City is moving in this direction, and rightfully so. The unions get bent out of shape because it reduces their membership. Politicians know this, but addressing it is a third rail for their careers. i.e taking money from the “helpless children”
LikeLike
I see from your ignorant, misinformed, and outright false statements that you are a political ideologue and not a teacher and that you have absolutely no experience working with children.
I have 20+ years experience working with mainstreamed special education students in NYC and FL.
I also see from your embarassingly ignorant comments that you are a loathsome excuse for a human being who is willing to sacrifice vulnerable, fragile children to your sickening ideology.
You disgust me and I’m pretty sure all decent people. Go away.
LikeLike
Jospeh, try teaching special education kids before you make such an ignorant remark. I’m a general education teacher, but I rely on my special education teachers for so many things. The special education kids would be lost in my class without the extra support, but with it, they excel.
The special education teachers in my school are my best partner in educating all children. I would be lost without them.
LikeLike
We are all conditioned in our own way. I was a fifth grade teacher and had numerous children who had trouble with their work, particularly English Language Learners along with math and literacy. We worked in groups where we helped each other. As a classroom teacher, it was a creative experience to work with children at many levels and to see how an emotional bond between them encouraged shared learning and understanding. I expected a strong response from those who are enamored with the whole process of dependency on the system. I agree with Seattle that 60% could probably benefit from being outside of Special Ed, and leave this system for the truly handicapped. The enemy is the reductionist way of teaching and learning, teachers living on publishers’ handouts and calling that education. The comments by Chris in Florida about sacrificing children, etc. shows the compassion and understanding devoid in some teachers, who look to maintain their stake hold in the system. I have many years teaching children and teachers on the graduate level in literacy as an intellectual and not as someone who has a complex emotional relationship about children and learning. The best teacher is one who can reflect upon their own practices and not get emotionally disturbed and abusive, when their own conditioning by the publishers is challenged. There is a certain blindness in education by teachers who feed on the idea that their students “love them”. Teachers need to “love” challenging their own ideas about education all of the time.
LikeLike
Joseph, There are many children with learning disabilities that can be helped in a resource class (1-2 periods a day). A good school has those classes and teachers work hard to transition students into regular classes full-time. Resource teachers work to help students adapt to difficulties they might face in the reg. class.
I believe resource classes have been an easy mark by the ed. reformers because the students usually can be mainstreamed. But that doesn’t always mean they are getting help for their disabilities. I have been saddened to see blanket inclusion push learning disabilities off the menu. Learning disabilities are very real and we need more, not less, research and consideration of them.
LikeLike
For a few years our district used rubric driven assessments. But we moved back to grades because some teachers and parents couldn’t deal with a grade based on progress rather than averaged percentages. The rubric driven card is useful because each child can be met at his own level of progress and need. Time isn’t wasted on averaging percentages. Upper kids can excel. Lower kids can work until they reach a higher level if proficiency. Our grading system is counterproductive. It canvassed risk and exploration. Teachers don’t feel comfortable with it. Propellant a bunch of certificates to use like trophies to prove their child us “the vest” or “better than” other kids. As long as thus mentality continues, education will be harmed.
Yet, when the tables are turned and the “data” is used to rank schools and teachers, we “feel the pain” and object to the punitive process. Changes need to be made.
Do we honestly think any school could have tamed the genius of Einstein, Edison, Mozart, or thousands of others? There are many great things happening in many great schools. Grading systems that are inflexible are not among those.
LikeLike
Nancy, I see that you are dedicated and honor you with your reasoned and rational concerns, but we need to define “learning disabilities”, and whether children can overcome them over time with peer help, rather than that of individual teachers and the isolation that it implies. I have seen children begin to understand concepts with board games that their groups have created, or even scripts created for puppet shows. Isolating children with teachers, and from their groups, needs to be re examined. Many resource room activities are just the bad rote activities by the publishers in the classroom, but in a smaller setting, which can be more insidious. Inclusion with two general ed teachers working with an entire group may be more effective, than one teacher doting on a few students “perceived” to have a “learning disability”, if we need to keep these teachers’ jobs.
LikeLike
Joseph,
Learning disabilities are defined. They actually exist and can be addressed with or without published material. All material from publishers is not bad. Resource rooms with credentialed teachers with backgrounds in understanding learning disabilities are what’s needed. Teachers need to learn and get credentialed in this area.
Certainly peers working together and board games etc. are nice activities, but when people imply these are isolated and “bad” classrooms they are actually creating the very stigmatization many of us have worked for years to eliminate.
And inclusion can be good the way you describe also. It all depends on the individualized needs of the child…always the purpose of the IEP!
LikeLike
When I was about age 7, my mother was told that I was retarded and would never learn to read or write. That was in the early 1950s and there was no special education classes or specialists who knew about learning disabilities and how to overcome them.
After the experts passed their verdict on me, my mother turned to my teacher for help, who provided material and guided my mother through the process of teaching me to read at home, because the teacher with a classroom full of students didn’t have the resources or time.
I learned to read and made the so-called experts wrong. Today, if I was a 7 year old, I would have been diagnosed with a learning disability called dyslexia and maybe my mother wouldn’t have had to use a wire coat hanger and pain to motivate me to overcome my learning disability because there are better tools and experts today.
The same teacher also suggested that my mother should have my eyes tested. It turned out that my vision was very bad and the blurry world I lived in and took for granted as what the world looked like cleared up when I got my first glasses and I actually got to see what trees looked like when they weren’t green blobs anymore.
Teachers make a big difference.
An even more dramatic story is that of James Ellison, who taught art at the high school where I taught. I remember him telling me that half of his brain had been removed through surgery. I don’t remember which half.
http://www.b17.com/ellison/biofile.htm
LikeLike
Lloyd, your anecdotal evidence indicates that learning is complex and students need all kinds of experiences with education, pedagogy and peer experience, which does not exist in classrooms, including family and extended family. Some in academia with literacy studies deny the existence of a “disease” called dyslexia. Children have all kinds obstacles to learning to read in school with inappropriate “programs”, which deny the reading process when the child is most ready, causing restrictions in their ability to read. I suspect from personal experiences that there are environmental factors which damage the nervous system; the eyes are the most sensitive organ in the human body, and the ability to create meaning from text is complex. We have a system called special ed which benefits the stigmatization of children at an early age, rather than allowing them to try to “overcome” these barriers over time. Finland does not allow children formal instruction until Age 7. No child should be labelled as “learning impaired” before that; just witness the learning impairment of those who run the school system. The literacy levels in the 13 colonies were extremely high. Literacy levels plummeted since the creation of the school system, creating a system (Spec Ed) within a system compounds the environment of isolation and alienation under the guise of caring for the “needy”, which we ourselves are creating.
LikeLike
You made “this” claim: “All kinds of experiences with education, pedagogy and peer experience, which does not exist in classrooms”
Where is your proof that “this” doesn’t exist in public school classrooms?
Where is your proof that “The literacy levels in the 13 colonies were extremely high?
In fact, your claim about literacy in the 13 colonies is not correct, and where literacy was high, there were mandated state and community public schools with supportive parents who were mostly white and from Europe with a common cultural foundation similar to what we see in Finland. There was no corporate Charter school movement with NCLB, Race to the Top and Common Core Crap.
For instance, “The Puritans valued education, both for the sake of religious study (they demanded a great deal of Bible reading) and for the sake of economic success.
A 1647 Massachusetts law mandated that every town of 50 or more families support a ‘petty’ (elementary) school and every town of 100 or more families support a Latin, or grammar, school where a few boys could learn Latin in preparation for college and the ministry or law.
In practice, virtually all New England towns made an effort to provide some schooling for their children. Both boys and girls attended the elementary schools, and there they learned to read, write, cipher, and they also learned religion. In the mid-Atlantic region, private and sectarian schools filled the same niche as the New England common schools.
The South, overwhelmingly rural, had few schools of any sort until the Revolutionary era.
Wealthy children studied with private tutors; middle-class children might learn to read from literate parents or older siblings;
many poor and middle-class white children, as well as virtually all black children, went unschooled. Literacy rates were significantly lower in the South than the north; this remained true until the late nineteenth century.
http://colonialquills.blogspot.com/2011/06/literacy-in-colonial-america.html
LikeLike
Fascinating, Lloyd! I’m glad you got help and it worked out.
Joseph part of what you write I agree with. I am no fan of labels. But you can help young children if you determine their difficulty early. I’m thinking more about speech problems etc.than reading. I am not a fan of RTI. Knowing your students in smaller class sizes is essential. But children do come to school with learning disabilities and we should help them. Loyd’s story is a great example of that.
And I am not aware of the literacy and “needy” plummets of which you mention.
LikeLike
Nancy, progressive schools in Europe do not label children at an early age. We need to define education. Are these children unable to listen to authentic literature and share with their peers, do art work and discuss the role of the community in their lives, perform and speak publicly. How early do you want to label children and confine them to a class, which makes them different. I have seen children labeled emotionally disturbed, which made them emotionally worse, than when they are moved to a mainstream setting.
LikeLike
Lloyd, I address these issues from my many years of experience in the classroom. You need not ask a question seeking proof regarding the variety of experiences in the classrooms in light of the Common Core test prep environment of all schools and NCLB in 2000. John Taylor Gatto has excellent evidence of advanced literacy in the Colonies, where reading a newspaper and the bible was vital, along with the number of editions of Tom Paine’s “Common Sense” sold, including indentured servants and freed slaves.
James Fenimore Cooper was the reading for third graders, rather than the programmed Lexile score texts of the current publishers
Data from the testing of soldiers for WW l showed high numbers of solders with a high literacy rate, which was the beginning of a great decline in literacy into present times.
But we digress, aside from the wonderful home school experience that you received, other children with both parents working, and half below the poverty line receiving inadequate food stamps, are being rounded up into Special Ed apartheid, where they will never breath the free air of mainstream education and equality with their peers.
LikeLike
Joseph,
You ignored the historical evidence in my previous comment that explains why you were wrong. Go back, click on the link and educate yourself about public education or the lack of it in the colonies. I’m not going to repeat myself. If you are unwilling to learn the truth through history and you want to stick to your ignorant opinion about literacy or the lack of it in the colonies, then there is nothing that anyone can do for you.
The United States of today is not the same as the fledgling Republic in the 13 colonies near the end of the 17th century. For instance, the early U.S. Republic didn’t have the challenge of teaching 6 million immigrant children from Latino families, many of whom came here illegally from some of the poorest regions in Latin American countries devastated by drug wars or rebellions.
In fact, in Mexico alone, over half of Mexico’s youth at age 15 are functionally illiterate, and they come from a country where 64% of the adults don’t even have a high school degree. These parents are not the same as the white faced, European Puritan immigrants who colonized most of the New England states.
LikeLike
Joseph,
I should end going back and forth. But “SPED apartheid” is a bit much. Perhaps you should fight for smaller class sizes so children pushed into inclusion aren’t lost in the shuffle. Or what about the charter schools that don’t include students with disabilities?
I spent most of my working profession helping students adapt to the regular class. They came to me with the disabilities.
And putting students with emotional problems in regular classes where they don’t get the help they need keeps a lot of parents and teachers up at night. Don’t label them then, but get them heIp!
SPED apartheid to me is ignoring the needs of children with disabilities and not wanting to pay for the services necessary to help them.
Now I am going to go buy the fixings for my Thanksgiving dinner. Have a nice holiday.
LikeLike
Indeed Nancy, Happy Thanksgiving to all. Some of my views may seem over the top,
but it has created a great discourse for me with wonderful minds in education. I hope that we can all feel free to question Special Ed on some level, and the roots and funding for its implementation and its existence.
Cheers!
LikeLike
Lloyd, not certain if I want to continue this thread, if my opinions are labeled “ignorant”.
I always honor my colleagues in education, even if they disagree. Literacy is not learned from a publishers handout. Please indicate your disagreements with John Taylor Gatto’s works as a grounding. The Enlightenment brought many ideas to our founding fathers in the 18th Century.
LikeLike
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you stated that the 13 colonies were highly literate and that was achieved without public education.
I provided a link to evidence that explained why that was partially true but also very wrong and misleading.
The evidence I provided through the link also pointed out that the New England colones had mandated public schools in every hamlet and town with at least 50 people or more as far back as the mid 17th century while there were no public schools in the Southern colonies where there was also widespread illiteracy except among the rich and powerful who could afford private tutors to teach their children how to read.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you refused to accept that history and change your thinking.
Someone who refuses to change their thinking after being provided with the facts that proves them wrong is a sign of stubborn ignorance.
LikeLike
A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njG7p6CSbCU
LikeLike