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

Study: NYC Charters Lose 80% of Students with Disabilities by Third Grade

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2014 //
139

A study by the city’s Independent Budget Office finds that charter schools have incredibly high attrition for students with disabilities.

Ben Chapman writes in the New York Daily News:

“A whopping 80% of special-needs kids who enroll as kindergartners in city charter schools leave by the time they reach third grade, a report by the Independent Budget Office released Thursday shows.”

He adds:

“Critics have said for years that charters push out needy kids and serve fewer difficult students. Overall, just 9% of charter school students have special needs — much lower than the citywide average of 18%.

“District schools also had a tough time holding onto special-needs kids in the time period covered during the report. Just half who enrolled in traditional public school as kindergartners remained in the same school at the end of grade three.”

Where do they go? Presumably to other district schools, not to charters.

Categories Charter Schools, New York City, Special Education

Tweed Insider Reviews IBO Report on Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2014 //
33

The Tweed insider who sends occasional reports to this blog is still anonymous. Still too dangerous to step out in the open. Wouldn’t it be swell if the Department of Education actually had a research department, instead of a hyper-active public relations department?

Insider here reviews the report on charter schools by the NYC Independent Budget Office. The report covered only the early grades, not the middle grades or high school years.

He/she writes:

Charter schools often seem to be at the center of the national debate on education. So much so in fact that when Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to review charter school policy in New York City, Eric Cantor, the Republican House Majority Leader in the United States Congress, went on the attack. Cantor claimed that de Blasio would “devastate the growth of education opportunity” and threatened to hold committee hearings about the city’s policies. To say the least it is unusual for a House Majority Leader from the United States Federal Government to threaten a city mayor who has been in office for less than 10 days. What could explain Cantor’s conniptions?

Data in a report released by the New York City Independent Budget Office the day after Cantor made his threats might answer our question. The report revealed that charter schools in New York City manage to get rid of students with lower test scores, special education students, and students who are often absent.

Here are some of the relevant quotes from the report:

“The results are revealing. Among students in charter schools, those who remained in their kindergarten schools through third grade had higher average scale scores in both reading (English Language Arts) and mathematics in third grade compared with those who had left for another New York City public school.”

“Only 20 percent of students classified as requiring special education who started kindergarten in charter schools remained in the same school after three years, with the vast majority transferring to another New York City public school (see Table 5). The corresponding persistence rate for students in nearby traditional public schools is 50 percent.”

“Absenteeism is an even greater predictor of turnover for students in charter schools, compared with its predictive power for students in nearby traditional public schools.”

It appears that Cantor and other self-proclaimed education reformers fear that transparency about the charter sector will reveal that it is an empire of cards. Rather than truly providing students with a better education it is evident that, as a sector, charter schools are just playing parlor tricks, getting rid of students who are bringing down their scores (and sending those students to the local public schools of course). No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have managed to turn education into a set of accounting gimmicks.

Another facet of the education debate revealed by the publication of this data is the extent to which spin rather than the facts is allowed to dominate in the media. The report is now being spun by the New York Times as “addressing a common criticism of New York City charter schools, a study… said that in general their students were not, in fact, more likely to transfer out than their counterparts in traditional public schools.”

In fact, the study provides evidence that charters schools in New York City are deliberately selecting which students they keep. They keep, at a higher rate than local public schools, only those students who bring up their test scores. And they kick out students who bring down their test scores. This gets to the core mission of public education. Are schools meant to serve all students or only students who produce good metrics for the schools they attend? The charter school sector and its advocates seem to believe their only moral obligation is to serve students who do school well. Students who don’t do school well are selectively encouraged and badgered to leave or are told they are not a “good fit.” Public schools, on the other hand, still believe that education should be open to all kids and that society has an obligation to provide for every single child.

In a fascinating twist this report follows a paper released in September by two conservative think tanks claiming that the charter sector in New York City does not discriminate against students with special needs. They alleged that charter schools have fewer special education students because fewer “choose” to apply and because charter schools are less likely to classify students as needing special education services “preferring instead to use their autonomy to intervene.” This paper was trumpeted by the media and treated as though it was a genuinely objective analysis, despite the fact that its methodology had been thoroughly debunked by the National Education Policy Center. With the data in the Independent Budget Office report we now have evidence that the charter sector’s preferred intervention is to selectively attrite students who would benefit from additional supports instead of actually trying to succor them. As long as the media accepts the “findings” of clearly biased think tanks funded by conservative groups as relevant to education policy we will not be able to have an honest national conversation about what works for children.

Where do we go next? The push for greater transparency within the charter sector must continue. Charters must be subject to the same reporting requirements as public schools. Complete data must be made public so that researchers can analyze what is truly going on. At the same time the role of charters in education policy must be minimized. Charters continue to take up bandwidth that should be devoted to discussions about how to make all schools for all kids better and better. It is by now abundantly clear that the charter sector as a whole has little to contribute to this conversation.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, National Education Policy Center, New York City, Special Education

Putting Students Last: How Charter Leaders Stole (Allegedly) from Disabled Children

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2014 //
17

G.f. Brandenburg read the court documents in the case against officials at Options Charter School in D.C.

The school was created to serve students with disabilities.

Brandenburg points out that the charter was very profitable for its leaders.

The court documents how charter officials–deregulated and lightly supervised by their collaborators in the D.C. charter School Board–allegedly transferred large sums of money to themselves.

Categories Charter Schools, District of Columbia, Special Education

Idaho: TFA Should Not Teach Students with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2014 //
54

Levi Cavener wrote this article about why young college graduates with only five weeks of training are not qualified to teach students with disabilities.

Levi B Cavener is a Special Education teacher at Vallivue High School, Caldwell, Idaho.

He wrote it after attending a local school board meeting, where a TFA representative claimed that TFA recruits are well prepared to teach students with high needs:

“At a December 10, 2013, Vallivue School Board meeting I listened to Nicole Brisbane, Idaho’s TFA point person, pitch her product. (The J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, a heavy donor to the district, called the board members to see if they would meet with Ms. Brisbane.) During the presentation, board members inquired about TFA’s ability to provide staffing for “hard-to-fill” positions, particularly special education. Brisbane was clear: TFA can provide “highly qualified” special education instructors.”

In Idaho, one foundation calls the shots for education: the Albertson Foundation. This foundation promotes privatization, charters, online learning, and TFA.

Categories Idaho, Special Education, Teach for America TFA

A Teacher Who Is Evaluated by the Scores of Students She Does Not Teach

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2013 //
40

A reader writes:

“I’m a special education teacher in New Mexico and I took this year off teaching, for medical reasons. The choice was made easier by the new teacher evaluations. Since my students have significant disabilities, they can not take the state tests. 50% of my evaluation would then be based on how the regular education students, who I do not teach, scored at our school. 25% of my evaluation would be based on my principal’s view of how I contributed to that score (God knows how that we be, since I do not provide instruction to any of the students who take the test). So 75% of my yearly evaluation would have been based on test scores of students that receive no instruction from me. How could this possibly be an effective indicator of student/teacher performance in my classroom?

“All this does is provide an incentive for teachers to work with the wealthiest, highest performing schools, while disincentivizing teachers from working with special needs students or in high risk or low income settings.

“I have no problem with being evaluated or critiqued as a professional, but it needs to be done with some semblance of common sense.”

Categories New Mexico, Special Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Academic Standards and a Boy with Autism

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2013 //
40

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”

Categories Common Core, Special Education

When Testing Becomes “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
52

A principal in New York told me the following story. He is
reliable. This is a true story.

He wrote to tell me that the state is requiring a student with Down syndrome to take the state’s new
Common Core test. It is an “alternative” test but just as “hard” as the regular test. She is almost certain to fail. Only 5% of students with disabilities passed the Common Core tests.

Then he told me an even more horrifying story. A child in his school has a rare
genetic disease that is fatal. His parents learned about it last
year, when he was in third grade. He has gone blind and deaf. He
has only months to live. The state demands documentation to excuse
him from state testing. The other children in the school are kind
to him. They hold his hand to help him maneuver the hallways.

The state is not kind. The state is cruel. The state loves testing, not
children. Is there even a touch of human kindness at he State
Education Department in Albany? Or are they blind, deaf, and
heartless as well? .

Categories New York, Special Education, Testing

Mother: My Son Is Not a Test Score

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2013 //
35

I received an anguished letter from a mother of a child with autism. She here describes–very movingly–her efforts to help him and the efforts of his teachers to help him. And when she reaches the point where he is assessed by New York’s new Common Core tests, she is in a rage. The New York State Education Department says he is a failure. She knows he is not. She knows how hard he has worked to achieve and learn. She knows how hard his teachers have worked on his behalf. My child, she says, is not a test score.

Every parent, teacher, and administrator should read her letter. So should Commissioner John King. And so should the members of the Board of Regents. See your handiwork. See what you have done.

Here is her letter:

Friday, October 04, 2013  

My son is not the ELA or Math score, so why does NYS assess him and his teachers on this? WHY?

Let me start with this- I am not a teacher. I am a true single mom of a child with High Functioning Autism.

 
The Backstory

My son was diagnosed with Autism at 22 months and was lagging greatly in his developmental growth across the board. Right after he was diagnosed he started receiving services at home. Several months later I brought him back to the Developmental Pediatric Doctor and it was clear and recommended he start full time early invention. So he was registered at a school that specialized in educating kids with Autism. And starting at age 3, from 9am – 3pm, 5 days a week for a year and a half, including summers, my son attended Crossroads. It was a 45 minute van/bus ride and bless his little heart, no naps and no free play were allowed. Work. Work. Work. He worked his behind off. He made leaps and bounds. At age 4 1/2, I put him in a mainstreamed preschool that was closer to home and that following September, at age 5, he started Kindergarten in a mainstreamed public classroom. He still received his services daily and at that point his diagnosis was changed to High Functioning Autism. He made it to 1st. He made it to 2nd.

2012-2013 School Year

Last year, in 3rd grade, he took the state exams for the first time, the NEW CCSS exams. His IEP states he is allowed time and half for all tests, including the NYS Exams. That means if a child is permitted 70 minutes, my son gets 105 minutes (70 + 35). When all of this test taking was happening last year, to be honest, he didn’t feel or realize the pressure that many of his friends felt; simply put “he just didn’t get it.” Right now he doesn’t have it in him to see the big picture; I know he will at some point. He believed it was just a test, a test where he sat down and was allowed to chew gum. And back then, only 7 months ago, it was “fine”. He was fine. I was fine. Why was it fine then and not now? Because I wasn’t educated about this and quite honestly there was a more pressing issue going on at his school in regards to the leadership, which has since been resolved. 

 

2013-2014 School Year

Currently he is in 4th grade. These past few weeks I have taken a great interest in the CCSS for NYS and am very concerned about how developmentally inappropriate the curriculum is. It seems that the CCSS program is a level or even levels, above those that are seen as developmentally “normal.” What is MORE concerning is how this CCSS is going to impact MY child, with Autism which is a developmental disability. So much so, that I scheduled an appointment with the school’s Assistant Principal, to discuss NYS testing and refusing them for my son. It doesn’t FEEL right. It isn’t right!  I am not a doctor. I don’t have the stats or a PHD to back me up, so lucky for me, this is not a scientific paper. I am a mom. I am a mom who has been reading about CCSS, looking over sample math problems and ELA reading passages and it scares me, for my son. I have felt hopeless about this for the past few days. My son is smart. He works hard to stay on task and up to speed with his schoolwork and his peers. And he does it! He really does it. Granted, his IEP has accommodations and modifications that allow him the opportunity to do the same work and feel successful alongside his classmates. Granted, he has a Special Ed Teacher that pushes in and works with him daily for Math and ELA. He works with a Speech and Language Therapist that helps him figure out the non-literal language and non-verbal cues. He works with an OT to help him with his handwriting, and all types of visual/spacial planning. And finally he sees the school Psychologist twice a month to help him with peer interaction. He is well liked. He is kind. He is social. He works hard. He is respectful. And he just needs a little help along with way.  What comes naturally to many others, it tough work for my son. There is no secret about it. I talk openly about this. It is what it is. There is no shame. We are ALL different in our own unique ways. 

Today 10/04/13

I received the NYS ELA and Math scores and even knowing everything I know about my son, I cried (the running joke is I always cry when it comes to him, and I do.) I cried because printed out before me on two sheets of double sided paper, was, at that point, MY son, who NYSED broke down into 5 categories.  

For the ELA:

·         Reading

·         Writing

 
For Math:

·         Operations and Algebraic Thinking

·         Numbers and operations– Fractions

·         Measurement and Data

I was kindly provided with the points my child earned in one column. Directly next to that column was a column labeled “number of possible points” and next to that one, the “state average.” As you can imagine, having a developmental disability, his “earned” points were low, well below the “number of possible points” and below the average.

According to NYS my son “performing at this level are well below proficient in standards for their grade. They demonstrate limited knowledge, skills, and practices embodied by the New York State P-12 Common Core Learning Standards for Mathematics that are considered insufficient for the expectations at this grade.”

 

The Aftermath

I let the fury get the best of me. Like I said, my eyes welled up with tears out of anger and frustration. You diminished my child to these 5 categories and to simplify the wording you chose, deemed him “too stupid to be in the grade level he currently is in.” Screw you CCSS and all the people that came up with this crap program. Screw you for its horrible implementation. Screw you for not considering the kids who are not on the right side of the bell curve. Screw you for not thinking about the kids who are developmentally delayed. Screw you for not thinking about the kids that aren’t developmentally delayed, but just don’t test so well. Screw you for putting pressures on the teachers. Screw you for allowing the kids to feel this pressure; it is bound to impact them. Screw you for allowing this chaos to spill over into homes and mess with our emotions, both child and parent. Screw you for APPR and evaluating my sons General Education teacher AND Special Education teacher on his test scores. Screw you for creating a problem in which our kids are the ragdolls and in which big businesses will be allowed to profit. I’m not a conspiracy theorist; I just call it like I see it. I am done with this. I’m not political. I’m for the kids, I am for the teachers and most importantly I am for my son.

I am still learning about CCSS and I don’t claim to know it all, as some do, but what I do know is this, he is not his score and neither are his teachers! I don’t care what he received on these tests, I never did and I told him the same. What I do care about and what I would hope you would too is what you can’t measure on these tests. The light in his eyes when he finally tackles a problem, be it Math or ELA, which he has been struggling to get and because of the help of his teachers he succeeds. The heart his Special Ed teacher has given to him for the past 2 years and what is now their 3rd year together. The hard work my son demonstrates at the dining room table, studying spelling. The joy we ALL feel because he has stood up for someone who was being bullied, thanks to the peer interaction help by the School Psychologist. The time when he conquered his fear of heights, outside of school on a Saturday, using tools he learned in school, from whom? Yes, from his teachers! I realize carrying the diagnosis of Autism is not the norm for most; however were children, like my son, in mind when CCSS was implemented? Because is sure doesn’t seem like it. 

I will say this one more time. My son, Liam, is not, your NYSED test score. He is a 9 year old boy, who works hard in all aspects of school, in the classroom and with his therapists. He receives tremendous support and kindness and life lessons from his teachers and therapists. He will be successful because of them, not because of this test. How do you evaluate that? That is my million dollar question.

Categories Common Core, New York, Special Education, Testing

NC Teacher: Time to Stop Blaming W for the Impossible Mandates and Wishful Thinking

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2013 //
38

A teacher in North Carolina left this comment:

NC has requested a waiver that even though we are now on the new evaluation system (which, interestingly, is continuously being reworked (Home Base) because Pearson is still getting kinks out—-possibly another one of those airplanes being built in the air)—anyway, the waiver would allow that even though the online evaluator system (which I assume factors in test scores) is up and running (sort of) that it not be used to make personnel decisions until 2016-2017.
It seems to be the era of mandates that are impossible, and then a series of waivers to get out of them. It seems like a parent making ridiculous parameters for children, but then constantly giving passes to work around them.
Most want to still blame everything on W. I cannot accept that. What is going on right now has nothing to do with W, directly speaking. There was an opportunity, I am assuming, to move away from NCLB and instead we are even deeper into that type of mandating and waivering (wavering).
Platitudes never seem viable. To me they just indicate posturing on the part of decision-makers.
While it may be wiser to vote for Democrats in NC in you are pro-public school, I am still waiting for Democrats to take ownership in some of the troubles we are seeing.

Add to that—while teachers can always improve, I will say that as an institution public school is far more sophisticated than any reformer would ever want to admit. I read over the stack of IEPs yesterday provided to me by the special ed teachers (because I am on the team of teachers who teach the children and therefore need to know about accommodations, modifications, behavior patterns etc) and I was thinking to myself that no matter what kind of undergraduate education a young graduate has had, a building full of inexperienced educators (such as a charter could be—not sure that they ever have been), could not possibly offer the services to special education students that a well-established public school can. The problem is right now there are ideas that want to treat everyone the same. And we are risking throwing out the baby with the bathwater in a big way. A big, expensive way. We gotta figure this out. And we can’t just blame it on W.

Categories Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), North Carolina, Special Education, Support for public schools

Special Education Teacher: As I Begin My Final Year of Teaching

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2013 //
15

Arthur Getzel has been a teacher of special education in New York City since 1978. On his blog, he describes his preparations as the school year begins. It is his last year. He goes shopping for supplies and spends $200 of his own money for necessities. He cleans the classroom to get it ready for his students.

He knows everything is supposed to change this year because of Common Core.

But, he writes:

“Seriously, I do not plan to change the way I teach my students. I will do my best to teach them the skills that they really need to succeed. My goals are for my student to meet their IEP objectives. I care not one iota about this curriculum. I will not teach them goals that are unachievable. Whatever happens will happen. I plan to do my “personal best” as I have done since 1978. I know that for the last 35 years, I have been an effective special education teacher in which most of my career has been with high need students. I taught kids that had everything stacked against them. Yet, I do know many who have made it against all odds. One of my students is a supervisor for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (who has a learning-disabled adolescent) and another is presently a registered male nurse in a large city hospital after spending part of his life in a correctional facility. These former students are real people and not data driven numbers or some TFA made-up anecdote.

“I will tell you one thing. When I retire on July 1, 2014, I am not going to rest. I am just closing a chapter. I plan to begin anew. I plan a chapter in which I will adamantly advocate for disabled children and fight to save the public education system. We retired teachers will become an army to oppose the reformers and privateers. We cannot be intimidated and will not be afraid to speak truth to power.”

Categories Special Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »