Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

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Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

drsarah 24 May 2007 16:21

Read Clint Bolick s Education Week article A Bad IDEA Is Disabling Public Schools (September 5, 2001). The article presents the view that special education is damaging schools and that we should eliminate the term learning disabilities. What s your opinion? Are learning deficits real disabilities? What might be some alternative solutions to the problems the author raises?

You have two options for viewing Clint Bolick's article.

1. By clicking on the edweek article link you will need to sign up for an Education Week account. This will allow you to access comments and other articles.

2. To view the article as a PDF document, click on "files" below and then open the document titled "A Bad IDEA is Disabling Public Schools PDF"

Last edited on 24 May 2007 16:23 by drsarah Show more

Re: Group 3 Discussion on SPED in Public Schools

EWhitworth 05 Jul 2007 00:29

I hate to say it, but I do think that learning deficits can turn into real learning disabilities – only because teachers aren’t able to give these students adequate attention to ensure that they make significant growth during one school year, thus they refer them to SPED where most often, a disability of some sort is found.

Bolick states that learning disabilities have turned into “a sociological sponge to wipe up the ills of general education”. This is a huge accusation – but one with much truth to it. In terms of alternatives and solutions to this, Bolick suggests and recommends that the “specific learning disabilities category should be excised from the law”. He wants states to have responsibility, flexibility, and most importantly, the funding to help ensure that non disabled kids with special learning differences or needs, will get the attention and education they deserve. He also recommends providing parental choice. In some states, low-income parents are given the choice to send their kids to private schools, places Bolick believes can give these students the type of education they need.

Some other alternatives I can think of come from the Journal of Negro Education article entitled: The Disproportionate Placement of African American Males in Special Education Programs: A Critique of the Process. Beth Harry and Mary Anderson offer some recommendations that I think could really help public schools – thus helping more students instead of referring so many to SPED. One suggestion was to label services rather than students which would make intensive instruction support available to all the students who need it. Next, they suggest restructuring schools to emphasize the prevention of student failure. Doesn’t this make sense? Yes! Identify poor school districts, and favor them! These schools need organizations to recruit qualified people to work for them who know what kind of population they will be serving, but more importantly, know how to help them learn. All schools are held to the same standards when they all teach an array of entirely different types of students and learners! This really affects my school and my students and it really irks me. Finally, Harry and Anderson recommend schools and teachers using meaningful and conceptualized presentation of materials – this should just be a requirement of all teachers – this alone, will help students learn better.

Re: Group 3 Discussion on SPED in Public Schools

EmilyEYoung 29 Jul 2007 05:09

I am intrigued by the idea that when teachers aren't able to support students in teaching them *how* to learn, learning disabilities may develop. But, Sally Smith's book, No Easy Answers, states that learning disabilities occur before, during or after birth, and does not give the implication that it is anyone's fault. I think the problem develops when students are not building the prior knowledge they need in order to make proper schemata for future learning, especially when it comes to learning processes. Learning processes need to be taught explicitly to all students, because students need to be aware of what they are doing, how they are doing it, how they can improve themselves within it, and how they can repeat and apply it in new situations. Is it this lack of teaching process along with content that blocks student learning? Or, can hard work in building that schemata later on in the academic career reverse any harm doing in the beginning, and these children who are labeled as learning disabled really are not?

I am also intrigued by the idea that students are being mislabeled as special education because of learning differently from others, and therefore creating educational stratification, as the authors of this article suggested. I think that these labels develop a lot of times because of classrooms that focus on direct instruction, where the multiple-intelligence filled classrooms will inevitably have some students who do not learn the way the teacher is teaching and thus may be convinced of a learning disability.

These are all the disadvantages of IDEA that are causing damage to our schools. But, it is VERY important that learning disabilities are very real characteristics of some of our students - they are naturally occurring and in need of patience and special instruction to get around the disability. While IDEA has some flaws and is overwhelming special education programs AND its mislabeled students, its original purpose of offering deserving students their right to a fair education is still intact. The end is good, but the means to get there is definitely dysfunctional in our public school system that rarely supports these students….

Re: Group 3 Discussion on SPED in Public Schools

aaseligman 29 Jul 2007 22:25

Wow Emily, that's an interesting claim from Smith that learning disabilities develop before birth, but if some come after birth how can no one be at "fault?" I realize it would seem harsh to judge some parent or condition based on how they handled their infant, but isn't this a possibility?
I do agree that students mislabeling creates a stigma both from others in education and from the students themselves. I had one student who clearly could do the work and was learning on the same level as others in my class, but I found out halfway through the semester that he had an IEP and that his mom insisted that he stay in special education. I found this out because it was at that halfway point in which he was having trouble in my class, and he and his mom decided to blame it entirely on me, assuming that because he was a special education student there was no way he could be responsible for his actions. It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx logic that he would never join a club that would allow someone like him as a member. This sort of thinking that since a student is SPED, he can't be responsible for his actions or for learning anything, and how do we know he's SPED? Ah, of course, low grades.
The problem is that because of IDEA, at least in my school, we often accepted far more SPED students than we actually had resources to handle simply because we knew we would get more money for these students, and I guess the thinking was that if we don't spend it on the student then we can use the savings for something else. It is a shame and a scam on both a moral and ethical level, especially when research shows that quality special education really can work, such as a report by economist Eric Hanushek. He tracks student progress when they take both mainstream and special education classes and find that at least for math, their scores go up. This doesn't say anything about the social impacts, but that would be much harder to measure.

Re: Group 3 Discussion on SPED in Public Schools

(account deleted) 01 Aug 2007 15:29

I think Emily and Aaron's posts bring up a significant issue that is implicitly addressed in the article, the difference between learning disabilities and learning deficits. I agree strongly with Sally Smith that learning disabilities are not the fault of the family or child, no one can cause a learning disability. True, there are risky behaviors during pregnancy and childhood that can affect a child such as exposure to chemicals etc. but for the most part parents are not negligent and learning disabilities develop by no fault of the family. I do think, however, that learning deficits occur almost exclusively due to environmental circumstances. Some children, such as those with mental retardation that we read about in Pearl Buck's story The Child Who Never Grew, have developmental delays that are due to disability. However many children that we teach every day have learning deficits that were caused by their environment. The lower levels of literacy of lower SES children are often attributed to the lack of time spent reading to them when they are young. This lack of exposure, often through no direct fault of the child's hard working parents, forces children to enter Kindergarten with fewer literacy skills and language exposure. Similarly have a teacher that that does not teach children "how" to learn but rather just what they are learning can lead to deficits when a child can not analyze and investigate new material on their own. As Emily mentioned above, children must be explicitly taught learning processes. Going back to the article, children should not be placed in special education if they have learning deficits. Isn't that the point of differentiation and offering different ability level groupings? Teachers should be able, to some degree, to modify assignments and scaffold so that all students can learn the material and correct for earlier learning deficits. Very often at my school students are placed in special education because they have behavioral problems. However I firmly believe that many of these behavior problems are due to learning deficits incurred over years of inadequate instruction. These children are not special education students, they are, for the most part, misdiagnosed with ED. These children are acting out due to their learning deficit not a learning disability.

Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

Liz Mickduff 10 Jul 2007 21:05

If I didn’t already have a bad feeling about IDEA, this article fully confirmed what I previously had suspected and enlightened me to even more bad policy than I had ever imagined! What does it say about the importance of “individuals with disabilities” when IDEA is the largest unfunded federal mandate in American Education? To me it says that children, the disabled, and education, have little importance to our Politians who are excruciatingly cheap in regards to the lives of young people who are going to be our future. The more I learn about the importance of various schools and training institutes that provide these populations with the support they need to be successful, I am sickened by our governments will to do away with them all for the almighty dollar. IDEA is just another way to unaccountable (imagine that in the age of accountability!) and pass the blame of our mediocre school system down the latter to the teachers who in one classroom are expected to teach mentally retarded, physically handicap, hearing and sight impaired and of course learning disabled students.

My thought of Bolick’s discussion of what learning disabled full entails is of utmost importance and relevance. Children, who vary in learning styles or perhaps just need tutoring, are categories as Learning DISABLED, (what does that really mean?) despite the fact that they have average or above average intelligence.

Sadly while many white parents have learned to work the system to get specialized services for their children or to achieve long term goals such as un timed SAT s, many minority and impoverished parents are not as savvy to the game, thus an over representation in the population of special needs students. Many children are entered as behavior problems when perhaps the real problem is stemming in part from the lack of literacy practices in the home that are directly connected to poverty. Meanwhile politians and unfortunately schools as well refer to these students as “two-fer” because they also qualify for Title 1 funding, again more obsessed with money than the lives of these children.

In regards to the future I am looking forward to the day that public education is taken seriously by policy makers. My sincere hope is that sooner than later educational public policy such as IDEA and NCLB are exposed for the scams that they are and done away with. And finally I hope that the community begins to rise up to demand fair and equitable education for all.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

mason 11 Jul 2007 16:32

I also agree with Bolick's thoughts about how IDEA is not such a hot idea for our public schools. From my experience, I have found that many students that are labeled LD that may have learning deficits, probably shouldn't be in special ed, but could do other things to supplement learning like the author spoke about how his son got extra tutoring. I think that many times putting this label on students is detrimental and also lowers expectations of teachers and expectations that students place upon themselves academically. In my school, I have seen many special education students who use their label as an excuse to not do anything and still get by. Students are often allowed to pass because they are special education students. So, instead of trying to assist and provide positive support and accommodations to students labeled LD, schools are enabling them to learn how to squeak by in the system and not have to do anything, becuase they are labeled special ed. NOw, I am not saying at all that all LD students are doing this. I have had many that legitimately try so hard and have trouble grasping concepts or retaining material or taking in and processing material, but just struggle but still work very hard. However, I have other students who sit there in class and don't even try or don't ever ever bring their book or complete 1 homework assignment…it's kind of maddening.

Okay, so getting off on a little bit of a tangent. I liked the suggestions that EWhitworth spoke about from Beth Harry and Anderson. The labeling of services and not students would be a great idea and hopefully cut down on the labels and lowered expectations put on some students. Also, the PREVENTION method of restructuring schools would also really help out by providing those who need services and materials and resources and opportunity to actually have these and use them to better their education.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

mason 11 Jul 2007 17:17

I wanted to pose a question about special education services for LD students to the forum. I was thinking about how we were all discussing whether or not learning deficits should be considered learning disabilities and then I was thinking about how the LD labeled special education students are not quite getting the assistance they need and thinking about what that assistance entails and then…okay, long winded here comes my question…I was thinking about pull-out or self contained special education classrooms vs. inclusion teaching and I wondered how people felt about the two options…possibly the benefits and drawbacks of each?

My first year of teaching, half of one of my classes was special ed LD students and I was fortunate enough to have an inclusion teacher come help me three days a week and it was wonderful. I think optimally, inclusion is a great thing and when done properly it really helps the whole class. The inclusion teacher that helped me really did a superb job of not singling or labeling the special ed students, but being an assistant to the whole class and obviously helping the special ed students but helping other students as well. This way, students were pulled out and highly labeled. Its hard if a student is pulled out because not only are they labeled but they miss things that happen in class…they miss the learning environment and miss being part of the classroom community. I like for my students to be in my class and be a part of what is going on. Then, they feel more invested as well…..so I was just wondering if others had different views on the inclusion vs. pullout and wanted to sway me:)

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jkirmes 27 Jul 2007 17:37

In an ideal school setting where there are plenty of special education teachers and plenty of resources I absolutely believe in the power of the inclusion model. However, in schools where resources and special education teachers are in short supply, I don't think it is a functional model.

Last year, there were two sections of 9th grade physical science taught at the same time, I taught one and a close colleague taught the other. Because my school was using the inclusion model, both classes had about 6 special education students and 20 general education student in them. After the first half of the school year, we realized that of the 12 special education students we had combined, ten of them were failing science. It was clear that when the students were in large classes with primarily general education students they couldn't get the support they needed to be successful. We went to the special education director and principal and asked if we could move all of the special education students and a few other struggling students into one section and keep the general education students in another. We were granted permission and rewrote the class rosters after the mid-year exam. If you are reading thing right now and thinking about how horrible I was for tracking and separating the students, consider this at the end of the school year 10 of the 12 special education students passed science and the final exam - which covered exactly the same content as the exam the students in the other class took.

When we made the switch, the special education department assigned a second teacher to my room three days out of the week and I was also lucky enough to have a common planning time with this teacher. Having two teachers meant that students got the individual attention they needed in class, and it also meant that every lesson was well planned well and in advance so both teachers could be a part. I have to say that for everything I read about the evils of tracking, separating these students out was exactly what we needed to do to enable them to learn the same content as the other students and pass the course. If I had to make that decision again, I would make exactly the same decision, in a school where classes are huge and their aren't enough special ed teachers to go around, putting the students in one place so that they can receive the services they need is what makes the most sense.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jesstabak 28 Jul 2007 18:52

I'm glad that you brought up a positive instance of tracking at work, Jen. At my school last year, we had a phonics class that about 35% of our 6th graders took. Most of them were in a room with our reading teacher, but 7 or 8 kids worked on the same content with one of our special ed teachers during the same period. They weren't all designated as SpEd kids, but they all benefited from getting their phonics instruction in a smaller group with a teacher who has a masters degree in special education methods.

I think that examples like yours or the one I mention above illustrate the way that tracking, as long as it isn't used as a way to classify kids across all of their classes and on through graduation, can help kids. It just needs to be done thoughtfully and on a case-by-case basis with each subject, perhaps even each unit, and be regularly reevaluated. With the phonics program, we moved a handful of kids around between the larger and smaller groups at the end of each quarter because they either seemed to need more help or were doing well enough that they could handle the larger group. We also took some kids out of phonics altogether because they had made enough progress. Others were moved to phonics as their difficulties became more clear. It takes regular evaluation to have these sorts of malleable lines between classes and ability groups, but I also think it's the best way to ensure that our kids are being tracked for the right reason, namely to help them get the extra help they need in as specific an area as possible.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

EWhitworth 29 Jul 2007 01:46

Mason, I do like the idea of inclusion - however, I was a Resident Teacher this past year; originally hired to co-teach ELA with the 4th grade teacher; however, in the 2 years that I have worked as a Resident Teacher, SPED issues came up and I was assigned to be an aide to certain students, and then this year, assigned to a 4th grade Math teachers class to do inclusion with a few special ed students, one of which had huge deficits in Math. He was on a 1st grade Math level, and for me, sadly, I didn't see how being in the 4th grade math class helped him build his skills. At the beginning of the year, I simply accommodated what the class was doing and put it on a 1st and 2nd grade level - however, as the year went on, higher math skills like fractions came into the picture and yes I could accommodate that for the SPED kids but I thought I should be helping them build a better base of math skills and build their confidence. I sort of started doing "pull out" on my own, in the class but doing very different work - knowing that I wasn't following the "inclusion" model. I had very little support and felt guilty for their lack of progress.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

terrakathleen 13 Jul 2007 15:14

I think that the introduction of the Student Support Teams (SST) process in DC is a way to do exactly what Bolick advocates: eliminate the special education designation for students with specific learning disabilities. The SST process is designed to slow down the referral process to ensure that as many accomodations are tried before an SpEd label is given. This keeps these students in regular education classrooms…however, as the article points out, many of these students are still not getting the services and extra support they need to be successful.

I think that one potential avenue for change is to improve and reform teacher education programs. All teachers must be given proper training in differentiation, multiple learning styles, cultural sensitivity and positive behavior management; if this happens, then I think that fewer students will be labeled as learning disabled because more teachers will have resources to address student learning differences early and in a variety of ways.

To respond to the post above, I think that an inclusion model is ideal when working with special education students. It reduces stigma and allows special education students to academically "keep up" more easily with their peers. However, successful inclusion hinges on a variety of factors and resources: class sizes must be relatively small, teachers must work well together and have time for common planning, a great deal of time must be spent on student investment and the creation of a positive classroom community, and both teachers need to use a variety of resources to accomodate and teach their wide variety of students.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

drsarah 16 Jul 2007 11:41

Good discussion so far — I think the ideas re: tracked vs. inclusion programs are good here. Within the topic of learning disability, how much some of the processes that Bolick describes support students at risk of failure? How do learning deficits become disabilities?

Last edited on 16 Jul 2007 11:42 by drsarah Show more

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jnsarak 17 Jul 2007 03:01

Was Bolick using the term "deficit" to refer to the word his son's IEP team used in the meeting he describes on page 2, or was he borrowing that from the law? I'm a bit confused as to where/when the distinction between deficits and disabilities arose.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

drsarah 17 Jul 2007 10:53

I think that he's using this term very specifically, because it was the word that the teachers in this initial IEP team said to him. Deficit vs. Disability (in terms of those words) is a strong piece of this article, and one could delve down into that a bit more i'm sure.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jnsarak 17 Jul 2007 02:56

I mentioned this in the other post about testing accommodations, but I think this is again an example of minimal data informing policy. While Bolick makes many accusations about the political motives for IDEA, I think many of his concerns come from frustration with imprecision in the law. He mentions the "specific learning disabilities," which are defined as "processing disorders that interfere with one's ability to perform a number of learning tasks," and then goes on to describe how this ambiguous portion of the law has ballooned to encompass more than half of children covered under IDEA. This seems like a major root of the problem. If the law were more specific (MUCH more specific) and actually characterized the learning "deficits" that should qualify, I think some of Bolick's frustrations would be eased.

I think most educators will agree that all students have individual learning needs, and some need more extensive accommodations and compensations than others. I don't think many educators would balk at legislation that would help deliver these accommodations more accurately and effectively. Unfortunately, I don't believe that the education community has a good, uniform handle on how to characterize (and communicate) these learning needs and the accommodations they require. I'm not saying that individuals don't have access to this information, or that no one has thought of doing this before, but this information has clearly not made it into policy. And if we, as the education community, eventually agree that creating and implementing such a specific and detailed law would be much too cumbersome to be effective, then so be it.

The point, though, is that the law we currently have reflects a vast lack of knowledge on the subject, and positive implementation is suffering because of it. Simply cutting out a huge chunk of the law may not be the best answer, and simply leaving it in may not be either, but finding the best answer and then basing the law on it would go a long way. I would add the need for well informed policy making to Bolick's list of necessary reforms.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

Mike Lederman 19 Jul 2007 19:52

I agree almost entirely with what Bolick lays out in his article. One thing though: I’m not sure if he is clear enough when he suggests that “funding incentives should be geared toward individual student progress” as his first reform idea. Is he suggesting that we pay “teachers for performance” i.e. improving individual students’ test scores? I know some states/districts have played around with this option but that it remains too controversial for most places. Did anyone interpret his suggestion differently?

Another idea for reform: Bolick suggests that students like his son and others with “specific learning disabilities” or mild “learning disabilities” would benefit more from the kind of extra attention/tutoring that they would receive at a private school. What if “special education” for public schools was just that - tutoring. No stigmas attached. No labels. Just funnel all the money that is getting lost in the bureaucracy to paying teachers to work extra hours to help students after school who are struggling for whatever reason. It can be the responsibility of parents to see to it that their children are attending - and if they care enough about their child’s learning - they should be up for the challenge. This takes some of the responsibility off of the school districts and puts it onto the parents… which I think is desperately needed. Any thoughts?

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

drsarah 20 Jul 2007 12:43

Good questions Mike. I'm sure others would like to respond, but i wonder, when you talk about making it the parent's responsibility to make sure the child attends a tutoring program like the one you envision, do you think you would might bump against some practical economic issues, such as transportation?

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jnsarak 20 Jul 2007 20:35

Part of the funding that's rechanneled from the current special education system into the tutoring service could go towards transportation issues. I don't think we'd even really need to get into whether or not parents "care enough" about their kids — they'd just have to stay after school to receive the tutoring, and the tutoring program would pay for transportation if need be.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jesstabak 28 Jul 2007 16:52

I'd like to reply to Mike's post… First, in relation to Bolick's assertion that "funding should be based on individual student progress," I think that what he's saying is that the money that's currently being funneled for kids with "specific learning disabilities" (which in most cases seem to amount to deficits in a certain area, not disabilities) should instead be used to address these deficits without the step of labelling the kids. This could be done through tutoring like you suggested, extra help during the day, or small group instruction run by a special ed teacher during general ed class time.

With that said, I think that teaching our most challenged learners sometimes takes more than a differentiated general ed classroom where the teacher is teaching to all modalities. Sometimes it really helps to have a specialist there. Our (amazing) special ed department, though small, was filled with people who frankly knew a lot more about reaching kids having trouble than I did. And being able to collaborate with them and have them work with some students for supplemental lessons was essential to our kids' growth. The key, though, is work our funding in a way, like Bolick suggests, that kids don't need to be slapped with a label in order to benefit from our SpEd teachers' expertise at times they might need it. I think eliminating the "specific learning disabilities" label would be a good start.

Last edited on 28 Jul 2007 17:33 by jesstabak Show more

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

Susan Oliver 28 Jul 2007 19:30

I think tutoring is a great opportunity for teachers to provide the additional one-on-one support that so many students, special needs or not, need to be successful. I think James proposes an easy solution to the transportation problem. There are two issues I would like to bring up with this:

First, I have a problem with teachers getting paid to tutor their own students after school. When teachers are given extra pay to help the students they teach during the day, there is a problem of interest. Playing the devils advocate, I would bring up the possibility that some teachers might hold back from giving certain students the individual attention they usually give them during class time because they know they will be receiving money to help them after school. I would hope teachers would not do this, but it may even happen subconsciously.

Second, sometimes after school tutoring can become inefficient when the time is unstructured and if students don’t know what they themselves need help with. Perhaps a daily log sheet would serve as communication between the teacher and the tutor.

My proposal would be to take the money saved through reducing the number of SPED labels and design a structured city-wide tutoring program using outside sources. I know several programs that work extremely efficiently after school. The Higher Achievement Program, for example, is an engaging after school tutoring and enrichment program for higher achieving students. If such a program could be designed for under-achieving students that was well structured and well implemented, then I think a lot of students could be served well. This might cost quite an amount of additional funds, and some parents might not want their students staying after school (in would interfere with some sports), but it would provide the additional support for our students with special needs.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

Mike Lederman 02 Aug 2007 01:03

Wow Susan. I hadn’t thought of the conflict of interest there but you’re absolutely right. I think I know some teachers who would neglect their students during the day so that they would have a reason to stay after school and make extra money (Hint: they’re the same ones who show their students movies all day that I mentioned in my posting about testing and the usefulness of the consequences of schools not making AYP i.e. being able to fire these teachers.) I agree that having outside providers offer tutoring is a better option (BTW, another one of the consequences of not making AYP). I think I’ve become an advocate of NCLB throughout the course of these forum discussions?!?! Of course, it needs to be better funded.

To address you second point about keeping a daily log, I think that something similar to the IEP could still be used, and it would be good to have a standardized document across the district, except, it would be more temporary. The goal of special education should be to get kid out of special education, right?!… This system would again fit the bill. Students would stay in tutoring until they mastered the objectives/standards on their IEP, and then the document would get stapled to a satisfactory assessment, stamped “completed” and go into a file cabinet for record keeping purposes only. It’s done! No stigmas attached. If another teacher wants the student to receive services for another set of skills, he or she could write up a new IEP and pass it along to the outside providers, and they handle it again.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jkirmes 27 Jul 2007 18:17

And everyone is always saying that it's charter schools that are disabling the public system…anyway, I really never thought about IDEA as being detrimental to schools, now I always knew that it wasn't quite functional, but this article convinced me that IDEA really is doing more to hurt us than help us. After reading it, I am convinced that the three reforms suggested at the end of the article make a lot of sense. I absolutely believe that progress should be rewarded and replicated, but actually getting that done is very tough (just look at NCLB).

The second reform seems easier to implement - taking away "specific learning disabilities" as a category would result in many fewer students being labeled special education, and would hopefully allow states to allocate funding in more appropriate ways that would benefit all learners. But, I agree with IDEA serving exclusively students with physical or psychological disabilities, only if states do a lot more to support teachers in serving the students who are currently labeled as learning disabled once they are released from special education. Teachers need good professional development around differentiation, they need more special education teachers available to help then plan, teach and assess, they need more planning periods and real systems for contacting and meeting with parents. Reform can work, but it will take a lot of changes to the way teachers are supported in teaching students with learning deficits.

The third reform seems the easiest to implement of all three, but I like it the least. Giving parents choice sounds good on paper, but I don't believe it will actually work. In reality, almost every student in DC already has choice since so few schools are meeting AYP, and very few parents actually take advantage of this choice. It seems to me that tuition vouchers would probably end up being used by more affluent students whose families can afford to pay the tuition difference out of pocket, while lower class students would remain in public school and continue to be under-served. Vouchers alone cannot fix the problem if lower class families do not use them.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

Susan Oliver 28 Jul 2007 00:50

Just to comment on your last posting, Jenn, I believe the reason vouchers are not working in DCPS in particular has a lot to do with the overcrowding in schools that are doing well and especially those few that meet AYP. I too thought lower class families did not understand the voucher system. So I set out to provide that information to several parents of my current and former students. I was embarrassed when I realized just how much they did know. The problem is that schools only accept so many vouchers, and those spaces are already taken. One parent informed me of all the schools she had tried to use a voucher to get her grandchildren into, but none of the schools were accepting anymore students from vouchers. I say this just to point out that this is yet another problem with the voucher system. The "choice" exists on paper, but not in reality. The problem doesn't necessarily lie within the parents in low income communities not taking advantage of vouchers, but the voucher system itself.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jnsarak 29 Jul 2007 15:51

It can also simply be prohibitive for a student deep in SE to travel all the way to NW every day for school. I've run into this problem when trying to get students to choose high schools other than their neighborhood schools. Unfortunately, vouchers won't get rid of the geographical correlation of effective schools.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

jkirmes 02 Aug 2007 18:59

Just to clarify, I was not suggesting that the reason school choice is not working is because parents don't understand. I guess what I was trying to say is that I see a lot of pretty compelling reasons for our students not to participate in voucher programs, here are a few that I think of right away: 1. As James said, the schools can be far away from students' homes and require too much traveling, 2. There is too much a difference between the cost tuition and the value of the voucher, 3. The voucher system is flawed and complicated and requires parents and or students to spend a lot of time getting the right papers to the right places. Basically I agree with you Susan, the system is flawed, but I'm still not convinced that if it were fully functional it would fix the problem - improving local school seems like a better option to me.

Re: Group Three Discussion on Special Education in Public School

Susan Oliver 28 Jul 2007 19:47

I have a question about the article. On page 5, Bolick says, "Worst off are slow learners from poor families who may receive no help at all. The IDEA skews education funding toward a small segment of children while leaving other with no alternatives." I understand that slow learners in higher income families often have educated parents who know how to advocate for their children. However, I don't understand how the IDEA works specifically to leave out slow learners in poor families. I looked throughout the article for evidence on this issue, but I couldn't find any. The author also states that "African-American special-needs children are far less likely to receive speech, occupational, and physical therapy than their white counterparts." (p.3) I know we previously read an article on the over-representation of minorities in SPED programs, and we discovered the lack of teacher preparation in working with culturally diverse students. However, I was just curious if there was any evidence of literature explaining exactly how the IDEA gives more money to slow learners in high income families and why African-American special-needs students are not receiving their services as opposed to white special-needs students.

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