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Special Education: Blessing or Curse?
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Special Education: Who’s going to fall on that double edged sword? This is such a touchy subject to write on. On one hand Special Ed is severely needed in our schools, but on the other hand they are expensive and tend to cubby-hole our children for years having to fight against its negative stigma.
I was working in a Foster Group Home in Hercules, and one of the boys, 15 years old, was to start school. His testing put him at 3rd or 4th grade level, and he was labeled “Learning disabled”. What exactly his disability was is even now unclear. He refused to start school. He would not spend one minute in a Special Ed classroom. What could the school do? Mainstream him into the 9th grade? That surely would set him up for failure. Mainstream him into a 4th grade classroom? The ridicule there would be horrendous, and knowing this young mans temperament perhaps even unsafe. In the long run he did not attend school for a period of time at all. In the long run he received the individual attention he needed, unfortunately it was with the Contra Costa County Juvenile Probation Department – another one bites the dust.
Special Ed classrooms sometimes seem to be little more than educational holding cells. Of course a great deal depends on our Special Ed teachers. Recently I was very impressed by an article written by Linda Schrock Taylor a Special Ed teacher in Michigan. She actually has been able to move students out of special education into mainstream classes, but it has been an uphill fight for her as well. California will receive over $1.2 million this year for Special Education from federal sources. Of course that will be divided to all the Title I schools in the state. Still that is a considerable chunk of change and is in addition to regular state funding. What’s happening with those dollars? Are we seeing more computers in the Special Ed classrooms? Equipment that can scan a book and read it to our students? Fortunately some Special Ed classrooms do have this up-to-date technology, but sadly most don’t – what happens to the money?
In California, the Dept. of Education has something they call; Response to Instruction and Intervention (RTI2) This is California’s response to Special Ed. But if you read their Core criteria, 'parental involvement' and 'specific learning disability determination' are items 9 and 10 on a list of 10 items; this seems backwards to me.
So what are parents supposed to do? Clearly the state does not consider you until way down on the list. That does not, however mean that we cannot attend School Board meetings. If you have a child in Special Education you must be involved – intimately. I like what Linda Schrock Taylor wrote:
“when parents arrive at IEPC meetings prepared to ask tough questions; demand date-specific, written plans; and hold districts accountable for effective remediation and RELEASE:
• What EXACTLY will be done to remediate my child's weakness? – What are the skills and success record of the teacher who will be in charge of my child's remediation?
• Which measurable instruments of assessment will be used? Please be sure to provide me with baseline and subsequent scores, in terminology that I can understand, preferably giving age or grade level equivalencies.
• When do you expect to complete the remediation, remove the label from my child, and remove my child from special education placement?
… [things will change when we are] prepared to 'use reading to learn,' rather than to still be 'learning to read.’
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