Inclusion... What does IDEA say.

While researching for our groups Prezi presentation for class, I have looked at IDEA and many of the case laws and how they influence Inclsion.  First, IDEA 2004 does not require inclusion but does require that students with disabilities be served educationally in the "least restricted environment appropriate" to meet their "unique needs". (websearch: www.weac.org/Issues_Advocacy/Resource  ).  The article went on to discuss how the least restrictive environment begins with the regular classroom. It does state that the law knows that all students will not be appropriate for the regular classroom so it requires a "continuum of placements".  Inclusion should be driven by what best meets the needs of the student as determined by their IEP. The IEP team should first consider whether the regular classroom is  appropriate and if not, then look at the next least restrictive environment until the team feels they have placed the student in the best environment to meet that student's needs.
Over the years there have been many who feel that there is no place for self-contained classes or seperate school facilities.  But IDEA states that there should be a continuum of placements. After working for twenty years in a seperate school facility, I truely can see the benefits for some students who truely need a placement such as that. I diffinantly believe that one size does not fit all when it comes to special education placement for students with disabilities. What are your thoughts?

RTI...A new thought on the tiers of RTI

Kelly had a blog entry about the need for more attention for those students who fall in the gifted area which got me thinking.  Why can't there be a 4th tier. This tier (1+, just a suggestion), would function something like tier 2 for those students who are needing more intervention. If students do significantly above average on the 1st tier, then they are moved to this 1+ tier which will provide them with a more  challenging curriculum.  It seems like this would better address the needs of these students and would hopefully offer them more than most of the current once a week gifted programs do now.  Just a thought.  What are your thoughts on this?

Conitnued thoughts on RTI

The more I hear about RTI (response to intervention) the more I want to hear about how it will be implemented.  I am curious to see how this model will be trained to all teachers since it will involve general education and special education teachers. I really like that the first tier of RTI involves all students.  I think this will help in earlier identification of students having trouble and I believe that it could finally put the issue of overrepresentation of certain racial groups in special ed. to rest since all students are addressed equally in tier 1.  I do think that there needs to be extensive staff development across the board way before this model becomes mandated in the next special education law reauthorization.  This model will totally restructure how schools set up classes, teacher schedules and how they allow for space and time for interventions to take place, especially at tier 2.  Knowledge of the process and intervention methods as well as Collaboration will be key in the implementation of this model. I look forward to finding out more information on RTI.

Responding to RTI

Response to Intervention (RTI) is an area of education that I am not very familiar with since I have always taught special education for  students with severe multiple disabilities.  I decided to research it so that I would have more information to form a personal response to it for my class paper. I do find the teired system to be more of a collaborative approach to identifying and addressing students who are not performing well in the regular class.  I think it is at least a different way of looking at learning disabilities rather than the traditional IQ method used for years.  The IQ method has been viewed as biased toward certain racial and socioeconomic groups. I still have many questions about as soon this RTI process begins since often identification of students with learning disabilities has been a system of wait to fail so to speak. I will continue to gather more information on the who and how this will be implemented and I will be interested to see if it will be a bigger part of the next update to the law. I found that the CEC website  http://www.cec.sped.org/ has a good bit of information on RTI and many more topics. There is a National Center on Response to Intervention which can be found at http://rti4success.org/  Check out these sites and see how you respond to RTI.

SpecialEducation...Parenting some parents

Just as there are many parenting styles there are also many diverse approaches to promoting parental involvement in special education. Tyrell shared in the comments that his school has held several events to open and include the parents. His experience was that the parents of typical learners attened while the parents of students in special education were noticable absent. My experiences over a twenty year period of teaching special education at a school that only serves special education students were that when we held PTA meetings we would have every teacher there and an average of 3-5 parents for a student body of close to 150 students. I don't think that people outside of special education realize just how big of a problem there is when it comes to parent involvement.  I believe that so much of society including a majority of parents who have a child in special education think that it is the teachers and the school district's job and that they don't need to be a part of the process.  I sometimes found it hard to even get the parents to respond to notes about the needs for even basic things for their students such as lunch money or diapers. When goals were discussed at IEP meetings that needed to be cared over into the home environment, many parents expressed that they felt that people in the school district were trying to tell them how to parent their child. They wanted us to work on everything at school but did not feel that it was important or found it easier and quicker to just do things for the child at home.
I think that some parents forget that this is my job and that I do my best to meet the needs of each student in the best possible ways, but it is their child and this child will be with them for a lifetime.  I try to get to know the parents of my students to get a feel for where they stand on understanding their childs needs and for planning for their child's future needs and desires. At times I feel that I am a parent to some of these parents.

Promoting Parent involvement in Special Education

Today I had a discussion with the Special Education Director for my school about her frustration with the difficulty in getting parent involvement.  After that brief conversation, I decided to do a search on parental involvement in special education. Several things popped up but 2 web sites that I found interesting are: http://www.ideapartnership.org/   and  http://www.ncpie.org/  The Natioanal Coalition for Parent Involvment in Education site offers several hot links to many of the big topics in special education.

I believe we must find creative ways to reach out to parents and to develop partnerships in the education of their child.  Instead of a view that it is the teachers job to educate these students, I feel that the job of educating students is up to the school, the parents, and the community.  It should be based on a mutual desire to meet the needs of all students. Even though the laws in special education talk about parents being more involved, I don't believe that there are specific reguirements in how to engage parents or how to determine the current levels of parent involvement. Therfore, if we don't really have a good idea how involved parents are now then how can we truely begin to reach out to and work with the parents to become more involved? 

Parent Involvement in Special Education

One of the big areas that stands out in the IDEA 2004 law is that it puts more emphasis on parent involvement in the IEP process and requires them to take a bigger role in collaborating with teachers in the development of the educational program for their child. Unfortunately, my experiences in special education over the past twenty years have included very few parents willing to collaborate on the development of their student's IEP. Parents that are involved sometimes are viewed as "problematic parents" because they do have the knowledge about the law and the IEP process. I welcome these active parents because my experieince has been that they truely are wanting what they feel is best for their child even when their views may differ from the views of the team. Most often, the team comes to an agreement on what meets the needs of the students. On the other hand, at times it has proven difficult to get some parents to even show up for an IEP meeting one time a year.  In an ideal situation, collaboration on an IEP would have all of those involved (including the parent/s ) in the IEP  coming together to gather information, determine goals and when appropriate, plan for the future by developing a transition plan. This should take place prior to the actual annual IEP meeting in order for the team to assess the students needs and to align the students needs with appropriate curriculum standards. Some parents have limited understanding of their child's disability and may be unfamiliar with many of the terms and the lingo involved in special education. These constraints can lead to added stress and intemidation for the parents leaving some to just agree and sign anything on the IEP document without really understanding what they are signing. I feel that we in the field of education need to figure out ways to provide better information to parents and to create a collaborative situation that encourages the parents to become more interested and involved in the process for their child. I found an interesting website that talks about collaboration between parents and education personel. The website is called On The Same Team Building collaborative special education relationships between home and school. This site can be found at http://www.specialedmoms.com/IDEA.html   Check it out and see what you think.

NCLB...Needing a fix.

I read an interesting article in the recent issue of TEACH magizine which I receive from the Tennessee Education Association. The article is an adaptation from a book titled The Death and Life of the Great American School System:How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch (Basic Books, 2010).  In this article, several issues and concerns about NCLB are brought up. She addressed the issue of the 2014 deadline for all students to be proficient in math and reading. She also bought up the issue of teaching to the test and how the demands of the testng process have taken away from what teachers address in areas/subjects other than math and reading. 
I am concerned that we are not addressing all of the areas that our students will need to be successful in life. Yes reading and math are extremely important but so are knowing the history of how we got to where we are and how science affects our lifes each day. The creative nature of students is not being addressed since in many school districts the arts are the first thing to go to make more room for the aspects of meeting the requirements of NCLB. We are still seeing to high of a dropout rate among high school students and many students that continue to post secondary education find that they must take several remedial classes when they first get to college to help to catch them up to what is required for some of their college coursework. Again I ask, Are we really leaving no child behind with how we are currently teaching and with the requirements of NCLB? Only Time will tell but the current outlook is not completely clear.

NCLB...The Portfolio alternative assessment debate.

I am very familiar with the TCAP-ALT portfolio assessment and have been using this assessment every year with my students who have severe multiple disabilities. I first want to say that testing these students poses a huge challenge for the special education teachers across the country. I applaud Tennessee's appraoch to the assessment problem. My former school was a pilot school and helped in making some of the many changes that have taken place with the portfolio over the years that it has been mandated. While I have had feelings on both sides of the potfolio issue, I do feel that there is a need to try and capture and document the abilities of our students.  But, much like the Inclusion issue, I feel that one assessment tool does not truely work with all of this very diverse group of students.  Even though the curriculum standards have been broken down into pre-requiste or alternative performance indicators, I feel that it does not take into account the demand for functional skills that are so crucial for these students with severe disabilities, especially as they move into the middle and high school years of their education. Our overall goal for these students is to help them realize their highest potential and be as independent as possible. Since a majority of these students are unable to actually interact with the assessment/data sheets, it can easily be argued as being a tool to test how well the special education teacher can present their data.  Let me say that I am a HUGE believer in data. My view is that if it is not documented, then it didn't happen. I do feel that the current forms used by the state of Tennessee do a good job of documenting data in a user friendly format.  My concern continues to be surrounding whether we are truely meeting the individualied needs of these students by forcing them to fit into the required subject areas of reading, math, science and social studies without looking at vocational and independent skills that are so important for these students. I also feel  for the special education teachers who teach students with severe disabilities in grades 3-8 since they must capture information in all 4 subjects every year( this aligns with the regular TCAP testing schedule). If they perform the portfolio assessment to the fullest then they must have 3 different areas under each subject. That totals 12 graphs and 12 evidence sheets per student which really adds up if you teach 8-10 students. And, if done correctly, the teacher will have hard data to back up this assessment data as well as hard data on all of the IEP goals for each student. Are you feeling overwhelmed yet?   These teachers are.