In the book, The Miracle Worker, Helen Keller overcomes all
odds and succeeds in becoming a contributing member of society with the 24/7
one-on-one help of her very determined teacher, Annie Sullivan. As the title
suggests, a miracle is not an everyday occurrence, but a once-in-a-lifetime
thing, something that happens despite terrible hardships or impossible
situations. A miracle is a rarity, and the Catholic Church attributes them to
the intervention of saints.
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, must believe that the
teachers of America are all saints, capable of delivering miracles daily, but
especially during standardized test time. In his proposed changes to the IDEA,
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Mr. Duncan wants to assure the
public that there are no obstacles to Special Ed children reaching the goals of
the new Common Core State Standards tests, the ones that “regular” kids are
overwhelmingly expected to fail this year and next. Mr. Duncan expects every
child with disabilities, physical, learning or emotional, to score in the
proficient range on an above-grade standardized test, one that is offered with
very few accommodations other than small group testing and extended time.
Good teachers can help the learning disabled kids make good
progress, but since they cannot be identified as Special Ed unless they are at
least 2 years behind, it’s ridiculous to expect such children to “ace the
test.” Some may indeed, eventually catch up due to the right combination of
in-school and at-home support. When I taught remedial math, there was a
full-time learning disabled student who came to me for extra math instruction because she was heads above her special ed class in math.
After 2 years we were able to mainstream her entirely for math because she was
forging ahead of most kids in her grade in math. She ended up scoring at a
proficient level on the state test in math. Reading, however, was not her
forte, and she remained in her learning disabled category for Language Arts
during the time she was with us.
Some kids are not going to make that kind of progress no
matter what you try. I taught siblings in a family of mentally challenged kids
and adults. Although I was able to help two of the kids who had an IQ of 47 and
55 respectively, their abilities in Grade 8 were far below what would be tested
on the state test at this point. Think about a child being forced to take a
2-hour test in reading and in math on an 8th grade level when their
reading and math levels were at a 2nd grade level. Algebra versus 2
digit subtraction, close reading of historical documents from the 18th
century versus memorizing 200 sight words because phonics is impossible with
your auditory perception problem.
Kids like the siblings in Special Ed are now able to take a
modified version of the standardized test that is shorter and with alternative
assessments and accommodations. Some kids actually score basic and proficient
using these alternative methods and assessments! But Mr. Duncan is currently
seeking to modify that to require only the most severely affected students to
take the test. Students identified with learning disabilities such as dyslexia
(visual misperceptions of words), dyscalculia (inability to work with numbers)
and dysgraphia (inability to write legibly) will be considered not severe
enough and have to take the 6 hours of ELA and Math tests at their grade level,
despite performing at levels 4 or more grades below. Plus, their teachers,
schools, districts and states will be penalized if they don’t score well.
Huffington Post’s Joy Resmovits puts it this way:
After years of holding states accountable
under the law for such things as timely evaluations of students and due process
hearings, the Education Department plans to look at results. For the first
time, the government will define compliance with the law not just in terms of
what states do for students with disabilities, but with how those students
perform… According to this new results-driven accountability framework, states
will be responsible for students with disabilities' participation in state
tests, gaps in proficiency between students with disabilities and their peers,
and performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, the
only national standardized test.
I don’t understand what the US Department of Education
doesn’t understand about being in Special Ed. The reason a child is identified
as such, is because they are performing at a level 2 or more years below their
peers. If they were able to take the test and pass, they wouldn’t be in Special
Ed!
The new portion of the IDEA law will put punitive measures into
effect for those states that do not meet their goals for Special Ed students.
If a state fails to meet goals three years in a row, a portion of their federal
money for Special Ed services can be withheld. That’s puzzling, since what is
the likelihood of being able to meet their goal in the fourth year without
adequate funding? As far as I can see it, the federal government is setting up
the cash-strapped districts for failure. Most money-starved districts have
already had to cut back on extra personnel and service that would make it
easier for students with IEPs to come closer to grade level. Classroom assistants and specialized reading programs have been reduced. Look at the
Philadelphia School District that has had to cut personnel three years in a
row, and is working on a bare-bones budget that doesn’t deliver the needed
services to its students. There is 1000:1 ratio of counselors to students, 44
schools are getting counseling services one day every three weeks. There is a
dearth of librarians, social workers, assistant principals, and materials and
supplies. And the federal government wants to up the ante for special ed students? Until fair funding formulae are commonplace, the number of support services for students correlates directly with the funds available (or not).
Let’s employ some honest-to-goodness special ed teachers in
advisory positions in the Department of Education to determine which pieces of
the curriculum and which accommodations will be reasonable to use for their IEP
students. Instead, we have a Secretary who has never taught, touting a
curriculum written mostly by corporate testing people, not real teachers, a
common core curriculum that has never been field tested, and regulations that
no teacher worth their special ed certification would agree to. We have politicians and
pundits, despite never having been competent K-12 teachers, who KNOW what teachers
need to do to serve their students.
Sorry, I can’t buy it. We need policy makers with common
sense who have the best interests of the children and their schools in mind,
not the policy makers we currently have who never had the common sense to begin
with.
We can’t work miracles with every child. Miracles are the
exception. We are not Arne Duncan's Miracle Workers.
IDEA – What is it?
http://nichcy.org/laws/idea/partb
http://nichcy.org/laws/idea/partb
Arne Duncan’s Makeover of Special Ed
Still learning!
