New Strategy to Keep Kids Out of Special Ed

To the special ed. teacher,

You write, "I am no fan of NCLB because it is penalizing students and schools when a student is unable to work at grade level. I am a special ed teacher and ...but when a student is in 5th grade and reads on a 3rd grade level, there is very little chance that they are going to pass a 5th grade test. A student in special ed should be expected to make progress every year but they may never perform on grade level".

I think you are forgetting key facts in your response.

1) It is the system that requires the student to be two grade levels behind before they are provided with "specialized instruction".

2) The system also relies on identification methods which have been proven invalid, ie the discrepency model.

3)The 5th gr. test, to which you refer, is the state test. A test that ALL children are expected to score proficiently on. The state test reflects what we EXPECT EVERY student to reach and is not a rigourous test designed to reflect academic standards we aspire every student to reach.

4) Unless the school district can demonstrate these students cannot attain grade level proficiency (cognitively impaired), than schools should be penalized. They have failed to teach them?

Parents shouldn't have to take school districts to due process to prove denial of FAPE...if the child failed to pass the state test, that is proof. It is a joke that a student cannot be eligible for SE if they have not had adaquate instruction. If the instruction was adaquate, the SD's general ed. proficiency rate would be 100% (unless some SE student's were unidentified or some GE students were cognitively impaired).

Kids with Learing Disabilities

In The HUDS Healdsburg Ca, they do test the kids they do fulinclution but at a 95% failling the kids then they reach a point that they ship the kids off to another school were they have a General special day clas rangeing in age from k- 12 with all kind of disablities, and have them just learn what the want even if it just drawing no other

RTI Unintended consequence

RTI can be powerful, but it replicates what solid teachers and schools already do--look for multiple ways of intervening and reteaching as soon as gaps become apparent. The structure is also helpful to schools where the process has not been formal. One "negative" unintended consequence relates to staffing. Let's say a school has (for example) 5 federally funded special education teachers who can work with teachers to develop appropriate interventions for these struggling students. The process works, and RTI provides what kids need without eventually labelling them "special education" students. Over time, the percentage of students classified as "special education" students diminishes, which is positive. However, in that event the federal funding also diminishes, meaning another budgetary area has to continue to pay for those interventionists. Districts must be financially prepared to replace those federally-funded positions with locally- or state-funded positions, or else the depth and richness of intervention available suffers, leading to a cycle in which students get intense services so student needs are met and special education numbers decrease, leading to lack of funding, loss of intervention positions and diminishing resources, leading to student needs being unmet and increasing numbers of special education-identified students.....

Districts would do well to think long-term and beef up intervention at the campus level that is not threatened by being based in federal special education funding; OR, the feds need to think long-term by providing additional portions of special education funding that are tied not to special-education identifications, but numbers of students addressed through RTI who never need the "special education" label.

RTI not enough

I've blogged a critique of RTI here: http://jaypgreene.com/2008/06/02/responding-to-response-to-intervention/

My argument is that RTI is simply an effort to get schools to adopt appropriate instructional techniques. But if we don't address why there weren't already using those techniques, RTI by itself is doomed to fail. It's not enough to offer schools an effective technique. We must also address their motivation to adopt and properly implement those techniques. As I argue in my blog post, there are perverse incentives that undermine proper implementation of RTI.

RTI; How they should have been taught in first place?

I'm wondering whether in certain instances RTI is how kids should have been taught in the first place. For some students who are casualty cases from either poor teaching or poor curriculum or both, does RTI mean direct instruction and other techniques frowned upon by the education establishment which is based towards inquiry-based and disoovery learning? So some students who may have some learning disabilities and/or no access to outside tutoring or help from parents may not be learning math because they were in programs like Everyday math or Investigations in Number, Data and Space.

Does exposure to the traditional methods held in much disdain by teachers then get them to the point where they can understand? And once there, are they thrown back in to these poor programs?

And for those students who are benefitted by RTI, but not by the poor programs: is there any chance they can be given IEP's that allow them to learn math the right way? Not fair to the other students, I know, but one step at a time.

No Wonder Kids Get Dumped in Special Education

The quote attributed to Wayne Sailor, "Everyone's great fear is: Will the science compromise the art of teaching" is terribly revealing. I can't help wondering if the quote is accurate.

Since real science is all about determining the truth concerning relationships between cause and effect, this quote basically asks will the truth about what is needed to meet students' educational needs be allowed to interfere with teachers doing whatever they prefer instead, regardless of whether those teacher-preferred practices work for children?

If this sort of philosophy is actually present in our education schools, we will have great insight into why so many kids wind up in special education.

THIS WORKS FROM SPECIAL ED TO POST GRAD, ED REHAB AND MORE

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NCLB drives RTI

In the old system, a discrepancy between a battery of tests that measured memory, 5 different reading skills and several math skills and a student's actual performance determined whether or not a student had a learning disability. This was measurable and did not rely on opinions. RTI is a hit or miss proposition where a student is not measured, a teacher's ability to intervene is measured. Besides being a huge burden on a classroom teacher, the RTI team can just say that the teacher has not tried enough or the best intervention, keeping a child out of special ed. Often, the student receives the interventions that are used to assist students with learning disabilities. Unlike a special education student with an IEP (individualized education plan), an student on RTI will go from year to year without supports as each teacher tries to figure out what interventions will help.

What has this got to do with NCLB? RTI is keeping students from being identified as in need of special ed, thereby keeping students out of special ed. With fewer students in special ed, a school may no longer have a special ed subgroup. The special ed subgroup is the reason many schools are not making AYP. I am no fan of NCLB because it is penalizing students and schools when a student is unable to work at grade level. I am a special ed teacher and have high standards and expectations for my students but when a student is in 5th grade and reads on a 3rd grade level, there is very little chance that they are going to pass a 5th grade test. A student in special ed should be expected to make progress every year but they may never perform on grade level. So, if we just give them "interventions" and do not qualify them to receive special ed services, then the school may make AYP. NCLB has become a numbers game and subgroup students will pay the price.

Keeping kids out of Special Ed

Too often, schools wait for a student to "fail" before the proper intervention begins. I hope that RTI is at least sampled by schools in all states to see if it can help students. All programs need to be tweaked, but with proper training and a bit of creativity by educators, this program may be successful. As educators we can't fix everything or everyone, but we can sure help to make them work at their best.