They did, her name is <Lisa’s full name>
Less-than-Lisa, we used to call her. Best buds with little Bobby Tables
Just out of curiosity, Shakes, what are you suggesting be the standard that the schools ue to determine “Worked Hard Enough”? How is that going to be measured? At some point in the process the school is going to have to use some sort of measure to detmine if your kid passed an arbitrary set of goals. What are you suggesting those be? How is the school supposed to seperate “worked hard but failed” from “slacked off and failed” kids? How do you measure effort? Especially since much of the effort happens outside the view of the teacher and administration?
Hey, it’s a big high school. We’re lucky that she got a diploma with the Cum Laude banner on it.
Seriously, I’m not going to post her real last name online.
That’s a good question. In my opinion, the end goal is to teach him the basic skills needed to get by in life. Like balancing a checkbook, managing finances. Knowing whether or not he got the correct change back from the cashier. (I’m using math because that’s where my kid struggles the most) Display the ability to do simple word problems.
I currently have to work with him on all this stuff. I’d rather the teachers be doing this as they are better qualified. But nope, because of the stupid mandates forced upon them, they have to teach him algebra and it only gets harder from there. And at this point, it’s hardly even teaching. Basically, all they’re doing is shoving a calculator if front of him and trying to teach him the correct sequence to punch the numbers in to get the correct result. This of course leaves him with no real understanding of what is being taught.
Algebra II, for one. These are the TEKS for high school math in TX. Look at the Algebra II ones, and tell me that someone who has a solid understanding of Alg I and Geometry but can’t do exponential and logarithmic functions and a ton of other stuff is basically uneducated.
I think that goes back to the old issues (old as in, talked about for decades, not old as in irrelevant) of mainstreaming or not mainstreaming. Basically, it sounds like mainstreaming him into the general education population wasn’t the best idea for him, academically speaking. He might have been better off in a specialized class with teachers certified in special ed and the training to teach autistic children, with a practical, real world curriculum focused on life skills instead.
I wouldn’t assume a teacher holding a standard teaching certificate/license is any more qualified to teach an autistic child than you are. It’s a subpopulation that needs, in my humble opinion, not just a specialized curriculum, but specialized teachers. But that’s expensive…
I dunno - I have to teach my kids all of those things myself, and they’re honor students. School is not the place to teach any of those things, except as it relates to core knowledge, like how to add and subtract. But the specifc concepts of those things, not so much.
School isn’t supposed to teach life skills, it’s supposed to teach the tools you need to use to solve life problems, like checkbook balancing. It’s one of the main things that have changed about the education debate - what the hell is school for? I like the old school (heh) idea of schools being about knowledge, but arguments on the other side do make good points.
It also brings to the ore one of the problems with mainstreaming - your son is disabled, and you’re expecting his teacher/school to what? Neglect the rest of the room to brush up on his time tables? Take 20 minutes of a 55 minute class to work extra with him to go at his pace. They can’t - they have 25 other kids, multiplied by how every many classes they carry, full of a bunch of other kids who are all over the ability spectrum as well. It cannot be done, even without the mandate of a state test.
And then to bitch about having to work with him at home? What is that? He’s disabled, and there is no way there is enough time, staff and money to give every kid the help they need, whether they’re disabled or not. Parents are supposed to help with homework and things like times tables and spelling words and essays. I’d rather not have had to change my kids’ diapers, but that is part of being a parent, just as arranging tutors and drilling math facts and everything else.
I said “supposed to be,” which has little to do with what they ARE. I thought we all agreed they are crap.
Teacher means someone there to TEACH, not just to evaluate. Even if every single school day consisted of the “teacher” flipping on a TV tuned to Cartoon Network and snoozing in the corner, there will still be some kids that will pass standardized tests and play soccer at a competitive level. That doesn’t mean any learning is happening at school.
Each student should improve regardless of ability, with the exception of perhaps some severe and unusual degenerative brain disorder or something. If they aren’t improving, everyone’s time is being wasted.
I’m not saying the student does not have the responsibility to make effort and pay attention and it’s all on the teacher. If the student won’t try, the teacher’s time is wasted too.
My son is in a special ed class. He was very briefly put in a regular class but they moved him back. He’s not in a class of 25 students. I think his last class was 15 students. And the bottom line is, if the kid is still trying to learn his times tables and division, he’s NOT ready to be taught algebra. That’s it. Full stop. You can’t just hand wave that away because “time and resources”. The problem needs to be addressed. This by the way is something his teacher agrees with me on.
And who the hell is bitching about tutoring my kid?
Actually algebra should be introduced right along with addition and subtraction, as it guides the student to make connections instead of just memorizing facts. I doubt they are going about it in a reasonable way if the goal is just to present grade-level material regardless of whether he has the ability to understand it, but it’s never inherently too soon for algebra.
I don’t disagree at all, I’m just saying that time and resources are stretched already. There may be nothing they more they can do.
This would be your call to get specialized tutoring outside of the school, using your own resources, be they your time or your money.
I might be misunderstanding things here, but it seems to be that a lot of these comments are misunderstanding what the actual rules change will do? Now, it’s quite possible that I’m the idiot here…and in fact, I’m used to that, but what it looks like to me is…
Back in 2001, the federal government passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which, among other things, set national minimum standards for education and required states to make standardized tests to see if schools were successfully meeting those teaching standards; and tied federal aid to education to those test results. So, for instance, a school where only 30% of students could pass the minimum standards in reading and math would have to make changes to their curriculum to better teach their kids, so that the next year, the percentage of passing students would improve, or else they’d be in danger of losing federal funding and having a bunch of bad stuff happen to them.
One of the things that made the schools unhappy was that these standards applied to special needs students as well, who, they argued, wouldn’t be able to meet the minimum standards, so that a school with a lot of special needs students would score lower and risk losing funding. So, in 2004, when Congress reauthorized IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), they included a lot of stuff to help harmonize it with NCLB, and one of the things they did was allow the Department of Education to grant waivers to the minimum standards. States would be able to create an alternate test for students with special needs with lower than the federal standard. So, waivers were handed out, and states started making alternative tests available. This ran into some problems. One of the big things was that some of the schools used it to try to game the system. They’d take the lowest 1% of their students (the law said that only 1% could take the lower assessed tests), and just declare them special needs, so they could take an easier test and not bring state scores down.
Meanwhile, a lot of special education teachers and advocates had a problem with the regulation, figuring it was using a sledgehammer to crush a gnat, lumping all special needs students together, and getting in the way of mainstreaming students with disabilities.
Meanwhile, since then, NCLB has been refined, new programs, called “Common Core” and “Race to the Top”, which are less punitive than NCLB and focus more on rewarding successful schools than punishing failing ones, have been implemented, and and the creators of the standardized state tests have been refining them so that they can apply to both mainstream and special needs students.
So, it’s under this background that the DOE is recommending the alternative tests be stopped. But this change will still allow accommodation of special needs students with an IDP, and won’t actually affect graduation policies at all. These are just the tests used to evaluate the success or failure of the schools in meeting federal education guidelines.
At least that’s how it seems to me.
Maybe we could have a varied set of acknowledgements.
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A Certificate of Attendance - This document acknowledges that (fill in name) showed up for school most of the time and never broke the rules in any serious manner.
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A Certificate of Merit - This document acknowledges that (fill in name) really busted their ass in school and gave forth the maximum effort they could.
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A Certificate of Knowledge - This document acknowledges that (fill in name) completed the academic course of study set by the state and actually learned something in school.
We could also do it the way the Brits do it. My understanding is that they take specific exams in specific subjects rather than getting a high school diploma. That’s not a bad idea.
In New York, where I went to school, we had Regents Diplomas, and non-regents (I think I remember the non-regents high school courses being referred to as ‘local’). Wikipedia describes it as follows:
eta: sparked by Lynn’s post I’d also note that my diploma declares that I of am good religious and civic character, which is hilarious and patently false, but it’s signed by a Bishop so I’m pretty sure God must abide
I have a niece who is developmentally disabled. She was given a certificate of some sort and she was allowed to graduate with cap and gown along with everyone else. No one but the family knew it. We’re in California though.
Though don’t some people think we already force kids to choose the path for the rest of their lives a little young as it is?
The actual subjects aren’t really that important unless you are applying to a selective university program. Generally the student just has to complete X number of A-levels (the school leaver exam) with an average grade of Y.
A ‘Y’ sounds like a really bad grade…
Well, it’s better than Z. I should also note that letter grades in the UK go A-E. No F. Kind of makes sense, since A-D aren’t supposed to stand for anything.