Former special Ed teacher here. A classic IQ test result is pretty meaningless. There are numerous assessment tools that give you a good idea of a student’s capability. Rant: I hate hearing someone described as “having the mind of a 5 year old.” Meaningless and condescending.
As you can see from reading the thread, many special ed kids in public schools are not being served well, despite a huge river of government money pouring in to fund education for special needs. There’s too much bureaucracy, too much sticking to outdated approaches, and too little flexibility.
There is some good news from other quarters, though. Arizona recently created Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. The idea is fairly simple. Parents with a special needs kid can withdraw their kid from school and the money that would have gone to the public school for that child instead goes into an account. The parents can then use that money as they wish: for a private school, for at-home tutoring, to support homeschooling, online courses, or for some combination of the four.
This program puts the parents in the driver’s seat, rather than forcing them to fight the endless battles that ddsun described.
Unfortunately the Arizona program has a limited number of students, 731 for the past year. But other states are catching on. Arkansas recently enacted a voucher program for disabled students, symbolically important because it’s the 25th state to offer vouchers of some kind.
I was in education back when “mainstreaming” (as we called it then) first really started to gain ground. It did some amazing things for most of the kids I saw and harm to none; and I was in a fairly terrible district at a really bad time in its history.
But you give me a chance to ask a question I always wanted to. Now – it’s a given that generations are different and all of education and society has improved over the years to some extent but -------- since you say “we were all so different from each other” and “I had some wonderful friends in Special Ed, but I also felt out-of-place with most of the kids that attended those classes.” do you think it would have been better for you and your classmates to all have been basically blended into the regular classrooms? Or would that have made the differences more pronounced?
You still have the problem that IQ testing will result in hiring substantially fewer black and hispanic teachers than white teachers. Again, since our society has decided that all racial groups are equal in aptitude, preferences and temperament, that means your IQ testing must be racist and anything racist is unacceptable.
It doesn’t matter if testing cognitive ability is in a perfect world the best way to hire teachers, an argument I’m amenable to. We need to establish solutions that work in the real world, not the world that we wish to live in.
Hi MyFootsZZZ, thank you for starting this thread. My son was in special education and also had a hard time. He had various psychiatric and learning issues. How long ago were you in school, and in what state (if I may ask)? My son is 26 now and this is Mass. I think ANY school would have been tough for him, but the worst was the regular public school, before he started attending a special school in mid-grammar school. And it was considered a pretty good school system.
The teachers in the regular school really did not have the training to understand or deal with anyone who had multiple symptoms. They could probably do fine with someone who had a certain kind of learning disability (and nothing else), but for someone like my son, they had no clue. When the school has no clue they either say the child is being oppositional on purpose, or they blame the parents. Neither of these was true for my son.
I feel that the decision about where to school the child depends on many factors. When they say “least restrictive environment” they think that equals staying in the regular school. But for my son, being in the regular school, the only child with his issues in the whole grade, being followed around by an aide all the time, really singled him out (and did no good). Attending a school where all the teachers and therapists were trained to understand children like my son freed him to be treated like all the other students, and was in my opinion a much more inclusive experience.
Anyhow, it turned out fine in the end, and I hope you’re doing well.
Don’t get hung up on OMG TESTING RACIST RUN RUN! here. 
Testing and evaluating teachers is only difficult to impossible because the unions oppose it so violently. It’s not a matter of trying to exclude anyone who’s not Richard Feynman. It’s matter of weeding out the genuinely incompetent, stupid and incapable ones who are teaching classes beyond their personal knowledge level - the ones who can’t read and write much better than their average students, and flunk basic competence tests not much harder than the tests they’re supposed to be giving and evaluating. These are *not *rarities.
Choose your own tests and terms, and by all means make it sensitive to cultural and racial bias. But we need to quit propping up the entire strata of barely-competent teachers just because we have to have enough warm bodies standing at the front of classrooms.
I’m sorry folks. I’ve been sick.
I don’t know, it seems that things should’ve gotten better by now, but they haven’t. From what I’ve read, it sounds awfully familiar from when I was in school. I don’t know how I would go about changing some things, if I had the power, but there’s definitely still problems.
You’re really sweet for saying that. I’m glad things turned out fine.
I’m still trying to figure things out. I don’t want to sound drastic, but I think I got a touch of PTS from school. I still have nightmares and they really effect me. I’m NOT comparing going to school to going to war or anything. But school literally has an effect on me to this day.
I graduated in 1999. NY state. A very “good” suburban school district. When I think about it, I could have gone to a private school for boys with Dyslexia. I’m still not convinced I’m dyslexic… but maybe I would have faired better had I gone there.
:o
Sorry I missed this.
This is a good question. I think it would have been better for me to at least be in regular English class, but otherwise, I don’t know how things could have been different. I figured that technology would one day, somehow, aid in one’s personalized education.
How would testing help that? We would still need bodies, and we still wouldn’t have them.
I teach at a really, really good urban magnet school. Nationally ranked. It’s literally about as good a teaching job as there is out there–and we struggle to fill vacancies with competent people. The other schools in my huge urban district–it’s sometimes simply impossible to find anyone they actually like. They hope for “will do” or “maybe we can develop them”. The problem isn’t that schools have talented people they can’t hire because of the deadwood cluttering up the building. The reason you keep the deadwood around is that you’ve no expectation of anything better coming along, and at least you know they show up everyday.
And sure, I know there are suburban districts that get hundreds of highly qualified applicants for every position, but those are also generally schools that are doing a pretty good job (and that’s no coincidence). The schools that we want to improve, the schools we worry about, already have classrooms with subs all year long because no even vaguely qualified person wants the job. Creating more vacant classrooms with more bored subs won’t help. Find a way to inspire good people to become teachers and train them to do the job well, and principals will make room to hire them, I promise.
I’d rather see young and inexperienced (often idealistic) teachers than “experienced” ones who are barely worth holding their chair down. Or even an increase in “emergency credential” teachers for upper grades and classes not necessarily requiring specific expertise. (Not that there’s any shortage of those in many districts.)
Yes: I think larger classes or fewer teachers or earnest substitutes are better than any stupid, stubborn teacher barely hanging on because the union is protecting them.
You don’t understand. We can’t even find those, or the ones you can find have personality problems so profound that you really, really don’t want to hire them.
You really have to go to a job fair at a large urban district to understand what I am talking about. My districts has had something like 20-30% turnover for years. We don’t have tenure. We don’t have unions–this is Texas. We can fire the bad teachers, and do. But we keep the mediocre ones because we’ve no hope for better.
I’ve been part of the hiring process for at least a dozen teachers over the years. I’ve never had to make a hard choice between two highly qualified candidates.
Researching it, turnover is about 20%, not 30%
And you don’t get “earnest” subs at $75/day; you get bodies. And often you don’t keep them in one class more than 6 weeks, because then you have to pay them more. So you swap them out. We are not talking about bright eyed hard working people doing their best, here. If they were that, we’d hire them as teachers.
MJ, I know all of this. I’m pretty much the only person in my family who doesn’t work in Ed, and I’ve seen the spectrum of issues close up for more than 40 years. (I am also quite familiar with the siege mentality of most of those in K-12 Ed. While its cause may be understandable, the limits it imposes on even discussing solutions aren’t.)
Despite all the comforting lies the Ed world is capable of telling itself, especially at the admin level, substandard teachers are not to be tolerated regardless of the circumstances.
And I think we can both agree that Texas has its own special problems, of no lesser degree than those of California - just of different shades.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned this but some parents are scammers. I don’t know what the requirements are as I’m not a Special Ed teacher, but if the child gets the right label, they’re entitled to Social Security (disability?) benefits. I know because my district got sued two years ago for “allowing” a special ed kid to graduate when his parents had gone to great lengths to ensure he would only get a “Certificate of Attendance.”
And although I’m not certified to teach special ed, I have co-taught classes all the time. The “co-taught” part is a joke. SpEd teachers do not “teach” anything in a co-taught class. They are there to keep the district within the law. What it really means is that I have a class of 40 kids, plus one moron who occasionally emails SpEd parents.
It is not possible to occasionally pull some kids out of an “inclusive” classroom because the kids fall further behind. Any SpEd kid who is successful in a co-taught classroom would have been successful in a classroom without the co-teacher.
The kids who get screwed are the regular ed kids. If their parents knew what a joke co-taught classes are, they would demand their kids get put in non-co-taught. Unfortunately, the schools portray it the way the parents on this board do:“Oh, it’s great for everyone! There are TWO teachers in the room! Lots of innovative methods to reach different students!” It’s all bullshit, your kid is stuck in a room with one teacher, 25 regular ed students, 15 special ed students, and one paraprofessional who is paid a teacher’s salary. A couple years ago I had a student with Down’s Syndrome who could not read or write in a World History class. Her parents wanted her there so she would feel “normal.” She’s not normal; she has a profound disability and her placement was completely inappropriate. But her “rights” to an appropriate education are far more important than regular ed kids’ rights to an appropriate education.
My daughter Serena is functioning on the austism spectrum. I’m not really sure how to classify her as she has sentence level speech, a couple years behind her grade in reading and math, and is in a special needs class. It’s an issue because the other kids are below her level, and have not good role model behaviors.
I was shocked when we went to her “mainstream” class. The para teacher brought the 3 highest functioning special needs kids into the back of the class, crowded them in one desk, and monitored to not cause disruption. Hardly the basis for success.
Her needs are being met, but nothing that points to success. Her teacher, paras and the “mainstream” teachers try hard and mean well and have tons of constraints, but it’s not the right stuff. 
And we live in one of the best public school districts in the US…
I don’t know what we will do. This is one of two elementary schools with special needs capability in the district. The teachers and staff try hard, but it’s not adequate. The one unique autism with mainstream kids private school is both seriously expensive, inconvenient and has no openings in the current grade. My wife doesn’t like the idea of homeschooling, and while we have great autism insurance benefits the burden for home schooling will fall on my wife. There is a private middle high school that might be a good fit, but we have 5th grade to get through.
It more than kinda sucks. And we are very fortunate that my company provides about the best autism benefits under insurance in the country with up to 40 hours of 1:1 therapy per week, that we take full advantage of.
I’m a member of that union (though in a right-to-work state, that’s pretty meaningless). You’ve been insulting toward teachers in this thread and, quite frankly, I don’t appreciate it. Teaching, like ALL professions, has good, bad, and otherwise. We fall in a curve like everyone else.
Unions are not in the business of protecting incompetent workers in any profession. That is just stupid. Unions do, however, work hard at making sure that workers toil in an environment where they can be successful. When problems do occur, they make sure that management does its part in solving the problem rather than merely firing the worker.
Come back when you actually know what you’re talking about. Or, even better, come back when you want to talk about special education. Thank you.
Vouchers are not the answer. Making sure that schools have the resources they need to meet students’ needs is the answer.
So that’s why New York, until just a recent year or so and maybe even now, has an entire school for teachers in years-long suspension hearings, who get full pay to go sit around and do nothing. For years, if not the remainder of a school year in which they were effectively fired.
Don’t get all huffy because there are far too many incompetents in your profession. I’m not saying they’re all bad, by any means. But you know as well as I do that the system - like any civil employment system - works pretty damned hard to prop up the low end, because doing so protects the middle and makes the high end look good.
I can appreciate all of the parents with *special needs kids *wanting the best education for their children. It also sounds like the desire is for them to be mainstreamed as much as possible so they can become more socially prepared for the real world as they grow up and interact with other people away from their families. That makes sense.
But for that to happen in a meaningful way, you would need to have more teachers of mainstream classes trained in special education techniques. This can be more expensive for school districts, as specialized teachers need specialized training on top of their basic education requirements. School districts across the country already face significant budget issues under the current programs.
I believe there is already enough teaching to the median among mainstream classes, which is why US students continue to fall behind relative to children educated in other countries. Children should be separated by their learning ability so that teachers can be appropriately focused on helping each group to maximize their potential, instead of teaching to the test.
You can refuse to tolerate substandard teachers all you want, but until we have strategies and incentives to recruit, train, and retain effective teachers to replace them, you’re just going to replace substandard teachers with new and different substandard teachers. This comes at a high cost and doesn’t help anyone.