The Common Core Is Tough on Kids With Special Needs

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-common-core-is-tough-on-kids-with-special-needs/283973/

?n1bc7p

In a recent discussion board thread on reading comprehension challenges in autism, a special-education teacher commented that her students can’t understand the assigned reading passages. “When I complained, I was told that I could add extra support, but not actually change the passages,” she wrote. “It is truly sad to see my students’ frustration.”

Why must this teacher’s students contend with passages that are too complex for them to understand? She attributes this inflexibility to the Common Core, new standards—created in 2009 by a group of education professionals, none of them K-12 classroom teachers or special-education experts—that have been adopted by 45 states. Though most Common Core goals are abstract and schematic, collectively they constitute a one-size fits-all approach that, in practice, has severely straightjacketed America’s special-needs students.

The teacher I quoted above—one of the many special-ed instructors I
teach at the Drexel University and University of Pennsylvania
education schools—is hardly alone. She’s echoing the concerns of dozens of other special-education teachers I’ve spoken with, most of whom have already gotten the message from their supervisors or superiors that they must adhere to the standards and give all their students the designated grade-level assignments.

Precocious students, students with learning disabilities, precocious students with learning disabilities: How does the Common Core suit them?

[jwirr]

1. To my knowledge none of the testing systems to grade teachers and schools has made allowances for

special-ed students. What is really terrible is that when they deliberately create failure they then turn around and take school funding away because the school has failed. I am of the opinion that all special-ed students should be exempt from this testing.

There needs to be another way of making sure that they are getting the education they require. If your schools are like ours in MN we have many who will never be at a testing level. My daughter included.

We create a ISP developed by a team of people (experts and parents) who work with these children and these tests expect us to abandon the individual plans for each student to get into step with the rest of the school. What good is an ISP if we cannot follow it and see IT as the test of success?

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. "ISP"? Same as IEP? n/t

[jwirr]

6. Correct. I worked mainly with adults and ISP is the adult form.

[Smarmie Doofus]

8. I'm not positive, but I'm not sure the adult treatment plans have the same "legal force"....

... as the IEP. ( correct me if I'm wrong.)

How these "reformers" .... or whatever you want to call them... manage to legally push this nonsense through OVER the legal force of the IEP is a sort of mystery and interest.

One thing they (school districts) used to do ( maybe they still do) is pressure the teacher write watered-down, "generic" versions of IEPs w. goals literally "cut and pasted". Then they require the SPED teacher to implement BOTH the CCSS nonsense AND the watered-down IEP.

And of course, by this time , the IEP has completely lost its meaning. It's content is supposed to be SPECIFIC TO THE STUDENT.

It's called an INDIVIDUALIZED Education Plan for a reason.

[jwirr]

9. They work pretty much the same way except the adult contract is with the Social Services Department

and the IEP is with the schools. What you are describing is terrible. But I am assuming that the school districts are sort of forced to do this to keep what funding they do get.

And I also wonder how the government has allowed this to happen.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. K and R. But the truth is nobody gives a fuck.

Or should I say.... this phenomenon impacts a relatively small ( and easily marginalized) demographic ( i.e. special needs kids , their families, and their teachers) the existence of which is an inconvenience to the architects of Obama-era "reform".

Much easier to pretend they don't exist.

[xchrom]

3. +1

[Jefferson23]

4. +1, it is so frustrating to watch. n/t

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. Imagine what it's like to be forced to *participate*.

[Jefferson23]

17. Horrific, and the consequences are telling. n/t

[LWolf]

10. I accidentally uttered the wrong word in an IEP meeting this week.

I knew better. It was a slip of the tongue.

A Freudian slip.

When talking about how to best meet the needs of my wonderful student who has very low cognitive functioning, plus a specific learning disability, plus severe adhd, I accidentally uttered the word "modification." Which, as those who deal with the legal protocols surrounding special education know, means something very different legally than the word "accommodation." Modifying curriculum is frowned upon. To say the least. Luckily for me, this particular meeting was not being recorded; the head person present frowned at me, went on, and then came back and re-worded what I'd said without the "m" word before adding my input to her notes.

No modifying curriculum. Accommodations only. Because modifications mean a "modified diploma" instead of a standard high school diploma, and while that may happen down the line, nobody mentions the "m" word anywhere before the student gets to high school.

[Jefferson23]

16. The system is disgusting..but I know exactly what you are talking about.

Very sad....and we can spend like crazy on all levels of the MIC, but we consistently
deny children their opportunity to advance themselves..all the while impeding the
teachers abilities/dedication..we make it almost impossible for them to advocate
out loud.

[jsr]

11. +1

[Igel]

12. I keep hearing this. It's inane.

It's like the TEKS in Texas. It's not the standards. It's the implementation of standards and how they're tested.

However, you have two distinct groups. In Texas, GT kids are fine with the standards. The standards have to be taught and mastered. They do so and move on. The only problem is if the administrators micro-manage and require that all and only the standards be taught, at the same level as every other student cohort.


SpEd kids are the same with the Texas TEKS as with CC in the rest of the country, and it's not a question of standards. Nor is it really a question of how local authorities want to implement the standards.

The problem is with administrators and the courts. We in Texas had limits on the number of SpEd kids that could be exempted from the old test, TAKS. Why? Because low-performing schools had skads of SpEd kids. It was a way of sidelining low-performing students, keeping them from pulling down the average scores. Since many were minorities, it was also a civil-rights thing. By making too many the minority kids SpEd, they were exempted from testing, meaning they weren't getting their FAPE. Constitutional violation.

The testing requirements were tightened. And it was required to teach the standards to *all* SpEd kids. Schools abused the system, followed the letter of the law instead of doing what the law-makers wanted, found ways to game the system. So the system was revised. Harshly.

The result was simple enough. A few schools found it in their interest to still over-enroll the SpEd rolls. True, the overage SpEd scores were zeroed out for reporting purposes, but it helped with other reporting requirements to not have those low-achievers on the regular rolls. Most schools just "accidently" had precisely the maximum number of SpEd kids possible.

Again, schools were gaming the system and thwarting the clear beneficial intent of the politicians, so they had to micromanage even more.

So next year SpEd kids in TX aren't exempted from the standardized tests at all and they're to be taught the same standards for their grade as any other kid. (Except that "scaffolding" is the new escape hatch: "We teach algebra II, even if all the problems on the board are simple subtracting. We're scaffolding their skills so they can learn algebra II.&quot

Why? Ultimately because administrators gamed the system and because teachers, given less accountability, too often decide to take the easy path instead of the responsible path.

This doesn't mean that I completely agree with CC and the more recent Texas standards. In at least some cases there's too much packed in, or they're fuzzy, or seem to lack an appropriate focus. But the real problem isn't with the standards, it's with implementation and to a greater extent with testing.

[frazzled]

13. Maybe one issue to consider is ...

the idea of testing by grade-level, which we generally equate with age. If, as in the example in the article, an eighth-grader (by age) is reading at a fourth-grade level, then it would seem they should be approaching the fourth grade general curriculum and be tested at the fourth-grade level. In other words, this particular student, for reading at least (maybe they're at a higher level in math), should be a fourth grader, receiving a fourth-grade (common core) curriculum.

This will, of course, make us rethink the idea of mainstreaming. And that is controversial, and it also admittedly has its pluses and minuses. Kids need to be integrated with others their age; but because development is uneven, or some kids need special attention, they also need to be taught at their level. How to address these competing needs? The schools my kids went to had a solution that truly worked, in my opinion. We had a choice of school type in Minneapolis back in that day: contemporary (your standard one teacher for one grade level, neighborhood situation); fundamentals (stressing basic reading and math skills, strict behavior codes); open (combined grade levels with team teaching); Montessori; and something called "continuous progress."

How did continuous progress work? Children were assigned a "home room" teacher. This is the class in which they started and ended their day, and from which they had lessons in art, phys ed, social studies, and whatever special activities were on the books for that grade level. For reading and math, however, children were tested for their ability level. In the normal classroom situation, a teacher can handle maybe 3 reading levels at most. But when you use the talents of six first-grade teachers, each of them handling several levels, you can get 12 or more very specific levels. So, for example, if a first-grader was already reading at a third-grade level, she might travel to Mrs. P's room to be with all the other first graders reading at that level. If a first-grader was not yet reading, she might go with others from her home room to Mrs. T's room for reading. If a student was a non-English speaker, he might go with his peers to Mrs. G's room, etc. These were really refined levels where teachers could really focus on individual curriculum levels rather than teaching standard fare to a whole class of varied abilities. Kids were unaware of what these levels were (though parents certainly weren't, and that's where the trouble would sometimes come).

My daughter was a "special needs" kid, though not in the sense this article really addresses. She is hearing impaired and wears two hearing aids. I remember the first IEP meeting we had, in first grade. All the first grade teachers were there, along with the district audiologist who monitored her case. It started with one of the teachers very innocently saying, "When we heard we were getting a hearing-impaired child we were frankly concerned, but we were surprised to see she reads so well!" I was pretty dumbfounded, and blurted something idiotic like, "well, she's hearing impaired; she's not stupid!" The audiologist set everyone straight, and explained the accommodations my daughter would need: sitting at the front of the classroom, so she could read lips; the teacher should not talk with her back was to the class while writing on the board; and the teacher should wear a microphone for the assisted listening device (my daughter's home room teacher really balked at this and fought it all year). At any rate, the continuous progress method really worked for her: she was an avid and sophisticated reader and got to go to another classroom with other kids at that level; she was put in a math level too high for her, though, I think, although I didn't realize it at the time. It made her unconfident in math for most of her school career; and I regret that she wasn't put in a lower level to begin with.

At any rate, what I am suggesting is that we test kids at their ability level, not their age. They will certainly progress more "continuously" that way.

I spent a number of years volunteering to tutor kids who had failed the state's high-stakes testing, required for graduation. Most of the kids I was assigned were non-native speakers (though some seemed also to have either learning disabilities or behavior issues). I remember one Vietnamese girl in particular, who really was a poor reader in the technical sense. So I had to deal with the very basic mechanics of reading with her, like phonics. I had been instructed to read a version of Bram Stoker's Dracula with her—way above her skill level—so there were also cultural and historical issues that were foreign to her. We spent two hour-long sessions each week, all semester long, reading that abridged book, word by freaking word, sentence by freaking sentence, and then talking about the passages we'd read. She started out pretty frustrated and defiant, and definitely uninterested (who in her situation wouldn't be). But as the semester progressed she was eager to find out what was going to happen in the story, and even though the reading and vocabulary was still hard for her, she began to make progress. Not up to her age/grade level (a junior in high school) for sure, but the change in attitude alone led to steps forward. So I do think it's possible to push kids a little. But it takes an enormous amount of work. I don't think teachers have enough time or resources to address each individual special needs kid in this way. But certainly schools should be engaging the community to come help in this process. With proper teacher supervision, volunteers can do a lot to give these kids the attention and, more important, confidence they need.

[FourScore]

15. Problem is, even the grade level expectations are too high. See post #14. n/t

[FourScore]

14. This is so true, and I have a child who will struggle for this reason, BUT

even the non-special ed kids are seriously negatively impacted by Common Core. My 10th grade child, who is an honor roll kid, has struggled in some of his classes like never before. He took a mid-term regents in his honors global history class. He scored a 97 on the multiple choice and a 72 on the essay. I read his essay and thought it was great for a 15-year old. But the standards and grading rubric meant that he had to be graded very harshly. Only 2 kids out of his teacher's 134 students scored an A+. I was told my son's 72 was in the upper percentile. Here is a sample, according to the common core website, of how a perfect paper should be written:

Throughout world history, many groups of people have been exploited, mistreated, and oppressed. However, out of these situations, many admirable figures have emerged to defend human rights, using a variety of methods. These methods varied from person to person and had different degrees of success. Two notable advocates of human rights were Mohandas Ghandi in India, and Paul Rusesabagina in Rwanda. Both of these men played crucial roles in the protection of human rights in the modern world.

Paul Rusesabagina was an important human rights activist in the mid 1990s, during the Rwandan Genocide. The genocide stemmed from ethnic tension between the Hutu and the Tutsi. These two African tribes had a long history of conflict made worse by previous European imperial practices. Shortly after a negotiated truce, the Hutu president was murdered, and in response, Hutu forces began to systematically wipe out the Tutsi population. This genocide ultimately led to over 800,000 deaths. Paul Rusesabagina was directly involved in the conflict as he was a Hutu man married to a Tutsi woman.

One method Rusesabagina used was allowing Tutsi refugees to take shelter in the Mille Collines Hotel in Rawanda, where he was the manager. After the UN abandoned its efforts in Rwanda, Rusesabagina was forced to use other methods. By bribing both the
Rwandan military as well as other Hutu officials Rusesabagina was able to gain protection and supplies for those he was helping.Rusesabagina also provided footage of the genocide to be shown on the media outlets to increase global awareness. This tactic successfully gained support from the outside world to help the Rwandans...

http://www.nysedregents.org/globalhistorygeography/114/glhg12014-rg1.pdf

My take on this: If a 15-year old can write like this off the top of his head and with no notes available, he's pretty much done with his education! Give that kid a diploma! It's ridiculous. These kids are 15!!!! This level of writing would be IMPOSSIBLE for a special needs kid to achieve.