Senate education committee members recently argued about an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, put forward by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. The amendment was to provide teachers with training to work with students with dyslexia. It turned into a dispute between parent groups and policymakers. No one seemed to realize that special education services in public schools were hijacked a long time ago.
On one side you had the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, and Decoding Dyslexia who wanted the teacher training. The National PTA, National Down Syndrome Society, and the NEA opposed it. Some parents didn’t like the amendment. Their students with autism and ADHD are not under the label of learning disabilities (even though the disabilities could overlap), so they didn’t think it was fair.
All of this made me scratch my head for a number of reasons.
First, remember P.L. 94-142 or IDEA? In order to receive federal funds, states must develop and implement policies that assure a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to all children with disabilities.
This doesn’t say a free appropriate public education for only students with autism, or only students with dyslexia, or only any other student disability group. It says a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to all children with disabilities.
Emphasis “all” and “free appropriate.”
I also remember when an appropriate education meant a student with disabilities had access to a teacher trained for the particular disability area. Special ed. teachers had to take about thirty credit hours from an accredited university in the special area–in this case learning disabilities–to be credentialed.
Now, when I hear there is a struggle to train teachers, I realize it is the result of years of education reform which stripped public schools of the necessary services students with disabilities should have been, and still should be, getting in their public schools. Regular education teachers, on top of everything else they do, must address special education. Specialists have been increasingly pushed out of the picture.
That Cassidy believes he needs an amendment for teacher training to assist students with dyslexia demonstrates this point. Furthermore, Cassidy and his wife started a charter school for students with dyslexia to help their daughter who apparently has dyslexia. Cassidy made the point that there are only three charters in the country that deal with dyslexia.
And why do we need charter schools? Why aren’t public schools addressing dyslexia and other disabilities? Cassidy’s fellow politicians, throughout the years, helped remove the services he now wants reinstated! They did this to privatize public schools.
The larger question is how does the federal government gloss over IDEA? Why do they get away with not providing ALL students, with special needs, their promised, free appropriate public education, within traditional public schools?
The amendment failed by two votes. But there shouldn’t have been a need for an amendment. Students with dyslexia and/or learning disabilities should already be getting services in their public schools.
One of these days parents are going to wise up and get together. Certainly there are some eager attorneys out there somewhere.
Nancy, it breaks my heart and makes me want to kick these politicians & billionaires who have undone just about EVERYTHING that so many of us have worked hard for, marched for, wrote and testified for…on behalf of children with disabilities and their parents.
Years of progress and research, gone!
You are right, teachers were trained in scholarly university programs in specific disabilities, and graduated as experts in teaching those children, along with multiple certifications.
Through the years, the requirements were watered down, teachers were trained to become generalists, children were served through mostly non-categorial services in inclusion settings – even if not appropriate, and gen ed teachers were told to differentiate. Climate in education was shifting fast, and not for the better.
This was mostly a response to universities not being able to train teachers quick enough to replace the teachers who were leaving teaching or those who were driven out of their jobs. Systems were not retaining these highly trained teachers. After that, paraprofessionals were trained in any so-called certification program off shore, online or in many school systems. End results: Knowledge drain! Skill drain!
Along came NCLB & RTTT to put the last nails into the coffin.
Here we are…
Fighting over billionaire funded Ivy League public policy degree mills setting up shop to become Dyslexia specialist.
What a joke!
After all, how hard can teaching be?
If 22 year olds with a BS and 5 week training -TFA- can turn around urban poverty schools, serve as experts in systems, serve on BoE around the country,,, and convince more billionaires that they intend to cure cancer, end world hunger and create world peace in two years.
Just watch the Miss America contest & you got it.
Makes me sad and sick at the same time.
Where is all this going?
Starting all over again, with keeping SWD out of schools, then having bake sales to start classes for SWD and fighting for equal access? Deja vu…all over again. Too familiar just in my professional lifetime.
Nancy, thanks for bringing these issues to the forefront and provide necessary historical perspective. We don’t have time to reinvent the wheel or IDEA.
Hanna
Thanks Hanna. I think your comment is complete. Thank you! I think there is also a push to get rid of ed. schools in general. It’s back to the wild west! One can only hope that eventually the tide will turn.
I maybe should have left off the last two sentences of my post. I know there are parents who have tried to work through a lawyer and who fight for services. I was thinking more of parents who only want inclusion and want it to the exclusion of a continuum of services. I have never understood this since students with disabilities have a variety of needs. I say this as someone who used to work to help students do well in the regular class. But I think there are a variety of needs and students should not always be pushed into the regular curriculum.
But thanks again, Hanna. Your activism is valuable.
Hi Nancy,
As the parent of a child with dyslexia as well as an advocate for all children with disabilities, I appreciate the sentiment behind your post — that students with learning disabilities ought to be receiving the appropriate education promised by the IDEA. If they were, you suggest, there’d be no need for us to beg for teacher training in the context of the ESEA reauthorization.
But let’s be realistic. The number of students in the SLD category has ballooned beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Between 1976 and 1996, the number of students in this category alone increased by a whopping 283%! Congress has never even come close to fully funding the IDEA, and the likelihood of its ever doing so becomes more remote as the numbers continue to increase. We have no choice but to consider other avenues to meet our kids needs. (And anyone who argues that there aren’t increasing numbers of kids with LD ought to take some time to study the neuroscience of poverty and toxic stress, and take a look at the Georgetown Law Journal article, “Poverty as Disability and the Future of Special Education Law,” by Jim Ryan, current Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education).
Training general education teachers to meet the needs of dyslexic students — as Senator Cassidy has proposed — makes tremendous sense for a number of reasons. First, the sheer number of students in the general population with dyslexia should alone provide justification (Sally Shaywitz/Yale estimate 17.5%). Dyslexia is neither rare nor unusual, especially in high poverty areas. What other IDEA disability is anywhere near this prevalent?
Second, there are numerous other students in the general education classroom who struggle with reading, including ELLs and economically disadvantaged students. The research is undisputed –all of these students would benefit from receiving the type of direct, explicit, systematic reading instruction that dyslexic students require.
Third, the cost of training one teacher who can teach all students in one classroom to read, would surely be less than the cost of developing IEPs and hiring staff to provide resource support to numerous individual students. It simply makes better economic sense to train the general education teachers.
Fourth, our students with SLD are currently existing in an educational no man’s land — and general education, at least in my opinion, is the more appropriate home. In some localities, including where I live, it’s virtually impossible to convince a school to find a child eligible for special education under the SLD criteria until the child has already experienced verifiable reading failure — typically around fourth grade. And Tennessee has gone so far as to exclude students with SLD from the newly adopted voucher program, because our kids’ issues aren’t sufficiently “severe.” How can anyone blame us parents for searching desperately for someone to teach our kids?
Finally, there is a fundamental difference between our kids’ issues and those of the other groups being served under the IDEA — one that more than justifies an increased focus by general education teachers. If our kids can be identified early and provided appropriate reading instruction, the “disabling” nature of their learning challenges could be eliminated. Yet general education teachers are not being trained in how to spot the early signs of reading challenges and to deliver instruction that could prevent the development of a disability. I’m curious if there is any other disability group that could benefit so profoundly from having trained general education teachers? What about another disability group which relies entirely upon teachers — not physicians — to first identify their disability?
Under the existing framework, kids with SLDs are routinely singled out and excluded from IDEA services, and we’ve tried to propose a solution that would address our kids’ needs without impacting those with more “severe” disabilities who are served under the IDEA. It’s heartbreaking to be perceived as selfish or as traitors to the disability community when, in reality, our kids are being systematically excluded from the current educational landscape, with no realistic hope of improving the situation under the outdated framework of the IDEA.
Hi Jenifer, This is thought provoking. I would like to check some papers and do a little more research on some of the points you make. I think you deserve a better reply than I can make in one evening. I have some other parents on FB who have brought up serious questions too. I’d like to blog more about LD and Sen. Cassidy’s amendment and get back to you next week. I have a post on recess I need to wrap up first. I think I could write another post on the LD/dyslexia issue. Thank you for such a well thought out comment! I’ll be back.
Dear Nancy,
I appreciate so much your taking the time to develop a reply to my comments. When educators with your level of expertise, experience and compassion engage in thoughtful dialogue with parents, we not only feel heard, we invariably emerge with greater understanding and perspective.
By the way, I left out an important point in my already too lengthy response above. I want to emphasize that i think there always will remain a need for talented, well-trained special education teachers who can support students who struggle with reading. I just don’t think we can rely on that model exclusively.
Thanks, again.