According to information given to me by Deborah Abramson Brooks Wsm, the U.S. Dept. of Education is insisting that the New York Board of Education continue to force all students with disabilities, except for those with the severest disabilities, to take the tests matching their chronological age, not their developmental age, ignoring their cognitive disabilities. HERE is the notification from June 29.
In addition, they are still insisting students struggling to learn English must take the regular tests after one year instead of two.
They will not consider the waiver requested by the Regents.
Both requests were aimed at reducing stress on students and yielding more useful results. State officials say that federal rules that require testing students at their chronological age, with narrow exceptions for students with very severe disabilities, set up some disabled students for failure and turn the tests into stressful guessing games. School officials in districts with many immigrant students say one year often is not enough for new arrivals to be ready to take language arts exams written in English.
Certain civil rights groups, as we know, have been behind this draconian testing too, along with, U.S. Assistant Education Secretary Deborah Delisle who is leaving to be the new CEO of the ASCD. The requirements, she says, are “necessary to ensure that teachers and parents of all students, including (English learners) and students with disabilities, have information on their students’ proficiency and progress in reading/language arts and mathematics” and “to ensure that schools are held accountable for the academic achievement of all students.”
The U.S. DOE is on a trajectory to privatize public schools and the only way they can do it to make it look like teachers are failing to teach students with disabilities or students learning a new language. They will continue to sacrifice the mental health of children and jobs of many teachers to do this. In New York, like everywhere else, testing has been tricky business.
What happened to the Individual Educational Plan (IEP)?
We have also been in the process of witnessing the end of special education, and a return to the old days of stigmatizing children. Instead of institutions, students will get segregated for-profit charter schools with Teach for America turnaround teachers. Or parents will be pushed out of public school into homeschooling.
It is amazing the lengths high ranking authorities at the U.S. Dept. of Education will continue to go to make public schools, teachers and their students look bad, all while they are breaking up special education and converting public schools into charters.
The IEP meeting is where parents who want their children to take a test, or not, should work it out. No so-called advocacy groups or politicians have the right to paint all students with one broad stroke. The purpose of special education is to individualize!
The U.S. DOE is overstepping its authority. They should have been sued a long time ago. The State of New York needs to protect its children! As does the rest of the country.
Some will say these draconian plots are because those at the U.S. DOE don’t know anything about kids with disabilities, and it is easy to get that takeaway when you watch Education Secretary Arne Duncan bumble about trying to explain why there is no concerted plan for children with dyslexia.
But the assault on special education has been going on since the day the ink dried on PL 94-142. Few politicians wanted to fund it. That we had some good years in the seventies to pull children out of dismal institutions and insist that they could learn and should have rights like every other child was a miracle.
Where is the safety net now? This push to test all students this way heightens the stigma children face—does not remove it. There will be no pleasant futures made based on these test scores for many of these children.
It is pure meanness. I know of no other words to describe it.
Given how much money those civil rights and disability rights groups have gotten from the Gates Foundation, it’s no surprise they blindly support the 1% alternative assessment qualification and annual testing. The numbers are astonishing. http://elfasd.blogspot.com/2015/06/what-is-influence-of-money-on-education.html
Yes, it is no surprise, Julie. Thank you for adding that link!
Thank you for being one of the few, solid voices for special education!
You have quite the voice yourself, Julie! Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this information. I saw much of this going on in Oregon as well, and it’s why I finally had to leave teaching. I just couldn’t take it any more.
I’m sorry, Joyce. It seems like you are not alone. I’m sorry though. Take care.
The continued insistence that students with special needs will just get higher test scores if we insist real hard is lousy policy. You’re right– it’s just mean.
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/06/used-sticks-it-to-ny-disabled-students.html
Thanks for sharing, Peter. Somehow parents have to get together over this. It isn’t going to get better or go away. I know of quite a few moms who are homeschooling not because they want to.
I am gnashing my teeth! How can Arne et al cling to the belief that many students are mislabed and stigmatized as special needs because they are difficult for (lazy) teachers to teach? Just have higher expectations and drill them in multiple-choice mind and they’ll show they can keep up with non-challenged peers! It happens to be a fact, though apparently overlooked not only by the Arne fan club but also by (Gates-funded) disability advocacy groups that many students have a legal right to their IEP because they have actual, diagnosable syndromes that negatively impact their ability to march in lock-step with their typical peers. They do not outgrow these syndromes; the obstacles need to be continuously addressed. That is what the IEP is for. It requires just the simplest logic to realize that when a student is reading independently at many grade levels below the grade for their chronological age, there is zero possibility of getting meaningful results from an assessment at their chronological grade. This must be labeled what it is–educational malpractice and child abuse. The powerful Joe McCarthy was eventually brought down after doing untold damage to adults and their families. What will it take to bring down Arne et al, when they are damaging young human beings, most likely irreparably? Isn’t the IDEA still federal law? As a retired teacher from the RI School for he Deaf, it’s my view that the IEP team should be deciding if the state assessment is in the INDIVIDUAL child’s best interest. Do special ed teachers truly have low expectations, or are the children moving forward at the most beneficial pace for their needs? If the test only causes stress and feelings of worthlessness in the students, and provides no meaningful information about the students’ achievements or struggles, what is the point? Parents need to understand and accept this, and federal and state ed officials should be publicly shamed by true experts in the various disabilities that impact academic achievement as assessed by standardized tests. This is tearing my heart out.
Thanks, Sheila. I can always count on you to get to the point and write passionately. It is pretty unbelievable. I was glad to see that the Regents seem to understand the situation. NCLB certainly did a lot of harm and IDEA took us backwards. I’m afraid there are some parents who have bought into the high-stakes testing.
Thank you, Nancy, for telling it like it is and fighting the good fight.
I appreciate that, Brian. Thank you!
I am a special education teacher and teach in a high school. Last week, a group of teachers and the administration met for what was termed a school performance plan Boot Camp. The idea was to identify specific areas of need. The Boot Camp was sponsored by the Borad of Ed. At first, I was excited that schools were not going to be told what our goals should be, but then the principal said we had to create a goal around the SAT. I brought up the problem of forcing students with specific learning disabilities taking the SAT. The reaction I received was as if I said pigs could fly. Increasingly, schools have been reducing the commitment to providing services, or even acknowledging the ramifications of handicapping conditions such as dyslexia. When students with IEPs are now a subgroup that causes problems for administrators because this subgroup does not meet testing goals. Increasingly, I am being told to “get your students to pass” as if the problem is instructional. As someone with learning disabilities, I know it is possible to be academically successful. I also know that I needed tutoring and alternative strategies. The intent of IDEA is not being followed and our students are suffering.
Thanks for your comment! A performance plan boot camp? Ha! Too bad it wasn’t a workshop on something to engage students in school. I’m sorry you have administrators who care more about test scores than kids! If they cared about motivating children, chances are their test scores would be better! Take care.
Hello Nancy ·and all other concerned about the plight of special education. Please read and support the New Business Item (NBI) that will be presented today or tomorrow at the 2015 National Education Association. Representative Assembly being held in Orlando Florida currently.
Report on the State of Special Education
in America in 2015
Teachers Must Defend the Rights
of Our Special Education Students
Submitted to the Delegates of the 2015 NEA Representative Assembly by the Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means Necessary Caucus (EON/BAMN)
June 28, 2015
Part I. Introduction: Teachers Must Defend the Rights of
Our Special Education Students; Now is the Time to Fight
Over the next year, the NEA faces the urgent challenge of defending special education programs against attacks by school boards, school administrations, and politicians across the country. The principle that underlies our public school system – that every young person has a right to quality public education – underlies special education in crystalline purity. Special Education has made it possible for tens of millions of students to graduate from high school who would have been condemned to a life without hope. Special Education programs are among the most extensive civil rights gains in American history and are a national treasure.
The attacks on special education are deeply hated by millions of young people, teachers, and communities across the country. One out of every 100 US residents is a member of the NEA. We have immense power. If we stand on the truth and fight to preserve special education in every city and community we live in, we can win important victories and transform the terms of debate on public education in the nation.
Under the Duncan/Gates/Obama Administration policies of education on the cheap, only a small elite would have access to schools that foster critical thinking, confidence, and the development of talent and creativity. These policies seek to establish a new Jim Crow for students with disabilities, returning them and their families to the repression and legalized inequality that reigned before the last civil rights movement won its historic gains.
The aim of these policies is to: 1) Dissolve Special Education programs and mainstream virtually all students with disabilities into General Education classes. 2) Restrict eligibility for Special Education and deny critical services to countless students. 3) Slash resources for existing special education programs, making it impossible for special education or general education teachers to provide the support that students need to succeed. As a plan for education these policies are an abject failure, but they continue to be pushed by school boards and administrations across the country, in reality, as an especially cruel means of reducing costs.
Unlike the politicians, we do not need to fear the truth. We can stop this attack. Millions of young people, families, and teachers across the nation stand for equality for young people who need the most support. Youth with disabilities have a deep sense of the necessity to fight for their own dignity; they and their families and teachers know from personal experience that without struggle there is no progress. We must reject the cynical, liberal jargon of inclusion and “integration” that is being used as a false justification to attack and destroy the special education programs that have been successful for the past 40 years. We can win if we stand on the truth and take action with our students and their families to stop every attack on special education in our schools.
Part II. Special Education: A Landmark Victory of the Civil Rights Movement!
Special Education was won out of struggle. Just one year after the mass civil rights movement led by Dr. King won the historic passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed to address issues of inequality and segregation in public education. Immediately following this, in 1965 and 1966, the Elementary and Secondary Amendments were passed establishing the Bureau of Education of the Handicapped and providing the first Federal funding for the education of youth with disabilities. Within the next decade, driven by organizing and mass actions including demonstrations and sit-ins by those with disabilities, their families, and supporters, the education of disabled children was funded by a separate law: the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EAHCA). Over a 35-year span, the law was reauthorized and became the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Before these victories, Jim Crow separate and unequal conditions were the norm for students with disabilities across the country. Black, other minority, and poor youth with disabilities were subject to the greatest repression. It was the rarest of occurrences for any student with disabilities to graduate from school, and super-repression of black, Latina/o, and other minority students with disabilities was the norm.
In 1970, before enactment of the federal protections in IDEA, schools in America educated only one in five students with disabilities. More than 1 million students were excluded from public schools, and another 3.5 million did not receive appropriate services. Many states had laws excluding certain students, including those who were blind, deaf, or labeled “emotionally disturbed” or “mentally retarded.” Almost 200,000 school-age children with mental retardation or emotional disabilities were institutionalized. The likelihood of exclusion was greater for children with disabilities living in low-income, ethnic and racial minority, or rural communities (Back to School on Civil Rights: Commitment To Leave No Child Behind, Jane West, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, 1/25/2001).
Today, almost 6.5 million students receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), making up approximately 13 percent of all public school students nationwide. Over the course of the 1990’s, the number of youth receiving special education services rose from about 4.4 million to almost 6.3 million (National Center for Education Statistics). Nearly half a million young people are served for Autism, over 400,000 for Emotional Disturbance, nearly 60,000 with Orthopedic Impairment, almost 2.3 million with Learning Disabilities and millions more with a wide variety of other disabilities (See Appendix A). This program is breathtaking in its scope. The very popularity and success of Special Education programs have made them the target of attack.
Special education programs are transforming the lives of millions of students and families of all races in every community in the nation — large and small. According to the University of New Hampshire, Institute on Disability, Annual Disability Statistics Compendium in 2012 nearly 8.5% of the 67,529,839 young people 6 to 21 years old in the nation were enrolled in special education programs.
The same Compendium reports that in the 2011-12 school year, of the 386,000 students 14 to 21 years old enrolled in special education programs, 247, 596 graduated with a diploma and an additional 55,564 earned a Certificate. A little over 7000 died or aged out. The Duncan/Obama/Gates attack on special education would virtually reverse these numbers – taking the nation back to a time when the vast majority of disabled students dropped-out or died and only the most miniscule percentage earned a diploma.
In the Special Report on Racial Inequities in Special Education, Gary Orfield of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA stresses the tremendous benefits that today’s special education system provides for students with disabilities, guaranteeing their right to a free and appropriate public education and dramatically increasing their chances of graduating from high school and going on to college (Orfield and Losen, Equity and Opportunity, Volume 60, January 2003).
In Special Education, as in all areas of American life, racism has a heavy impact. Orfield and Losen find that minority children with disabilities are underserved. Black children with emotional disturbances received less high-quality early intervention and far fewer hours of counseling and related services than white students with emotional disturbances. In addition, they find disturbing racial disparities in outcomes and in rates of discipline. At the same time, they warn that the inequities described in the report are no excuse for the U.S. Congress to question the overall worth of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or to withhold needed funding for special education programs.
EON/BAMN calls on all those who stand on the truth and are ready to fight in their own schools to join with us to organize on the basis of the truth. The NEA has historically stood for student placement base on individual needs, a full continuum of special education programs, and services, and IEP’s determined by maximum teacher, parent/guardian, and when appropriate, student involvement (NEA Resolutions – B33). It is essential that we stand-up and fight now in every community and school district in which attacks are attempted. Our victories over the next year are essential to opening a new period of struggle to defend and expand public education across the nation. We must be our own leaders!
Part III. “Full Inclusion” and Wholesale “Mainstreaming” Equal Second-Class Jim Crow Education for Youth with Disabilities
Using the cynical cover of “full inclusion, “integration,” and “wholesale mainstreaming”, school boards and Administrations across the country are attempting to slash spending on special education services, and destroy the protections for disabled youth that have been won over years of struggle.
A May 15th, 2015 US Department of Education/ Health and Human Services (ED/HHS) Draft Policy Statement on Early Childhood Education (which includes Elementary Education policy statements) would mandate “ full inclusion” as the only viable option for services. It wages a frontal attack on special education teachers – stating that a primary objective is to identify ways to use “resource allocation to support special educators shifting from full time teachers to providing consultative services to early childhood teachers and community providers” (Ibid).
It seeks to overturn the mandate to provide funding specifically targeted for special education programs, calling for states to “consider braiding funds across early childhood programs, particularly IDEA funds with other early childhood funding streams, including public preschool, child care, Title I funds for pre-K services, Early Head Start and Head Start” (Ibid). One of the greatest victories of the movement that won special education services was to secure funding that is specifically targeted to these services. This is a model for all early childhood programs.
The push toward “full inclusion” or wholesale “mainstreaming” is not new. In the 1980’s and 1990’s many families became aware of Special Education programs and sought support for children with disabilities. Full inclusion programs were pushed as a cost cutting measure with disastrous results. The backbone of special education is the Individual Education Plan (IEP). This recognizes that the students have individual needs, and establishes a protected right to have these needs addressed. Full inclusion in the General Education program as a policy, negates this right. The result of one overview of research on full inclusion came to the conclusion that, “After twenty years, the devastation of full inclusion is evident, leaving Special Education in a precarious position of trying to salvage it’s original mission for students with disabilities. Full Inclusion is nothing but an illusion of support for students in the classroom” (The Illusion of Full Inclusion: A Comprehensive Critique of a Current Special Education Bandwagon, by James M. Kauffman and Daniel P. Hallahan, 1994).
Just as Arne Duncan’s charter school boondoggle was justified in its initial stages with lies about “innovation”, and Ward Connerly justified the racist attack on affirmative action with quotes from Martin Luther King, so the façade of “integration” of students with special needs is used as a cover to destroy special education programs in order to save money. If allowed to carry through it will have predicable results – the reestablishment of second class, Jim Crow education for disabled students and youth. In regard to special education, “full inclusion” as a policy means leaving students with disabilities to sink without assistance and be driven out of school and into poverty and/or prison.
The gutting of IEP and other special education protections can only result in abstract equality on paper while blocking-off all paths to its realization in reality. It will mean that the only judgment – for special education and general education students – is based on standardized test scores. This is an attempt to make public schools look more like charters — slashing costs and attacking the rights of students and teachers. Charter schools have never provided special education services and never will.
Part IV. Defend Special Education; Reverse the Policy of Wholesale Mainstreaming; Fight for a Massive Infusion of Resources to Special Education
We must fight to expand special education services to all youth who need them. Students with disabilities are ignored, or driven out of school, denied placement or placed improperly. An examination of the pressing need for expanded mental health services can serve as an example. The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), an organization founded in 1979, to protect the civil rights of individuals with disabilities and parents who have children with disabilities states the following on their website:
The Surgeon General recently recognized that half of the children in the United States who require mental health services receive them, if at all, through the public school system. The same report also states as its foremost finding that the majority of children in need of mental health services (approximately 75 to 80%) do not receive them (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999).
A survey of (parental) complaints over the past four years affirms that parents are not informed of the availability of mental health services for their children, requests for mental health services are ignored, there are long delays between the initial request for services and their delivery, agencies do not have mechanisms in place for determining their responsibilities for providing services, and services themselves are either unavailable, inadequate, or just not delivered (The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), Mental Health Services for Children with Disabilities the Story in California, 2014).
Teachers, students and families know what we need to address the real problems that face special education programs – smaller class sizes, more staffing, greater access to programs, a massive increase in resources. We need to vastly expand access and resources to Special Education programs – for emotionally disturbed students, for autistic students, for those with learning disabilities, for all who need support.
In a survey conducted by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and the National Coalition of Personnel Shortages in Special Education and Related Services (NCPSSERS of more than 1,000 special education professionals, including special education teachers and special education administrators from all 50 states, shows that the impact of federal, state and local budget cuts on special education is most evident in an increase in caseload and class size; lack of funding to purchase resources such as assistive technology; and reduced professional development opportunities. In addition, budget cuts have resulted in layoffs and unfilled vacancies. Some 94 percent of the respondents say that funding cuts have impacted their ability to provide services mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (Council for Exceptional Children, December 3rd, 2013 Press Release).
Although in some states, there has been additional funding flowing to public education in the last year, funding remains at levels below what it was prior to 2008. “More than two-thirds of states — 34 of the 48 states analyzed — are providing less per-student funding for K-12 education in the current 2014 fiscal year than they did in fiscal year 2008 (Most States Funding Schools Less Than Before the Recession, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Michael Leachman and Chris Mai, Revised, May 20, 2014).
In the months to come, we must build our struggle more broadly and deeply. We have in front of us a considerable number of vital issues to address with all of our strength: we must come to the defense of our special education students, teachers, and families and stop the destruction of special education programs. The actions that we take when we return to our homes, after leaving the Representative Assembly, will be critical to protecting special education in the face of this attack and strengthening public education and the NEA as a whole. There are a tremendous variety of tactics we can use to defend our programs – circulating petitions, speaking-out at school board meetings with parents and students, rallies and press conferences, sit-ins and other actions. If we stand on what we know to be true, stand with our real allies, the young people and communities of the nation, and lead by example, victory will be ours.
Part V. EON/BAMN Program of Demands to Defend Special Education:
Public education is a right for every young person! Defend and expand special education protections and programs. No charter schools! No school closings!
Stop the destruction of Special Education programs and dissolution of classrooms! No wholesale “mainstreaming” of students in general education classes! Hard caps on special education class sizes and caseloads at the optimum size for serving students in each individual program. Student placement must be based on individual needs rather than on available space, funding, or local philosophy of a school district. We reject judging Special Education programs and students with disabilities on the basis of standardized test scores.
Expand Special Education programs to serve all students with disabilities! Identify and serve all students who need support. We demand full implementation of IEP’s determined by maximum teacher, parent/guardian, and when appropriate, student involvement. There must be a full continuum of placement options and services/delivery models available to students with disabilities. We demand a full range of specialized programs – Learning Disability, Emotional Disturbance, Severe and Mild Autism, Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Visually Impaired, Orthopedically Impaired and all others – fully staffed with specialists and available to students and families who need them.
Increase funding for Special Education programs including a massive increase in federal funds! Stop the Cuts! Hire special education teachers, specialists, aides, counselors, nurses, psychologists and all needed staff. No student should be excluded because of a claim of lack of funds.
Thank you for posting this, Paul. As a parent, a very vocal one, I would be thrilled to have teachers become more engaged outside of the classroom. In my tiny corner of the world, the teachers are afraid to speak up, do not attend BOE meetings (much less speak at them), and frankly, it has always felt like they were happy to see me and other parents take the hit from the BOE, while they hid behind us. The teachers were wonderful in the classroom, but that was it. This also extended to general ed teachers. Overall, they have stood by silently as NJ has adopted one terrible education policy after another. I hope NEA really encourages teachers to find their voice and this gets a full vote to adopt. I also hope NEA is prepared to protect teachers when they do speak up.
It is not fair to expect working public school teachers to stand up and speak out. It leads to on-the-job hostilities and is discouraged by their bosses. Most of the teachers I know just think it is better off to retire or quit and then fight. This is up to parents..
I neglected to mention that the above state of special education report 2015 was written by Mark Airgood and the EON/BAMN. This is a more comprehensive statement and the cut all NBI will be more compact.
Paul, This is interesting and well done. Would Mark and EON/BAMN permit me to put it as a blog post? I’m thinking it might have a better chance to be seen. I will give them credit and thank you of course.
I will keep this short, and sweet:
Child Abuse.