Can one teacher effectively teach students with a variety of disability and/or language needs? Or do we need special education teachers?
Perhaps a better question is, can computers do the job of both regular and special education teachers?
Here is an example of what I am talking about. This ad appeared for a webinar through Education Week underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. I have noticed nuanced messages in a lot of ads for teacher training. See what you think.
Adams 50’s Steve Sandoval—a 2016 Education Week Leader to Learn From—created an “interventionist framework” out of frustration that his district’s talented education specialists were isolated by separate certifications, regulations, and funding streams. The framework helps to “cross-pollinate” teachers of special education, English-language learners, and gifted students, to identify common strategies and target interventions for all students. The approach has helped dramatically raise student achievement in the district during a time of demographic change, and has helped make possible Adams 50’s switch from traditional grade levels to a competency-based-leveling system.
Adams 50 is a school district in Colorado which touts a Competency–Based System. Review their website. It is an eye-opener.
Sandoval is a psychologist turned special education leader and some of what he advocates, if you look further at his beliefs about special education, make sense.
Get rid of labels and have general and special education teachers collaborating—or cross pollinating (because we don’t have enough strange education terms).
But teachers have been collaborating for years. Cross-pollination talk—the implication that separate certifications, regulations and funding streams are wrong—are what I question.
General education teachers remind me of Internists in medicine. They look at the whole child and their general learning needs—like an Internist looks at the individual’s overall health needs.
Special education teachers specialize. They focus on a particular area—like autism for example—and they specifically study about instructional practices that will assist students with differences.
While general education teachers should know something about all disability areas, it seems strange to assume they can look in-depth at every kind of disability issue that shows up in their classroom. That’s where the special education teacher, or the language specialist, or the gifted education teacher shows up.
To say that general education teachers should assimilate what the special education teacher knows—no special certificates or regulations should get in the way—implies to me that they don’t think special education teachers are needed.
In a Competency-Based System where students are online, this would be a monumental step away from looking at disability areas—the assumption being that students with special needs will work on the academic level they are at on the computer.
And Sandoval seems to be implying that funding streams should be blended. Students with disabilities have always received more funding. Why even go there?
I believe their assumption is that when all students work at their academic level on the computer there will be no need for special education teachers or funding streams that address the differences in children.
The goal is that everyone will work towards the same goals through online instruction, even though they are all at different levels.
But I always go back to this one question. If a student with disabilities continues to fail, whether it’s Common Core or Competency-Based Learning, what happens to them? Where’s the safety net?
If a student gets stuck on the computer do they do the same skill over and over until they get it right? What if they can’t get it?
Where’s the special support if all the teachers are cross-pollinated?
And, we file this in a long series of: The End Of Special Education.
That’s how I see it, Julie. Thank you. Back to the way it was after the online stuff doesn’t work.
So stupid and sad. But too many people just don’t understand the very real need.
I think sometimes parents are impressed with tech. Thanks Joyce.
I know that’s how it is my corner of NJ. Sadly, as more research comes out about the need for tactile experiences (handwriting), the loss of the ability to read cursive (daughter’s friends call it “code”), the PARCC scores being lower overall for students who took the exam on a computer vs. those who took it with paper and pencil, and so on. CBE is just another gimmick. Imagine if all the money and energy spent on the garbage was actually used for a true education?
He who does everything, does nothing.
Until we as a nation are willing to devote more money to education, special education included, we aren’t going to get the results that everyone wants.
You get what you pay for.
I agree, Thomas. But I think right now we need to reassess where the money is going too. Thanks for commenting.
To your question, Nancy, “can computers do the job of both regular and special education teachers?” I answer NO! This is overwhelmingly disheartening. Blind faith in the power of computer algorithms to meet the needs of an incredibly diverse universe of neurological, perceptual, sensory, cognitive, linguistic, emotional, and behavioral challenges–it’s mind-boggling in its ignorance.
Thank you, Sheila. You stated it perfectly.
I’m leery of some of the points you make bc it seems that the assumption is that students in the Adams 50 schools spend all of their time online. From the research I’ve done, that does not seem to be the case. For children with learning differences, the setup at Adams 50 seems to be quite beneficial. One of the main complaints of parents is that their child is either being shoehorned into a self-contained or resource room settings with learners that whose skills vary wildly, or put into a mainstream classroom where they can’t keep up. The concept of learners not being segregated by the concept of strict chronological age is a pretty exciting one.
Unlike most school reforms, the educators at Adams 50 seem directly involved in the choices and direction of the district. This Chalkbeat.org article describes some of the evolution the district underwent, and talks about teachers being involved in the process. The district listened to the teacher’s views on the time consuming nature of data collection. Also, teacher turn over is very low for a district of this size and socio economic nature. It’s pretty exciting to see a public school district move from a “turnaround” status- giving lie to the myths that only school closings or charter schools can do more for our students. http://co.chalkbeat.org/2012/08/27/no-more-turnaround-labels-for-westminster/#.VrNZLseRMwA
Your points on the trend to move away from special education teacher prep and training are well made. If anything, we need more special education teachers, more teacher prep in this area and more specialization. While not every “regular education” teacher can and should be an expert in the areas of learning differences, they can and should know what executive functions are supposed to look like in students with and without disabilities. Every teacher should know the warning signs of dyslexia. And there should always be educators who have been trained in the best theory and practices of educating students with disabilities.
Competency based education has the potential to spell disaster for students with disabilities. Parking someone in front of a computer all day will equal further loss of opportunities to interact and be explicitly taught social skills, problem solving, and chances for collaboration. I’m not sure that’s the case for the Adams 50 experiment. I would love to see further information before jumping to that conclusion. This article has the Adams 50 superintendent, Pamela Swanson, discussing the issues with current standardized testing and how mandated tests devour instructional time.
I appreciate the time it took you to write this, and I read through the link with an open mind expecting to see something I overlooked. But what I found was an adherence to the usual standards or competency approach that to me is not good teaching. Standardization is canned instruction in my opinion and this school is full of it. When I got the end of this article one sentence summed it up best.
“In summer school, we were giving away some free books, and I had a mom come up to me and say ‘I need a 2.7 reading-level book,’ ” Gould said. “I nearly cried. This mom knew exactly where her kid was reading at, and she was invested in making sure he selected a book that was at the right reading level.”
Are you kidding me? It has come down to this?
What about letting a child pick a book based on their interests?
As a teacher of students with learning disabilities, I always understand book reading levels because I needed to get my students below their frustration levels, but children should be allowed to have the freedom to choose the books they find interesting in the library.
Parents, unless the teacher specifies it due to a serious reading problem, should not be obsessively determining reading levels of the books their children read.
My concerns about Adams 50 still stand.
How does a giveaway of free books prevent a child from choosing what they’d like to read in a library? The PTA in my child’s elementary school sponsored a book giveaway at the end of each year. The books were sorted by the teachers into approximate reading level, along with a list of books in a range two levels below and two levels higher than my child’s current reading level. The book was chosen so it was accessible and could be read independently- there was nothing wrong with that. Independently, I would take my child to the library and he could choose whatever he liked. One trip to the library in 4th grade resulted in non-fiction books on the Civil War, some Russian folklore, a graphic novel and a chapter book. Some he could read independently, some not. I appreciated that the school provided him with a book all on his own. The comment from the teacher being moved by the parent had more to do with the parent’s involvement and knowledge of their child and less with slotting them into a “reading level”. Educators everywhere will tell you that one of the main issues with students from lower socio-economic areas is that their parents and guardians are focused on the problems of survival- enough food, shelter, and medical care, that schooling, by necessity, is a distant priority. Here was the opposite- a parent knowledgeable and involved. Maybe the educator doesn’t often have the luxury of seeing that.
What exactly do you think education has been over the last 100+ years if not “standardized” and “canned”? Prior to Common Core, prior to these corporations taking us over, do you think children learned in public schools by picking and choosing their interests? There were no worksheets, no textbooks, no pre-determined curriculum? Our entire history of public school is heavily dependent on the “one-size-fits-all” model. What exactly is more “standardized” or “canned” about Adams 50 than the majority of public schools in the US? At the very least, Adams 50 is equipping its students to read and write. They have taken a good hard look at how they were not supporting their students and their educators and they voted to change it. Teachers and administration voted. They are not doing so by having them sit like statues with their hands folded across their desks ala Success Academy. They are doing it by educating all students, not creaming the best students, and they are doing so with a unionized groups of educators under full public oversight.
The link you sent and the website describe a school heavily oriented towards test-taking and standardization. It is much different than the way public schools used to be run.
Many parents are tired of this kind of testing and are opting their children out of the tests.
And many teachers and parents are concerned by the unproven use of digital instruction. Not all teachers are happy about union decisions either.
But your comments are important because the debate needs to take place. Thank you!
Nancy, your blog is very important to the cause of promoting and defending our most vulnerable and at the same time, unique and promising students, our students with disabilities. I urge you to do more research into Adams 50 bc I would hate to see you give in to the worst of the anti-reform sentiments, i.e. suspecting anything different means an abandonment of our students to corporatization and oppression. Here is an article where the Supt. of Adams 50 speaks about the problems w/the standardized testing culture:
http://co.chalkbeat.org/2014/03/07/state-board-struggling-districts-to-talk-turnaround-efforts-next-week-as-clock-runs-short/#.VrOLm8eRMwA
And here is one that describes the district’s evolution 4 yrs later, in 2014. It describes a fluid system dedicated to finding the balance btw extreme individualization and best practices and not afraid to seek teacher input on how to achieve that.
Again, I haven’t seen any evidence that Adams 50 is putting students online at all times. Instead, the evidence points to a district with students in poverty ( out of 10,000 students, 8,000 of them qualify for free breakfast) learning.
Do you have any evidence that these students are being turned into automatons? I have scoured the internet for any information that says there are issues with Adams 50- that’s how much I respect your opinions. But I can’t find any- not a single blog post or news article that is complaining about what’s happening there.
So again, please don’t fall for the assumptions that all change in our schools is bad. Adams 50 is not the K-12 Academy of the Colorado Public Schools.
The link you sent me shows a school heavily focused on testing and standardization and the heavy use of digital instruction. We differ in thinking this is a good way to run a school.
And standardization is much worse today than years ago. Test-taking has risen in its prominence and many parents are tired of it and opt their children out of the tests.
There are also a lot of concerns about teacher unions today. But thank you for sharing your ideas. The debate is important.
http://co.chalkbeat.org/2013/05/23/four-years-later-a-districts-standards-based-reform-evolves-and-pays-off/#.VrOLXceRMwA
Look, I am not against the use of technology in schools. I think it can be a valuable tool for a teacher to use. I am also not against good assessment either.
But Competency-Based Education is radical. And the links you send me do not show otherwise.
Everything is based on test scores, and all the language is about performance including the data boards!
This post by me is about a school official implying that certifications for special education teachers aren’t really needed, or that additional funding for students with disabilities isn’t necessary. This concerns me.
I don’t believe it is inclusion to sit children with disabilities alongside those without disabilities to work on separate academic work online. I worry about so much online instruction for all students.
Students will be subjected to continuous testing for every small task that they do.
If Adams 50 was one school that served as a pilot program for CBE—I would maybe say O.K. let’s see. But CBE is being pushed into schools across the country.
Where’s the research to show this kind of set-up works? I have seen none.