A discussion about IEPs for all students seems to be trending. In an interview with The Nation during the presidential campaign, Jane Sanders talked about IEPs and public schools. It was likely the most we heard about public education at that time.
Here are her words.
It’s interesting, because we’ve made progress with IEPs [Individualized Education Programs] for people with disabilities, or students who need extra help. I think every student should have an individualized educational plan.
As a parent, I had these kids, I didn’t know who they were. I wasn’t molding them to be me or my husband. What we wanted to do was find out: Who are they? What are their abilities? What are their interests? What are their talents? I think we need to do that in our schools.
Special education teachers and parents may have applauded this idea in the past. If every child had an IEP, we reasoned, teachers could look at differences in all children. Maybe we could drop the labels.
But in today’s world, an IEP for every child has taken on new meaning. It isn’t what Jane Sanders said, and it is important to distinguish what could happen by giving everyone an IEP.
All-Tech—Personalized Learning
Putting children online to learn is called individualized, competency-based, customized, or mastery learning. The word used most often is personalized learning.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg realized the concept of the IEP for all students would be great for promoting their kind of education—online instruction.
We now know that this is the end-game, the school transformation or “disruption” towards digital instruction with “guides,” not real teachers. Does this look personalized to you?
Instead of grades, every student will work according to their skills—online.
But sticking a child in front of a computer isn’t personal at all. It’s cold and mechanistic. It certainly doesn’t lead to the self-discovery Jane Sanders mentioned.
I would prefer to have my child sitting in a circle of other 5 year old children, watching the teacher read a picture book about the alphabet. I would want them engaging with that teacher and the other students, rather than having them sit alone watching an ABC program on the computer.
This would take on added significance when a child has a disability. One of the best achievements for any child, but especially a child with disabilities, is positive acceptance by other students. There’s little of this when children all work online.
Teachers, well-prepared to teach reading and other subjects, are much more capable of determining a child’s capabilities than a computer. They can choose from a host of resources and remedial materials to help children better understand what they need to learn.
One of the resources a teacher might choose is a computer program. The difference is the teacher is in charge of the instruction.
With today’s personalized learning, the computer is the focus. Teachers are removed from the equation.
When teachers are in charge of an IEP, they require smaller class sizes so they can address a child’s differences. Corporate school reformers have long been against lowering class sizes, knowing full well that smaller class sizes are the key to a teacher’s success.
Massive groups of children working online is their goal, along with data collection that can serve outside marketers.
The Loss of Special Education
There’s another concern about the trend of IEPs for all. It involves school choice and charter schools.
Right now public schools are the only place where parents of students with disabilities, and gifted and talented students, get IDEA protections. Give every child an IEP, what will those protections mean?
Betsy DeVos and her corporate friends would like nothing more than to end IDEA. Parents of students with special needs will have little left to keep them in public school. There will be no special services. This opens the door to school choice.
But most choice schools won’t honor the special needs of students with disabilities.
And those online schools will find children with disabilities languishing at the computer, never rising above a skill level. Online instruction is useful only if the teacher is involved.
Special education costs more than general education. There’s also a profit to be made there.
Watch for online autism or dyslexia-themed charter schools. Don’t expect fully-trained special education teachers.
I find it strange that any parent who has fought to have IDEA enforced in a public school setting, would sign on to the segregation they will find in a special needs charter school.
But Bill Gates recently expressed interest in special education and charter schools. If anyone can bend the rules and change the meaning of IDEA it will be those like Gates and DeVos who have a lot of money.
So, the next time someone starts talking about IEPs for all, please stop and reconsider.
Some Other Posts I’ve Written Relating to this Topic
“Using Students with Special Needs to Privatize Public Schools” 2014
“IEPs for All or Something Else?” 2015
“21 Concerns about Special Education and Competency-Based Education” 2016
“12 Reasons Why Digital Personalized Learning is Not Special Education” 2016.
“IEPs are a Public School Thing: Let’s Not Forget That” 2017
Individual IEPs is how they will usher in the money following the child which will mean that wherever that child goes to school (public, Charter, private, religious, home school) that facility will have to adhere to state and federal mandates. So much for choice but of course YOUR idea of Choice and THEIR idea of Choice has NEVER had the same meaning. What parents will end up with is choice of location but not choice in what their children are taught. Charters with no elected school boards is part of the plan to eliminate the voice of the parent and elected representation from the git go. Vouchers, 529s, ELAs all schemes to get ALL children into the system. Now IEPs for ALL. They will not stop until they have ALL children under the same system of Common Core aligned standards and data collection. They can have no outliers in their scheme. Parents it is time to STARVE THE BEAST.
Thanks, Karen. I think some private and parochial schools do worry about choice for the reasons you state. Good point.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure the best ways to differentiate instruction. Since I was often working with classes of 40 math students or 36 physics students, it was a challenge. It seems to me that IEP for everyone has the potential to become top down management of educators and usher in the destruction of special ed.
It makes more sense to enable professional educators working with reasonable class sizes to differentiate instruction. This means that teacher education programs and education leaders need to focus on improving differentiated instruction. It is easy to say differentiate instruction, but I found scant practical guidance on how to differentiate instruction beyond the elementary school level.
I think you’re right. Forty students! Phew! Yes to the last paragraph. If teachers are supposed to do inclusion right they must lower class sizes and address the training needs of teachers.
As one who had spent a substantial amount of time writing and implementing IEP plans, the idea of an IEP for everyone has horrified me from the get go. I always found it artificial to try to design goals that were supposed to be indicators of progress in areas of weakness. Writing them required operationalizing the learning so that the “learning could be counted somehow. In most cases that reduced learning to quizzes with only one right answer that most often only had to be chosen from a limited number of choices. At most, the tests only required a recognition of the correct answer and did not require a student to recall information or to use it in a novel situation. The IEP was a necessary exercise, much of which was valuable, but establishing goals to fit within the parameters of the process was difficult if one cared at all about trying to make a meaningful plan. In addition, we were expected to write a series of benchmarks for progress toward each goal and update them on a regular basis. I cannot conceive of such a process that would not reduce learning to pretty computer graphics that say very little about a student worth memorializing in such a document if we tried to extend the idea to all students.
I remember when IEPs were simpler and the objectives more meaningful. When I left teaching they were longer and so complicated it seemed they had lost their purpose. Teachers scrambled to complete them and get the necessary signatures in the spring.
We used to have something like this in high school math before the diploma project. We would place students in three classes, depending on what they could do according (gasp!) to their previous teacher and a couple of tests. By the time they got themselves together, most of them were able to do real algebra when they had a little learning and maturity. But along came this reform and that one until our individualized plan was shot to h#!!. Thank you Bill gates.