Top News Stories
Will new special ed guidelines help students achieve?
Mar 4, 2010 6:14 PM
The Department of Education is once again overhauling its special education program. But will its new guidelines do what no preceding plan has done: ensure not just that the law is followed and special needs students get the services their Individualized Education Programs demand — something frequently ignored by cash-starved principals — but that students actually achieve and graduate with diplomas?
“Right now,” UFT Vice President of Special Education Carmen Alvarez said, “too many students with special needs are dropping out or leaving the system without a viable credential.”
This latest reorganization, called “Implementation Plan for the Reform of Special Education,” projects a two-year phase-in process that would — just as all earlier efforts promised — focus “on the advancement of student learning and achievement.”
Critics, including the union, fault the guidelines for being vague on specifics, such as failing to ensure that the right level of support is written into students’ IEPs and failing to hold principals accountable for providing services children need to pass their classes and achieve.
Chief among their concerns: ensuring that collaborative team teaching classrooms are appropriately staffed with licensed special education and content-area teachers and that CTT recommendations are based on student needs, not budget or staffing considerations.
Alvarez also wants to see a seamless process in place where IEPs are revised when the existing level of prescribed services does not adequately address the student’s learning and behavioral needs.
“There’s plenty of good will in the guidelines, and we’re engaging with Laura Rodriguez, the DOE’s chief achievement officer for students with disabilities and English language learners, to make it better. But where’s the compliance? Where are the guarantees of achievement?” Alvarez asked. “As things stand, the system is not connecting classroom instruction to the IEPs, and the new rules are silent on how to get classroom instruction to correlate with IEPs and produce classroom success.”
Alvarez doesn’t question the intentions of its framers, who say in the plan that they want to “foster education, inclusion and respect for students with disabilities” and their families. Noteworthy for Alvarez is the intended push for inclusion of special needs kids in their community schools. The plan would allow District 75 to be more focused on serving students with highly specialized needs. Schools would be, as the plan pledges, “held accountable for improving outcomes.”
The plan also promises professional development to assist IEP teams “by providing ‘toolkits’ for schools to encourage best practices,” and will encourage schools to become “active partners” with parents of students with disabilities, though Alvarez feared that “encouraging” best practices wouldn’t be enough, especially if principals have to spend money on professional development, and that students and members won’t have the resources and support they need to do the job that is expected of them.
The DOE expects it will implement plans for 200 selected community schools by the 2011-12 school year through “creating instructional tools to guide [a school’s] work” and by “provid[ing] expanded training for educators and ongoing support through [the new Children First Networks],” which would offer not only instructional but administrative support.
Simultaneously, said Alvarez, the DOE must work to lay the foundation for implementing the initiative in the other 1,400 schools.
While Alvarez thinks the guidelines should be considered a work in progress, she insists the initial draft lacks teeth.
“Everybody believes in inclusion,” Alvarez said, “but the supports are not in place. The system’s not ready.” She pointed out that the toolkit, which is supposed to bring community schools up to speed on meeting special ed children’s needs, hasn’t been created yet.
“There’s nothing said here that will diminish complaints and help students achieve,” she said.
There’s also no funding scheme for the proposal’s support, nor details on what will happen to District 75. “And how will the needs of students with very challenging behaviors be addressed?” Alvarez asked.
The guidelines’ lack of specificity and accountability were similarly criticized by the special education watchdog ARISE Coalition.
“What first needs doing,” Alvarez said, “is for the DOE to create a working committee comprising all stakeholders who can offer valuable input. Then, it has to ensure that any effort to refocus District 75’s mission not come at the expense of programs or services for any child with disabilities.”
Alvarez also wants school aid targeted to discrete needed services, and not provided in block grants, as is presently done, so that principals use school dollars as intended and not as they choose.
