More Special Ed Coverage
KUOW also has a report on Special Education in SPS. It is heartbreaking and, to me, confusing.
Confusing because in the first story, about a little boy named Ryder, it labels him as being on the "autism spectrum." It states he received services in preschool and yet, he can't get them in SPS? If he has a diagnosis, then he should be receiving services.
Then there is another child in the story, Tenzin, who also has autism and yet he can't get something simple like instructions in a written form. (I was able to get that for my son in high school and that was multiple teachers and no one called it a problem.)
His mom says,
"...the quality of special education in Seattle schools depends too much on how well a school’s principal understands the federal law that guarantees services to kids with disabilities." It shouldn't be that way.
This almost seems to echo DeBell's comment about how expensive it is to serve Special Ed students. We all know that but the alternative is to ignore or frustrate them and their families? I'd really like to know what President DeBell thinks should be happening. Does he think families are looking for these diagnoses for their children? Does he think it is easy to have a child with special needs?
Banda says:
"I need someone who’s actually been in the trenches, who’s been in the battles. Somebody’s who’s seasoned. Somebody that has been in that level of leadership in administration that is not only familiar with special ed needs but special ed law, building team, potentially with the idea of restructuring that whole department," Banda says.
I'd like to do more than cross my fingers that SPS finds that person.
Confusing because in the first story, about a little boy named Ryder, it labels him as being on the "autism spectrum." It states he received services in preschool and yet, he can't get them in SPS? If he has a diagnosis, then he should be receiving services.
Then there is another child in the story, Tenzin, who also has autism and yet he can't get something simple like instructions in a written form. (I was able to get that for my son in high school and that was multiple teachers and no one called it a problem.)
His mom says,
"...the quality of special education in Seattle schools depends too much on how well a school’s principal understands the federal law that guarantees services to kids with disabilities." It shouldn't be that way.
This almost seems to echo DeBell's comment about how expensive it is to serve Special Ed students. We all know that but the alternative is to ignore or frustrate them and their families? I'd really like to know what President DeBell thinks should be happening. Does he think families are looking for these diagnoses for their children? Does he think it is easy to have a child with special needs?
Banda says:
"I need someone who’s actually been in the trenches, who’s been in the battles. Somebody’s who’s seasoned. Somebody that has been in that level of leadership in administration that is not only familiar with special ed needs but special ed law, building team, potentially with the idea of restructuring that whole department," Banda says.
I'd like to do more than cross my fingers that SPS finds that person.
Comments
I am not surprised at all about Tenzin's experience. My son's teacher hadn't even read his IEP 6 weeks into the school year and didn't know he had a diagnosis of PTSD before he decided to lay on him. He didn't know my son didn't have an adverse intervention plan. He was simply treating my son the same way he treated every kid in the classroom, which is exactly what Tenzin was getting.
The one concern in Banda's statement is about someone who's been in the "battles." We've had enough of the battles.
A medical diagnosis is not the same as meeting special education eligibility criteria. That is a big area of confusion. 504 eligibility equals 1) have a medical or mental health condition (disability) that 2) substantially limits (has a real impact) the ability to engage in a major life activity (for most kids, learning, thinking, attention etc). Special education requires 1) meeting categorical eligibility requirements (there are at 8 I think, each of which has specific definitions and requirements under the WACs), that the disability that meets the categorical requirement impacts ability to access education and 3) that the student needs specially designed instruction as a result. The medical diagnosis of Aspergers and Autism are not the same as the educational definition (and are currently in debate as the DSM-V is proposing changes). A medical diagnosis of Aspergers may meet Health Impairment category requirements if the student doesn't meet the Autism category requirements, but it isn't automatic. No judging if this student was or should have been eligible of special education, just saying it isn't as simple as diagnosis equals eligible.
-SWWS
Ryder, like many other 3rd graders, are the unwitting guinea pigs of MGJ's 2009 gutting of a continuum of placements for children in the wide swath of gray area between regular ed and special ed, one of her most damning legacies...
My child shared that kindergarten class with Tenzin, and I volunteered in the room. Tenzin was definitely not treated "the same way" as "every kid in the classroom." Many modifications were put into place, and I have to say that when I saw him in the classroom he was happy, engaged, and successful. That's not to say his mother doesn't have legitimate complaints about the services her son received or didn't receive, but he was not treated like everyone else except in the most appropriate and ethical ways. The work that came home from that classroom ALL had written instructions. It was kindergarten! Show and Share was explained in writing, homework packets were explained in writing and the teacher is one of the only teachers who puts together a gorgeous newsletter every Friday to fill us in on what happened that week, what was coming up, and that had little (well explained) activities. I do not know what Shaun is talking about when she says she couldn't get written instructions.
Seattle's special ed debacle is just one of the many ways this district is floundering, but let's keep some perspective. It is possible for some parents to have unreasonable expectations. It is possible for a child's IEP to be honored and for a parent to still be unsatisfied.
Tenzin's teacher is one of the best I've ever seen. If she wasn't able to meet Tenzin's every need, it's because doing so presented an impossible task in the situation. Not because she didn't try or care.
The bigger issue is that a general ed teacher cannot care for 28 sudents in a k-1 classroom and also be perfect when it comes to making the parents of every child happy. The reality is that Tenzin has a disability and is legally entitled to extra services, but the other 27 children in that classroom all had special needs of one kind or another. In a class of 28 six-year olds, every child loses out.
We are asking too much of our teachers. If we are going to expect inclusion to work well, we need to invest a lot of money into training and we need to lower class sizes.
Bagley Parent
It sounds like you know more about this situation than I do, and it does sound like I was jumping to conclusions about what was going on in the classroom.
I can tell you though; that what I said happened with my son happened to my son. I have emails between the teacher and his supervisor where he says he laid on my son for up to 30 minutes at a time. And the only way I found out that he was laying on him for that long was when I requested records and was told they didn't keep any, so we had to rely on emails.
Restraints were a routine intervention in my son's classroom, not a last resort. No one had even bothered to read my son's IEP until I said this abuse had to stop. This staff was ignorant, desperate and isolated in a building of gen-ed programs supervised by a principal who had no special ed experience.
And to those who say this was an isolated incident that won't happen again, I can tell you that it is not. Nothing has changed. There are no policies that would prevent this from happening. There still is no mandatory training for special-ed teachers which would train them in the use of de-escalation. There still is no records management of use of restraint. There is no requirement that teachers notify parents if their child was restrained or put into seclusion. There are no statistics kept. It would be hard for anyone to prove just how bad the situation because they do not keep any statistics.
I have recently talked to other parents who asked their boys if any adult ever held them to the ground with any part of their body, and guess what, my son's teacher laid on other kids, too. And so they didn't find out that their child had been abused for years until a month ago. Can you imagine?
How would a parent know what was going in a classroom if their child had an expressive language problem? Wire them? I have raised three other children who are now all adults. I never had to ask any of them, hey honey, did the teacher lay on you today?
Yes, it’s illegal. Yes, it’s not “best practices.” SPS has known about this for three years. They have taken no action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again in another classroom with another teacher and other children. They need to do that.
Bagley Parent
SPED staffer
The real target ought to be the people who supervise principals and the establishment of performance evaluation criteria for how principals support sped in their buildings, generate buy in from teachers so as not to isolate sped and nurture relationships with families and teachers around these students. Mr. Banda can't foist this off on a new sped executive director should one ever materialize. This is his responsibility.
reader
I taught RR and self-contained in Federal Way (I felt it was very well run) and fair. If I was proposing any dramatic or costly changes to an IEP (greatly increased service minutes for example, or a change in placement), a representative from the special education dept had to be there. Are you guys telling me that an IEP team in Seattle can just decide to give a kid something as costly as a full time aide without any checks and balances? That the principal has some sort of say in funding that? If I wanted to propose something like that, I would need loads of data and documentation to back it up, and a specialist (or two) would come in for lengthy observations.
I was annoyed by this process at times (it slowed things down), but on the other hand, so often the behavior specialist would come in and spend a few hours watching one of my students (and meeting with their parents) and she would offer up an alternative plan that actually worked. Does Seattle have Behavior Specialists who do such a thing?
To clarify some of the earlier confusion:
To qualify for special education, you need to answer yes to two questions:
1.Is there an identified disability?
2. Is the disability preventing Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)?
It's possible a child with autism (or any other disability) is making (AYP) in the gen. ed. classroom and they would not qualify for additional services. Where it gets tricky, is that often children could make even greater adequate yearly progress if they had more services, but in accordance with IDEA, schools are only required to provide a FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education). School districts are not required to offer the "best" education for each child, they are only required to provide an "appropriate" one. When parents sue for additional services case law tends to favor school districts when a child is making "adequate" progress. There is a great deal of debate about the definition of "adequate".
TS
When I was getting my principal credential (in another state) I was required to take a class on education law, 90% of that class was spent deciphering sped law. I wonder what WA state admin programs entail?
Sped Longtimer
By the way, the standard is "some educational progress "not adequately yearly progress. Adequately yearly progress is about compliance with NCLB. That is a school or district level issue, never measured as individual student.
-SWWS
Lots of info about STEM, however.
Thanks.
Clueless - no. That's not "normal" for autism. If you've met 1 child with autism, well then, you've met 1 child with autism. Many have language difficulties which make book reading difficult. But for others - well, you see that's their passion. Students with autism often have difficulty with motivation. Extreme difficulty. Moving to a systematic reward scheme helps students perform non-preferred activities. Eg. Reward, visually, and with escalating rewards - any behavior that you wish to increase. Eg. Time spent doing something besides reading.
Sped Longtimer
??
-parent
-sped longtimer
Clueless
One of the difficulities with autistic children IS motivating and keeping them on-track.
It really helps to give written instructions, where possible, and NOT verbal. They can't retain it and they get easily frustrated. For Asperger's students, they also take words literally, so clear, non-confusing words are best.
It helps to give them a plan. Go over it with him/her and ask the parent to help the student follow it.
Longtimer
Another word for that is Pass the Buck. It's what the district has done for a decade.
How about he digs in right now with his own 2 hands?
Waiting for Godot
Longimer
What are we waiting for? This job has been posted for eons, (many years) and nobody has showed up that passes the interview. What's going to be different now? I totally get it that there has to be a single go-to person, and one that doesn't change every 6 months. But really, it will take years before somebody coming in will have enough knowledge of who does what to even have an impact - even if they were good. Just hire somebody already!
Longtimer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69w96cFdPMk&feature=related
The sad part of this is that Bagley does some of the best inclusion in the city, thanks to the legacy of the inclusion program that MGD threw into the garbage. That legacy is going to go away if Banda doesn't leverage it. You just can't throw these kids into a gen ed classroom and call it "inclusion"--if it's not supported, it's not inclusion. It's neglect.
--monkeypuzzled
I want the T-shirt with this on it.
I want a large roomful of SPED parents, all wearing T-shirts with this printed on it.
And I want the Board, Mr. Banda (who I suspect agrees -- and should be wearing the T-shirt too) and the upper SPED management at a table facing the roomful of SPED parents wearing the T-shirt with this printed on it.
And when the Board, Mr. Banda, the SPED staff, and all the parents in their T-shirts finally file out at the end of the meeting, I want the decision to be that we go "back" to inclusion, real inclusion -- and that we do it right.
This is the crux of the matter. What one person or team or school considers "supported", another considers " neglect".
It's not black and white but many shades of grey. It's not a static process but rather, very dynamic.
SPED Staffer
-reader
Sure, there may be some argument about how much support is necesssary. Is that what you're trying to say? But to plan for no support (because you're calling it ICS) is a plan for failure. It is neglect, and it happens everywhere with ICS. Especially the new, post-stimulus ICS that doesn't have enough aids.
-sped parent
sped parent
Get rid of the principals who are all about advancing their career and promote the ones who are educators.
It's tragically funny that some of the very worst principals, the ones who have been moved around the district from school to school staying just long enough for the community to be outraged, are then moved into district administration.
Marni Campbell loves to say she "inherited" ICS. By my calendar, she was in charge the summer before ICS began in 2009-2010. She didn't miss much in "planning" because there really wasn't any (unless you call spending $M of ARRA funds on aides planning and "implementation"). She was there for over two years. Yet she had "no control" over how it was botched? She had no influence to set things right? To even tell families the truth? Even this Sunday she's still trying to place blame on someone, anyone, else (it's Ilene's fault).
Are these the qualities needed in sr. leadership? Isn't there a spot for her in Highline?
How Lame
Yeah, I've heard her say that in meetings more than once. That's BS. She campaigned for the SpEd director's job because she had forced ICS down the throats of SpEd teachers at Hale (or was it Ingraham?) where she was principal.
That's why GoLoJo hired her to be Kommissar for the program.
I'll say that I believe there are many spec ed staffers who do want to help kids, and are as frustrated as the rest of us.
How Lame