Seattle Special Education PTSA Slams Advanced Learning Survey
And they want it retracted. I totally agree. Here's a link to their letter, addressed to Superintendent Brent Jones, the School Board and senior staff. It's entitled, Ableist language hurts family survey.
The Special Education PTSA Board reminds the Superintendent and the Board that the PTSA Board already stated their concerns previous to this survey.
Last May, when the School Board passed Policy 2190, the Seattle Special Education PTSA testified about our concerns regarding disabled students who are also cognitively atypical, or twice-exceptional (2e) students, under the new Advanced Learning initiatives. Specifically, we were concerned about whether the new screening procedures would identify these students for advanced learning and the lack of information about how 2e students will be served under the new plans for advanced learning.
Simply put:
The family survey that was recently sent to K-8 families is ableist and it creates a barrier to neurodivergent families instead of providing 2e students with access to services they need and are entitled to.
Their bottom line:
We ask that SPS retract the survey and replace it with a non-ableist family survey.
Additionally, the PTSA Board offers some word-smithing for problematic questions.
They point out a race and equity issue:
There are other ways in which ableism, linked to the legacy of white supremacy, appears in the survey. Manners and politeness are a white supremacist construct, and many neurodivergent students are not interested in either.
While the Seattle Special Education PTSA does not mention it, many comments at my previous post on the survey references faith-based/spiritual traditions which should have nothing to do with enrollment in an academic program.
I follow up that statement by saying that perhaps the Board and the Superintendent want to migrate Advanced Learning from being a purely academic program to one that seeks to find students will all kinds of strengths and talents. Which, of course, would totally change the program. I'm not sure what the academics would look like at schools if they expand the premise of the program.
Comments
https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/ALTF-Final-Report-ADA.pdf
We have a board majority that wants to push ahead and fully dismantle Advanced Learning. Without appropriate oversight, they are setting the district up for lawsuits. They need to do better.
Really? Aren’t we overdoing the “white supremacy” wordsmithing? Pretty soon we’re going to be conflating the David Dukes of the world with manners and politeness. White supremacy will lose value as a concept if we continue to apply it to everything we disagree with as some sort of conversation stopper. Manners (aka respect) might not be interesting to some gifted kids, but surely social competence is something we want to engender in all students. I’m not sure why questions about manners would be appropriate on a survey, but complaining about how manners are uninteresting to your child sounds like something a snotty entitled parent (probably white) would say.
Not Persuaded
Cry Wolf
One, the letter from the Seattle Special Education PTSA says - as I said in my original piece - that neodivergent kids (and I have one) - are not big on manners and politeness. Not that parents don't try to instill those things but the student's personal issues may not make them stick. That's why - for a program that should be open to all - that the PTSA called that out. I'm not sure why the PTSA decided to talk about white supremacy but that seems to be part of the issue for them.
But my neodivergent kid, no matter how he didn't like some rules or thought they were "dumb", was talk that the teacher is the boss of the classroom and gets to decide the rules. (I do like when some teachers talk with kids about rules and allow some room for discussion.)
Two, I also see this "weaponizing" of many societal mores that some POC are now pushing back on as cultural straightjackets or "white supremacy." I will partially cede that idea has some justification. But just as a teacher cannot allow every kid to say or do whatever they want in a classroom, so it is in the workplace. And in private workplaces, more so. Their business, their rules.
I was not happy when TFG decided to take out cultural trainings in the federal government because they do matter. For example, important to know that Ramadan is as important to Muslims as Christmas/Easter is for Christians. That's being inclusive of others' sensibilities.
But if a boss is running a meeting and asks that everyone allow speakers to finish their comments before talking, I don't think that's white supremacy; it's good manners. And the object of any meeting is not to make others feel bad and fearful but to communicate in order to get to a common goal.
Kids with disabilities suffer indignities and bias everyday, and in Seattle Public Schools often outright child abuse from being put in cages to being locked out. They are particularly vulnerable because not all of them can communicate what is happening to them. One common misconception about kids with disabilities is that they cannot also be highly capable, so no one even thinks to look for high capability in kids with disabilities, and when they do, they lack the training to see it, because high capability looks different in a student with autism, in a student with dyslexia, in a student with ADHD, in a low vision student, in a hard-of-hearing student, in a student with mental health challenges. Even students with cognitive and intellectual disabilities can be highly capable depending on the circumstances. Imagine underestimating Malala that way. Helen Keller. Stevie Wonder. Frida Kahlo (who had spina bifida). FDR.
https://www.understood.org/articles/en/gifted-childrens-challenges-with-learning-and-thinking-differences
All children are capable. All children are gifts. All children have gifts. But whenever you hear someone misuse the terms used in law saying "all children are highly capable" or "all children are gifted," what they mean is that they do not value the intellectual needs of kids with disabilities and they do not wish to meet the intellectual needs of kids with disabilities or, worse, they don't think any child can or should have such needs. So they do not look for those needs and they do not attend to those needs. Which is biased, ableist, and harmful to kids who have been harmed enough in schools.
The Sped PTSA should be commended for criticizing the AL department and that survey and asking for its retraction.
411
Good Job
NESeattlemom
Cry Wolf