Read on Special Education

CAUTION: “White elephant in the classroom” discussion.

by Christopher Clanton, father of two and special education teacher.

What follows is intended to inform healthy conversation within our schools. Unfortunately, special services have become a huge part of the problem for public education. Consider with me that special services are not progressive thinking. These are old methods that are very cumbersome and rarely meet their intended purpose. The suggestion of this article, is that special services are now bogging down change within public education.   

Topics:
Legal Language.
Differentiated Cluster.
Technology Enabling Deficit.
Thriving in Electives.
Schools are Unnecessarily Vulnerable.
Behavioral Learning.
RTI(Response To Intervention)
Managing Massive Amounts of Confidential and Legal Information.
Lost in Language.
Accommodated Learning.

Legal Language.

Special Education language is specific. Integrity and professionalism in public education begins with how we serve our at-risk, our disabled, and those with skill deficits. All classrooms are bound by special education principles. In practice, special education or IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is composed of six elements: Individualized Education Program (IEP); Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE); Least Restrictive Environment (LRE); Appropriate Evaluation; Parent and Teacher Participation; and Procedural Safeguards. These laws are in place to ensure that every student receive an education with equal opportunity to learn, but times have changed and learning standards should no longer be generalized for all students.

General education teachers regularly complain that there is an increase in special needs students.

Caseloads are twice the size they should be and teachers are hushed or ignored if they speak up to this fact. Instead, long hours managing the all-important legal paperwork continue, and there is a continued decrease of time available for teachers to plan meaningful lessons. Learning is becoming lost within the technical language fed to parents:

“We personalize and differentiate your student’s instruction in a way that is targeted, based on your student’s evaluation data, and based on the progress monitoring data of your student’s IEP/ELP goals, and from assessing daily course work. Instruction is modified by the teacher team, with cross-disciplinary accommodations unique to your student. In all learning environments, the instruction is tailored to and in support of your student’s needs and disabilities and in support of your student’s IEP goals and post-secondary goals.”  

If a student or parent understands this jargon filled fable, it gives them a warm feeling like their student is getting something individual and personalized. Facts are, special services are not adequately supported by administrators, by general education teachers, or the traditional school model.

Executing special education services is a huge responsibility. In my experience, the principles are not realistic logistically at the scale student populations have become. Placing students, that are not having success, in a separate classroom with other students with severe learning and social-emotional disabilities, has lost its validity. This approach has worked for very few. LRE law implies that students have the right to be grouped with their positive peer role models, with the higher functioning students. There is no arguing that special needs and ELL students enhance the student learning community within any classroom setting they are apart of. My suggestion is that educators can do much better in their methods service our at-risk and disabled learners. Sure…with endless amounts of support and preparation time, teachers could hold together current approaches. Our teachers are very talented individuals that can plan and execute just about anything. Because adequate time isn’t given or available, it will continue to be left on the shoulders of the special education case managers to make sound and look good. Most educators don’t feel safe talking about the fact that executing special services with integrity is not possible at the scale they have become!

Assessment and identification have taken over as the primary way schools are addressing students not having success. This effort does not go in depth, into the critical learning needed for students to thrive. It’s popular to be on the forefront of the new disability. There is a new spectrums to consider every school year. Sadly, IEPs and ELPs are primarily in place for legal compliance. These documents are designed to protect teachers, schools, and ultimately the respective State. Poorly written documents have little to do with what is best for the student’s learning. Teacher team practices have been whittled down, case managers are in the unspoken position of protecting general education teachers by not revealing their lack of participation. Schools accept a minimum requirement that one core content general education teacher attends an IEP team meeting. How is it possible to have adequate team meetings this way? Large amounts of time are routinely required for a teacher team to be committed to IEP and ELP development as a team. Yet all professional development time is filled with large group theoretical learning.   

Differentiated Cluster.

General Education Teachers contribute to special services mainly with students of “high profile” parent. Differentiated instruction is largely not happening as the law states it should. Parents don’t understand that special services have become illegal in regards to differentiation. This is painfully obvious, when all secondary classrooms sadly lack adequate curriculum and learning materials designed for students with academic skill deficits. This “ties the hands” of secondary teachers. Students with academic skill deficits deserve curriculum and learning materials that are interest-appropriate and written at their independent reading comprehension level. This is a proven approach to reading comprehension development that is very difficult for schools to keep up with, mostly because the interests of our students change so rapidly, and because there is such a wide range of skill levels to consider at each grade level. It’s ok to talk about this. It is very challenging to teach to multiple skill levels, especially when these materials don’t exist. Many high school students require learning materials written at a 4th to 8th-grade reading level. Many middle school students require materials written at a 3rd to 4th-grade reading level. Providing our students with appropriate materials has become complacent and has been put on teachers to “differentiate”. There simply isn’t grade level curriculum through high school written with differentiate language. Planning for differentiated instruction is the primary effort of a special education teacher and requires large amounts of consistent quality planning time. This time simply isn’t available. Quality differentiation is becoming lost in the language on documents that are being fed to parents. Teachers may use language that presumes maximum possible effort to differentiate, but there is a reality to the amount of time teachers have to personalize and differentiate with fidelity. In this way, services have become illegal in practice.

Technology Enabling Deficit.   

Assistive Technology isn’t always beneficial. I’ve grown concerned that some assistive technology is also enabling students to not look closely into their core skills. How can schools become better working with this subtle result? Writing is one of the best tools teacher have reaching a student in a personal way. Writing instruction is also one of the biggest challenges a service provider faces because it takes finding extended engaged quality instructional time. Writing instruction is important because writing skills are thinking skills. Language Arts teachers and ELL teachers often resolve to focus on reading instruction, usually from a digital curriculum. This curriculum collects progress monitoring data, which administrators appreciate because it protects the school. There is a justification to this approach, which includes an effort to expose students to grade level language. There is a hope that through exposure grade level language expectations and principles are absorbed. Good Writing instruction teaches the use mature language as a young person identifies with their community, as they express themselves, and as they individualize. Good Writing instruction is personal in nature, which leads to other instructional opportunities such as social-emotional and communication instruction. Service providers gain insights into a student’s learning by looking closely at how they articulate their identity. We get a sense for how a student is relating to having an academic skill deficit in school and on a social and vocational level. They express their edges of social emotional learning. Again, this requires quality time and immediate, consistent feedback much greater than our traditional school model is providing. Instead, writing is a skill that is becoming very assisted with technology. Technology is being used to benefit students, to “even the playing field”, if you will. Meanwhile, valuable knowledge of student interests and possible career paths are being lost.

Thriving in Electives.

Very often a student with special needs will excel within an elective classroom. Once a true believer in special education, I’ve grown disappointed in how these students are required to give up elective classes. I’ve changed my thinking as a special education teacher. I acknowledge that elective classes are actually the most important classes for students with academic and social deficits. Instead, more academic focused intense remedial instruction is a school’s solution, removing the student from the subject in which they are most successful. These students are isolated socially, labeled as special, and placed into a resource room. In most settings these students are grouped together, again isolated socially, which, is completely illegal as the law is written.

Reducing electives to focus on core academic skills makes sense for very few. This effort has become weird and unsettling for our special needs students and our teachers. LRE law implies that students have the right to learn with their typical age level peer unless they receive a greater instructional and learning benefit being away from their typical peers. How do we reconsider this approach? If a student and family advocates for a specific learning path, it should guide and open doors to that individual’s optimal secondary education path. When a learning path is advocated for, learning is student-driven and family supported, and something shifts.   

Schools are Unnecessarily Vulnerable.

Special Education Law has made schools vulnerable. Technical language and data is what protects a school. There is an important caveat to this although. The data that actually legally protects a school is only the progress monitoring data of the goals on the many special service contracts. Schools like to bring in other data that supports decision making and changes to an IEP. This is a shortcut that parents are signing off on. Parents accept other data collected as the justification for IEP change because they don’t realize the IEP goal progress monitoring is actually the most important data to be assessed. These goals are not only legally obligated to be monitored and periodically reassessed, these goals are the actual learning that a school is legally responsible for. Monitoring the actual IEP or ELP goals is largely being ignored. School administrators and special education administrators love digital curriculum for all the data they generate.  

The progress monitoring shortcut I describe, creates a vulnerable place for schools. Schools are very much at risk of lawsuit because they are falsely committed to managing so many documents and goals per special needs student. Service providers are ongoingly and legally required to develop S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals as a team. The quantified results of these goals are to drive daily instruction in all environments. In this way, special education is broken! Our best schools are not pulling off meaningful goal progress monitoring and development as a team. If parents look into these goals, and advocated for the progress monitoring data, they would be sadly disappointed. School will hustle to produce such data for you. But know that these goals should be meaningful and pinpoint the precise learning the school is legally responsible for, over all else. These goals are to have benchmarks, that drive their development. Instead, these goals are largely becoming perpetual malarkey.

General education teachers don’t buyin to these goals, they largely don’t participate because these goals usually less than pinpoint the students absolute place of learning in a subject area. Student rarely even know what their goals are. They are difficult to write and challenging to understand. They require large amounts of dedicated and productive team time. Even if there was the time, and buyin, attempting to assess learning through some quantified goal data is falling short of meaningful. These goals only make sense in a courtroom. Determining what is an “appropriate” education for a student, is not equal to some data from a S.M.A.R.T. goal! Determining if a student receives an instructional benefits should be a reflection of a future potential for vocational and personal sustainability. Teachers realize this, and simply don’t have the time to put into these goals. It makes me sick that teachers are not free to talk about this. Managing and developing so many progress monitored goals, has become not possible and has become the responsibility of the special educator to make look good. To be honest, it’s embarrassing that teacher teams aren’t talking about this. For a parent to go into the legal appropriateness of their student’s goals, would be a good way to impact a teacher team’s attention. How are the goals changing your students learning trajectory, increasing your student’s learning in the subject area, effectively bringing your student’s skills up in that subject. For a parent to routinely request summaries of this ongoing data collection beyond the periodical “progress reports”, is a good way to keep a teacher team committed to the goals. Ask how your student’s goals are driving the differentiation of the instruction received in all learning environments. Ask them how often they are meeting as a team to assess and develop these goals based on the collected data? Ask about the accommodations your students actively receives, and for a number of examples of documented effectiveness. Is there meaningful quantified data with supporting accomodation data? What is the a justification and purpose of these goals?

Behavioral Learning.

Social and emotional learning is behavioral learning. For the large majority of IEP and ELL students, optimal learning requires full-time social/emotional behavioral instruction and accommodations. For many, full-time cultural considerations are also very important. The art of being a special service provider is much more than providing Reading, Writing, Math and Social Skills instruction. Good special education teachers aim to develop learners that understand how to support themselves and their success. We join students in their learning experience in a close way. Parents and students don’t want our special educators overloaded, planning for meetings, evaluations, and progress reporting. We want teachers planning instruction and supporting students.

What determines what is an effective use of instructional time? For a growing number of students, continual social/emotional and cultural instructional time is absolutely required before any academic or vocational learning can occur. This type of instructional effort requires a different school model approach. Schools can do a much better job integrating a legal responsibility for social-emotional and behavioral learning. They are not addressing the critical learning of our at-risk students in a realistic way. Priorities are to stay focused on keeping students in standardized classrooms and making grades. For this reason, classrooms feel like pressure cookers for a huge percentage of students.

Once a student is qualified for services, all facets of the IEP are to be planned for. If there is an element of behavior considered during evaluation for qualification of services, there should be at least one goal established within the document, with progress monitoring being performed regularly by the teacher team on each goal. This quantified data is to be included when determining accommodations and disciplinary action for that student. Disciplinary file information should be referenced and used to develop the social-emotional goal and accommodation strategies. Doing this as a team is a good way to increase teacher’s, and administrator’s, ability to support a student consistently. In most cases, IEPs are not adequately written, instead they are in place for funding purposes and for the school district’s legal compliance. When a student’s negative behavior is a contributing factor and a reason why they qualify for services, social-emotional instruction gains importance for that student when considering what is appropriate and equitable. Referrals to special education usually happen because of a routine disciplinary situation that is occurring, and/or because the student is failing their classes, or a teacher has made a referral because they have grown suspicious of a specific significant skill deficit. When disciplinary and social-emotional indications are not documented within the Present Levels section or the Needs and Disabilities section of the document, there is no legal obligation for a school to modify disciplinary action. A school may see a benefit in omitting this vital step as behavior modifications require time and manpower that does not exist.

RTI(Response To Intervention)

RTI(Response To Intervention) is another good example of a methodology in place that has become ineffective at the scale it has become. RTI is a general education initiative similar to special education. RTI is strong in very few schools and nonexistent most. The law is clear, that only after a number of interventions have been tried at the general education level, progress monitored and documented, should qualification of special education services be evaluated or even suggested. This pre special education RTI process is largely skipped at most schools because it’s a lot of work. This is unfortunate because the data that comes from the RTI process feeds the integrity of special education. When a school does not allow time for teachers to participate with a meaningful RTI process, expect a disconnection and a lack of buy-in with your special education department. RTI data reflects how the student is not having success and is the beginning of IEP or ELP development. In theory, this is how general education teachers stay connected to and interested in the IEP, FBA, BSP, or ELP S.M.A.R.T. goal development. RTI findings feed the development of that student’s specialized instruction, unique accommodations, and strategies developed in special education. Parents should ask to see their school’s general education intervention effort, see the RTI data, prior to signing consent for their student to be evaluated for special services. What has been tried?  

Managing Massive Amounts of Confidential and Legal Information.

Fact is, the amount of special education information has simply become too massive to manage. Educators present as if they have confidentially 100% handled. Few are brave enough to talk about how difficult it is to manage the massive amount of confidential information on our special services documents. Special services document information is for service providers within each learning environment of a student including extra curricular activities such as sports. This information is highly confidential and important to manage perfectly. Each term, only the teachers and coaches that work directly with the specific student is to be aware of and included in the IEP team development information and meetings. How do teachers manage and communicate the ever changing information, and coordinate such a detailed confidential efforts for so many students? Each of these working documents is sometimes 20 pages long and are intended to be continuously developed by teacher teams. Each semester teacher teams change for a student. Each semester student rosters change for a teacher. How can a human teacher hold in their view so many details, on the fly, throughout a school day? How can they use this information to develop their materials without the time available or given? Meaningful, legal sharing of confidential information, as a team, is only possible with huge amounts of time for lesson planning, and complete emergence and participation in S.M.A.R.T. goal development. School and School Districts are accepting a minimum effort sharing IEP documents. Often times, this is a physical binder that houses special services documents. The idea is that a teacher can access this changing information, these working documents, at any time. This binder sits, is usually not updated consistently, and is rarely used for its intended purpose.

Lost in Language.

It is my repeated observation that teachers are rewarded and acknowledged by administrators for using language that is far beyond the reality of how a student is being served. Honed language can feel like a “smoke screen” to a parent. I recognize that language used on documents and verbally with parents increasingly does not match the student’s experience. This is happening because special services within the traditional school model is not sustainable.  

A brutally obvious example of this is during the annual migration of middle school students transitioning to high school. Districts are making shortcut decisions that are shockingly not legal, mainly because their legal obligation is too much to manage. Imagine the amount of individualized confidential student information educators are faced with receiving and remembering. How is this possible as a 9th grade teacher receives hundreds of new students, all with a name and face. How do they possibly, from day one, have students with special needs identified, let alone, are able to execute every IEP, FBA, BSP or ELP detail precisely? There is no transition in public education that is more stressful for a student or a family then this time. Teacher preparation time at the beginning of a school year is taken up by mandatory professional development meetings. How are the many goals, and details, and accommodations be executed with accuracy? Remember, this is confidential information that can’t be laid out in the open for teachers to reference.

It is a trend, as students enter middle schools and high schools, that special services strategies and goals are changed illegally. This is a school district decision. This is done without parental consent. IEP and ELL Goals are changed and removed, and even the “Service Minutes” are changed without parent consent or reevaluation. These types of changes only legally happen at a meeting where the teacher team is present with supporting data, with documentation and work samples. The student and parent(s) are present and an administrator is present. The team then makes a decision together and signatures from the parent are acquired if that parent accepts the change. Decisions are legally made when the changes are supported by assessing the progress monitored data of the S.M.A.R.T. goals. Data should never be thrown together at the last minute by the special education teacher. S.M.A.R.T. goal data should be something the entire teacher team is familiar with prior to the meeting. This data shows that previous goals are no longer beneficial to remain present with. New goals are then possibly developed together as a team. The parent(s) are a legal part of that team and if parents and the student want strategies and goals to remain as they were the previous Spring, which is totally understandable, the team considers those voices as influential. Documents are just changed to fit what a school wants. This is ridiculous and will get school districts into a lot of trouble. In my experience, school districts are not being transparent about such shortcuts. Parents from our at-risk families go along with the decision making of a school because they don’t realize it’s not legal. Once that new IEP is signed, the changes are agreed upon. This usually happens at the first IEP review meeting at the new school. This is sad because the reasons such changes are made to these legal documents is actually only to cover the school district legally. These types of changes being made to the documents are not to improve the learning of the student.

Accommodated Learning.

It is time to consider alternative Graduation and Disciplinary approaches. General education teachers are continually challenged with how to grade an at-risk or special needs student that demonstrates distracted behaviors and work completion refusal behaviors. “They didn’t earn the grade.” This is a common situation for most special education students. This situation is very difficult for a special education teacher or parent to advocate for.

Special education does have a formalized way a school covers themselves, a teacher covers themselves, and allows a student to earn modified grades towards graduation. This extremely cumbersome qualification process is referred to as a zcode within the grade book. This modified approach to grading and receiving credits towards graduation is so daunting for teacher teams. Meetings must happen prior to each term with the entire teacher team present. Meeting regularly and consistent for zcode grading is very challenging for educators to coordinate, therefore, zcode grades rarely fulfill theoretically intended purpose. Done with absolute integrity zcodes still are not meaningful for teachers or parents or students. Zcodes are only a way for a school district and a teacher to legally cover themselves. The battle of the grade book continues! In this way, the traditional school model’s eight period school day managing a gradebook and transcripts, is outdated.

When teachers are involved in the IEP on a daily basis, as legally required, they are more apt to contribute to the consistency of the strategies, the accommodations, and the social/emotional and behavioral instructional needs. Please allow me to stand up and say that “there is not enough time in a day to manage special education with integrity at the scale it has become”! It is not humanly possible, nor is it effective. Special education was built on principles that are now bogging us down.

Special education teachers are in a “not fair” position of protecting themselves, their reputation, the reputation of their fellow teachers, their school, and their administrators. It is sad that teachers are so overloaded with these legal responsibilities. This is never more shamefully evident as school staff give a disproportionate amount of time to the concerns and advocacies of “High Profile Parents”. High profile parents understand the law. They are involved developing the legal language on the documents and know well how to advocate for their student’s 504, IEP, ELP, FBA, BSP, ReadPlan, mental health needs, and medical needs. These parents are in the main office of their school during the first few days and weeks of each term. They often bring professional advocates and lawyers to support them. They know well that teacher teams are always changing, and they know that their influence increases the likelihood that their student’s IEP and rights will be upheld. Do you think Hispanic and African American families are getting a fair shake by public education in this way? How many parents of at-risk students, from our lower socio-economic demographic, feel like active members of their student’s team? How many parents of at-risk families do you think are considered High Profile?

Teacher are bombarded with pressure from school officials to have compliant documents in place, to protect the image of the school and school district, or else. These fear based leadership tactics are subtly renewed at every school district department meeting. These fears are trumping public education’s responsibility to educate. Even our most qualified and amazing educators seem programmed to give verbal responses that protect themselves as professionals. Teachers are not free to speak openly. They talk in private about how our schools aren’t properly serving our most at-risk students. They talk about how broken and not realistic special education has become. This reflects how traditional school model methodology is machine-like and no longer appropriate. Because our educators are so capable. Because the language of our most talented educators has become so honed, I fear that special education and how we serve our special needs students won’t change very soon.