Any Validation Of This Person's Opinion?

Thanks to The Gradebook for this link and the accompanying public comments:

When is 2010? A class-size question that matters

Can anyone validate this person's comments? Anonomous but truthful comments accepted.



"School systems have been running class size numbers through a "business accounting" model for nearly eight years.

Step 1: County-wide class size average was achieved by hiring more special education teachers and firing the aides who worked in the classrooms with the children. For instance, a school's special ed program that once served 28 students with disabilities with one teacher and three classroom aides (An inexpensive solution to a labor intensive process.) now serves 28 students with two teachers and 1 classroom aide.

Step 2: School wide averages- The "business model solution" to reach this benchmark was to divide and conquer. Let's say a system of schools served 3000 students with disabilities with programs concentrated in 10 of their 30 schools. The special education programs were broken up and divided over the 30 schools in the system and whoa la, abra cadabra-school wide averages are met adding no additional resources. Too bad those concentrated special education programs served students, teachers and schools well by creating atmospheres that supported special needs learning. Whether it was a playground equipped for wheel chair bound students or an atmosphere accepting of behavior challenges equipped to curtail even the most egregious and socially unacceptable behaviors. No matter. The kids, the teachers and the programs were dismantled to avoid the cost of implementing the class size amendment with integrity.

Step 3: Classroom by classroom- When it finally gets down to what the voters wanted in the first place: smaller classes to make learning, teaching and (accurate) accounting methods feasible, well...the answer is to thwart the will of the people again, right!

The people did not want learning disabled students to experience less support in classrooms through losing non-certified, but highly trained classroom aides.

The people did not want special education programs dismantled.

The people wanted ALL children to experience more classroom support. Those with disabilities as well as those with abilities. The people wanted to assist teachers with their workload by diminishing the number of students they were responsible to teach.

This is the same unethical behavior exhibited on Wall Street. Cook the books and dam n the consequences!

If you think the fall of the stock market is a crisis, you just wait until we fail to educate an entire generation of public school students!

Is it too quaint to expect our leadership to simply do the right thing?

And we wonder why our kids don't just do as their told! With today's role models, it's no wonder kids don't think the rules apply to them. The lesson here is-just don't get caught!

Posted by: | February 16, 2009 at 12:08 PM"

What? In Times Of Hundreds Of "Isolated" Incidents, I Was Told That The Staff Was Expert

Many Florida teachers may be ill-equipped to handle special-needs students:

"Even teachers who earned degrees in education may have taken just one or two classes in special education, making them aware of their legal responsibilities but unsure of how to manage a class in which one child may not respond the way other children do."

"Scott said many teachers rely on 'old school' punitive methods of discipline, most of which don't work with special needs students, particularly those with autism who may miss social cues.
'You can't punish these kids into behaving well,' he said."

Imagine a pro-active parent such as myself, along with the assistance of a pro-active teacher, taking my deaf/blind kid to Florida State University to be evaluated by the leading expert in the education of deaf/blind students. Imagine the main reason this time and effort was done was so that we could share the results and the educational implications of this report with the staff that was unsure of how to manage a class which one child may not respond the way other children do.

Imagine the excitement that we had when we received the report and saw some of the same strategies that we had been trying to help the teacher and principal with.

Imagine the disappointment, frustration and later anger that we had when we were told by the school personnel that "Those are just recommendations. We don't have to do them."

The arrogance and ignorance of the system stifles the growth of the very teachers they depend on.

Defining "Primary Disability" And The Educational Implications Of Same

I was hoping to get a little more information, but I'll go with what I have.
On a previous post, a public commenter and I had a discussion and this was stated:

Motel Special Ed: IEP Tip for the day:

"We do have to choose which one is the 'primary' disability. This is the one that requires the most service time."

I wanted to know how one determined which disability requires the most service time, and the response was this:

"I think I can answer that. I have an SLD/Hearing Impaired student in my class. The SLD is "primary"(I think that's the term) because he's with SLD teachers in 5 classes a week(FUSE) and has only a weekly meeting with other teacher (of the Hearing Impaired)who visits a number of sites per day(s). In IEP meetings, both are present."

We can assume that the student is Hearing impaired the same amount of time that the student has a specific learning disorder.

I bring this up because in one of the difficult school settings that my son was in, the frustrated primary teacher that he was with most of the time made a comment that she was only responsible for my son's hearing disability and that the vision department was responsible for his vision disability. This was the same time that he had been provided a computer that apparently caused some problems because the need for the computer use was written into his IEP, and no one else in the class had a computer. He had done quite well with large fonts at his previous setting and had a proven track record. To add a little flavor, after things started going bad we discovered that the computer screen he was supposed to be using was so bad that all of the normal sighted adults that had to get involved with this issue could plainly see that he couldn't see it.

While there is certainly more to this small part of what started the big story, it was shortly after that that I made it a point to say that he was profoundly deaf and legally blind all at the same time.

Some people think that is a mocking statement. I was simply stating the facts.

That happened over 10 years ago, and I am sure that all of the ESE divisions work together in full support with each other now.