The Unkindest Cut

I’ve been going on and on and on about the Georgia Alternate Assessment (GAA).  NCLB states that every child must be on grade level by 2013 and to that end requires regular testing in order to obtain accountability.

 

Let’s talk about accountability for a second.  I’m quite in favor of accountability, as I’ve seen more than one of my colleagues skate by doing very little in their classrooms.  Then when their ways are exposed to the light, it results in some new rule, regulation or system which burdens everyone else.  A regular and reliable method of accountability would catch errors, mistakes and slackers a lot sooner to the betterment of the students.  If a student is failing or is not performing, wouldn’t it be better to find this out as early as possible?  If there is an incompetent teacher, wouldn’t it be better to know that sooner rather than later?

 

Accountability was the carrot that George W. offered the conservatives in congress in order to gain passage of NCLB.  And it has been the mantra of the various conservative voices in the education debate.  They practically beat and whip the progressives with the mantra that opposing NCLB is akin to being afraid or in opposition of reform and accountability.  I’m a conservative, and I can think of any number of reasons and ways to beat and whip progressives and liberals.  But this “accountability” and “reform” as represented in NCLB isn’t one of them.  Remember, it was Ted Kennedy who stood in the rose garden behind G. W. when he signed that abomination.

 

First off, “accountability” in NCLB always means a standardized test.  Well, almost always, and we’ll get to that.  But accountability for teachers being highly qualified means passing a test.  For students, it means taking a test.  For paras, it means passing a test.  For schools, it is how many in each subgroup pass the test.  It is all about the test.

 

My students can not take a standardized test.  It’s just not physically possible and there would be no valid results derived from such a test.  So my kids pose the most significant challenge to NCLB.  Advocates of NCLB do not wish to discuss my kids.  They want to ignore them.  They wish they’d just disappear.  But they can’t because it’s NO Child Left Behind, not All But 1% Not Left Behind.  So they had to come up with something, and in the state of Georgia it is something they call a “portfolio.”  And the “portfolio” is a hell of a lot more work for the teachers than the students.  There are many, many ways that a portfolio can fail and count against the school’s AYP.  NONE of those ways have anything to do with student achievement.  So teachers in Georgia have to log in scores and scores of extra hours making sure that every form is filled out correctly despite the fact that the forms themselves have their own flaws built in.

 

But I have not mentioned the unkindest cut of all.  It’s the flem in the spit that is spat in the eyes of every teacher who has to endure this ordeal.  It is the salt in the raw wound.  It is the twisting of the knife in the belly. 

 

I hope you’re sitting down.

Because according to our testing administrator, they aren’t even going to look at and score every one of these portfolios. 

 

How’s that grab you?

 

All that work.  For nothing.  All the writing, editing and rewriting and no one is even going to look at it.  Apparently they are going to take a random sample and score just some of them.

 

That’s the face of accountability.  See, scoring these things is a massively time-consuming exercise which means it will cost money.  Perhaps the state doesn’t have the money.  Or they don’t have the time.  You ain’t got no money honey, I got no more time.

 

Whatever the reason, that’s what I was told.  I could not believe it.  I can not accept it.  It just takes an already cruel joke and takes it beyond the absurd.  Why put so much into something that no one will even look at?  If these were regular education students, there would be a shit fit because no student is going to expend all that effort for so high of stakes and not have every test scored. It’s just plain cruel.

 dick

 

 

One Year Blogiversary: A Word or Two

 

One year ago I officially became an education blogger.  It really has been a labor of love and I have really enjoyed getting to know other bloggers and readers.  The initial idea for this blog was to help fill in a niche among education/teacher bloggers, mainly dealing primarily with special education and special education policy issues from the point of view of both parent and teacher.  There are many things that impact those in the disability community that others might either not think about or take for granted.  Probably nothing has turned things on their head since the first public law guaranteeing an education to individuals with disabilities as much as No Child Left Behind.  During the past year, I had to take another test, my paras all had to take a test and I am being tested again through the alternate assessment.    I went from being an advocate for high quality and accountability to being a being a bitter enemy against centralized control of education and yet another unfunded mandate.  There’s such a difference between turning my children over to other people in my own community and turning them over to the federal government.  IDEA provides protection from discrimination, but it’s my local district providing the education according to the curriculum and plan we set up on a local level.  But with the weight of the Feds upon us, the needs of the state take precedence over the needs of the individual child.

 

The most popular posts, by far, has been the IEP series that I did.  I might get 150 hit per day, and 100 of those are directed at posts specifically dealing with that series.  The Fleecing article was the first one that really caught a lot of attention thanks to Liz who nominated me for the Skeptic’s Circle.  No other single post has done as much as that one as far as putting me on the map.

 

I often get posts from parents and teachers asking for advice.  I try to do what I can, but I’m still learning the same as everyone else.  I don’t know it all and have learned a lot from the writings of others.  This past year has been a grand adventure and I hope I can continue to be a resource for those in the special education community.  Perhaps I’ll have a little bit more in the way of making a big deal over this place in another year! 

 

Thank you all for stopping by!

 

dick

 

 

Thinking About Assistive Technology

 

I’m thinking about Assistive Technology (AT) lately. This is the time of year when we look at our budgets and buy things for next year. With the miniscule supply money we have, it makes it difficult to choose. Anyone who knows anything about disabilities knows that the minute a thing becomes useful to people with special needs, the price automatically doubles. It’s almost like vendors figure out that they have a desperate consumer base and they are determined to squeeze everything they can out of them.

 

For instance, I’ve always bought a lot of ground turkey instead of hamburger because it’s tons cheaper and has tons less fat. As soon as they slapped a label on it that said “Gluten Free Casein Free” on it, the price went up $.40 a pound! As if printing those 4 words suddenly increased their overhead or something. This is another reason why I’m such a skeptic, and an angry one at that, because if you are a parent of a person with disabilities you are going to have other people’s hands in your pockets all the time.

 

As I look through various catalogs, I see stuff costing hundreds of dollars that might only be $25.99 in the regular retail marketplace. And the more severe the disability we’re marketing to, the higher the mark up. Various talking, vibrating, flashing toys for $50 where you might be able to find something comparable for less than $10 though a junk outlet like Oriental Trading Company. I’m looking at a wooden puzzle for $50 in a special needs catalog, where one can go to the dollar store and pick up 3 for $10.

 

Assistive technology can be sophisticated or it can be simple. I’m the sort that prefers simple although make no mistake that I love the flashy toys as much as any guy! Two years ago, Spaz’s mother had a technology assessment done and they authorized the purchase of a Dynamo for about $3,000 or so. Most of it was paid through Medicaid, so you and I footed a lot of the bill. Within a year, the thing was unusable for a couple of reasons. One was the fact that Spaz is simply hard on stuff. He has to mouth and bite everything and squeeze it and occasional hit it. This isn’t good for electronics, generally speaking. The other reason is because they bought the Dynamo at the end of its support cycle. Every 3 years, Dynavox comes out with newer, flashier and more expensive gadgets and then quite supporting the old ones. So when the Dynamo broke or the memory cards quit working, dynamo said “tough.” They might have supported them for a year, but they eventually quit. This, despite the fact that Spaz’s mother did purchase the extended warranty for another $1,000 or so.

 

Meanwhile there is Taz, who absolutely is not any easier on his stuff, comes along. Instead of a dynamo, he has a PECS book made of a 3 ring notebook bought at Wal-Mart, with various laminated pictures and pages with Velcro in it and he has had it since middle school and he still uses it despite the fact it is falling to pieces. But when this book eventually visits the landfill, I’m not out gobs of $$$.

 

It’s so easy to be seduced by vendors peddling assistive devices and technology. They do so many seemingly wonderful things and it’s easy to be sucked into believing that a child absolutely must have a certain thing. Parents of neurotypical children have the same problem, but with the miracle of mass production and mass advertising and competition (the free market) they don’t get pinched nearly as bad. Individuals with disabilities are a seemingly captive audience and it seems like this population is very susceptible to various scams and slicksters. The folks at Dynavox are not necessarily scammers, but they are hustlers. There are populations where their devices are very appropriate and useful. I once had a student with a traumatic brain injury who used one, and they did offer extensive training to all of us educators who worked with him. However, when that went bad, they no longer offered support for it. The turn-around on offering support is about 3 years, which is not untypical in the consumer electronics industry. However, this particular machine cost over $7,000 without the extended warranty. I do have problems with a company who handholds a person through the purchasing process but then leaves them seemingly high and dry 3 years later. And these machines don’t seem to be especially durable as I have never seen one that was used regularly that lasted the full 3 years.

 

Parents, teachers and service providers have limited budgets and it is important to make those resources we have go as far as possible. I’ve met teachers who basically blow their funds and say, “Oh well, it’s not MY money!” I think that is a glib and irresponsible attitude. Some thinking needs to be involved in what we spend money on as to how important a thing is and how we’re going to use it. As an educator, I’m also mindful of if and how I can transfer a thing home. For instance, I just had a workshop on Intellitools, which is a wonderful bit of software I’m going to use to get my students through their alternate assessments. The cost for this suite of programs is around $285. The cost of the Intellikeys keyboard which makes this software accessible for my kids is $375. The cost of Boardmaker which we use for all sorts of activities (like Taz’s PECS book) and other programs runs about $370. See a trend here? And each of these pieces of software have other supporting bits of software going for $50-$150 each.

 

Last year, I was given $125 by our department and another $100 from Governor Sonny Perdue. That’s it. And I can’t save my money in a piggy bank, I have to spend it all during a specific time or it is forfeited. In the case of Sonny’s money, I could only spend it during the 3 day tax holiday.

 

So I can and do appeal to the county office for these big ticket items. Personally, I want a digital camera that won’t be taken away for some other pet project. I can make my own overlays with my own pictures that are actually relevant to what students do everyday. But I’m also going to need the Intellitools to get through the alternate assessment with some degree of sanity.

 

But back to parents for a second; parents of students with disabilities are usually not wealthy. Especially those on the more severe end of the disability spectrum. The parents of my students are lucky if they have a computer at all, let alone DSL or high capacity processors and memory and multimedia add-ons. I know of 2 of them who have computers, while the other 3 do not. There are not going to be able to afford a touch screen much less Intellikeys and all the stuff that goes with it. They have more important needs like housing, clothes, medical bills and food. I don’t send long lists home to parents of my kids of stuff I expect them to provide. At the beginning of every semester, Thomas and Percy both bring home lists of supplies that their teachers want parents to send in. Wipes, napkins, tissues, sanitizer, air fresheners, paper towels and on and on. In addition we get asked to bring in snacks. In addition, we get hit up to buy wrapping paper, candy, magazines, school pictures, annuals, spirit shirts and clothes and participate in every PTA activity. Raising children is a costly venture, but more so those with special needs. I’m not a big fan of the GFCF diet, but I at least admire the resourcefulness and dedication of those who are.

 

All of the above is simply my way of saying that I’m looking for ways to bring technology to those who can’t afford the bleeding edge stuff. If I can find a way to make Power Point (or better, Open Office’s Impress) work, I’m going to do it. If I can find a way to give parents access to the internet on the cheap, I’m going to do it. That is part of the driving force behind my Linux/open source blog. I’ve been able to save a buck or two by having access to eBay and an open market place. I’ve been able to find lots of information and learn from other people by virtue of having such access. You all reading this probably takes this sort of access for granted. But within the realm of students with disabilities it seems that those are the people who could probably most benefit from technology and those are the people least likely to be able to afford it.

 

OMG – I just realized…I’m coming up on my Blogiversary! I’ll see if I can get in some sort of self-indulgent sentimental post in on the weekend. Thanks to all you who have been reading!

 

dick

 

On Being an EBD Teacher

Hannah’s QuestionRE: Working with EBD Students

 

I worked for 2 years for a “live in/work tons of hours” wilderness camp for EBD boys. I loved working with them, they were such interesting and spirited people. Now I am looking at special ed graduate schools, but I’m not sure if its exactly suited to what I want. I want to work with this type of population, but is the public school system the way to go? With all of your experience do you think this is the best route?

 

 

There are many routes for working with the EBD population. Those with Emotional Behavior Disorders (EBD) are actually a very diverse group. “Interesting and Spirited” is a fairly accurate description!LOL! Since they are so diverse, they often require a diverse range of services from mental health to juvenile justice to educational and vocational services. I would rate humor and patience as the cardinal virtues for working with this group. These traits are needed for any teaching position, but you’ll need an especially generous helping for working with these youngsters.

 

I’ve had 3 different types of experiences working with this population: Public school (high school and middle school self-contained), psychoed (part of the public schools, but a specialized school) and a mental health facility for children and adolescents. In the latter position, I was part of a team of doctors, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists and sometimes even juvenile justice personnel such as probation officers and teachers.

 

In my case, I needed a lot more structure and support for working with this population. For me, there is no worse den of horrors than a self-contained EBD classroom in a regular school. But administrative support is the key here. If the administration just wants you out of their way, you’re on your own. Not many teachers do well in this type of isolation and the average rate of burn out is hideous at something less than 3 years on average. I know some who have been doing it much longer and some who didn’t last more than a few months. Tough job, but opportunities abound. There are loads of jobs out there for the taking.

 

In Georgia, we have a psychoed network, which serves students with severe emotional disabilities who are too severe to be in a regular education setting. This is a more restrictive setting and the disabilities are much more severe but administrative support isn’t quite as much of an issue. The program coordinator is most definitely on the same side and everyone is pulling in the same direction.

 

The state hospital was the most restrictive setting of all. It was a locked facility, and we had teams of people working with relatively small numbers of clients with very severe problems. Our clients ranged from the normally intelligent who happened to be suicidal or homicidal to those with significant cognitive impairments. While the severity was worse in many ways, the level of support was actually higher. I didn’t have to deal with the worst of the behaviors as a teacher because there was a medical and behavioral team standing by and they could use more interventions like seclusion and medications. Generally, I found that more restrictive settings translated into more support but it also means more severe behavior issues.

 

It takes a special temperament to work with those who are, by definition, difficult to get along with. When I told an old teacher of mine that I was going to be teaching those with EBD, she half-jokingly said, “It’s nice to know someone is getting in the business who knows something about it!” I wouldn’t say my temperament is the best, though. While I am extremely calm on the outside, inside I tend to be a roiling bucket of nerves. My tolerance hasn’t improved much with age! I can work well with this population in limited doses, meaning not all day, every day. Being a consultant, psychologist, counselor or some other service provider that works 1:1 wouldn’t be quite as bad as teachers who typically have several EBD students at a time who tend to feed off of each other and escalate every little situation. They quickly become proficient little button-pushers as they can often be quicker and more streetwise than students with other disabilities. They can also be very creative, so any person dealing with groups of this population should be equally nimble mentally in order to keep ahead.

 

The rewards can be rich, but sometimes require much effort and patience compared to working with other kids. They aren’t always appreciative of your efforts and frequently sabotage their own success which can be very frustrating. They can be enormously charming and then enormously vicious in the space of seconds. I knew many who seemed to have interests in psychology and law, which also made things quite challenging as they were constantly gaming the system. They usually also come from very rough environments which can also be heart breaking.

 

I’m not telling anyone what to do, because only you know what your own temperament and tolerance is. There’s a reason why there are always EBD positions open in school systems. If a person has the skills, talents and temperament, they can enjoy their success and reap the admiration of everyone. Seriously, tell someone you’re an EBD teacher, and most people will bless you while genuflecting. Many of those attracted to EBD teaching aren’t exactly saint material, themselves, which helps them identify with the kids sometimes. My background, as tough as it was, has served me well where I am now and I have no regrets although I wouldn’t care to go through some of it again. That’s one of the good things about special education is that there is considerable room for movement between areas, subjects and grades.

 

Good luck!

dick

 

The Screw-Ups Who Made NCLB Necessary

Hat tip to The Paraprofessor for scooping this one up. I’m eternally grateful that he’s provided me something to discuss other than alternate assessments.

 

The Baltimore sun is reporting that a bunch of its para educators are being transferred in the middle of the year in order to comply with NCLB requirements. NCLB requires all Title I schools to be staffed by paras who are highly qualified. “Highly qualified” in this case means two years of college or passing a test. The school system in Baltimore is the only one in the state and possibly the only one in the country going through this sort of upheaval, according to an AFT representative identified as an expert on teaching assistants.

 

What happened is that not all of the Title I school paras have met the highly qualified requirement. So the solution the school system has implemented is to take the highly qualified paras from non-Title I schools and transfer them in to the Title I schools. Right now, as in in the middle of the school year. Imagine being a parent in one of those non-Title I schools and now your child is going to lose their HQ para which will be replaced by one who is not HQ. And sure enough, parents are pissed. Paras are pissed.

 

System officials, parents and paras in the system opine that they should simply wait and finish the school year instead of disrupting the whole system. The thing is, this provision was supposed to take effect in January 2006 and the feds granted an extension until June 2006 for just this reason. Baltimore is already a year overdue! We ALL knew about this since 2002. In fact, the paras knew about their HQ requirements long before special education teachers. This is gross incompetence on the part of the Baltimore school system. It perfectly illustrates the reason why law makers felt the need to write such a law and implement sanctions in the first place! If it weren’t for incompetent idiots like these clowns in Baltimore, accountability, standards, deadlines and sanctions would not be the issue they are today.

 

In Magnolia County, we were a little on the slow side, or it seemed like it by not getting information to the paras until 2004. The school system made the decision that all paras in the entire school district had to meet HQ requirements by June 2006. Any who did not would not be re-hired and they were not hiring any who did not meet the HQ requirement as soon as the law went into effect. This eliminated the whole shell game Baltimore is now forced to play between those schools that are Title I and those that are not.

 

They should have gotten all of their paras highly qualified and now the schools that did their part in Baltimore are having to take up the slack for those that didn’t in the Baltimore system as the savvy principals non-Title I schools lose their HQ paras to the bumbling Title I schools who failed to meet the requirements. Thinking about it, a body can see that a pattern of failure does exist in some schools. I’m extraordinarily angry because every school district in the nation has to pony up and pay for the outright stupidity of a few districts who can not get their act together.

 

If school systems had blanket parties for screw-up school systems, the Baltimore one would be a prime candidate. Every administrator, parent, student and teacher who has had to suffer under NCLB’s most burdensome provisions should get a crack at walking by the clowns in the Baltimore system and delivering a punch or kick in the place of their choice. There’s just no excuse for this sort of incompetence.

 

A Good Laugh and some NCLB links

Anyone reading this for any amount of time (and you continued to subject yourself to my screeds!) can see that NCLB, and the alternate assessment in particular, has gradually increased my stress levels, not to mention my workload.   So I’ve had to spend some time getting my nerves back together.  Working with the kids that I do who require much and assorted physical handling in order to meet their positioning and mobility needs is actually pretty good therapy.  There aren’t any other teachers in the high school whose jobs demand this sort of physical mobility and effort.  The PE teachers could get in more, but the job hardly demands it and many of the teachers avoid it.  When Jim or Ravi hollers, they are communicating a need for some sort of shift and often it involves changing diapers.  This isn’t light work as both these boys are over 16 years old and weigh over 120 pounds with some pretty severe muscle contractions. 

 

Working on Taz’s tasks for the alternate assessment has been stressful but it’s been manageable.  I’ve been able to actually incorporate a fair amount of fun into the process.  However, I have this other student that the administrators dumped on me, that has been nothing but a huge headache.  The other teachers don’t want to it so it falls back on me.  This is why committee work absolutely SUCKS because people find ways to get out of doing things and then the case manager (ME) is left flapping in the breeze.  I don’t teach the kid.  I never have.  I’ve laid eyes on him exactly twice.  But the administrators who are leading this process seem to be in a coma when it comes to exercising some sense into the process.  Harry and Carrie are the two Assistant Principals (AP) that are leading this process. Harry used to be a special ed. Administrator before he was promoted to the AP in charge of testing.  Carrie is now the AP in charge of special education.  Harry seems to have totally forgotten everything he ever learned when we worked with him in special education.  Carrie, in her 2^nd year with us, is still learning the ropes.  Neither of these have a background in special education.  Still, one would think that having a teacher who actually knew and taught the student might be a good choice for making informed decisions as far as leading the effort to evaluate him. 

 

So while I’ve bashed NCLB and made it a very convenient scapegoat, not all baboons reside in Washington.  We have some right here in Magnolia County.  This is the problem with handing down mandates from the highest levels of government.  It has to be passed down from one sapiens to another and it is continually reinterpreted, added to, modified and reworked.  By the time it gets down to us lowly serfs who actually have to implement a thing, it is screwed up beyond all recognition.  However, sometimes it is good for a hearty laugh. 

 

Yesterday, when we were in our GAA meeting, we were talking about some particular about how the submission forms had to be filled out.  Someone made a comment that it shouldn’t make too much of difference how the thing was dated (the directions are somewhat vague) and Harry said with a totally straight face, “But, we need to be as precise as possible for the benefit of the kids.”

 

Benefit the kids?  Benefit the students?  Are you kidding me?  This process has LONG left the domain of benefiting the kids!  It’s become all about advancing some ideology, and accountability and some political agenda.  I laughed so hard my sides hurt!  HAHAHAHAHAHA!   I had not laughed so hard and so much in a very long time.  All of these students are going to get a special education diploma.  It does not matter one WIT whether the dates on the submission forms have dashes or slashes!  How much does a kid with an IQ of 35 care about the school’s AYP?  And should they care about how their subgroup performs in math? 

 

I do get out once in awhile, and Eduwonk caught my attention with a little snippet that I checked up on.  The links are worth reading, as there are people within the disability community who do like NCLB.  In fact, Madeleine C. Will, Vice President of Public Policy, National Down Syndrome Society, wants NCLB to be more stringent in its standards for individuals with disabilities.  The other article from an elementary school in Georgia credits NCLB with more special education students being mainstreamed.  Actually,  the state DoE has set a goal for 90% of students with disabilities be included at least 80% of the time.  And by reading the article, you can see that even this elementary school is falling short of that target.  I’m actually for more inclusion as long as it involves both skill sets in the form of two teachers, regular and special educators working together.  For some reason, school districts have resisted that model and favor the more restrictive settings. 

 

As a counterpoint to Eduwonk’s offering, I’ll pony up a letter by a state school superintendent who has actually been in favor of accountability for a long time but who points out several instances where NCLB and specifically the Federal DoE has fallen short and sometimes is outright dishonest.  Definitely worth a read, and hat tip to Jim Horn whose blog sort of pointed the way to this little gem.

 

Dick