Grades for Students with Severe Disabilities October 25, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Curriculum, Ed Policy Discussion, Parents and parenting, Special Ed., Special Education, severe disabilities.add a comment
One of the most common questions I am asked is “How do you grade the students you teach?” I mean, they don’t do any paper and pencil activities, they don’t produce anything and there are no permanent products. At the high school, every other student is producing something in the way of writing or projects or test scores. Oh…TEST SCORES which have become the gold standard in this country! Don’t get me started…
I do progress reports and have some sort of program data on most of my students, except for the very lowest ones, especially since discrete trial lends itself to accumulating data. But it does not translate well into the sort of letter/percentage grade that schools make teachers give high school students. A student may not be doing a single task independently during any trials and in any setting this would be viewed as a total failure. In my classroom, I look at level of support, and usually we have a mixture of trials requiring verbal, gesture, partial physical or full physical prompts. I suppose I could assign a score to each part of the prompting hierarchy and arrive at a more empirical figure. But when it comes to high school academic standards, no figure I could come up with would have any sort of validity. None. So when I do the report card, I take a wild guess according to effort, progress, and where we are in relation to goals. And most parents don’t have a problem with their teachers doing this as long as that grade is an ‘A’ or a ‘B’. As long as their child is making honor roll, they aren’t going to complain.
However I have over the years raised the ire of more than a couple of parents when they come from the middle school. For their entire school career of getting letter/percentage grades, they have been getting mostly 90’s the entire way through. Other teachers I have taught beside did exactly this, giving every student a 95 or 96. This is one of those Horace’s Compromise things, where there is a tacit agreement that “good enough is good enough” and we demand and deliver as little as possible. For other students, it is mostly between student and teacher: You deliver the minimum amount required to meet certain expectations, and you are rewarded accord to meeting the minimal criteria. If you want an ‘A’ you know the minimal performance required to get there. For students with severe disabilities, it is between teacher and parent: “Give my child an ‘A’ and I won’t ask for any justification.” So in a sense, I am severely disrupting that tacit little agreement when a student comes home with a 78 or a ‘C’. Now we have a problem.
The problem that I have is this: does a child who is uncooperative, disruptive, belligerent, violent, and otherwise assaulting themselves or other people legitimately belong on the honor roll? And what if, even in simple discrete trial tasks they are uncooperative? I’m not going to fail anyone on account of their disability, but neither can I justify elevating that into “honor” status. And it’s not like any of my parents are gong to take advantage of their child’s exam exemption to keep them at home!
So here’s, generally, how I arrive at a grade:
A = 90-100 – The student is totally trying and is making progress. It’s a bit relative, and with 9 kids, I have a sample size that allows me to judge who is the best and who is not. I might have given 1 ‘A’ this marking period. By the end of the year, I will have more. It means the student is making real attempts at completing things independently.
B = 80-89 – Most of my students are working in this area, which means that we still have some problems that we’re working on, but we’re still making some progress. I leave room to show improvement, so during the 1st marking period all grades are lower. I’m looking at the data and how much prompting and support is needed.
C = 70-79 – Here, we have many issues that we need to address, and many students will start here, especially if they come from summer break wild and off the chain. I have to work twice as hard to get them into the routine as the ‘B’ group. Freshman typically seem to end up here, as they are well below their classmates. Remember, this is ongoing. A student can totally move up by Christmas and still get their B and make semester honor roll if everything is going like it should be. But if a student is physically capable of pushing a button or pointing to a card and refuses or throws the material, we have some issues to work on. You should not be on the honor roll if you are refusing to do things independently when it is well within your capability. It represents a significant gap between potential and actual achievement. A person can’t give what they don’t have, and I take that into account. But if you’re slacking, do not expect a break. I’m just sayin’.
In our school, there are no ‘D’s and I’ve never given one anyway. Yeah, we ALL need improvement and my kids don’t need to be labeled as “poor”. The ‘C’ smacks over achiever parents hard enough as it is! Failure is not an option here. And it wouldn’t make any difference, anyway. If the kid is on the honor roll for 4 years, they will still stay 3 more. If they fail, they still come back. Conventional “promotion” doesn’t really exist compared to typical peers. However, I have promoted kids to the Moderate class, but that was mostly because they were misplaced in the first place.
In a sense, my grades are a reflection of what we do at school, but it can also be a reflection of what is going on at home, which is probably what alarms so many parents. In a typical, nondisabled classroom, we know that parents have a lot to do with how their kids do in school by providing guidance, structure and motivation. many students will not do any homework, unless a parent insists and prods and cajoles and bribes or whatever it is they have to do. Trust me, I know how much of an ordeal this is! Homework should be something students can do on their own with a minimum of assistance. For my students, it is a bit different, because they don’t have any homework that a student could do at home independently. I suppose I could do what many of the teachers of my two boys do and assign projects that demand parent involvement, like large intricate craft projects. Then I’d have something to grade! But then I suspect I’d get even more grief when I gave a lower grade than expected!
However, parents do have a lot to do with encouraging their children to do things independently, like feeding themselves or playing with toys or pulling up their pants. I see this more with feeding that anything else, as I’ve had occasion to socialize with other parents who have children with disabilities. I’ve irked more than one parent when at one of these events I got on top of them for spoon feeding a child who I knew was capable of feeding himself. Here you demand that we put this as a goal on the
IEP and work on it at school, and you are not doing this at home! Don’t demand a goal on tooth brushing on the IEP if you are not going to do it home.
So I have students who come to me and have no physical reason why they can not perform a given task. It’s not necessarily the student’s fault, but it reflects some ground that we will have to cover that should have been done previously. No honor roll grades, there. But that doesn’t mean that will always be the case, and hopefully we’ll get to the point we should have started.
Assessment for this population isn’t a matter of simply taking a test. You can’t just give them a pencil and paper and say “Here do this worksheet, answer these questions.” NONE of them are even verbal, so a verbal assessment is out. Most have limited mobility and serious motor issues, so manipulative assessment is out. And I’m not going to say a lot about a severely truncated attention span or limited perseverance. That’s not to say we can’t measure progress, but it translates very poorly into a report card A-B-C-F format. So I send home daily notes to parents in their notebooks. They are informed every day not just during quarterly report card periods. I’m more transparent than any other teacher in the building and possibly in the entire county! I have a blog! I have a video channel!
Grading is never a precise science, as there is a bit of an art to it. Most teachers of students with severe disabilities do neither, and just give the kid an ‘A’ whether it is earned or not. And that is fine for them, as long as we all agree that the grades on the report card don’t mean anything unless they open up Harvard to students with IQ’s in the single digits. But I’m trying to communicate at least a little bit with the hideous system that I’m forced to use, and convey some degree of meaning to something that isn’t terribly meaningful in the first place.
As a parent, when we went through school, grades were also used as a motivational tool. Study and work hard, get good grades and get rewards and honors and a good job. None of that motivational stuff applies to this population . Even if they comprehended the difference, quantitatively, between 78% and 98%, or an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ , why would they care? This actually applies almost universally to all students with disabilities. The graduation rate in my high school for students with disabilities is 30%. The employment rate for students with disabilities in my county is about 10%, with most of those being part-time or less. Which means that over 90% of students with disabilities emerge from high school with few quality prospects. Those in the population that I teach are not even at that level, and have a waiting list waiting for them when they leave my program. So in the grandest scheme of things those 1st quarter grades are not terribly relevant.
I want to say one more thing about grades, and this goes to everyone regardless of whether the student has a disability and cuts across grade levels and even that first college midterm. Mainly, that those first marking period grades should be intentionally more stringent than any others. That means that a student (and the parents) should expect the grades to be lower than “typical” for that child. This represents the first period of a new grade level/year with newer and higher expectations. If the student is already exceeding the standards in all areas, what is the use of continuing to go? Many students, when grades are a motivational, will go into “early retirement” if they think they have already got it in their back pocket. It also doesn’t give any indication of relative strengths in weaknesses especially when using marks like our elementary schools i.e. C,S,U,N or 1,2,3 or faces or stars. As teachers, we need to allow for room for growth. So as parents, we need to take a relative view of the marks coming out after the first marking period and not be too judgmental toward the the student or his/her teacher and those marks. It’s merely a guidepost and a relative indicator of where that student is at a given time.
Whining October 25, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Special Ed..9 comments
This is going to sound awfully whiny, and there might be some SID/PID teachers who have more of a reason to complain than I do. But I don’t think any are in my county.
I feel swamped. I think I have always felt swamped in some fashion or form but this year it hit particularly hard with 3 new students and 2 new paras. Nine SID/PID students is simply too many for this level of disability. I’m trying to keep track of 9 diets, 9 medical conditions, 9 bathroom schedules (gotta keep track of when everyone has a BM!) 9 parents, 9 IEPS, 9 academic programs across all subjects and all 4 grade levels. While all my paras have talents in their own way, they are not charged with keeping track of everyone all at the same time. Sure, that’s why I get paid the big bucks, but where is the limit?
I am totally crashing up against it. I forget stuff like jackets, snacks, medications, and a variety of other little niggling things. I used to like talking to parents and related service providers, but I find I have less time and patience for the various nitpicking requests. “Can you brush his teeth?” “Can you make sure her shirt is tucked in?” “Can we make sure he uses his communication device at lunch?” “Can you make sure he stays on the GFCF diet in the school cafeteria?” “Can you make sure he uses his picture schedule?”
If I had a sane class size, these would be just part of the job and everyone would get the special treatment we’re supposed to give him or her. I felt full at 7 students but we were able to do some cool things. This year, it feels more like just survival, and not sustainable. I do have to give credit in that several other teachers and paras have chipped in and helped when they could. My parents have generally been supportive. My paras are generally competent. The thing is, is that I feel like we are past the point where adding more paras will do us any good. Adding another adult helper is simply one more person that I have to keep track of and manage all day long.
Some may hate me saying this, but we are a school/nursing home hybrid. We do what they do in a nursing home plus I have to do what 4-5 other teachers do, albeit on a different and much abbreviated level. The shift to the regular academic curriculum on top of the daily living skills curriculum adds a level of incredulity to a mission that was already seen as bordering on futility.
Most of the real stakeholders know all of this already. I’ve voiced a lot of concerns to those in positions to help and ease our plight, but they are not listening or at least they are not responding. Either they are unwilling or unable to do anything. And since some students were allowed to jump across the zone into my class where another parent was not allowed to go to a different zone to in order to escape my overcrowding. So indicators are pretty much pointing to some sort of willful hostility or ignorance at the county system level.
The core problem is that each of my students have so many pressing needs, some which need to be met in order to maintain their health and their lives! I feel personally responsible for each and every one of them, and don’t have it in me to say “Too bad” and not try my best. I’ve known many teachers who were willing to simply let things slide or simply do the bare minimum or less. This particular position sometimes attracts those characters. But I can’t do that, as I am blessed and cursed with a moral conscience that does not allow it. So every time I fail to meet a given need, or forget something or don’t get to something, it is seen as a demoralizing failure on my part. I don’t think my standards are too high, but with this many kids, the toll has been substantial. In the grand scheme of things, forgetting to send a jacket home or keep up with who had a BM when is comparatively minor, but this sort of thing has been happening more and more this year. I feel like I’m losing my mind. But I’m trying to noodle it out and basically chalk it up to the fact that I am trying to do the best that I can under the present circumstances. I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but I do have high standards for myself. I expect mistakes and expect to learn from them. Is feeling down about neglecting some of my students perfectionism? I think that is what it is; I feel like all of my students suffer from neglect at least at some point during the day. I can not sit all of them around a table and have them physically within arms reach. When they are being positioned and changed, those not needing positioning are hanging loose. When teaching those who are less disabled, I can barely include those who are more involved because they all need intense instruction!
Horace’s Compromise (or at least the dilemma described therein) has officially arrived in my classroom.
New Project – My Backyard October 14, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Blogging, Linux, moving on.add a comment
In the interest of fairness, I’m unveiling my latest blogging project. Longtime readers know that I occasionally blog about Linux, and sometimes people actually read it.! It’s a small niche project and I enjoy being part of that little niche community. While more eyeballs land on this blog day-in and day-out, blogging for and about enthusiasts is quite an adventure.
Here, I write for and about my life in the world of exceptionalities, professionally and personally. It’s been a total labor of love, and I enjoy it. In the early days, as an anonymous blogger it was a great place to vent my spleen about being a teacher and a parent. Then I came out as “me” and made this accessible to everyone. And several people in the higher echelons were not well pleased with many of my opinions and writings. So I find myself still trying to find a voice of passion that is still acceptable professionally. Not an easy tightrope to walk upon! And this is a source of frustration in my writing here, since it often feels stilted. There’s definitely a pall of oppression that weights things down in my present teaching circumstances.
There are going to be changes, no doubt. I’ll write more on those as we go along, but in the interest of disclosure I’m unveiling a new blog: My Backyard. This is where my interests in science, nature and agriculture can come together and hopefully find expression. Plus, it’s a place where I might be able to post on-topic pictures without running afoul of FERPA or HIPAA or any other privacy/confidentiality laws!
The whole beekeeping bug bit while I was helping Thomas with a school project a month or so ago. He had drawn the topic of “wasps” for a report and we started researching and took a few pictures in the backyard and pit together a little power point. I then extended the research to bees, in general, and…well, the rest is already blogged over there!
This place isn’t going dark, by any means. I still have the GAA to finish! Plus I want to blog my last 10 years “by the numbers.” You’ll know it when you see it. But if things slack off here even more than they already have, you’ll know why!
D.
Getting the GAA Finished October 3, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Alternate Assessment, Curriculum, Special Ed., Special Education, severe disabilities.2 comments
My goal is to finish my entire GAA before Christmas. It’s a lofty goal, but it is totally possible. In order to have any realistic shot at it, though, I need to have all of collection #1 finished before the end of this month. So how am I doing?
I’m over half finished, but I’m being reminded as to why it is a serious mistake to wait on data collection for these things. Murphy likes to set up camp right in the middle of one’s plans. The more urgent, the more likely things will go wrong. In this case, it happens to be the flu. The same thing happened last year with one of my students. He missed more school while I was working on GAA activities than in the previous 2 years combined! And so it is this year as I have a student who has been out a couple of weeks due to the flu. Plus we had a flood day, and who knows what other natural disasters, delays and issues will crop up?
This is why a body has to ruthlessly hack, chop, fight and claw through this process with as much speed and efficiency as practical. Stuff happens, and the longer things are put off, the more stress that will visit later.
I’ve written my basic outline on a planning sheet, and am busy checking off as I go. The lesson plans feed into the GAA tasks and follow the outline I’ve mapped out. Next month, while waiting for the 3 week lag to pass before laying into collection #2, I’ll do some alternative activities that also fit the GAA plan. so in a sense, I’ll have a parallel portfolio of other tasks to use in the future, if necessary.
With my present numbers and the severity of my students, it is difficult to do anything outside of a couple of tasks per day. Every student needs changing, every one needs feeding and most of them need to be positioned/repositioned throughout the day. Plus I have 2 new paras to train and an old para who came back after it took 8 years to get rid of her. So it is a major challenge just to keep the fires out.
So when it comes to nailing down a given GAA task, it is best to plan on doing the same task multiple times. It’s unlikely that all students will be there for a single take, and it is also unlikely that you’ll get a decent or usable collection on the very first trial. so I generally schedule 2-3 tasks over 2-3 days in order to have multiple opportunities to get it. I’m also an opportunist when it comes to grabbing data and using resources. This is another reason to get all over a basic collection. Sometimes, something better comes along and you have a chance to jump on it.
For instance, I was doing some listening/speaking/viewing activities with the Gotalk with a student, when the SLP came in. I quickly got her to work with my GAA students on the required task, and got pictures and data to go along with it. Things just clicked into place. I like to get a variety of people involved, including OT’s, APE teachers, and other therapists. The idea is to incorporate a lot of diversity into the mix so there are several options and pieces of evidence to choose from. It also looks good on the final product, because it illustrates that this isn’t just a one-time deal and reflects superior teaching practices. If you are all stressed about just getting the thing done, you may miss these opportunities because of sheer stress. What the knobs who are pushing for “accountability” fail to see is that no one performs at their best if they are overly stressed. This assessment is not assessing students, it is assessing teachers. So get it it done quickly and then keep improving it as time passes. With increased revisions, it does get better, but you can not revise and improve what you have not already finished! I find that having a time line and calendar helps. It keeps me focused on daily goals and tasks rather than being overwhelmed by this big, huge thing hanging over me. It’s easier to make progress when it isn’t looming so large.
That being said, it is looming large! And having a student absent fir a long period of time does derail my little calendar. At first, I wanted to hold everyone up, so we could all move through together. But I couldn’t wait forever, so I tried to do some of the easier tasks that were most differentiated across participants, which for me is the ELA speaking/listening tasks. Science and social studies seem to lend themselves to more group work, but I’m not waiting anymore. We’re going to go ahead and plant our plants and move on.
And remember as Murphy is fond of saying: As bad as things may seem at the moment, they can always get worse, and they probably will. So you might as well enjoy the moment!
Hopefully, the rest of you teachers are progressing along! Good luck!
National Autism Center Report October 2, 2009
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Behavior Analysis, Ed Policy Discussion, Teachers, Therapy.add a comment
Before I even get into anything about the report itself, I do want to mention that actually getting a copy of the report involves submitting your name, email and state. I looked for any privacy notices regarding this information, but didn’t see any. So before even reading it, I resolved that I was going to mention this hoop that everyone must jump through. I think it is needless and detrimental to the stated primary mission of the organization which is to help professionals and families of individuals with autism. If you’re going to release the report to the public, then release it. If you’re going to harvest information from people who want to see the information, then be explicit about that.
