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When it comes to budget cuts SE mandates get funded first. Regular education gets what's leftover, if anything.
Several districts facing severe budget cuts are laying off significant numbers of non-SE teachers raising class sizes into the 30s for elementary and middle school while SE classes and support teachers related to NCLB target groups get fully funded.
The regular education students (the majority) lose out and so does society as we send fewer children with quality credentials to compete in the global marketplace.
ESE and gen ed get funded from two different pools, though. Local budget cuts don't impact the federal monies received.
And school boards cut teachers because it gets the public mad enough to accept bond issues, and they get their budgets back. If the board cut the superintendent's salary rather than the teachers', the public would likely applaud, which is not the desired result, at least from an administrative POV.
We're in danger of melting down and destroying ourselves in the swamp of politically correct induced mediocrity.
I'm among the older members of CD and the one thing I do enjoy about getting older is I don't care as much as I used to what people think of me. It really is wonderful, I just don't care. Allow me to be politically incorrect for a moment. Sometimes Johnny is just born stupid and no amount of education is going to make Johnny a medical doctor or even bring him up to "average". But we're all star struck with this equality thing but God doesn't work that way and some of us are more equal than others the day we are born.
Johnny is an idiot. Johnny wasn't born with the abilities most of us were. That is a fact of life.
Exactly. What in the world is an idiot with an IQ of 80 doing in a chemistry lab in the first place??? Why are they taking up the valuable space? What is going on is insanity!
The trend lo these last ten years is to put all kids in college-bound tracks. If nothing else, it makes good PR-- "look at us, look how many kids took APs last year!" (Never mind how few actually got 4s or 5s on the test.)
ESE and gen ed get funded from two different pools, though. Local budget cuts don't impact the federal monies received.
And school boards cut teachers because it gets the public mad enough to accept bond issues, and they get their budgets back. If the board cut the superintendent's salary rather than the teachers', the public would likely applaud, which is not the desired result, at least from an administrative POV.
Wrong. Some of the ESE money comes from the general pool (there is a per student allottment that every child gets regardless of whether or not they have an IEP). While there are added funds for ESE, when the state cuts the per pupil allottment across the board and you're not allowed to cut SpE services, 100% of the cuts come from regular ed. If the federal government cuts the allottment for ESE, then you take that out of the regular ed budget too because you can't cut special ed services. You're forced to figure out how to fund ESE whether the government gives you the money or not.
We can subscribe to the idea that each student requires and deserves precisely the same quantity and quality of education, I suppose. Of course, we would have to remove human teachers as well as human children from the equation, which would make us...well, android engineers, I suppose.
We could subscribe to the idea that every student deserves an individual education that caters to them and raise a generation of people who think they come first too. Not androids but that would be interesting to watch. I wouldn't want to live in that country but it would prove entertaining when they face, for the first time, as adults that the world doens't bend to your way of doing things.
To a certain extent, education should be the same for all. Adjustments should be made only when the child can't adjust. Part of school is preparing kids to operate in a world where they will be expected to do the adjusting to fit in. One thing they need to learn in school is how to adjust. And that's important. It's one reason many of the better companies to work for like to see lots of sports and leadership positions on applications.
I was passed over for a job by one company (great position) becasue I didn't do sports in high school. They were looking for team players with proven records. I was too individual to them. And I am. I pretty much went to school but didn't participate in extra curriculars, precisely, becasue I'm more individual than most. I can see their point. I can see where someone who was student body president would have been more desirable when you're looking to put together a team. Being part of a team means adjusting to the team not asking that adjustments be made for you. We're treading on thin ice if we teach our kids that each and every one of them deserves a special education designed just for them. The puzzle pieces have to fit when they enter the work world.
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