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I'm with you. Because the kids who don't need crutches will be the leaders, I think we have to serve them first. Not that we don't address the needs of special ed kids but we can't let it be at the expense of the kids for whom education will make a difference. My school's budget is, disproportionately, in favor of special ed. and I don't see that changing. Every time there is an increase (which we haven't had in years) special ed gets a bigger increase but when there are cuts, they come out of regular ed. or teacher benefits.
People need to wake up and realize what all these acoomodations are costing. If you want them, great. Just pay for them. Don't rob the general ed budget to put them in place.
Education budgets are state monies. Federal monies fund IDEA 2004-- that is, children with IEPs bring extra dollars into the system. And that assumes that all accommodations are costly, which is not so. Changing homework parameters, providing a visual schedule to be taped to the desk, or teaching a child with adhd to use a sheet of paper to block out the visual busy-ness of, say, Harcourt's Math 5 book, cost nothing. (One could argue that providing a social skills group costs the school by utilizing guidance counselor hours, but it is offset by the funds being brought in by the IEP funding.)
If you want to be angry about unfunded mandates which eat into state education budgets, look at NCLB. If you want to really get angry about priorities, look at your school board budget and check out administrative costs. Johnny's education isn't improved by the superintendent's car allowance, the ten assistant superintendents (and associated support staff), or by the salaries that rival members of Congress.
Education budgets are state monies. Federal monies fund IDEA 2004-- that is, children with IEPs bring extra dollars into the system. And that assumes that all accommodations are costly, which is not so. Changing homework parameters, providing a visual schedule to be taped to the desk, or teaching a child with adhd to use a sheet of paper to block out the visual busy-ness of, say, Harcourt's Math 5 book, cost nothing. (One could argue that providing a social skills group costs the school by utilizing guidance counselor hours, but it is offset by the funds being brought in by the IEP funding.)
If you want to be angry about unfunded mandates which eat into state education budgets, look at NCLB. If you want to really get angry about priorities, look at your school board budget and check out administrative costs. Johnny's education isn't improved by the superintendent's car allowance, the ten assistant superintendents (and associated support staff), or by the salaries that rival members of Congress.
I don't know how it is in the school you teach in but in mine, special ed is a big chunk of the budget. NONE of that money finds it's way to my classroom no matter what accomodations I make for students with IEP's. If I'm lucky, I get a child with a para who takes some of the pressure off of me.
As the parent of 3, all above average intelligence children, I can attest to having to advocate just as strongly for my gifted two as I have done for my learning disabled one.
Why does it have to be either/or? They are all entitled to an education, even if they don't all learn the same way.
While I think the spec. ed dollars are important, I also think they have been diluted by behavioral problem students. My son has done well with an IEP, and I think it is because he remained in the regular classroom. I would not want him in a disruptive setting. If a student's behavior is making it difficult for the others in the class to receive an education, than they belong in an alternative setting.
Behavioral problems are not necessarily a special ed issue. They can be, but they can as easily be the result of a snotty kid with no regard for others. Of the four biggest behavior problems in my child's last public school class, two were ESE. And both of those were essentially being raised by wolves, and abetted by an administration and teachers who wanted to rescue their poor downtrodden souls rather than refer them to the alternative center. So it's really hard to tell whence sprang the behavior problems.
Please try taking my posts at face value instead of reading into them. It adds nothing to the debate.
I read nothing into your posts. On the internet, words are all we have to go by, cutesy little emoticons notwithstanding. If you choose not to qualify statements, they remain broad brush claims.
I'm with you. Because the kids who don't need crutches will be the leaders, I think we have to serve them first. Not that we don't address the needs of special ed kids but we can't let it be at the expense of the kids for whom education will make a difference. My school's budget is, disproportionately, in favor of special ed. and I don't see that changing. Every time there is an increase (which we haven't had in years) special ed gets a bigger increase but when there are cuts, they come out of regular ed. or teacher benefits.
People need to wake up and realize what all these acoomodations are costing. If you want them, great. Just pay for them. Don't rob the general ed budget to put them in place.
Now this I have to heartily disagree with. Just because a student needs help in one area does not mean he or she is not extremely talented in others and it certainly doesn't mean they will be reliant on accomadations forever. I needed some extra help when I was in middle school, because I had some issues with basic writing skills thus the IEP. Even so, I always scored in the around or above the 90% percentile on almost every scale score test I have taken including the IQ test (142) and the Law School Admissions Test and graduated from a private liberal arts college, which was mostly paid for by scholarship in 3 and 1/2 years no sweat. Only missed *** laude by .04 and would have it if I stayed the extra semester. The funny thing is I am not at all unique. There are tons of people exactly like me who may have needed a little help finding strategies in one field or another during their K-12 education.
No one or at least only a tiny minority of people are going to be good at everything and it is a really bad idea to sell someone short just because they may have needed a little help at one point in their education.
I don't know how it is in the school you teach in but in mine, special ed is a big chunk of the budget. NONE of that money finds it's way to my classroom no matter what accomodations I make for students with IEP's. If I'm lucky, I get a child with a para who takes some of the pressure off of me.
A couple of things come to mind here:
You are a teacher in a non-standard environment (charter school) with one year's experience. I am a homeschool parent, former public school parent and volunteer, and education advocate with experience in several large local school systems. I would not be surprised to find that our experiences are quite different.
Second is that I seriously doubt you would be able to identify which monies coming into your classroom come from which source, other than that ESE paras are paid from IDEA money, Title One staff are paid from Title One money, etc. Further, the salaries paid to ancillary staff like OTs, PTs, and speech therapists affect the quality of education for the student in your classroom-- not your own comfort level. You wouldn't see a tangible cause/effect relationship there, since it's not as if ESE students were assigned special beakers or microscopes with little pink or yellow triangles for identification purposes.
If you've a real interest in how IDEA money impacts your classroom, and how it's spent at your facility, I would suggest you research your school's budget.
Too many things are lumped together under the "special education" umbrella.
No doubt.
There's a truism among treatment personnel that kids with insurance have behavioral disorders and kids without have records, but that's no longer strictly the case since schools have started initiating their own psych referrals for behavioral issues rather than waiting for parents to do it. With school psychologists at hand, insurance isn't strictly necessary.
Additionally, in some states, gifted ed is considered exceptional ed because it is the only way to get it funded. I suppose the parents of disabled kids could complain that those horrid gifted programs are taking resources away from the kids who are truly needy, but that's not generally an issue.
I am wondering if we are forgetting all the normal regular kids and focusing too much on the special ed kids. Before anyone jumps down my throat, I have a child that has a IEP so been there, done that,
But I also have a very smart child who is in 4th grade. Last year was horrendous for him as he badly wants to learn, but there are a group of 5 kids in his class of 24 that are just a huge distraction in the class. Most of the kids are great, but the teacher seems to take up most of the day trying to discipline these kids. And of course then the other children who arent a distraction are either being ignored, or are waiting for the class to get back together and to move forward.
Are we going to have a graduating class in a few years that are so far behind because of mainstreaming, or because the discipline isnt there due to due process.
I remember when the girls were behind in science and math and all the attention was given to them, so much that the boys were left behind. Now are we going to have the smart kids behind??
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My father ran a global organization that helps those with special needs, and my sisters both volunteered hundreds of hours to work with Special Ed, but I personally feel that we waste a lot of money and resources on those who take extra work.
Like in school when we focus on the dumbest kid in the class, the whole class suffers. Why do we waste resources on kids who have no potential to achieve anything more than mediocrity?
It sounds harsh, but if you had a grove of 30 apple trees and 1 of them produces perfect apples, 5 produce really good ones, 20 produce average ones, 3 produce mediocre ones and 2 of them are riddled with worms and problems, which trees would you value the most? Now if you value that perfect tree the most, why focus most of your energy on those defective trees? How is it any different with kids? Why do we spend extra money and time on kids with no real potential?
I went to public school for four years (grades 7-10) and I saw how terrible the system is. As someone who was coming from a school for gifted kids and being in the gifted program at my public schools, I was held back by the slowest and dumbest kids and found myself regressing academically. Part of the reason for that is the fact that teachers, classrooms and financial resources were being wasted on Special Ed kids.
Wouldn't we be much better off having ACTUAL Special Education for people who are truly special and not "special"? Think about it, instead of trying to teach someone with a 75 IQ how to measure angles in a triangle (real useful when working at K-Mart), we could be nurturing the gifts of the brightest kids and actually seeing some positive results.
SPECIAL EDUCATION COSTS AN ADDITIONAL ~$6,500/yr (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1297237.html - broken link)
Quote:
The total cost for special education students was $6,335 on average, or 2.3 times the cost for regular classwork, the report said. About 11 percent of the nation's school children receive special education.
Wouldn't we be much better off spending $6,500 on the top 11% of kids instead of the bottom?
Here's another analogy: Your favorite team drafts 4 running backs for some reason. 1 stud in the 1st round, 2 average guys in the middle rounds and one scrub in the last round. Who would you want your coaching staff focusing on most? The scrub or the star?
My father ran a global organization that helps those with special needs, and my sisters both volunteered hundreds of hours to work with Special Ed, but I personally feel that we waste a lot of money and resources on those who take extra work.
Like in school when we focus on the dumbest kid in the class, the whole class suffers. Why do we waste resources on kids who have no potential to achieve anything more than mediocrity?
It sounds harsh, but if you had a grove of 30 apple trees and 1 of them produces perfect apples, 5 produce really good ones, 20 produce average ones, 3 produce mediocre ones and 2 of them are riddled with worms and problems, which trees would you value the most? Now if you value that perfect tree the most, why focus most of your energy on those defective trees? How is it any different with kids? Why do we spend extra money and time on kids with no real potential?
I went to public school for four years (grades 7-10) and I saw how terrible the system is. As someone who was coming from a school for gifted kids and being in the gifted program at my public schools, I was held back by the slowest and dumbest kids and found myself regressing academically. Part of the reason for that is the fact that teachers, classrooms and financial resources were being wasted on Special Ed kids.
Wouldn't we be much better off having ACTUAL Special Education for people who are truly special and not "special"? Think about it, instead of trying to teach someone with a 75 IQ how to measure angles in a triangle (real useful when working at K-Mart), we could be nurturing the gifts of the brightest kids and actually seeing some positive results.
SPECIAL EDUCATION COSTS AN ADDITIONAL ~$6,500/yr (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1297237.html - broken link)
Wouldn't we be much better off spending $6,500 on the top 11% of kids instead of the bottom?
Here's another analogy: Your favorite team drafts 4 running backs for some reason. 1 stud in the 1st round, 2 average guys in the middle rounds and one scrub in the last round. Who would you want your coaching staff focusing on most? The scrub or the star?
You are making a very broad assumption that some how all of the students who use special ed resources are at the bottom as is demonstrated in all of your allegories, which is often not the case. Let me ask you something what would you do with a child who can write brilliantly, but is sub-par in math? Or a student who is an excellent pupil of the sciences, but has trouble differentiating the civil and revolutionary wars in history? With many special ed kids this is the case, they may hold a C or B average, but their grades are a mix of high As and Ds. What do you do with them? It is not so much about good and bad apples or slow and fast runners as it is about what do you do with 8th grader X who struggles to pass science, but easily knows the background and historical significance of events ranging from the battle of Ain Jalut to the invention of interchangeable parts.
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