kitchen table math, the sequel: I'm angry...

Thursday, June 28, 2007

I'm angry...

Yesterday I picked up my son's report card. He was rated "above standard" in math and science (of course! Kindergarten, and we completed the 1st grade in math already at home! Russian math, not a fuzzy one). OK, but he was placed in class 105 for the next year.

Let me explain a little. I work in middle school - and I hate heterogeneous placement... I tried to ensure that my honor classes are as homogeneous as possible. Honor classes in each grade are numbered 01.

So today I went to my son's school to clarify the issue: do they track? What is 05 class? Can I place him in class with accelerated math (if they have it)?

The answers were (and since they know that I am a teacher "from across the street" they were a little more clear than a moment before on the phone obviously answering a similar question):

-District demands heterogeneous placement - we follow. There are no difference between the classes by number.
-well, we don't know who is the teacher in that class for sure (that's true, nobody knows anything for sure in the schools until September!)
-if he is recommended by his teacher he will be pulled out for enriched math no matter what class he is in

After I left the office, the secretary ran after me:
-She just looked up and found that 105 is an inclusion (CTT) class! So my son was placed there for good balance and this is fair to other students and teachers! (Sure, I know inclusion classes! He will be there to help the teacher teach slower students instead of LEARNING himself. And that "fair" talk drives me nuts - I heard it in my school from the teachers, too. I don't see too much good in heterogeneous placement, sorry. Especially, when it concerns my child. And I don't care if it's fair for other children. Life is a competition after all).

-Well, she understands... but she can't advise anything. If I have any other reservations, I shall feel free...

Now, Add to that Everyday Math curriculum and Balanced Literacy with Social Studies focused on the "Neighborhood" - I will start my search again. The worst - most public schools (all as I was told) use EM in Brooklyn, and I am restricted by many things such as who and how drops him off, picks him up from school etc. Oh... And I planned to relax this summer!
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25 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

We need parent overrides.

NOW.

June 28, 2007 at 3:16 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

One of Ed's colleagues has her child in .... I'm thinking a public school in the Village.

The school **asked** parents if they'd like to have their child in an inclusion class.

Parents who wanted their child in the class said 'yes'; parents who didn't want their child in the class said 'no.'

That's the way it should be.

June 28, 2007 at 3:17 PM
Anonymous said...

I am the special ed teacher in inclusion classes and the reason we have inclusion classes in our school is very much the opposite. We feel that the teacher is freed up to work with the students needing enrichment because I am able to take some of the load off with the struggeling students. The classroom teacher has time to focus on enrichment. The gifted students are actually at an advantage in our inclusion classrooms.

June 28, 2007 at 5:13 PM
Anonymous said...

I agree with the above comment by the special ed teacher. In our district, all classes are heterogeneous. There is a mix of abilities in all of them, with some fast learners, some slow learners and some in between.

In most classes, you have only one teacher, but in inclusion classes you have two. The general ed teachers can focus on the middle and higher end kids and the special ed teachers focus on the struggling learners. If my kids are going to be in mixed-ability classes, I prefer inclusion classes because there are two teachers.

All classes follow the same curriculum anyway.

June 28, 2007 at 6:25 PM
SteveH said...

"I am the special ed teacher in inclusion classes and the reason we have inclusion classes in our school is very much the opposite."

I assume this is some sort of team teaching technique. We have something like this at our public schools. If you are talking about about two teachers, then what would be best is to separate the kids into two separate (more homogeneous) classrooms.

The reason for combining very mixed-ability kids together is NOT for academic reasons. It's for social and feel-good reasons only. On top of it all, many of these kids need acceleration, not enrichment. I've heard all of this before. Even if some kids get enrichment, there are many times when all of the kids are grouped together. Schools just love the idea of using smart little Suzie as a role model and teacher's helper.

I had a meeting with the principal at my son's school (remember that he is going from the private school back to the public school). She is having big issues with teachers in the lower grades who do not want to differentiate on a content or acceleration basis. At most, they just want to do enrichment. They worry about tracking. Of course, you can't have it both ways; very wide mixed-ability classrooms and no tracking. Enrichment does not do the job.



"All classes follow the same curriculum anyway."

The same slow and poor curriculum. That's the problem.

June 28, 2007 at 7:10 PM
Doug Sundseth said...

"If my kids are going to be in mixed-ability classes, I prefer inclusion classes because there are two teachers."

If my kids are going to be hanged, I prefer that the hangman be efficient. That's not an argument for hanging my kids.

June 28, 2007 at 7:27 PM
Exo said...

I didn't teach inclusion this year, but some of my fellow-teachers on the floor did (science, middle school). And I observed inclusions many times, plus was taught how to deal with inclusions in ed. school. I know that in some inclusion classes the second teacher is present, in some - you are alone. And it is a usual method to have "smarter" students to help "slower" ones. I practiced it myself in the beginning (didn't know any better after college!) - doesn't work even with accelerated classes.
It's not really possible (or necessary) to differentiate instruction with the class of 30 (or 20) - it's easier to dumb down the instruction. And that's what many teachers are doing with inclusion classes (on top of already dumbed down curriculum).

I don't think my son is gifted, and he gets enough enrichment from me after school, but he could benefit from faster and more rigorous move through his schooling. (Well,we got a downside of being ahead of the class - he doesn't listen to the teacher for long now, since he already KNOWS what she says).

I will try to find a school over the summer while my son will be in Ukraine with my mother. I don't believe in my luck though. The thought is crossing my mind again - should he go to school in Ukraine?

June 29, 2007 at 6:34 AM
SteveH said...

" ..should he go to school in Ukraine?"


Schools want full-inclusion and no tracking in the lower grades. The only way to attempt this is to use differentiated learning and enrichment. This is reasonable only if you set low expectations and have a fuzzy idea of education. This is the fundamental flaw of modern education.

If you can survive until middle school, then the ideological dam breaks (hopefully) and schools become more flexible. Our public schools had a change in administration and all of a sudden, they started being flexible about placement in middle school. We are bringing our son back to public school for sixth grade and he will be in 7th grade pre-algebra instead of sixth grade Everyday Math.

Even so, we still expect a lot of headaches and home teaching. Our goal is to get him into high school, where he will have all of the competition and challenge he can handle. This is workable because my wife and I will make sure it works.

Education requires the most parental help in the earliest grades, less help (it could be more) in middle school, and little help in high school. He's got to learn to deal with it himself.

June 29, 2007 at 7:18 AM
Anonymous said...

It all just seems incredibly inefficient for the feel-good payoff the schools are hoping to achieve.

Certain across-the-board special ed children might be able to be included into an academic class with an aide, but not as many as people think. Their deficits can be all over the place making their class experience even more frustrating than their general situation already is.

Most of the academic classes that my son was included in (with his special ed teacher right there) were a waste of time because he was operating years behind his regular ed peers. I'm sure he didn't understand what the teacher was saying most of the time. The special ed teacher ended up having to re-teach or explain everything later in the other classroom.

Don't get me wrong. I think where you can use full inclusion, you certainly should. It is good for special ed kids as well as for the rest of the population, but these cases have to be decided carefully.

When there is no ability grouping, who does the teacher teach to? The top group is bored and the bottom has no idea what you're talking about. Slapping down worksheets in the name of differentiation is not the answer, nor are constant all day pullouts for each of the various groups.

June 29, 2007 at 7:21 AM
SteveH said...

"I think where you can use full inclusion, you certainly should."

Schools should see the difference between a full-inclusion classroom and a full-inclusion school. There is a charter school near us that groups kids by ability in math and English (and maybe something else), but uses full-inclusion classrooms for everything else. It's an attempt to address the issue, but I'm not sure you can decide that subjects like social studies or science don't deserve the same separation.

This comes down to a conflict between a social agenda and an educational agenda. The only way to resolve this conflict with full-inclusion classrooms is to lower grade-level expectations. That's why educators like spiraling curricula. Schools can pretend that everyone is at the same level. When parents complain, the school starts talking about differentiated instruction and enrichment.

Full inclusion does not allow acceleration by definition. Ergo, content and mastery of skills (acceleration) is not as important as critical thinking and understanding (enrichment). They have broken the link between mastery of content and understanding. Fuzzy education triumphs.

Of course, this thinking magically disappears by high school where everything is about mastery of content and skills. Parents just have to make sure their kids survive until then.

June 29, 2007 at 8:33 AM
SteveH said...

While I'm at it, how does full-inclusion really work? Schools just teach what they can to the students and then allow all but the slowest to move on to the next grade? Either the ability range is going to increase or the school is really holding the faster kids back.

Without pass/fail criteria, or with very low pass/fail criteria, how does a school know if kids are living up to their potential? My nephew only progressed because my sister and her husband expected more and worked really hard with him. The school was going to allow my nephew to set the pace.

For many kids, school is not natural or fun. It's hard work. It's constantly pushing to see how far you can go. When I was growing up, we didn't have the same wide range of abilities in class, but everyone knew that if they didn't work hard, they would get bad grades on their report card and perhaps have to go to summer school or stay back a year. This may not be the best motivation, but who's in charge here; adults or kids?

Schools don't like tracking or filters, so they allow kids to slide along with their age-peers thinking that everything is just fine. Then in middle school or high school they get the BIG tracking and filter and it's too late to fix the problems. If schools push problems off for enough years, the problems look more like external problems. If kids fail to learn naturally, then it's their own fault, is that it?

June 29, 2007 at 8:58 AM
Anonymous said...

You wanted to know how full inclusion works. In our school, the curriculum is aimed towards the middle of the bell curve. The special needs students get modifications(i.e., they are not expected to master the same material as the regular ed students).

My bright second-grader was in a full inclusion classroom this year. It was not a problem. He learned the same material as the other students in single-teaching classrooms. There were two teachers in the classroom, so the student-teacher ratio was pretty low. It worked well.

June 29, 2007 at 9:51 AM
Instructivist said...

"This comes down to a conflict between a social agenda and an educational agenda."

The way education has been redefined, the social agenda IS the educational agenda. Academics takes a back seat.

"The only way to resolve this conflict with full-inclusion classrooms is to lower grade-level expectations."

As is to be expected, there is great variety among SPED kids. Only some are LD. I had SPED kids who were academically more advanced than the rest since they get more intense, direct instruction in small groups. I suspect some are erroneously classified. In one case the teacher wanted to refer a kid who turned out to be gifted but was unchallenged in the setting he was in.

June 29, 2007 at 10:35 AM
Anonymous said...

I have one highly gifted child, and one classified child with severe delays.

The thought of them working together in the same group so as to enrich each other is ridiculous.

They need separate attention, and to be with students like themselves.

All that ability-grouping really accomplishes is the appearance of equal opportunity.

It's a stinky way to run a school.

June 29, 2007 at 11:47 AM
SteveH said...

"In our school, the curriculum is aimed towards the middle of the bell curve. The special needs students get modifications(i.e., they are not expected to master the same material as the regular ed students)."

If many kids get reduced expectations but area allowed to move on to the next grade, then the middle of the bell curve will get lower each year. At the very least, the bell shape will spread out further each year, making it that much more difficult to differentiate instruction. It's not saying much that a student learns the same material as the other students in single-teaching classrooms.

The presumption is that in the mixed classrooms, the students do mix for at least part of the day (otherwise, why bother), but they still cover the same material and get the same expectations as the students in the single-teaching classrooms. Something doesn't fit here. The kids in the single-teaching classrooms must be bored out of their minds, or the more able kids in the mixed classrooms get lots of homework. Of course, the real way it's done is to set the expectations really low for all.


You can't have it both ways. You can't have different levels of expectations in the same classroom and then expect any sort of meaningful mixed ability groupings. I've heard many teacher attempts to justify this arrangement, but the attempts are feeble at best. This arrangement has nothing to do with academics and everything to do with feel-good social manipulation.

June 30, 2007 at 7:42 PM
Anonymous said...

I think I'm saying that all classrooms are mixed. It's true that the single teaching classrooms do not have kids with IEPs. But they do have low-achieving kids who require extra assistance in math and reading (there are teachers and aides who come in to provide these services).

So in my opinion, it doesn't matter whether my son is in a single-teaching or a co-teaching class. In either case, it's mixed ability grouping. In a co-teaching class, at least there are two teachers, so the regular ed teacher can focus on the regular ed kids.

In all classes, there is some enrichment offered to high-achieving kids.

July 1, 2007 at 5:05 AM
Redkudu said...

I've been the primary teacher in high school inclusion classes for 5 years, and for 2 years in middle school before that. I've had no choice in the matter. Two of the biggest problems I've had with inclusion are 1) getting an inclusion teacher for the entire period (since we have more classes than we have teachers), and 2) getting an inclusion teacher who truly knows how to team-teach.

For #1 the problem is that not all inclusion students are assigned inclusion support for the entire period. Some are only assigned inclusion for 20 minutes per week, leaving me to have to deal with students either not emotionally mature enough or academically advanced enough to be in the class. Does it slow things down to the lowest common denominator? You betcha. Because that is the student I am held most accountable for. If that student's grades slide, I am called in to talk about more and more modifications for the student for my lesson plans, which affects my grading and planning time. One year, they wanted me to use small post it notes in order to communicate with a severely troubled child, because he couldn't handle being addressed directly. They wanted me to prepare post its for his classroom notes ("because he responds well to post-it notes"), and for any conversation I would have with him in the class. And I was taken to task by the SPED office once a week because his grades continued to slide and his inclusion teacher used my class period to go and get coffee.

Which brings me to #2. Last year was the first time I'd ever found an inclusion teacher who really knew what it meant to team teach, and since I get inclusion classes every year, I've requested him again (plus a woman from the distant past who was also helpful). Before him, and for 3 years, I've had an inclusion teacher who would come to class late every day, take her coffee, go to the back of the room, and proceed to fill out paperwork. When I tried to get her to help she would look at her charge, say "But he's doing his work," and go back to hers. The only thing I could get her to do was make copies, because what she really wanted was to be out of the room.

Modifications are also difficult. One year I had to modify my lessons three different ways for a single class. (And that year I had 5 out of 6 inclusion classes.) The first modification was for a student who was going blind. Though he had a large magnifier which he was supposed to place over the text, he didn't want to use it. His parents told the school it embarrassed him, so he didn't have to use it. His modification was to have everything - every question and instruction - read to him. Since his inclusion teacher was only assigned for 30 minutes, that left 60 minutes in which I had to juggle the rest of the class, and read this child every question I wanted him to answer. Oh, and did I mention he was going deaf as well, but the parents refused to get him a hearing aid because - you guessed it - it embarrassed him? So even if I'd already read the instructions out loud to the class, I had to repeat them to him side-by-side.

In the same class was a child who was so emotionally disturbed, the requested modification was to allow her to answer all written material with scenarios from an endless fantasy story she ran through her head, and in the case of essays, to turn in short stories instead. (Yes, high school.)

Every single student in an inclusion class is put at a disadvantage academically if the teacher or the inclusion personnel are not completely in sync and equally dedicated to making sure there is acceleration on all levels. And, of course, if the student won't do their work, or complains the work is too hard (because they haven't been pushed like this before), the SPED office steps in with mandatory modifications.

Believe me, not every teacher has a feel-good reaction to inclusion, and I'm not the only one. Though we don't get the option to opt out, it's become a small, private war at my school, with teachers complaining that inclusion students are required to do so little in the classroom that the "positive social interaction of their peers" is a bogus reason for them being there.

July 1, 2007 at 6:48 AM
Anonymous said...

Redkudu,

Excellent post. As a parent, a volunteer, and a fill-in aide, I have observed the same things over and over again. I have seen veteran teachers break into tears over the loss to their other students.

And 1 set of parents in denial can do a great deal of damage whent the distict lacks a backbone.

Fear of due process seems to drive a lot of districts to these appalling outcomes. I watched administrator after administrator come in to observe an undiagnosed seriously disturbed child whose parents insisted he be with the other children. The parents refusal to even have the child tested turned into a year of meetings and conflicting instructions for everyone involved.

I think if the parents of the other children had any true idea of how much time this child took away from theirs, they might not have thought it was such a good idea.

And the saddest part was that the person who will really pay the price is this child.

That's just one school, one district. This stuff is going on in a lot of places, I imagine. If the other parents don't stand up about it then it will just get worse.

The parents in the class I was in thought it was probably a good thing in the name of tolerance. They didn't see how many times I whisked him out of the room whenever he gave signs of a fit.

July 1, 2007 at 8:10 AM
Exo said...

Redkuku, what you describing is in agreement with what I observed in my middle school. My friend taught 2 inclusion classes this year, one with a second teacher who did nothing to help, and one without (a para was present once in a while).
I had two students with IEPs in my honor 7th grade, too. One bright girl (physically disabled - had one arm), who did perfectly fine. And a girl with slow reactions to everything - she was hosed in the honor class because kids were cruel to her in another class. Her para was reading and re-explaining tasks to her while I was teaching - annoying at least, since I require complete silence during lecture time. Other students could not resist to react to that "buzz" - and usually would start buzzing themselves. I hated it. By the way, the IEPs for those girls were never given to me, even though I asked. So I never did any modifications. The pace for the class was set to be pretty fast. The only thing I did for that girl - I gave her tests to take home (and she didn't do well even having the book in front of her!)and offered an additional time - a lunch with me once a week to help.
But inclusion means not just modifications, it also means more distractions: repeating, talking, moaning, whatever disturbed children do and teachers react to.
And as a techer - a normal misbehaving child can be punished - I will not feel bad for him/her. But I feel sorry - and can't do anything about constand disruptions coming from a child who is not able to control himself due to disability.

July 1, 2007 at 8:26 AM
Exo said...

And one more thing. During the elementary school years, children acutely feel "fairness" - meaning equality. They can't understand yet why one child gets more attention than another, why one child is allowed to talk, to tap, to have less work than others - it's not fair for them. Why a wrong deed can ban bring a different punishment - or not bring a punishment at all, depending on a child's IEP. I know that my son is highly sensitive to such things - he wants to maintain it fair, sometimes to his disadvantage. And that's right for his age.
That an additional downside for "regular" students in inclusion classroom.

July 1, 2007 at 9:21 AM
Anonymous said...

Maybe your school districts aren't implementing incusion very well. I'm just saying it wasn't a problem for my son.

I also think inclusion is better than throwing all the special ed kids together in their own classroom. Given how many different kinds of special needs there are (i.e.,dyslexia, autism, learning disabilities, mental retardation, etc.), this doesn't seem like a very good solution. Warehousing these kids never worked very well.

July 1, 2007 at 1:43 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

If you can survive until middle school, then the ideological dam breaks (hopefully) and schools become more flexible. Our public schools had a change in administration and all of a sudden, they started being flexible about placement in middle school.

I don't think this is true.

Middle schools came out of the "middle school movement," which is dedicated to heterogeneous grouping.

Anyone who really believes in the "middle school model" opposes ability grouping.

Which leads directly to our own situation, which is a middle school that has Darwinian gatekeeping, though it's hard to describe the connection....

Our middle school engages in a form of "tracking" that is intended to wash as many capable kids out as possible.

No disadvantaged kid will ever set foot inside accelerated math or Earth Science in the 8th grade AND many, many advantaged kids who could do the work are left by the wayside, too.

Ability grouping left in the hands of the school, not the parents or students, isn't good.

July 1, 2007 at 1:53 PM
Anonymous said...

I also think inclusion is better than throwing all the special ed kids together in their own classroom

Depends on the situation. A blanket statement like that seems to come from a feeling you have, not from hard evidence.

I have a son who flourished much better in a self-contained classroom than in a regular one. It depends on how the class is run.

For instance, a child with only reading difficulties but a normal IQ would probably be fine with inclusion. When you have problems across the board with borderline IQ and delays of 2+ years in most skills, you are often wasting the child's time forcing him into a regular classroom.

Warehousing these kids never worked very well.

It isn't warehousing if it is done carefully. You shouldn't assume that it is just because you see SPED kids together in a classroom.

I've experienced both situations firsthand so I know that self-containment (with academic subjects) done well is often the better choice.

But I have learned over the years that school districts will make very important and detrimental decisions based on money. I think every parent needs to keep their eyes open even if the inclusion classroom your child is in is fine with you at this moment. That can change in a heartbeat.

When districts try to cut corners they will throw the wrong mix of SPED children together. Parents are loathe to complain about the loud BD/Tourettes kid jumping around next to their highly distractible ADHD kid because they're often so grateful to have anyone help them at all.

Besides appearing ungrateful, SPED parents especially don't want to appear insensitive. They've usually experienced plenty of that over the years and don't want to appear unkind to another child.

July 1, 2007 at 3:00 PM
SteveH said...

"Maybe your school districts aren't implementing incusion very well. I'm just saying it wasn't a problem for my son."

There are two issues here; ideology and implementation. Both are a problem. First, the implementation will work only in the best circumstances. Second, full-inclusion means that the more able kids get less. Enrichment is not acceleration, and it doesn't matter what the non-inclusion class is doing.


"Warehousing these kids never worked very well."

Well, there you have it. There is the real reason. They want it both ways and they can't have it. That's why they have to lower academic expectations and claim that everything is OK.

July 1, 2007 at 7:27 PM
SteveH said...

"Middle schools came out of the 'middle school movement,' which is dedicated to heterogeneous grouping."

I suppose I should be careful about using the term "middle school". Our middle school doesn't follow the middle school movement. Actually, it's really a K-8 school, but the schools are in separate buildings; one for K-4 and one for 5-8. Most people call the 5-8 school "middle school".


"Darwinian gatekeeping"

This is interesting. Our school doesn't do gatekeeping in an administrative sense. It tries to give students what they need, assuming they survive the full-inclusion lower grades. However, it's really up to the students and their parents to make things happen. In that sense, it's Darwinian.

July 1, 2007 at 7:38 PM

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