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I have to be a bit of a devil's advocate here. Why is it that teachers are expected to do what parents here are saying they can't do?I actually have an answer to this question!
That is, parents can't get one or two children to, say, do homework and study at home for a bit, whereas a teacher who has them for 45-50 minutes a day (or twice that every other day if block scheduled) is not only supposed to teach but also supposed to motivate them enough to do the homework and studying?
A few of them.
FIRST: Kids are often much more cooperative with other adults than with their own parents. That's why so many parents I know, parents who were trying to reteach content at home, finally gave up and hired tutors.
C. is your classic cooperative kid, and when he was in 8th grade, as I recall, we reached the point where I was shouting so much something had to give. That was when I discovered Karen Pryor's work. I remember, going into Christmas break, devouring Pryor, having a major heart to heart with myself, and vowing to do a 180 as soon as the new semester began, which I more or less did. The household was pretty close to being in crisis, and C. is a mild-mannered kid! (If Susan S is around, she'll vouch for me on that one - )
I used to think: what would be happening around here if C. weren't a mild-mannered kid?
Meanwhile, C. was having precisely zero problems at school. I think he had one - no, two - detentions in his entire 3 years at middle school, and one of the 2 was a group detention most of his math class (math again) served for being disrespectful to a substitute teacher.
SECOND: Parents really, truly don't have the training we need to deal with a lot of the stuff we deal with. Not that parents should have to have training! I'm not suggesting anything of the kind. I'm just saying that, for instance, using the principles of positive reinforcement to deal with a challenging autistic child (or a completely non challenging nonautistic child you're trying to reteach math to) does not come naturally to anyone, as far as I can tell.
Of course, teachers don't get a lot of training in behavior management, either, but schools do seem to have school psychologists these days, and at least some of them have had some real training and experience.
Good teachers do acquire an extremely impressive set of skills where classroom management is concerned, something I'm still working on. A behaviorist I know told me that classroom discipline is THE issue every new teacher faces, and that includes a new teacher who has just served a tour of duty as a Marine.
THIRD: Even if the parent is highly skilled at maintaining law and order inside the home, the parent is not inside the classroom. I can't tell you how often I've heard about school personnel assuming that parents can magically, from miles away, directly influence their children's behavior inside the classroom.
My own funniest story on this score concerns Andrew, who, a few years ago, was being very difficult on the bus. Now Andrew, as I think a fair number of you know, is autistic and nonverbal. He doesn't talk. We can talk to him, but it's not clear how much he understands.
(Andrew is also weirdly smart - this is something the teachers and aides say, btw, not just a parent fantasy .... Andrew is sui generis. I need to say that out of loyalty and also out of honesty. btw, Susan can probably attest to that one, too. Susan watched Andrew during my mother's funeral, and afterwards said to me, "I think he ordered something from Amazon.")
Anyway, Andrew was being difficult on the bus, and the head of transportation called to discuss the situation. He wanted me to make Andrew stop. Somehow I, as the parent, was supposed to be able to change my autistic child's autistic behavior on a bus. When I expressed skepticism that I would be able to influence Andrew's behavior from afar, the transportation director asked me: Can you have a talk with Andrew?
I said: Andrew doesn't talk.
The thing is: the transportation director knew Andrew doesn't talk. And yet he was on the phone asking me to 'have a talk' with my nonverbal son.
That's an extreme example, but I've seen the same thing with ADHD kids: I've seen school personnel assume that a parent can affect an ADHD child's behavior without being present to do so.
That's not how ADHD works. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite of how ADHD works. I know a family that has done a fantastic job with their very ADHD son: meds, therapy, very strong behavioral boundaries, lots of love, authoritative parenting --- a fantastic job. Their son is a very good kid.
Nevertheless, as far as I know he was quite disruptive in classrooms through all of through middle school (not sure about high school). The classroom disruption problem in his case was really, truly a "school problem" in the sense that it was taking place inside the school. His parents had his behavior well under control at home; I saw it. They had also taught him terrific manners; I saw those, too. But keeping his classroom behavior under control inside a classroom without being inside the classroom themselves was not possible.
With disorders like autism and ADHD, if the school doesn't deal with the problem, it doesn't get dealt with.
FOURTH: This brings me to my final answer, which is that when a teacher can't manage a student in his or her classroom, other arrangements need to be made by the school.
This isn't just my personal opinion; it's pretty much the law. By law, a student who can't function inside a regular classroom must be evaluated, must be given an IEP (if that's what's called for), and must be educated -- by the school.
That said, I know this is an area where schools often miss the boat. The horror stories I've heard .... I think the phrase "radical inclusion" (not my term) captures it. When school administrators decide that full inclusion (what is it called now - collaborative classrooms?) is the way of the world come what may, when
Also: full inclusion for all is a decision the school has made, not the parents. The school has a responsibility to provide a calm and safe learning environment for all children.
That is my opinion; general education children have no entitlement to nondisrupted classrooms, sad to say.
21 comments:
"...parents can't get one or two children to, say, do homework and study at home for a bit, whereas a teacher who has them for 45-50 minutes a day (or twice that every other day if block scheduled) is not only supposed to teach but also supposed to motivate them enough to do the homework and studying?"
Who is expecting teachers to do this, the parents or the school? With full inclusion, the school is the culprit. Who is stopping the school from separating the willing and able from those who are not? If a school creates a difficult learning environment on purpose, they won't get a lot of sympathy from me when they blame the parents when it doesn't work. What about the prepared students? How should they react to schools pointing their fingers at other parents when a solution is within their control?
You said "schools do seem to have school psychologists these days", once again showing that you're not in California. Next you'll be expecting nurses in the schools, and class sizes under 35 in elementary school.
I think it's reasonable to split the difference here. You're right that parents are not in the classroom with their kids, and that schools are (or should be) responsible for managing classrooms and making other arrangements when student behavior is outside the bounds of acceptable. However, it's also true that the general level of home training that a group of students is getting has a huge effect on classroom climate. I'm talking about general ed kids here more than special ed. General ed students can cause a lot of disruption, and there is certainly a domino effect that goes on. Students who are entitled brats at home are much harder to manage. Much. They are much more likely to think that acting out is amusing, or that the classroom is a good place to exert their social dominance.
You said "schools do seem to have school psychologists these days", once again showing that you're not in California. Next you'll be expecting nurses in the schools, and class sizes under 35 in elementary school.
NY has all of these people in spades. Tiny little districts have full-time nurses.
With pensions!
They are much more likely to think that acting out is amusing, or that the classroom is a good place to exert their social dominance.
Absolutely ---- BUT the school has to deal with it.
The parents of these kids have already shown they're not going to deal with it, and the parents of the other kids can't deal with it.
The school has the responsibility to maintain classroom discipline, create an environment that promotes learning and responsibility, etc.
Oh, I absolutely agree that the school has to maintain classroom discipline. I'm just saying that they can do a better job of that if the kids arrive at least adequately socialized.
Regarding full inclusion of disruptive students, in my district ( in Pennsylvania) it seems like administrators choose full inclusion because it is the lesser of two evils. If they take disruptive students out of regular education classrooms, they risk lawsuits and being placed on watch lists by the state department of education (Part of the settlement of the Gaskin case was that districts are ranked based on how inclusive they are and face penalties if they are poorly ranked.). Lawsuits and watch lists absorb the district's money and its employees' time. I think my district just puts every child into a regular education classroom and it either "works" or we collect enough data to defend against parental or government criticism ( of course by that time, the other children may have had to put up with months of disruption). So while administrators may be partly to blame, court rulings and government have also put administrators in a tough place. The lower part of this Web page explains how corrective action works in PA. http://keystoneeducational.com/Gaskin%20v.doc
"So while administrators may be partly to blame, court rulings and government have also put administrators in a tough place."
Another vote for charter schools. If the regular schools can't do it, then let the parents do it. Our schools, however, still talk about how full inclusion is a better educational model.
Our high school separates kids. The lowest level contains the kids who are more than a year behind academically by state testing standards. The top level is "honors", and the middle level is college prep. All of the trouble makers are in CP. It's a regular class. That's why many students try really hard to get into all honors classes.
This won't be done in the lower grades because the schools are smaller and they just don't like tracking. The high school doesn't call it tracking because the different levels are by subject, but anything that sepearates kids in the lower grades is considered to be tracking. It's interesting how this is allowed to change in 7th and 8th grades with the separation of kids in math.
Our schools increase the range of abilities in the lower grades and then claim that they all can get what they need using differentiated instruction and no tracking. Then, they don't want to allow kids to go off to charter schools.
It's an interesting effect. On one hand, they claim a better model of education, but on the other, they claim that they really can't do anything else because of state laws or the risk of lawsuits. They talk about how everything can be done with differentiated instruction and then rationalize that private schools can do better because the kids are pre-selected. Nothing is stopping public schools from pre-selecting or sorting. What's stopping them, lawsuits or their own educational pedagogy?
I've noticed this since my son was in Kindergarten. On one hand, you hear about the glories of full inclusion and differentiated instruction, and then in one-on-one conversations, you hear the real story. They can't separate kids and how some kids can easily catch up if they are gone for a year on travel. Private schools and charter schools can do better because the kids are pre-selected or "creamed".
Some claim that charter schools cheat because they don't have the same requirements and limitations as regular public schools. Everything is screaming that separating kids is good. The regular public schools are admitting it in their arguments against charter schools. Still, they want to keep full inclusion and differentiated instruction.
How long can they live in their own dreamworld?
My view is that they know that separation is good, but they can't do anything about it for one reason or another. Charter schools can do what they can't do. The solution is not to stop charter schools by claiming that what they do is not fair.
I actually work in a charter school. If a parent of a SPED student wants full inclusion, they get it no questions asked. Charter schools are just as vulnerable to lawsuits as any other school.
"If a parent of a SPED student wants full inclusion, they get it no questions asked."
Lawsuits drive pedagogy? I don't believe it. What law requires full inclusion? What law requires tracking by age? Can SPED parents do that in high school?
"All of the trouble makers are in CP. It's a regular class. That's why many students try really hard to get into all honors classes."
This is one of my issues with the local high school, which is the school I attended back in the 80's. At the time, there were two honors sections of everything, and two AP sections when there wasn't honors (so no honors English senior year, but all the honors students took AP). Now, there are a bunch (8-10) of honors sections, but still only two (or even one) AP section. So honors isn't honors, it is just a way to avoid the general population. Or what used to be called college prep.
"What law requires full inclusion?"
IDEA, or at least it can be interpreted that way. It requires SPED students to be placed in the "Least Restrictive Environment" and so if the parents think that is full inclusion, it is very hard for the school district to prove that isn't appropriate.
"Oh, I absolutely agree that the school has to maintain classroom discipline. I'm just saying that they can do a better job of that if the kids arrive at least adequately socialized."
Or if the school's discipline is adequately supported at home. The (few) times that my kids had any problems with a teacher, we carefully explained to them that while we might agree that the teacher's methods were not the best, they still had to do the right thing. They had to listen to and abide by the teacher's rules.
The other part is having a school administration that supports classroom discipline. I'm sure I've posted before about the principal who responds to any office referral (such as student came in to class late, refused to sit down or stop talking, threw chair when told to do so) -- with an observation of the teacher the next day. To see exactly what the teacher did wrong. The example I give was observed by a supervisor -- a supervisor who took the student to the office so she could help the teacher out and explain it to the principal. Couldn't understand why the teacher was upset that she'd done that -- until she found out the "consequence" -- for the teacher not the student.
Our district ran a several year long "principal leadership" training program. It seemed to teach them to "just talk" to the kids and to remember that acting out is a "cry for help."
I heard one of these principals actually agreeing with a student who said he had no idea he shouldn't be shoving kids down the steps because his teacher had never told him that (this was a 5th grader). She told him "I'll speak with your teacher about that, so you'll know next time." And then she sent him back to class.
I do agree that no one can control behavior well from afar -- but you can certainly work as a team with a teacher/school. I also know of kids who are wretched at school and not at all like that with their parents. The reverse of what you describe. It's hard for the parents to realize what their kids are really up to. Though I will say, that if they can get to school to observe when the kid doesn't know they are there, things often change quickly.
Clarification -- it was a year long training/alternative certification program for principals (many with less than 3 years classroom experience). There were several years of one-year cohorts.
We are in the process of furloughing 100s of teachers...and yet many smaller schools still have 2 and even 3 administrators (450-500 students, a principal, assistant principal and sometimes a director -- and class sizes near or at 30 this year and higher next).
Oh, and part-time nurses (usually two half days per week at any school), and no school-based psychologists. They float to many schools, doing testing.
(Part 1 of 2)
The full inclusion movement in my district definitely evolved from three separate trends that coalesced in a perfect storm, so to speak. It didn't arise out of a belief system about inclusion or discovery-based learning or any of that. I followed the process very closely at the time (between about 1992-2002) because I was then teaching special ed (LD) and had a keen interest in providing appropriate programming to kids with reading disabilities, other LD or language impairment. The impetus came from above and had three prongs:
(1) Cost. There was a major effort to cut costs in some areas (senior administration not one of them, coincidentally), and Special Education was a target -- small classes, highly trained teachers, aides, paraprofessionals et alia were all very expensive. The research data (longitudinally) on self-contained sped programs for most students was also very disappointing. Inclusion was seen as a way to save money and still look egalitarian, socially equitable and all that. Our CEO had a public meeting about the issue where he was very frank that this was about money, but opined that our wonderful teachers would make the new inclusion work. We did not share his optimism (and still don't). Naturally, some SPED programs remain but they are very limited and the hoops to jump through for parents or teachers to refer students for these programs are daunting and endless. Currently, I'm told, a student has to be 4 years below grade level in all areas to qualify for a LD class.
(2) Change in parental attitudes, overall. At one time parents of children with disabilities were happy to see their children enrolled in a program geared to their needs, and in my district at least the teachers of many of these programs were specially trained and the programs well-resourced and effective. More and more, there has been a shift in attitudes. At least, we are now seeing a majority of parents refusing SPED services or classification, and insisting on their right to have their child in the general ed classroom. There are quite a few powerful and well-organized parent lobby groups that are politically active and support full inclusion, even for severely disabled students. To answer Steve H's question, can they demand full inclusion in high school, the answer is yes, they can in many cases. They can refuse to let their child be enrolled in a lower track or ability-level class even when the student clearly cannot possibly do the work and will fail. In effect, they have the right to ensure their child will fail. Which s/he does, and eventually either does go to a lower track or drops out (I have seen this phenomenon so often I have lost count).
(Part 2 of 2)We have students who in an earlier era would certainly have been placed in SPED whose parents refuse sped classification and services. The school cannot, except under extraordinary circumstances, place a child in sped without the parent's consent. Having a child with an exceptionality in my extended family, I have some idea of how the parents often feel: it may take them years to come to grips with the child's needs and limitations on a realistic basis. Even the parents of children with developmental disabilities (and very low IQs) in my former school were often uinwilling to accept that Junior would not be going to college, and should perhaps focus on learning life skills. In my family I saw the progression (somewhat like the phases of the grief process) whereby denial and magical thinking gave way to desperate search for "cures," to hope for a sudden breakthrough, to gradual acceptance and more realistic planning for the child's future. This can take years, however. And the child may be in an inclusive setting all this time, whether it is best or not.
3) Legalities. Although courts have occasionally upheld the rights of school disctricts to place students in a special setting over the parents' objections, this can take years and whopping legal fees. Most often, the parent wins. My district has lost several major appeals regarding sped placement, based on allegations of cultural or racial insensitivity and discrimination. Thus, there is no eagerness to press for segregated programs for minority children. Even with very violent and disruptive students, the process and documentation required to remove them from the least restrictive environment is daunting and very time-consuming. It can take YEARS.
In our case, the requirements for differentiation and inclusion flowed from the top down, and were a response to the gradual dismantling of sped services and offloading to the neighborhood school. I don't hear any chorus of believers here that this is a system that works better for most children -- especially where teaching of foundation skills and sequential mastery is required -- but we are obliged to do our best with what we have. "Differentiation" is constantly trumpeted as the solution, but I have yet to meet any school-based staff who think that it is the answer. Inclusion could work much better if it allowed for "Joplin plan" -type flexible grouping by achievement or instructional level, and adequate staff (aides, paraprofessionals, resource teachers) to provide targeted instruction to the high-needs kids. There never has been a golder era when everyone was better served, but I think that both our most vulnerable kids AND our potential high-flyers are disadvantaged by the current model. "Every classroom a one-room K-8 schoolhouse" doesn't seem like a worthy 21st century model to me.
Oh, I absolutely agree that the school has to maintain classroom discipline. I'm just saying that they can do a better job of that if the kids arrive at least adequately socialized.
I am laughing!
You made my day.
The other part is having a school administration that supports classroom discipline. I'm sure I've posted before about the principal who responds to any office referral (such as student came in to class late, refused to sit down or stop talking, threw chair when told to do so) -- with an observation of the teacher the next day.
Right.
That is appalling.
I talked to a woman who was subbing in the Bronx.
The miserable situation she was dealing with had to do with data collection requirements. As I recall, Bloomberg was collecting data on discipline.
In and of itself, 'collecting data on discipline' strikes me as a good thing.
But the way that was being handled by the principal of the school where she subbed was that teachers were simply ordered not to report any discipline problems. (We may have a similar situation with NYC police & crime statistics.)
Extremely disruptive kids stayed put inside the classroom -- and knew they were going to stay put.
This is yet another reason why I favor some kind of teacher-in-charge set up .... some way in which teachers are professionals as opposed to 'employees' who must be observed and evaluated.
Two years ago the BOE candidate we supported (he lost) was the husband of a teacher (a friend of mine, actually) and he had spent many years in management himself, in banking. He argued that the 'pyramid' needed to be flipped upside down, I think it was. Administrators would have a largely supportive, facilitative role, as opposed to a top-down evaluative role.
Of course, with tenure and unions and state standards etc ... if teachers were 'on top,' they would have the same temptations to game the system (so to speak)...
Nevertheless, teachers are the people who are actually inside the classrooms. They are on the front lines.
I **think** teachers are going to be less likely to decide that never sending a disruptive student out of the classroom is the 'solution' to a city requirement that schools report data on discipline -----
"It requires SPED students to be placed in the "Least Restrictive Environment" and so if the parents think that is full inclusion, it is very hard for the school district to prove that isn't appropriate."
But that isn't the driving force of full inclusion. If schools didn't want full inclusion, they wouldn't have it. What if parents want their SPED child in AP Physics? High schools don't solve that problem by using full inclusion.
"In effect, they have the right to ensure their child will fail. Which s/he does, and eventually either does go to a lower track or drops out (I have seen this phenomenon so often I have lost count)."
That's what they do in our high school. I don't know if they ask parents to sign a waiver.
There is an historical sensibility that there should be no tracking or separating kids in K-6. If they now extend the range of ability in these grades, this goal becomes untenable unless you have a model that seems to make it work. Educators had one ready and waiting that met their deepest philosophical leanings. They embrace full inclusion. I don't hear them moaning about doing things they don't believe in.
"The full inclusion movement in my district definitely evolved from three separate trends that coalesced in a perfect storm, so to speak."
Yes, the pieces all seem to fit, but cost wasn't the main driving force in our town. Nobody would complain about the cost of doing what's best for SPED kids.
I have also seen an attitude change with SPED parents, but they seem to use their classification as a tool for getting what they think their kids need. Many love full inclusion - some don't.
If many teachers fundamentally don't approve of full inclusion, they keep it a big secret. I know that some will admit in private that more able kids are the ones not getting what they need, but they often say that they will do fine anyway.
This is the point I was getting at. Do teachers believe in full inclusion and differentiated instruction or is it just a big front? Forget cost, the law, and what SPED parents want, that's not what I hear when schools tell me how wonderful the model is. It annoys me to now hear that maybe it's not their fault; that they are being forced to do it.
Do teachers believe in full inclusion and differentiated instruction or is it just a big front?
From what I learn from teachers in different states and districts, it is quite possible that many in your district (and certainly in some others I know of) are totally gung-ho on differentiation and inclusion. There are "true believers" out there.
But there's also an incredible range of opinion, beliefs, knowledge and skills among K-8 teachers across the country. I wasn't aware of it myself until I got active on listserves for teachers starting in the mid-90's. That was a revelation. There are vast differences in practice, philosphy, organization, attitudes.
I don't see any rah-rah support of full inclusion or differentiation, in my area, and I've been in both middle and k-8 schools over the last 15 years or so. In general, teachers - like most parents I talk to - support inclusion in principle, but with reservations. Inclusion for whom? For what purpose? With what support? With what assurances that the needs of other students will not be compromised?(etc.) As for "differentiation," so far it is perceived as just another top-down mandate that must be complied with. Teachers have always individualized to some extent, at least in the elementary grades; this is just a more formal and paperwork-intensive way of doing that. To the extent that it deflects attention from providing special needs kids the services that really are needed, we are skeptical, even suspicious, of it.
Because of the financial climate, we don't really anticipate any improvement in services to the sped kids in the immediate future, so we get on with it. Stupid mandates have been part of the ed biz for as long as I can remember; most of them die a natural death over time only to be (as Catherine pointed out) reincarnated with a different moniker.
On some of my teacher discussion groups these issues get bruited about a lot, and those who post tend to be more critical of these trends than not. But there are some who wax prolix in their enthusiasm for inclusion and differentiation -- so your local observation is probably quite accurate. It isn't necessarily similar in other districts, though.
Recently I had an extended conversation with a teacher in a district quite similar to mine and was amazed by the totally different attitudes, ethos and philosophies informing the teaching staff and administration, given that phenotypically the school milieux were similar. Instead, the differences were staggering.
I'd like to see a mix of inclusion for the less-academic subjects combined with focused, small-group instruction for the special needs kids at their instructional level. I know from my experience in LD back in the day that many of these kids could be effectively taught and eventually reintegrated into general ed classrooms without IEPs, but that will NOT happen in the present scheme of things.As for keeping our opinions secret -- in our contract, it specifically states we may not publicly criticize the policies of the district (as individuals). We can -- and I have done this -- join with others and make submissions to the school board, etc. to address our concerns about poicies such as sped, inclusion and the like, and suggest modifications or alternatives. This works about as well as parent input -- sometimes an effect, often not.
When asked (by parents, generally) I try to point out the limitations of inclusion and look for ways the parent can make the system work for the child, or what resources they can access outside the system if need be. I also encourage them to let their elected representatives know about the issues. One problem is it sounds like motherhood and apple pie -- who can be "against" inclusion? You have to reframe the issue as one of providing effective instruction for all students, not just a seat in the classroom.
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