During last week’s Opelika City School board meeting, I was privy to assistant superintendent Brenda Rickett’s explanation of the system’s recent Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) results, those ultra-important percentages from the state that are allegedly meant to tell us whether our system’s schools are up to snuff.
It seemed that this year’s reading scores were not up to their proper levels across the system; though the percentage of children passing these high-stakes tests had risen over the last few years, it had not risen enough to please the educational gods in Montgomery.
In two cases, Opelika missed a passing grade on these tests because children who fell into the “special education” subgroup failed to score high enough of some of their tests.
This gave me pause.
“We’re making special education students take these tests?” I said to myself. “Seriously?”
Having known several special education teachers over the years (and having worked with students with special needs myself over the years), I found it downright mindboggling the state of Alabama would want to give high-stakes tests to those students.
We call these kids “students with special needs” because each of them is special and each of them has needs different from every other student.
The nature of high-stakes testing is meant to homogenize and blend together students into that almighty percentage, that simple pass or fail number, and seems to go against the style of individualized education and attention that is the spirit of the special education movement.
In your average special education class, you find students who run the gamut of disabilities, from developmental impairments to intellectual issues, from autism to Down’s syndrome and from specific learning barriers to kids with severe speech and language concerns.
Special education teachers have to spend their time catering to each of these wildly differing students’ needs, making sure they can understand the state standard mandated instructional materials in front of them using the methods that these teachers know works best for those individual students.
Sometimes, it’s beyond difficult for these teachers and aides to fulfill this task.
When you’ve got a pupil who, for all intents and purposes, thinks on the level of a six-year-old, it can be a Herculanean task to get that student to sit still long enough to try to get him/her to learn a ninth grade science standard like the names and locations of the planets, much less getting him/her to retain the material.
If daily lessons are a struggle, I shudder to think of the burden those students face when it comes time for these high-stakes standardized tests.
While it seems all well and good to want to hold every child to high standards, to want them to succeed at the best level they can, unfortunately not every student can meet those challenges, and what’s left is sadness and frustration on the part of teachers, parents and our friends with special needs.
Often, these educational policies are designed and mandated by politicians and bureaucrats who seldom see the inside of a regular classroom (outside of the occasional election year photo-ops), and seldom visit our special education classrooms at all.
Instead of forcing these students to have state-mandated standards and plans of study hammered into their brains, why can’t we take a more common sense approach and give these kids the sort of hands-on vocational and life training they’ll actually need once they leave school and enter the real world.
Instead of teaching them the planets, why not show them how to read and interpret restaurant menus, so they can order for themselves when they get hungry.
Instead of talking about valence electrons and balancing chemical equations, let’s teach them chemistry they’ll use in their everyday lives, showing them what household cleaning products not to mix together so they won’t cause accidents that may hurt themselves or others.
Instead of complex algebraic equations, let’s show them how to count out correct change from a cash register, useful basic math skills we could all benefit from learning.
Our students with special needs are great kids with the potential to lead normal, fulfilling lives that they themselves can manage and control.
But, they can only succeed in this task if those who control our schools’ curriculums can recognize a simple fact: those high-stakes test scores they revere so much only tell them one thing about our schools - how good kids are at taking those tests.
Until they take off their testing blinders, all of this is just a moot point.
We all want our kids to grow and thrive as best they can, but shoving testing at these kids isn’t the right way to produce excellent results, and, quite frankly, it never will be.
Oh, Cliff... Preaching to the choir, as far as I am concerned. My mother has taught in the MPS system for years, so she has a lot of first hand experience with the Alabama Edu Board, and almost none of it is favorable. My favorite example of the craziness she has dealt with: Last year they changed the test used to get the AYP numbers statewide. My mother is a math teacher for 5th grade. The curriculum given to teachers (statewide mind you) ended up not including several things that were on the final version of the exam and the teachers weren't told this until two weeks before hand. Their numbers ended up being not too bad for her class, but she attributes that to that particular class being bright, not an overall picture for the state and other classrooms. If they can't even get it together to tell teachers what is going to be on an exam that has such far-reaching consequences (funding, raises, keeping your job, assessments, etc), then how can we expect them to do anything else in a logical way. A large part of the problem is, as you point out, that the people on the board have either only worked in theoretical education and have no idea how a classroom works because they've never been in one, or have never worked in education at all and have no real concept of classroom/teaching dynamics. That is generally what it comes down to in my mind... Every. Single. Year. There is some new scheme that, if you asked a teacher what they thought of it, would have been veto'd due to simply being indefeasible. I have no idea what goes into doing your job, so why would someone put me in charge of telling you how to do things? But that's how it works in Alabama (and other states, I'm sure).
ReplyDeleteThis is already long so I won't go into it, but my brother is one of those special needs kids. We have had an excruciating time trying to find somewhere we can trust he is getting a worthwhile education (for HIM! He doesn't need chemistry or geometry. He needs life skills). In Montgomery, our public school system is so bad that we have a huge private school system for the people who can afford it. Unfortunately, if you can't and/or have parents who don't care, you fall through the cracks. The IEP's are great, but in practice can be hard to implement due to funding issues. Several schools here share a special needs teacher now (since the budget cuts last year at least) and they bounce back and forth on different days (I know two who do this). How is that helping those kids? Yes, there are funding issues, but I just don't see how education is always at the bottom of the list. How is it not more important that it is? This is SUCH a frustrating issue for me.
Shutting up now... This is just an issue that I have been rather close to for most of my life. I've always wanted to get involved in education reform here, but unfortunately, the people who are in charge resist it so strongly that until they are gone there is pretty much no point.
Kil, I've heard your story from several special education teachers and families with kids with special needs. It's heartbreaking, but until the people who make educational policies actually get into a classroom and see how their policies are hurting people, it will never change.
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