Special Education Challenges

Assistant Principal Interview:

When asked the about difficulties regarding 504’s and IEP’s there were two circumstances that stood out in our conversation. 

The first was a situation unique to our school.  Our school is an IB magnet therefore students have to meet certain requirements to be accepted into our school.  One of the requirements is receiving scores on or above grade level on end of grade tests.  Due to the fact that many EC students struggle on EOG’s we only a few students with IEP’s per grade level.  Because there are few students we have only one person who serves the entire school for all of the following responsibilities: Oversee all IEP’s, testing/eligibility for IEP’s, compliance facilitator, meet the needs of all EC students, and is the teaching assistant for all inclusion class settings.  This is a lot of work for one person to do.  Due to the amount of work placed on one person the administration must be well informed about EC and all of the accommodations and oversee the EC teacher is doing their job in order to meet compliance by law.

The second situation was regarding the testing modifications students require per their IEP.  More students are needed to be testing using the following accommodations: separate room, small group, read aloud, mark answers in book, etc.  Due to theses accommodations staffing the help necessary can be quite troublesome.  A student who needs these accommodations for EOG’s are now able to receive the same modifications during normal formal assessments throughout the year.  Needing all of the extra staff to do this is not funding by anyone and has required the administration to add more work to others case load.

Overall, my assistant principal discussed other challenges they face due to EC accommodations and I’m sure all other responses will vary greatly. Meeting the needs of all students is not easy; however it is absolutely necessary not only morally, but legally due to FAPE.

Supreme Court Ruling on Special Education

Summary of case:

The supreme court ruling regarding special education was about a student who was in high school and suffered from attention issues which his parents believed was a learning disability.  The school evaluated him and decided he did not qualify for special education.  In the students junior year the parents grew tired of the lack of support and pulled their student out of the school and placed him in a private residential school with a tuition of $5,000 a month.  When the parents moved the student from public to private school they did not notify the district in their decision.  The family then hired an attorney to address the situation and decided to sue the school district to pay for their child’s tuition.  Before the case could be heard it had to go to the supreme court in order to determine whether or not the parents could sue the school district for the tuition.

Supreme court justice John Paul Stevens wrote the 6-3 majority opinion: "We conclude that IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) authorizes reimbursement for the cost of special education services when a school district fails to provide a FAPE (Free and Appropriate Public Education) and the private-school placement is appropriate, regardless of whether the child previously received special education or related services through the public school."

The decision did not rule on the outcome case it simply determined that it was legal to try the case in federal district court.  It is now up to the federal judges interpretation of the supreme court ruling to decide if the school district failed to provide the child with the appropriate education and the private school was able to meet the students needs.

The family is suing the district for $65,000 in the total cost of tuition and additional legal fees which is estimated to amount to $500,000.  The case has been appealed by the district because the superintendent (Jack Musser) believes the outcome could be a landmark case and set precedent for future lawsuits.  No ruling has been made on the five year old case and I could not find any information supporting a final decision on the case.

Research used from the following websites:

MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31493504/ns/us_news-education/

Oregon Live - http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/06/us_supreme_court_rules_against.html

Do you support the decision?

In this case based upon the information that I have researched I do not support the supreme courts decision.  I do not support this because of the language used in the description of the majority opinion: “regardless of whether the child previously received special education or related services through the public school.”  This makes an extremely dangerous blanket statement that essentially supports any student and their parents to leave a public school without exhausting all options or opportunities available.  

As a public educator I have experience teaching students with and without disabilities.  Through this experience I can recall numerous examples where parents have asked  for their student to be tested for learning disabilities and were determined to not have a disability.  If the student has continued to struggle and has needed any help to be successful we, as a staff, working cooperatively with the parents have designed different accommodations to ensure success of the students involved.  This has been successful in all circumstances and it has not been necessary to provide special education services for the child to be successful.

  

When ruling in favor of the family the supreme court, in my opinion, supported the lack of collaboration between a students parents/guardians and their teachers/support staff.  Collaboration and open communication between parents and their school is an essential part of the process when educating students.  This ruling allows parents to go around the school district without trying to take other possible steps which could result in success.  Parents no longer need to exhaust their options before leaving a school district instead they have been empowered to leave if they don’t feel their child is receiving the proper support without even needing to notify the district of their frustration and choice.

You Tube Video Addition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

The video that I have posted above is about Sugata Mitra's educational experiment.  The experiment involved putting computers in places around the world (mostly India) where students are able to use the computers for whatever purposes they desire.  He then would go back to each site and assess their knowledge.  His results were truly remarkable demonstrating that children are able to teach themselves by working together if given the access necessary to information.