My Squirrelly View of Education

Karen Jankowski’s April 3rd 2009 post Reaching for the Brass Ring…..of Independence, advances the proposition that it is time to end the war between the remediation and accommodation camps in special education and make Universal Design Principles ubiquitous in order to foster independence.

It is time to end the remediation vs. compensation battle and declare a truce. The emphasis on remediation at the expense of accommodation must stop. Instead, remediation

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MUST be COMBINED with compensation to accommodate for learning challenges if our students are to feel a sense of competence, mastery and independence.

This is what I have always believed and wanted to  practice in my classroom. Independence should be our ultimate goal. However, we will not be accomplish this unless education policymakers have to be brought into the fold. In the great debate over raising standards for all students, policy makers overlook the needs of our students.

In the push to turn the Michigan workforce from a blue collar industrial one to a high tech one, our legislators in their infinite wisdom forced a new state curriculum and high school exam upon us. Now In Michigan high schools we now have to teach a college prep curriculum to all students regardless of disability and/or career plans. This includes the requirement that all students (emphasis on the “all”) Algebra II for all students. The Michigan Merit Exam begins with all but the most impaired students taking the ACT, a college placement exam. Accommodations can be given only if the company that produces the ACT approves regardless of what a student’s IEP says.  To further muddy the waters, this test is what is used to determine AYP and accreditation. Pressure is now on districts to make sure that students receive the content needed to at least get an adequate score on this test.

While I applaud their intent to raise standards, I question their methods.

As Special Educators we are forced to accommodate and provide content at expensive of working on deficit areas. Yes, our goals are still suppose to reflect the deficit, but in reality there is no time to do both with the pressures of the state curriculum. Co-teaching has become the preferred way to deliver content. Few schools have spent the time or the PD to make co-teaching work. It has become the General Ed teachers grade the Gen Ed kids. The Special Ed teacher just grades the same assignments to a different standard. True collaboration doesn’t occur in this forced co-teaching environment.

As I see it, everyone in the process needs to, so Karen so eloquently states,

Understand that students learn differently, that a one-size-fits all approach does NOT work.

We need the time and the support of our administrators, legislators, and State Department to effectively apply Universal Design Principles to this curriculum. Co-teaching can be effective if all parties participate in developing appropriate classroom activities that ensure learning for all.

I implore our state Department of Education to poor money and time into making this curriculum work for our special education students, rather than spending time and money on the minutia of correctly completed paperwork. Please make this curriculum accessible enough so that our students just don’t give up and leave school.

For now, my colleagues and I will do what  we can to get our kids to graduation. We do need a paradigm shift but it needs to begin at the very top with our legistlature and the State Department of Education.

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How has learning changed? In some ways, a lot. In others, not so much.

A couple of quotes form the Time Magazine article really struck me.

1. “It’s important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it,” says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.

2. “Jobs in the new economy–the ones that won’t get outsourced or automated–”put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos,” says Marc Tucker, an author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy.”

These skills have always been necessary and have been developed in High Schools pre-NCLB. I learned these things in my High School Debate and Forensics program at Kearsley High School in Flint, MI. Unfortunately, few students took advantage of the opportunities these programs provided. In the 70′s my blue-collar high school was a “prep school” for the GM factories ran the city. Less than 3% of my class went to college. Those that did, did not return to Flint. As we graduated from college we witnessed the first round of GM’s downsizing that would turn downtown Flint into a relative ghost town. At my 5-year class reunion in 1980, there were classmates who had been laid off from GM never to return. For many of my classmates lacked the ability to adapt to change, to think outside the box, and to see opportunities in the future. The few who did, got retraining and left.

I think that if we are to serve our students, we must stress these same skills, so that they can meat the challenges our changing economy brings. Right know I have a since of deja vu. I feel that I am watching Monroe struggle with the same problems that Flint has and still is facing.

I fear that Michigan’s new graduation requirements, while admirable, when combined with the high stakes test, the Michigan Merit exam and NCLB’s AYP requirements will force schools to teach to the test rather than allow students the chance to create and explore this new world.

The appropriate use of web2.0 collaborative learning is a step in the right direction, but it is only a step. We need to get our students ask the “Why and How” questions when confronted an issue just like I was trained to do in Mrs. Turner’s Debate Class. The question “Why is this happening?” can lead to powerful critical thinking. It can challenge our beliefs, our thought processes. It can lead to creative solutions to complex problems. Likewise, the question “How can this be changed?” can lead all of us to create new answers.

This weekend I watched my 18 year son, a UofM-Dearborn freshman struggle with an argumentative essay for his composition class. He knows how to structure and write a competent paper, but he is lacking the ability to develop a complete, persuasive argument. He can use the web, but he lacks the facility to use any search engine other than the basic Google search. This kid is a math major (“Mom, calculus is fun. Get over it!”). He graduated with honors from a great high school that regularly turns out Merit Scholars. He took computer software classes, yet he was never taught basic web skills. I fear that we are and will continue to turn out students like him who look good on paper, but lack the skills and the thought processes to handle this complex world.