At first glance, this sounds good. What could be wrong with demanding that schools provide appropriate services to special ed students? More support for these students and their teachers, perhaps more funding for special needs programs, would be a great thing. Unfortunately, further research indicates that Arne Duncans idea of how to better serve special needs children is drastically different than mine, and, I assume, drastically different than most parents of special needs children and their teachers. Mr. Duncans idea of better serving our most vulnerable children is to raise the bar higher for those kids and hold schools accountable for those children reaching that higher bar through, of course, standardized testing. Schools will be judged by the outcomes for special needs kids, whether theyre learning disabled, blind, or so severely disabled that they are nonresponsive. These are the outcomes that are going to be considered: How well special-education students score on standardized tests, the gap in test scores between students with and without disabilities, the high school graduation rate for disabled students and other measures of achievement. Really? Were going to close the achievement gap for disabled children? Higher expectations and punitive measures is all it will take to get these kids at grade level? Right. Lets test them more and theyll be all better. This may be the most appalling, misinformed thing Arne has done yet. He has no more qualifications to be Secretary of Education than I do to be Surgeon General. In fact, his only qualification seems to be that he plays basketball with the President. Now hes going to arbitrarily, with absolutely zero experience in a classroom (let alone experience with special needs children) begin the next round of punishment on schools and teachers because they cant perform the impossible task of fitting all children into Arnes one-size-fits-all box.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 01:18:16 +0000
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