LDAMichigan IDEA Exchange

What Constitutes "Reading" in the 21st Century?

2013-04-05T12:09:00.001-07:00

by Kathleen Kosobud, volunteer, LDA of Michigan

Is accessible text "reading"? Or do we need to re-define what we mean
when we measure comprehension of the written word?

The Learning Disabilities Association of America and NCLD are working on statements to address current research and policy in the area of "read-aloud" accommodations on standardized tests. We've all thought a great deal about this because "reading" has been changed so much through the use of assistive technologies. Most of us can read a variety of materials on the web in a variety of ways. This blog is automatically converted to audio through Odiogo technology. My MacBook has built-in text reading capacity, and I can customize both voice and rate. Thanks to a cooperative endeavor between colleagues at MSU and a number of organizations around the world, we can now carry a flash drive with a suite of tools to customize any PC to many of our needs.

Highlighted text is converted to audio. For some, this is reading.

Take a look at the currently posted list of accommodations for the MEAP, MI-Access (Sped. 1%), ELPA (ELL proficiency), and NAEP. From pages 5 to 10 are all of the listed standard and non-standard accommodations.

Among the people I know who access text through text readers, they regard the currently imposed limits of access to text for the reading comprehension tests (e.g. not allowing a text reader on the content) as a form of discrimination. If I "read" all or most of curricular materials by using a text-reader then that is, for me, reading. It is most analogous to limiting people who are profoundly visually impaired (blind) to using large print as their only form of accessing text, or requiring that the Deaf read lips as their sole form of accessing the spoken word.

Is Braille print text? For a person who is blind, is this "reading"?

Although those in the business of test development argue that accessible text readers invalidate the construct of a test of reading comprehension, perhaps it is time to re-think whether, or in what ways, a test of reading comprehension has importance in our rapidly changing world of assistive technology. If tracking knowledge and skills is a worthy value in educational policy, then perhaps users of accessible text should be assessed for their literacy in both written and read-aloud formats. I hesitate to suggest this, though, because it imposes an added barrier for people with print disabilities--they have to prove that they are unable to read text in the "eyes to print" way in order to validate their need for accessible text.

For a person with dyslexia, is this "reading"?

This is one of the undue burdens imposed on folks with learning disabilities in all manners of settings in the adult world. No one asks a wheelchair user to demonstrate that they cannot walk without their assistive device--a wheelchair. Why is a print disability regarded with so much more skepticism that one must have documentation of print disability that is (in most cases) no more than 5 years old? It assumes, at best, that those using accessible text readers are lazy; or at worst, that they are liars. All in all, I would be happy if my peers who are challenged in this manner would stand up to policymakers and assert their rights to be appropriately accommodated without the endless burden of having to re-demonstrate their differences.

School Finance Reform--How it Affects the Vulnerable

2012-12-08T14:41:00.002-08:00

by Kathleen Kosobud, PhD, ABD
Disclaimer: This is a personal reflection and may not represent the position of LDA of Michigan as an organization.

I'm an advocate for children with special educational needs. I represent children in foster care, probably one of the least empowered groups attending public schools. Current Michigan school code already allows districts and charters to discriminate against children in special education by limiting their choices. Their "home" district must agree to pay for them to attend a school in a different Intermediate School District (essentially a different county or LEA) even if the receiving school is part of a "school of choice" district. The rationale is that it costs more to educate a child with special educational needs. No such restriction exists for children who are considered "gifted" or "athletes" or "talented", although their needs may also cost a district more. This restriction is "enhanced" in the 302 page long Oxford proposal for Michigan School Finance Reform--districts will have the right to accept or refuse students who apply to attend their schools.

I am sick at heart when I think about the children whom I represent. Many have been removed from their homes after severe abuse or neglect. Already hurting, they deserve the very best of care, and the most particularly attentive of educations to help them to recover from their physical and psychological wounds. When a district is given the right of refusal to serve these children, we condemn them to bleak futures. While other, more privileged children may cross boundaries, selling their assets to the highest bidder, these children are left to attend whatever public schools their district assigns them to. For them, there is no choice.

I think of two children I am representing right now: one a traumatized first grader who has already been in five different foster homes, and two different school districts in his short career as a consumer of public education, and the other a teenager approaching his exit from foster care in an institutional setting because no home could be found for him. This older student, discouraged and angry at the lack of concern he has experienced in a bricks and mortar school, is currently taking online classes, isolated from the social milieu of other teens. His special educational needs, learning disabilities in language and literacy, are not being met in this virtual environment, and the virtual charter is not prepared to devote the resources to customize his education in a way that will enable him to access the courses. I despair for both of them. For the first grader, I see a future of rejection by schools unwilling to meet his his greater needs for stability and special care because his coping mechanisms are so fragile. For the older student, I see a loss of any interest in learning, and decreasing hope for any future outside of the institutional setting. He is the face of the "school to prison pipeline", even though the caring adults around him recognize that he is not intrinsically a bad kid.

For these two children, the proposal for "choice" is a sick, sad joke.

SAD NEWS FROM LDA OF MICHIGAN

2012-10-22T05:11:00.003-07:00

October 21, 2012

Good Evening All,

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I share with you the passing of Flo Curtis, our fearless leader of the LDA of Michigan.

She died peacefully this afternoon, Sunday, October 21, 2012, surrounded by her family and her loving husband, Harley.

Flo worked tirelessly for the LDA. She ran our organization like a superhero! She was working on the conference up until the day she entered the hospital. We all loved and respected Flo. Her spunk and passion will continue to live on in our office, our organization and our hearts.

We plan to honor Flo at this year's conference, so please share a story, a picture, or a special memory that you have about Flo. You can send them to me at coachmecarey@gmail.com . I'm certain I have not included everyone on this email. If you know of someone who should be informed, please send along.

As soon as I hear of the details of the service, I will let you know.
Thank you and God Bless Flo and her family,
Regina
--
Regina Carey, M.Ed.
President-elect, LDA of Michigan

IEP Michigan Pre-Labor Day Rally in Lansing

2012-08-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

Today, disability advocates, parents of children with disabilities, students with disabilities and legislators are gathering on the steps and lawn of the Capitol to express concerns about the conditions under which special education programs are operating. The organizer, Marcie Lipsitt, is a frequent letter-writer to the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, and an advocate in Southeastern Michigan. Marcie invited LDA of Michigan to participate.

Source: Michigan Alliance for Special Education

Often, disability organizations are founded to represent the needs of a particular segment of the disability community, or coalesce around a particular issue that affects a subset of the disability population. Class size, service availability, teacher qualifications, and supports are issues where we seem to hold common ground. The devil is mostly in the details.

LDA of Michigan's contribution to the Rally is this statement, to be read by Regina Carey, our current conference chair and president-elect (her term starts in 2014):

Statement of LDA of Michigan for the IEP Michigan Rally

August 29, 2012

The Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan is a 501 3c Non-Profit organization. Most of our work is done by a dedicated group of volunteers. LDA of Michigan is the statewide affiliate of the Learning Disabilities Associationof America.

The mission of LDA of Michigan is to enhance the quality of life for all individuals with learning disabilities and their families through advocacy, education, training and support of research.

If you think that it's harder to be identified with a Specific Learning Disability under IDEA in Michigan, you're right. Today, one out of three children with IEPs have Specific Learning Disabilities in Michigan. In 2001, there were over 95 thousand students identified with Specific Learning Disabilities. Ten years later, in 2011, there were only 73 thousand. Since 2001, there has been a decrease of 22 thousand in the number of students with Learning Disabilities. This isn’t because of an educational “miracle” or a massive drop in population-- it’s because the rules changed. The 2004 reauthorization of the IDEA expressly prohibited all states from requiring the “discrepancy model” to identify students with learning disabilities. So, in 2006, the Michigan Rules were made much more stringent. The official numbers are down but we know that a large number of children are simply falling through the cracks.

Source: Annual Special Education Child Count, 2010--MDE

Most students with learning disabilities are in general education classes of 30 or more students, being taught by one general education teacher. With 21^st Century technology, all children with learning disabilities should be able to use accessible instructional materials—with or without IEPs. A reading barrier should not determine a child’s achievement in social studies, science, math, or the arts. But new innovations in technology will not solve the problem of large class sizes, or completely accommodate children with disabilities. Teachers in the general education classroom can’t do this alone—their districts need the resources to support smaller class sizes, co-teaching, team-teaching and paraprofessional assistants so that all children can be successful in the classroom.

The "Michigan Merit Curriculum" requirements place a new burden on teens with disabilities. Although the legislature provides for a Personal Curriculum for students with disabilities, implementation has been challenging. Some districts delay Personal Curriculum accommodations until students have failed many courses, and are nearly 18 years old; some use the Personal Curriculum to reduce requirements to unacceptably low levels; and some refuse to implement a Personal Curriculum altogether. The Personal Curriculum is intended to provide some customization of the requirements for graduation. Withholding or delaying the implementation of a Personal Curriculum is yet another barrier to students with disabilities, many of whom have great potential for success.

We believe that children with learning disabilities are capable and competent. Success starts in the classroom, and continues in the workplace and the community. We cannot give up on our children. Education can make a difference. We want our children to achieve maximum independence—through self-determination, with high expectations, and by working on the skills that lead to self-sufficiency.

What we know is that the number of people requesting help and direction has increased. What we do is provide a helping hand, a listening ear, and a starting point for families navigating the maze of special education. What we want is for individuals with learning disabilities to be recognized for their gifts, talents, and contributions.

Please join us for our conference on November 11^th and 12^th at the Kellogg Conference Center on the campus of Michigan State University.

Source: LDA of Michigan, 2012

Finally, if you are able, please consider a membership or a donation of your time, talents or treasures to our organization.

We probably have many more concerns than will fit into a 5-10 minute sound-byte, but these concerns--SLD identification, conditions in the classroom, and preparation for life beyond high school--are the essentials. Unless education addresses the needs of struggling learners, through individualization and personalization, our children will face less access to bright futures as adults.

COMMENTS ON THE DSM-5

2012-06-16T11:30:00.001-07:00

Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan Public Comment

June 15, 2012

The Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan is an all volunteer 501(c)3 non- profit organization representing families and educators of persons with learning disabilities. Our offices are located at 200 Museum Drive, Ste. 101, Lansing, Michigan 48933.

Our mission is to enhance the quality of life for all individuals with learning disabilities and their families through advocacy, education, training, service and support of research. Our organization supports initiatives that encompass prevention, early identification, and access to the necessary supports to allow full participation of our constituents as citizens.

Our stakeholders represent a diversity of perspectives regarding the particulars for educating students with learning disabilities, but are unified by the conviction that, despite the range of learning problems subsumed under this category, these problems share the common trait of appearing to be breakdowns in the neurological processes of executive functioning which affect listening, oral expression, reading decoding, reading comprehension, written expression, mathematical calculation or mathematical reasoning resulting in evidence of unexpected underachievement in one or more of these areas.

Picture source: http://www.rainbowreaders.com/

The Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan welcomes this opportunity to publicly comment on the proposed revisions related to Specific Learning Disabilities in the DSM-5. Although many of our concerns are related to the early identification of these breakdowns in the context of early childhood academic settings, we also recognize that these breakdowns extend into adulthood and affect life activities beyond educational settings. Therefore, we recognize that a DSM-5 diagnostic code reflects broader parameters than those observed solely in school settings. Further, we recognize that although these breakdowns exist, the function of diagnosis is to identify these breakdowns while offering beneficial insights about the external and environmental barriers that exacerbate the expression of these neurological breakdowns. Therefore, if medical diagnosis is to be useful, some attention needs to be paid to the educational and functional implications of the existence of these neurological breakdowns. In our society, where a high level of literacy is considered essential for individual success, it is important that we understand and help to improve access for those people identified with “dyslexia”. Access includes early intervention, as well as the provision of alternative forms of access, especially to text, for those identified with “dyslexia”.

In the United States, much of the research on Specific Learning Disabilities has focused on “dyslexia”, which is a specific learning disability that encompasses language processing, multiple aspects of the processes involved in reading, and also may include processes involved in spelling and written expression. Of the roughly one in seven people identified with Specific Learning Disabilities, 70 percent are thought to warrant a diagnosis of “dyslexia” (Lyon, 2001; Lyon, Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2003; International Dyslexia Association, 2012). This means that in Michigan, of the over 73 thousand children identified with Specific Learning Disabilities, one can estimate that more than 51 thousand are dyslexic (Michigan Compliance Information System for 2010-2011). Or, in other words, roughly one out of every four children with special educational needs (n=217 thousand) in Michigan may be considered “dyslexic”. In the education context, accessible text providers prefer a quasi-medical diagnosis of “dyslexia” as opposed to the more generic term, “specific learning disability” when authorizing the use of their services. Most notably, Bookshare, the largest provider of accessible textbooks, recognizes the term “dyslexia” as a qualifier for its’ services.

A large community of researchers in the neurosciences (c.f.: Bennett and Sally Shawitz, G. Reid Lyon, Jack Fletcher and others) have focused their attention on the causes, traits, interventions, and outcomes for persons with “dyslexia” and attach special meaning to the term as a separate set of conditions from other forms of reading failure because of its’ prevalence and intractability (see for example the comments of Michael Ryan, Ph.D. at http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/, and the statement of the International Dyslexia Association, http://www.interdys.org/). Internationally, too, the term “developmental dyslexia”, as found in the ICD-10 (WHO, updated 2011), holds special significance. In order to compare incidence of various disorders and diseases internationally, common terminology with common meaning is required. To remove the term “dyslexia” from the DSM-5 is to put the U.S. data-reporting out of step with the rest of the world. Increasing global interdependence requires that we be able to communicate using common terminology in order to share scientific findings, and to work toward overall improvement in the education and lives of all humankind.

In summary, the use of the term “dyslexia” holds significance as a diagnostic term, in research on its’ causes, characteristics, interventions and outcomes, and as a shared descriptor in the international community. Therefore, the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan supports the continued use of the term “dyslexia” in the DSM-5.

Submitted on behalf of the Board of Directors of LDA of Michigan,

Florence Curtis, Acting Executive Director

Board of Directors

President—Byron Vorce, Bellevue

President Elect—Regina Carey, Okemos

Secretary—Betsy Schrage, Grosse Pointe

Treasurer—John Carter, Ann Arbor

Past President—Lori Parks, Plymouth

Newsletter Editor—Kathleen Kosobud, Ann Arbor

Healthy Child Director—Amy Winans, Lansing

Dawn Bentley, East Lansing

Linda Clark, Novi

Renee Craig, East Lansing

Edna Felmlee, Williamston

Glenda Hammond, Lansing

Delia Laing, Ann Arbor

Judith New, Ann Arbor

Annette Puleo, East Lansing

Rosanne Renauer, Lansing

Mary Rivera, Lansing

Kristen Toadvine, Mulliken

Kendra Tobes, West Bloomfield

Annette Lalley Trautz, Lowell

Vicki White, Lansing

URGENT ACTION ALERT on Highly Qualified Teachers

2012-06-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

ACTION ALERT
"Highly Qualified Teacher" Provision
Call your Senators TODAY!

Background:

In the dead of night last December Congress passed a bill to fund the federal government for Fiscal Year 2013. They attached a provision to the bill that allows people who enter an alternate route teacher preparation program to be considered "highly qualified" on the first day they are enrolled in the program.   In other words, your child’s teacher could be called highly qualified while he or she is, at the same time,learning to become a teacher! Many of these "teachers" are placed as special education teachers and may be teaching your child.

This provision is set to expire at the end of Fiscal Year 2012, or when Congress finally finishes legislation to fund programs for Fiscal Year 2013. Congress is working on funding for Fiscal Year 2013 now!

On Tuesday June 12 the Senate can change this bad policy!   The Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Subcommittee will vote on a bill to fund programs for Fiscal Year 2013 and can let this provision expire or vote to continue it.

Let the Senate know our neediest students deserve better! LDA is part of a coalition of 87 disability, civil rights, parent, principal, rural and education advocacy groups who have banded together to get rid of this provision. If Congress votes to continue this bad policy, we at least want the federal government to start collecting information from school, districts and states that will let parents know if their child's teacher is credentialed and fully prepared to support their child in the classroom.

Take Action Now:

Call the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee: The list with phone numbers can be found at the bottom of this message. It is important that you make these calls BEFORE Tuesday June 12.

Communicate this Message:

§         Identify yourself as a member of the Learning Disabilities Association of America and give your role (parent/teacher/person with a learning disability, etc.).

Then say:

§ "On Tuesday, June 12 at 2 PM, the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds education is scheduled to consider an important issue to me."

§ "I ask that your office oppose any effort that will extend a bad federal policy to allow teachers in training to be called “highly qualified.” This is not fair to parents or to students with learning disabilities!"

§ "If the provision must be extended, I request the federal government start collecting information from schools, districts and states that will let parents know if their child’s teacher is credentialed and fully prepared to support their child in the classroom.:"

§ " Can I count on you to stand up for children with learning disabilities?"

Thanks!!

Each entry, below lists subcommittee members by Senator, State, Education Legislative Aide, and Phone #:

Daniel K. Inouye
HI
D
Anthony Ching
(202) 224-3934

Patrick J. Leahy
VT
D
Kathryn Toomajian
(202) 224-4242

Tom Harkin
IA
D
(202) 224-3254

Barbara A. Mikulski
MD
D
Mario Cardona
(202) 224-4654

Herb Kohl
WI
D
Jessah Foulk
(202) 224-5653

Patty Murray
WA
D
Sarah Bolton
(202) 224-2621

Dianne Feinstein
CA
D
Ashley Eden
(202) 224-3841

Richard J. Durbin
IL
D
Joanna Serra
(202) 224-2152

Tim Johnson
SD
D
Carrie Johnson
(202) 224-5842

Mary L. Landrieu
LA
D
Tasha Hensley
(202) 224-5824

Jack Reed
RI
D
Moira Lenehan
(202) 224-4642

Frank R. Lautenberg
NJ
D
Kyle Brown
(202) 224-3224

Ben Nelson
NE
D
Charlie Ellsworth
(202) 224-5274

Mark Pryor
AR
D
Sarah Holland
(202) 224-2353

Jon Tester
MT
D
Alpha Lillstrom
(202) 224-2644

Sherrod Brown
OH
D
Marjorie Glick
(202) 224-2315

Thad Cochran
MS
R
Will Todd
(202) 224-5054

Mitch McConnell
KY
R
Sarah Arbes
(202) 224-2541

Richard C. Shelby
AL
R
Andrew Newton
(202) 224-5744

Kay Bailey Hutchison
TX
R
Dana Barbieri
(202) 224-5922

Lamar Alexander
TN
R
Peter Oppenheim
(202) 224-4944

Susan Collins
ME
R
Kenneth Altman
(202) 224-2523

Lisa Murkowski
AK
R
Karen McCarthy
(202) 224-6665

Lindsey Graham
SC
R
Courtney Titus
(202) 224-5972

Mark Kirk
IL
R
Jeannette Windon
(202) 224-2854

Dan Coats
IN
R
Casey Murphy
(202) 224-5623

Roy Blunt
MO
R
Kristina Weger
(202) 224-5721

Jerry Moran
KS
R
Brian Perkins
(202) 224-6521

John Hoeven
ND
R
Emily Tryon
(202) 224-2551

Ron Johnson
WI
R
Elizabeth Schwartz
(202) 224-5323

SENT BY:
Sharon Tanner
Director of Membership & Development
LDA National Headquarters
4156 Library Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15234
412-341-1515 x209
stanner@ldaamerica.org

LDA...Empowering Individuals and Creating Opportunities

Link to the letter from the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities

What are we talking about these days?

2012-02-12T16:52:00.000-08:00

by Kathleen Kosobud, past-president, LDA of Michigan

I'm getting ready to share social media ideas with the Learning Disabilities Association state affiliate presidents and executive directors, so I thought I would try out a few new tools. Here's a "word cloud", a visual analysis of word frequency in posts on this blog from Wordle:

Word Cloud from Wordle

You can change the font, colors and arrangement of the words. Pretty cool, and free.

True Participation

2012-02-02T16:48:00.000-08:00

You may be interested in reading John W. Lloyd's Beyond Access: Improving Success where he says:

On the educational front, one of the factors to which many disability rights organizations regularly point is the poor outcomes for students with disabilities after graduation from high school. The litany of unfavorable comparisons between students with disabilities and their not-disabled peers is familiar to many: higher unemployment, less frequent enrollment in post-secondary schools, more frequent contact with and incarceration by law-enforcement officials, etc. These are clearly outcomes that we would not only like to see improved, but also they are improvements that would auger well for our society (e.g., emphasizing the abilities of individuals) and economy (e.g., lower unemployment).

He goes on to advocate for special education to address success, not mere access to participation in the adult world. I agree that this is the critical issue: Just building the bridges doesn't mean that people will know how to use them. In my own reflections on my past encounters with Michigan Rehabilitation Services, this has been a difficult concept to communicate. I find it puzzling that we (K-12 special educators) often offer accommodations to students with Learning Disabilities without planning instruction on how to use these accommodations to successfully level the playing field.

Picture of Alpha Smart Dana on Renaissance Learning Website

I remember when students with writing problems were offered AlphaSmarts to compensate for poor handwriting, poor spelling, note-taking, a lack of word-processing equipment at home, slow writing production, a lack of written composition skills and so on. Our local county chapter of the LDA held a meeting about tools and accommodations, and one family member told me that her grandchild had been given one of those, but no one at the school had any idea how to download and print what she had written on it. What a total waste of resources!! The student got very little benefit out of the AlphaSmart, even though she'd put the time in on her assignments. But, the staff at her school didn't have the training or information to make this a useful and powerful tool for her.

Around the same time, I had borrowed an AlphaSmart from the county Assistive Technology Consultant and, after playing with it for an hour or so, figured out how to upload files onto my computer, and how to print directly from my dot-matrix printer. I also learned how to spell-check, change fonts and line spacing, and cut and paste text. Here I was, thinking how useful this tool was, while at the same time, a whole school had convinced parents that the AlphaSmart was an anachronism, and chose not to use it (or anything else) that might address the problems of access and successful accommodation.

In the interim, the AT Consultant continued to recommend the AlphaSmart to other students at the same school, resulting in a great deal of acrimony between her and the staff at the school, without any resolution. What started as a small problem of poor communication blossomed into a full-blown bickering match between the school staff, parents, and the county consultant. No gains were made for the kids for whom this could have been most helpful. Most of the students waited until they were in high school to access computers in their computer lab, purchase a low-end computer for home use. The most fortunate of these students were given used laptops that their parents bought for them. This, of course, violates one of the primary tenets of FAPE--that the supports and services provided in a public school would be FREE and appropriate. If, in order to have full-time access to the necessary supports and services, a student has to purchase a laptop, or a calculator, or any other tool: how is that "free"? If special education under IDEA ends upon graduation from high school, how have we fulfilled our obligation to the student to maximize access and participation, if we never show students how to independently use the tools and accommodations we recommend? It's a little like someone throwing a kid into a swimming pool and telling them, "Okay, I provided the water, it's your job to learn how to swim in it!"

Technology seems to progress at the speed of light. Now, an AlphaSmart is truly an anachronism. Tablets such as the iPad2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, with touchscreens, and lightweight, with more bells and whistles than anyone could imagine, make it so much easier for us to get intuitive technology into the hands of young people so that their playing fields are more level now, than ever before. But, if we only hand them the tools, without showing them what they can do, we might as well just hand them a rock and a stick.

World Languages and Students with IEPs

2012-02-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

By Kathleen Kosobud, past president, LDA of Michigan

Many education leaders and policy-makers agree that competency in at least one World Language other than English is important if U.S. citizens are going to compete in a world-wide economy, and promote global understanding. Multiple language policy has been a hot topic for a variety of reasons. Should we provide bilingual instruction to students who are immigrants? Should we teach World Languages to preschoolers and elementary students, at a time when their brains may be more receptive? What languages should we be teaching, and why? Should we shift our emphasis away from French and German in favor of Arabic and Chinese? Can students with disabilities be expected to learn foreign languages? Are students with disabilities less disadvantaged because all students enter on an equal footing as beginners?

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) has been an active partner in the development of curriculum for World Language instruction, and has been a strong advocate for increasing participation of all students in learning World Languages. In 1995, as part of a move to develop national standards for schools, ACTFL identified five aspects of World Language that are essential to a balanced World Language curriculum: “The Five Cs”—Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities. (With Nod to History, Foreign-Language Standards Unveiled). “The Five Cs” offer guidance for instructional planning, as well as setting the foundation for assessing accomplished teaching, through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) (go to NBPTS and search for World Languages Standards). [see endnote 1]

Picture source: http://monsieurdoehla.wikispaces.com

By 2000, developers of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) announced their intention to develop assessments for graduating HS seniors in their grasp of Spanish as a foreign language. However, by 2004, the effort was tabled: there was insufficient participation in the assessment for the developers to establish test validity (National Foreign-Language Assessment Delayed Indefinitely). Foreign Language instruction remained the only subject identified as a core area in national legislation that was not assessed in the NAEP. In 2005, despite legislative cuts to foreign language instruction budgets, the U. S. Department of Defense intensified its efforts to expand instruction in foreign languages and culture, particularly in Chinese and Arabic (Defense Department Takes the Offense on Languages). As national, state and local funding of education has continued to focus in on reading and mathematics under No Child Left Behind many efforts to maintain or expand World Language instruction have been curtailed. Yet, in the global education arena, many policy analysts and educational researchers argue that U.S. education suffers from a lack of breadth and rigor, including instruction in foreign languages and culture. In many other countries students graduate from the equivalent of high school speaking two or more languages.

This brings us to the Michigan Merit Curriculum requirement for knowledge of a World Language other than English for all high school students expecting to graduate with a diploma. Here’s my disclaimer: I am not a Personal Curriculum (PC) Liaison, but I am interested in ensuring that students with disabilities do not lose ground under the new Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC). If you’re not already familiar with the term, PC Liaisons are district employees to whom you can turn with questions about local district practices involving the MMC. They are the ones who have information about accommodations and modifications for accelerated students, struggling students, transfer students, and students with disabilities. Contact Mary Head for permission to join the Personal Curriculum Ning, a place where PC Liaisons can share what their districts are doing to adjust the MMC for various kinds of students.

I recently participated in a webinar on the World Language requirement for PC Liaisons hosted by Michigan Department of Education staff and local district consultants (view here: World Languages PC Webinar, January 19, 2012). Under the MMC, the graduating class of 2016 (this year’s 8^th graders) will need to complete two years of World Language instruction, or demonstrate a Novice-High proficiency in a World Language other than English (through an assessment based on the ACTFL standards for World Languages).

Picture source: http://www.languagetesting.com/scale.htm

This rating covers students’ skills in speaking, writing, listening, and reading a World Language. In order for students to achieve this level of proficiency, instruction may be at a higher level—Intermediate—so that students’ performances average out to Novice High levels. There is no state assessment; this is left for local districts to manage, either through assessment of the Michigan benchmarks for World Languages as students progress through World Language courses, or through assessments purchased or created by the district that align with the ACTFL standards. Formal testing is only necessary for students who wish to demonstrate mastery, either because they elect to get credit by “testing out”, or because they want to enter more advanced coursework.

Presenters in this webinar noted that a variety of strategies improve the performance of all students in World Language courses, including students with disabilities: team teaching with a special educators who have a world language background, peer mentors, National Honor Society tutors, test readers, and block scheduling all seemed to be helpful for students who might struggle without additional support. In addition, for students with IEPs, presenters reported that the same accommodations and supports identified in an IEP for Language Arts or English instruction may be used to promote success in World Language classes.

For students with IEPs, it is also possible to write a Personal Curriculum, identifying portions of the curriculum that they can be expected to achieve, applying the term “as much as is practicable” as guidance, and individualizing based on a student’s needs. Personal Curriculum plans are only considered after other interventions have been exhausted, according to the speakers. This means that your high schooler may be working on “exhausting interventions” until the junior and senior year of high school. In the process of exhausting interventions, there is also the distinct possibility that your student will be behind in credit. If at all possible, parents need to make their Personal Curriculum requests early, and make sure that interventions are not used as excuses to delay consideration of a Personal Curriculum plan.

I have some thoughts about selecting a particular World Language to learn, and some of the ways of accommodating a student with learning disabilities. The choice of language may contribute to a student’s success. Spanish is considered by many to be the easiest of languages to learn because of its’ simpler grammar. From a listening and speaking perspective, this may help a student who has difficulty with vocabulary, since fewer word forms need to be learned. French, Italian and German may be slightly more complex, grammatically, but may also have appeal. A note on vocabulary: if your student has difficulty with new or specialized vocabulary in English, make sure that this is accommodated in the World Language class.

Reading, writing and spelling may be problems, especially for a person who is considered to be dyslexic or dysgraphic. Languages that use a different written system (Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew) than our alphabet may not be as good a choice for those with dyslexia either. Emphasis on speaking, conversation, and oral translation is better for students for whom reading and writing in English is already a problem. (One of these days, I imagine, the same suite of tools that students use for speech to text in English, word prediction, and contextual spelling will be as readily available for World Language learners). Closed captioning on television, either in English or in a World Language allows a learner to listen to a language and connect meaning to the written or spoken word. Having access to this technology may influence your high-schooler’s choice of language.

There are other language options that naturally emphasize one modality over another. Latin is not primarily a spoken language; students with auditory difficulties may find it more to their liking than learning a language where their pronunciation of words will be a constant challenge. “Heritage” languages are primarily spoken and gestural languages. These may be better suited for students who are interested in Native American culture, and find their greatest difficulties in reading and writing. American Sign Language (ASL--the language of the Deaf culture) [see endnote 2] eliminates listening, speaking, reading and writing, and substitutes viewing, signing, gesture and expression. Students who are visually oriented may find that ASL meets their needs.

As with all accommodations and modifications, it takes effort on the part of parents to help bring about maximum access for a student with a disability. In some districts, schools allow students to use community resources as alternative classrooms. If your district is one that will entertain that possibility, you may be able to connect your student to a member of the community for instruction in a language that is not offered in school in exchange for some bartered service. For instance: learn a “heritage” language from a tribal elder in exchange for doing household chores. Many community colleges offer ASL courses. Although they may go too quickly for some students, you may be able to work on an arrangement between your local district and the ASL instructors to offer a slower version of the course for a group of high-schoolers.

LDA of Michigan is interested in hearing from you about your experiences with the new high school diploma requirement for World Languages. Contact LDA of Michigan with your stories or questions.

Resources:

Link to About World Languages

Link to ACTFL Proficiency Standards

Link to Language Links/Special Needs

Link to NBPTS World Language Standards for Teachers

Link to the World Language Requirement Power Point (for PC Liaisons)

World Languages Consultants:

Dr. Millie Mellgren: newlanguagepathways@gmail.com

Dr. Barbara Appold: appoldb@bangorschools.org

Lori Flippin: flippinl@e-hps.net

Endnotes:

1. I had the privilege of working as a liaison to NBPTS on the development of the World Languages teacher assessment, and learned a bit about what sets teachers of World Languages apart from teachers in other disciplines, and how instruction in different languages varies—depending on the unique characteristics of each language. Some languages are only written (e.g. Latin), some are only spoken (e.g. Native American “heritage” languages), some require additional references in order to produce written text (e.g. Japanese and the use of a kanja dictionary), and some are neither spoken nor written (e.g. American Sign Language).

2. Rosen, Russell S. (2008). American Sign Language as a Foreign Language in U.S. High Schools: State of the Art. Modern Languages Journal 92, 10-38.

-----

Abstract: The last 2 decades witnessed a growth in American Sign Language (ASL) as a foreign language in U.S. secondary schools. This overview of the current state of ASL as a foreign language in the schools consists of a history and a survey. The information on history was drawn from a study conducted by Rosen (2006). This history is followed by a national survey compiled by Rosen (2005) on U.S. secondary schools offering ASL for foreign language credit. The survey provided information on the number and distribution of schools, teachers, classes, students, departments, and the process for program implementation. The information is used to ascertain the current breadth and scope of, and to discern trends in, ASL as a foreign language in public high schools nationwide.

###

This study is comprehensive enough to provide some support for offering ASL as a world language, in my opinion.

Displaced, Dyslexic, and Despondent

2011-06-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

Since the auto and other manufacturing industries and other related businesses have either left Michigan or downsized, LDA of Michigan has heard from many displaced workers with reading disabilities who have found it difficult to find work. Many are in their 40s and 50s, too young to retire, and very uncomfortable with the idea of returning to school to upgrade their skills. Adding to the problem of being displaced is that even very well-qualified workers in their 40s and 50s are finding it hard to re-enter the workforce in jobs equivalent to the ones that they lost. They may need to piece together several part-time jobs to make ends meet, and may have to forego benefits and pension plans in the process. The latest AARP Bulletin has an article about the problems of getting jobs equivalent to the ones lost.

The critical issue for most of those who call us is that their long-time difficulties with reading have made it nearly impossible to find work. Many left high school to work "on the line" or in shipping or hauling. Lacking high school diplomas didn't matter at the time they entered the workforce, but the lack of a diploma now is a serious handicap for re-entry.

Here are some of the issues that we've helped callers to the Learning Disabilities Association deal with:

You can dial 211 anywhere in Michigan on a "land line" telephone to reach United Way information and referral. This service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They link people with food, housing, health care clinics, prescription supports, and a host of other public assistance programs and services. They try to link callers with services in their zip-code areas.

Prescription Support: Walmart, offers 30 day supplies of some generic medications for $4, and so does Target. Call these store pharmacies to check if your medications are covered, or if there is a generic equivalent for medications you are taking. In addition, Meijer pharmacy provides prescription Metaformin (a diabetic medication) free of charge; it also provides certain prescription antibiotics free of charge. These are services available to all.

If prescription medication support is needed, beyond what Walmart, Target or Meijer offer, call the Partnership for Prescription Assistance Michigan at phone number 888-477-2669. They answer calls Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

For employment, if a worker has a disability, Michigan Rehabilitation Services may seem overwhelmed with the numbers of displaced workers in manufacturing fields. However, working with a case manager at MRS may improve a person's chances of re-employment. It helps to be assertive about your needs. If support is needed in getting a GED or a high school diploma, or additional training, then applicants to MRS need to make sure that this is understood to be a priority. Michigan Protection and Advocacy Services offers help negotiating with MRS through their Client Assistance Program. If you're really stuck, contact them.

In addition, getting some assistive technology evaluation and training may be very useful to allow a person with severe dyslexia compensate for reading and writing problems. Recent open source software developments have made it possible to add accessibilty to any PC through a flash drive, without loading the software onto the computer.

SSI Disability income: Social Security representatives in the field offices usually obtain applications for disability benefits in person, by telephone, by mail, or by filing online. The application and related forms ask for a description of the claimant’s impairment (s), treatment sources, and other information that relates to the alleged disability. There are also incentives for people with disabilities to re-enter the workforce through Ticket to Work, with a variety of income and health supports to ease the transition.

Michigan Assistance and Referral Service also has online resources and applications for different kind of help, like support from the Department of Human Services.

The statewide system of Centers for Independent Living are also resources for a variety of supports and services, and may help with advocacy support if needed.

Literacy Tutoring, Adult Education, and GED Preparation. Call your local school district for the adult education and GED programs nearest to your location. They will also be able to refer people to literacy tutoring programs, where trained volunteer tutors work one-on-one with adult learners to improve their reading skills. Some tutors may have additional skills working with adults with learning disabilities.

Since many adults are overwhelmed by their many needs, it helps to set priorities. It is helpful to choose one problem at a time to work on. Choosing ones' priorities may be the first step towards empowering an adult who may be feeling very defeated by the system. Just as it is important take care of physical needs and upgrade skills, it is also important that adults in this situation be given the opportunity to regain their dignity and self-respect.

The Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan offers support mostly through identifying other agencies that can provide needed services. In the process, we also try to offer moral support and encouragement. Our volunteers often will be able to refer you to a variety of resources that they have used, and can guide you in working with resources in Michigan.

"Journey into Dyslexia", Standardized Education, and the Need for "Shop Class"

2011-06-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

I'm watching this scene on HBO right now -- Steven J. Walker who manufactures wood pellets (to fuel a special type of woodstove) is telling the story of his painful experience as a kid with dyslexia, except for high school shop class and a great shop teacher. He breaks into sobbing tears as he tells how the school district discontinued shop classes and sold off all the equipment, which ultimately leads to his starting the pellet business. Well, tech ed has come a long way, but the emotional attachment that this man conveys is the one constant.

The documentary is "Journey into Dyslexia", now showing on HBO. It's a collage of authoritative, narrative and personal perspectives on learning disabilities involving reading. One of the talking heads is Guinevere Eden, a neuro-scientist whose studies of brain imaging confirm differences in how people with dyslexia process the written word. Another is David Connor, a disability studies scholar, who discusses inclusive education as a civil right, and suggests that although others may conceive of dyslexia as "disability" he prefers to consider it a natural part of human variance. Still another is Jonathan Mooney, who engages the rebel in me as he rails at the dismissive attitudes of the many unsympathetic adults with whom he dealt while in school. The overall theme of the documentary is that this kind of human variance (dyslexia) leads to such positive phenomena as entrepreneurial risk-taking, creativity, toughness and perseverance and other great things. But, I notice that the people with dyslexia featured in this documentary also talk about how painful it was to grow up with dyslexia. I know from my own experiences (as a teacher and a mother) that many kids with dyslexia and other learning disabilities are not nearly so resilient. I think I should probably re-watch this film and seriously consider its narrative, and counter-narratives.

When my son entered high school (he has language-based learning disabilities), he and his one best friend, a boy with autism, ended up at two different schools. He was crushed. The deal I made with him was that if he could successfully make it through a year at the big high school (a huge adjustment in itself), I'd entertain the idea of his "dual-enrollment" the following year at the big high school he had to go to and the small alternative high school where his friend attended. Dual enrollment meant that he would use his lunch hour to take a bus from one school to the other. It meant that he had to take care of responsibilities at each school while he was there. And, it meant that he would have to manage his obligations at each school with limited support from teachers. As an incentive for toughing the year out, we went through the course catalog for the big high school and picked some CTE classes that were in areas of his interests. So he happily took Computer Assisted Design (CAD), TV production, Know Your Auto, and Intro to Electronics. For his freshman year, he only took three of the four core academics to make room for the CTE courses. That year, he passed all his classes, and discovered that he had become a leader and self-directed learner in CAD. (The last time I recalled having teachers make favorable remarks about his school accomplishments was when his third grade teacher told me that he was the "go-to" artist for drawing sharks and jellyfish during their unit on oceans. Kids with all manners of learning disabilities often experience a huge praise deficit. Rick Lavoie's video-talks give a great deal of insight about this.)

The following year, even though his 9th grade science teacher recommended he take Intro to Biology (scornfully called "Science for Dummies" by my special education colleagues), we suggested that he be allowed to take "Foundations of Science" at the alternative school, instead. This interdisciplinary, experiential science course had kids "doing science" and reporting out on their findings, using a variety of technologies, and much more tantalizing than "Science for Dummies". He also took courses in Film Studies at the alternative school and, the following year, transferred out of the district and into a technical middle college at our local community college. He achieved a high school diploma, an Associate's degree, and tech certification in digital media production at the middle college, and finished a B.A. in the field at a neighboring university. He now works part-time as a camera-person for a community television station, and is building a solid resume of his experience.

Career and Technical Education saves lives. There is no doubt in my mind that this is true.

Unfortunately, in this age of standardization, core curriculum, and a push to make all children "college ready", CTE has taken real hits. Here in Michigan, the enrollment reports for CTE courses have been on a downward trend since 2003 (the data only goes through 2007, currently). People in the field report that each year, there are fewer enrollments, and fewer programs in the high schools. And they attribute the decline to a devaluation of skilled labor--the kinds of skills that are taught in CTE programs. The other day, on the companion blog to the public radio program "on Being" was a post "The Work We Value, The Intelligence We Ignore: Is the Work that Made America Great Valued Any Longer? It features the comments of Mike Rowe, the creator and host of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Rowe said: "I believe we need a national PR Campaign for Skilled Labor. A big one. Something that addresses the widening skills gap head on, and reconnects the country with the most important part of our workforce." It's not that we don't need the skilled trades, it's that we have so devalued them in the rush to make all children "college-ready", that kids who would benefit from learning their academic content through hands-on, authentic work experiences are no longer able to carve out time in their schedules to take these courses.

On the MAISA website, there are samples of what districts have done to make math courses more accessible, and there are samples of courses and curriculum crosswalks that show how academic content can be embedded in CTE with resulting student success. I've focused on the math, since this field has been dominated by a very rigid and didactic structure--the sequence of Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 seems to be unshakable--not so much because they are "naturally" sequential and dependent on each other, but because of some sort of religious adherence to this being the "one right way" to teach mathematics.

Derrick Fries, Ph.D., a professor at Eastern Michigan University, has collected data that shows a strong association between poor student performance in 8th grade math and those likely to fail to complete Algebra 2. Since a Michigan diploma is contingent on completion of a semester of Algebra 2, this means that we can predict which students are at high risk of dropping out, or failing to attain a diploma. If we can alter these outcomes by offering more tangible, work-related courses with the core academic content embedded, we can improve graduation rates. If Mike Rowe is correct, we also are filling a gap in the labor pool by creating a new generation of skilled laborers.

We know that young people who fail to complete high school are more than likely to face lives of poverty. We also know that the dropout rates for students with disabilities are disproportionately higher than for the general population. And, we also know that many students with a variety of disabilities flourish in classes where they are able to learn by doing. CTE classes are prime examples of learning by doing.

I repeat, Career and Technical Education saves lives.

Creativity and Foresight for Strategic Enrichment

2011-06-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

by Kathleen Kosobud, for LDA of Michigan

I was e-mailed by a fellow traveler in disability advocacy, Liz Bauer, a former member of the Michigan Board of Education and a continuing activist in "getting it done fairly" for kids with disabilities.

She wrote on behalf of a mother who was asking her for guidance to help her 12 year old daughter who is entering 8th grade and, like her mother, has challenges with dyslexia. She was asking for resources so her daughter could complete American History as an independent study. The mother said: "I wish to jump start her 8th grade [year] with enthusiasm, success, and encouragement that we are intelligent women who can master this with a smile and confidence!"

Well, I may have overlooked her request for a resource that would allow her daughter to get credit for a course over the summer, but I think that I may have fulfilled the spirit of her request, and made a broader statement about what summer experiences can do for kids who struggle to learn during the school year:

If I were still teaching in a middle school, I'd be gathering resources to build the background vocabulary and experience of my 8th graders. In a "true" middle school model, we integrated all content across the curriculum, so the idea of studying American History in the absence of studies of scientific thought and discovery, literature, and the arts is sometimes difficult for my interdisciplinary brain to wrap itself around.

For 8th graders in Michigan, US History is defined in time--from the Age of Exploration to the Civil War. It's an arbitrary limit, and it encompasses a great deal of "dusty" content, so the real trick is making it personal--building connections that make one appreciate how we got to where we are. Here are the grade level content expectations for 8th grade social studies.

My inclination would be to go looking for documentaries (http://www.pbs.org/, and http://www.learner.org/ are two teacher resources I might use), fictionalized accounts of historical periods in film (check with your local youth librarian for videos in their collections), audio books of appeal to middle schoolers (check with your local youth librarian or sign up for Bookshare for delivery of online books to your computer at http://www.bookshare.org/), visits to area museums, forts, historic sites, and virtual tours (http://www.thwt.org/virtualtours.htm) to access as much of the time encompassed in 8th grade US History as possible. One author who is very popular with middle schoolers is Avi--who is himself dyslexic and a real history buff. His fiction really can draw you into the period.

A big consideration: because it is a real drag to be passively learning at any time (especially summer), I would think about projects to make things come alive--crafts, cooking, model-making, creating videos or slide shows online, etc. If you are near historic sites, make visits and learn from their visitor guides (the people who are on staff, not the pamphlets) what happened in Michigan at a given period of time. Visit Greenfield Village and spend some time in different periods of history all in a day--churn butter, watch glass blowing, learn to make ribbon roses for the latest of looks in hats, etc. Some libraries offer free or reduced passes to these attractions around southeastern Michigan so you may be able to save money and see some pretty interesting sites.

Good luck and enjoy your adventures in history this summer.

I think back to summers with my own two children, who often needed to recover from school over the summer. I looked for recreation programs, camps, and other experiences that tapped into their interests and talents. I looked for opportunities for friendship-building through their interests. I always kept in mind that this was their summer vacation, not an extension of the school year.

I'm sharing this with readers of this blog because sharing my thoughts and ideas is a way of spreading the word that there is a better world for all of us who learn differently, teach differently, and may not always feel included.

May you have a good summer with your children, too!

Adventures at the Michigan State Board of Education Meeting

2011-06-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

June 14, 2011(Flag Day)

posted by Kathleen Kosobud on behalf of the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan

Today I attended the Michigan Board of Education (MBOE) meeting (link to video archives) in Lansing. On the agenda was a briefing on the Personal Curriculum. Since my previous comments at the Ann Arbor forum of the MBOE were critical of local districts' implementation of Personal Curricula for students with disabilities, I decided that it was a good idea to be a visible presence at this Board meeting. As it turned out, the Personal Curriculum presentation was delayed until after the public comment portion of the agenda.

Timing, it turns out, is everything. Wendy Heckman, a mother who had worked for 4 years to convince her school district to offer a Personal Curriculum for her daughter, joined me just before the public comment time. She brought "visual aids": her daughter's senior picture, a picture of her daughter holding her diploma, and the diploma along with a wonderful (and short) public comment about what implementation of the Personal Curriculum means for students like her daughter. The catch in Wendy's voice, full of the emotion she had experienced when she knew for certain that her daughter would be graduating with a diploma, was palpable. Members of the board were visibly affected by Wendy's words; and the "visual aids" she brought put a face on the story. When she finished, all those at the meeting clapped. Here is my introduction of Wendy, followed by her comments:

My name is Kathleen Kosobud. As a volunteer advocate for the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan, I met Wendy Heckman, a parent, who called for information and assistance in getting a Personal Curriculum plan for her daughter, a senior with an IEP. She will be speaking after me.

This board’s support of a Personal Curriculum for students with IEPs is why I’m here. The word has still not spread and the result is a return to the “wait to fail” model of support for students with disabilities. If general education is for all students, we need to educate districts that the Michigan Merit Curriculum can be achieved in many ways.

And here are Wendy Heckman's comments:

My name is Wendy Heckman and I would like to share with you some of my daughter Riley and my journey through the Michigan Merit Curriculum. I first found out about the Michigan Merit Curriculum at Riley’s 8^th grade annual I.E.P. meeting, where I was told Riley would have to complete and succeed in the MMC in order to graduate and receive a diploma. My first thought was, “Oh, my God, how are we going to get her through this?”

Riley has a learning disability in math and received an I.E.P. during her 5^th grade school year. As of her last evaluation in March 2011 with the KTEA-11 she scored a 5.2 grade equivalent in Math Concepts and Applications and a 4.9 grade equivalent in Math Computation. She struggles with short-term memory loss and with math problems containing multiple steps. Riley is 18 years old. Two weeks ago Riley was a senior struggling through her two toughest classes that semester, Algebra 11 and Chemistry A (which she was completing on Plato) and which she was failing in both classes.

For three years I had asked for a Personal Curriculum in math for Riley and each time was turned down with excuses like: “No, Personal Curriculums were only for students who were accelerating in the MMC” or “The State of Michigan frowns on the use of Personal Curriculums” or “Personal Curriculums are very hard to get and very rare” I would like to say in November 2010 Riley was the first student in her school district to receive a Personal Curriculum (which was for Algebra II) and in January 2011 she received a Personal Curriculum in Chemistry.

Even though Riley finally had a Personal Curriculum, her final months of High School were an emotional roller coaster for her and her family. “Will she do it? What if she doesn’t?”

During these last months while Riley struggled, I looked for any way that we could somehow fight to get Riley her diploma. A Certificate of Completion was no longer an option, she had done more than show up for her four years of High School. She had participated in Marching Band, with her beloved cymbals “Bert and Jeff”. She was the first girl cymbal player in their Marching Band history, Concert Band, Drumline, Follies, Theatre Arts and had even won an award through Barry County for a poem she had written in 9^th grade. She made friends, went to proms, participated in float making and powderpuff football during Homecoming Senior year. She went back and passed the Math classes that she struggled through and failed, until she passed them.

So what was Riley entitled to? According to FAPE, every child is entitled to a Free and Appropriate Public Education-even students with handicaps. But what was appropriate for Riley? Was the Michigan Merit Curriculum appropriate for Riley? And if she was not entitled to a diploma, what was she entitled to? She would have the amount of credits required to graduate according to the school district, but would be missing a ½ credit in Science according to the MMC.

I couldn’t help but feel that something was not right here. According to Michigan’s Mandatory Special Education Act of 1976 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Amendment of 1997 guaranteed all persons with disabilities the right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). But the Michigan Merit Curriculum states that each child must have:

4 credits in English-Language Arts
4 credits in Math-including Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry. Plus 1 other math course-senior year
3 credits in Science-including Biology and Chemistry or Physics
3 credits in Social Studies-including U.S. History & Geography; World History & Geography with a ½ credit in Economics and a ½ credit in Civics
1 credit in Visual, Performing and Applied Arts
1 credit in Physical Education & Health
and an Online Experience

How could FAPE work with the Michigan Merit Curriculum to entitle a child with Learning Disabilities to a diploma? It can't. Not without a Personal Curriculum. What is appropriate for one child isn’t always appropriate for another. Every child learns differently and by lumping them into one mold and expecting them to succeed in the MMC (especially learning disabled students), I feel would be a violation of their right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education. They have been set up to fail! It is a known fact that children with learning disabilities can succeed in the academia field, they can be Doctor’s, Lawyer’s, Nurses, CEO’s and Teachers. They can be successful, but the only way for them to succeed in MMC is with Personal Curriculums.

Teachers, School Administrators, Parents and Students need to be made more aware of Personal Curriculums and the modifications and options that are out there for them. Many parents in our School District are unaware of Personal Curriculums or have asked and been denied like me. Riley and I had to pave a path for a Personal Curriculum-the School and the Head of Special Education had absolutely no clue how to set up a Personal Curriculum-so we walked it together.

It was a group effort, what is the old saying? “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well, maybe it takes a community for a child to succeed in the Michigan Merit Curriculum. From parents to Teachers, from School Administrators to Special Education Teachers, to whom I owe a huge thank you, these Teachers are incredibly underrated and under appreciated-to Ms. Denny Bouchie, Ms. Jeanine Smith, and Ms. Tammie Grabowski, I can never thank you enough. To Ms. Kathleen Kosobud from the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan who became more than an Advisor, but a lifeline and treasured friend. Thank You.

In the end I’m am proud to say “She did it! Riley did it! She received her High School diploma with her friends and fellow classmates on June 5^th 2011. I think I was more proud of this diploma than my own High School diploma. My daughter Riley and I took a journey together, there were delays and detours, but this is one journey that will be one of my fondest. When I reflect on that moment when we met for the first time after finding out she could graduate (2 days before graduation), Riley was standing in the Gym, with her senior class, holding the flowers I had sent to her, she turned and looked at me, she said one word, and as she said it she smiled, with this big grin, “MOM!” We hugged and held each other, crying while I took her face in my hands and told her, “You did it! You did it! I’m so proud of you!” That memory will be one of my most treasured memories, one that will live with me forever. This is for you Riley! I love you, Mom.

I'm so glad that Wendy and I attended the Board meeting because it brought home the need for districts across the state to do a much better job of informing families of both the requirements of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC) and the many ways that students' needs could be accommodated through the creative development of a Personal Curriculum.

And what a great segue into the Michigan Department of Education's Personal Curriculum presentation! Abbie Groff (the presenter) reported that the largest number of questions came from people inquiring about the Personal Curriculum for students with IEPs. This aspect of the Personal Curriculum is to provide access to modifications to allow students to achieve as much of the MMC "as is practicable". The vagueness of this language has been a problem for districts because it leaves each district to decide on the flexibility that they can apply. If they are overly rigid, their graduation rates suffer. If they are overly relaxed, then their "graduates" may be inadequately prepared for post-secondary programs and employment.

After the presentation several Board members remarked that they had been in touch with constituents who reported that their districts were not honoring requests for considering a Personal Curriculum. Ms. Groff reinforced that districts must consider a Personal Curriculum if requested, but did not have to approve every request. She also reminded the Board that a parent, emancipated student, or teacher could make the request, and that people in certain roles were required to participate in the consideration of a Personal Curriculum.

If you or your school district needs more information or technical assistance with Personal Curriculum options, contact your Personal Curriculum Liaison at your intermediate school district (click link, check box for ISD District, and click "Search"), or contact Mary Head for the name of your local contact or for more information about the Personal Curriculum option. There are plenty of resources that she and other MDE staff have collected to make it easier for districts to follow through on requests for Personal Curriculum plans, and there are video and podcast archives that can provide more information.

Post-script to Public Comment entry

2011-06-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

by Kathleen Kosobud, writing for LDA of Michigan

I just heard from the mother of the young woman who was not offered a personal curriculum until her senior year of high school. She called to tell me that her daughter was graduating...with her class...and had passed all of her courses! Today was her open house.

This could only have happened through the combined efforts of a team of people who believed that this young woman had value: her family, her teachers, her friends, her school administrators--and most importantly--the young woman, herself!

This is a story of triumph over adversity; but it is also a cautionary tale. Even while holding high expectations for achievement, we need to remember to be considerate of circumstances that may make such achievements very challenging. We need to be proactive in planning to allow the playing field to be truly leveled for students with disabilities. It is unfair to withhold a fair accommodation from a person who needs it until they have reached the point of despair. It is a form of taunting that amounts to bullying.

It is my hope that Michigan districts will be more proactive and consider requests for accommodation through creative course selection, differentiation of instruction, alternative formats for course completion, and through the option for developing a plan for a personal curriculum. Our common objective is to see to it that many more students successfully complete high school with diplomas, and are able to continue their educations or training for successful entry into the workforce.

Public Comment to the Michigan Board of Education forum in Ann Arbor

2011-06-05T20:50:00.001-07:00

To: Members, Michigan State Board of Education
Date: May 26, 2011

My name is Kathleen Kosobud. I am a “temporarily retired” special educator working on my dissertation. My research focus is on family-school collaboration in special education. I am one of the first 87 teachers in the country to have achieved the status of National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT-EA/Generalist, 1993). I am also the immediate past president of the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan (LDA), an all-volunteer organization; and I am finishing my service as LDA’s representative on MDE’s Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC). I am here to speak from my experiences as a teacher, parent, and advocate about righting the course for students with disabilities as they are challenged to meet the High School Content Expectations or “huskies” (HSCEs) of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC).

I read the SBE’s recommendations to Governor Snyder: “Education Improvement and Reform Priorities” and heartily endorse your performance focus regarding graduation, and the ability of graduates to “obtain post-secondary credentials that ensure they are well-equipped with skills for work, self-support, starting a business, and contributing to the common good”. This year marks the first graduating class affected by the changes in curriculum requirements through the Michigan Merit Curriculum. Although the initial legislation was passed in 2006, with additional legislation supporting the development of “Personal Curricula” (PCs) for students with disabilities passed in 2007, it seems that districts across the state are still unprepared or unwilling to implement PCs for students whose identified disabilities interfere with successful completion of the MMC, without such modification. During the past year I have fielded calls from parents who have encountered varying forms of resistance to their requests for PC plans for their high schoolers.

One parent called me after school personnel at her son’s 9th grade special education planning meeting (IEP), told him that he would not be getting a diploma. Stunned by this pronouncement, his comment was, “Then why am I bothering to go to school?”

Another parent called me when her daughter, a senior with mathematics learning disabilities, flunked her first semester of Algebra II. Although this parent had requested a Personal Curriculum for her daughter since her freshman year, the district said that she had to fail courses in order to warrant consideration for a Personal Curriculum. So, until her senior year, she was left to struggle through all of the curriculum requirements at her high school, without PC modifications and lagging in credit. Since she also was having difficulty with the mathematics HSCEs of chemistry, the district suggested that she drop Band (the one course in which she was experiencing success), in order to take a team-taught class in chemistry, and repeat the Algebra II course that she failed. Finally, because she was going to be short of credits for graduation at the end of the year, the district would not allow her to walk with her graduating class--students with whom she had attended school for all 12 years of her time in this rural district.

A third parent called after a district told her that they “didn’t do” PCs. Period. This troubles me on a number of levels.

First, students with high-incidence disabilities have always had the potential for gainful employment and full participation in the adult world, with appropriate accommodation for their disabilities. The reluctance of districts to respond affirmatively to requests for Personal Curricula is punitive, and mean-spirited. Loss of access to a diploma represents, for students with disabilities, lifelong diminishment of opportunity. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics[1] in April of this year, people with less than a high school education experienced a seasonally adjusted 14.6% unemployment rate nationally. High school graduates for the same time period experienced a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 9.7%. This is nearly a 5% difference. Further, for men with disabilities, ages 16 to 64 years old, the unemployment rate was 16.1%, compared to a 9.2% unemployment rate for those without disabilities[2] Women in the same age range were unemployed at 15.2% with disabilities and 7.8% without. We don’t need to “help” our students with disabilities add to these sorry statistical outcomes.

Second, denial of the opportunity to complete high school with the support of a PC reinforces the abundantly-felt lack of self-worth that students with disabilities often acquire as part of their school experiences. From the time that they begin to show achievement differences, students with disabilities are more likely to be bullied, excluded and devalued. Denial of opportunity to complete high school with a diploma is, in effect, an institutional validation of everything that students with disabilities have internalized since the early years of their schooling. Without hope, we see a rise in risky behavior, alienation, and ultimately the justification needed for dropping out.

Third, the failure of districts to appreciate that people ultimately contribute to society in a variety of ways has led to a decrease in the wealth of options for students to be successful in completing “as much as is practicable” of the Michigan Merit Curriculum, in alignment with their talents, interests and career goals. Many Michigan districts are experiencing, for example, a decrease in enrollment in Career and Technical Education courses, even though there could be many opportunities for the embedding of practical mathematics and sciences in these courses, in fulfillment of the MMC. Like many of you, I depend on skilled technicians when I need home improvements or repairs. It is a short-sighted form of budget-consciousness that comes out of districts interpreting the MMC as a series of “one size fits all” classes.

I don’t think that the Michigan Board of Education had any intention of increasing the stratification of students by recommending the MMC. In fact, two years ago, while I was still president of LDA of Michigan, we printed and distributed buttons like the one I’m wearing that reads: “Rigor, Relevance, Relationships…and ACCESS!” I adhere to the notion of “assuming competence” in all individuals and so I see the MMC as an opportunity for districts to collaboratively create classes and programs that allow for maximum learning diversity.

Button Design, LDA MI Conference 2009

We have many resources in place to offer technical assistance and support through Michigan's Integrated Improvement Initiatives (MI3)[3] for this work. We can make school a much better environment for students with disabilities, from the time they are identified through the time that they successfully complete high school with the appropriate supports, services, accommodations, and modifications. Districts across the state are using the MMC to develop courses that have the capacity to engage a variety of learners through multiple representations of content, differentiation in the ways that students interact with the content, and opportunities for students to demonstrate their mastery of content in a variety of ways. These need to be widely shared, and easily accessed by those districts that have fewer resources to devote to the task of curriculum development. Finally, we need to remember that the workforce that will bring Michigan out of its economic slump depends on having diverse enough skills that the collapse of a single industry will not bring us to our knees.

Michigan’s Board of Education has laid the groundwork through the policies that it has crafted to make a more equitable and attainable future. In the words of the late Ronald Edmonds, my former Pioneer High School history teacher (1978 speech):

“We can whenever, and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need, in order to do this. Whether we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.”

Thank you.

-----
About N Kathleen Kosobud: Kathleen is a member of the Network of Michigan Educators, a group of 500 or so recognized educators in Michigan who are available to state policy-makers for their expert opinions on policies affecting education and children, through the “Ask the Network” program started by Jean Shane at the MDE. Kathleen blogs for LDA of Michigan at http://ldamiexchange.blogspot.com/, and for her own amusement at http://backburner-nkk.blogspot.com/. She was one of the contributors to the revamping of the teacher education program at Michigan State University’s School of Education through a project to infuse inclusive content into all teacher education courses for the preparation of new teachers, under the guidance of Susan J. Peters, Ph.D. After achieving National Board Certification as an Early Adolescence/Generalist as a teacher of middle school mathematics in a special education resource classroom, she served as a teacher-in-residence for Assessment Development at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She is the parent of two adult children with learning disabilities, and identifies as a person with learning disabilities, herself. You can reach her by e-mail.

[1] US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A4: Employment Status of the civilian population 25 years and over by educational attainment http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm, accessed 5/25/11

[2] US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Table A-6. Employment status of the civilian population by sex, age, and disability status, not seasonally adjusted, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t06.htm, accessed 5/25/11

[3] http://cenmi.org/About.aspx

Raising the Bar While Improving Opportunity?

2011-05-19T08:22:00.001-07:00

I had the privilege of sharing the floor with Derrick Fries, Ph.D. a professor at EMU whose research follows students identified "at risk" of dropping out based on their MEAP math scores and Math course grades in 8th grade. He cites an astonishingly high correlation between 8th grade MEAP math scores of 4 and below, final grades in math of D or below and an almost certainty that the same students will not be on target for completing a semester of Algebra 2 by their senior years of high school. Without personal curriculum plans, students who fail to complete .5 credit in Algebra 2 are ineligible for a high school diploma in the state of Michigan, under the requirements of the Michigan Merit Curriculum.

Fries' presentation, which is well worth seeing, includes some startling statistics. During a school year, 20,000 students in Michigan high schools will drop out, or be pushed out. To get a sense of scale, these same dropouts would almost fill the Palace of Auburn Hills.

Fries also compares the annual costs of housing an inmate in prison, with the average annual per pupil costs for public education. According the the 2011 Children's Defense Fund Report, these costs are $28,570 (prison) and $9575 (school), respectively. Dropping out is associated with higher rates of incarceration, so these costs are important to keep in mind. It's not that we can claim that all dropouts end up in jail, but Dr. Fries' argument is still interesting--extending the time students stay in school, and increasing the graduation rate may reduce the numbers of future prison residents, and save the state a considerable amount of money. Even if it means an extra couple of years for some students, we should be making serious efforts to encourage students to stay. Yet, that can be a pretty hard sell for the students involved.

There are a number of barriers to extending time for students to graduate--the biggest may be the belief that completing high school should take four years, no exceptions. We accommodate students with learning disabilities by giving extended time on tests; why shouldn't we give extended time for high school completion? High-schoolers taking more than four years to complete their diplomas may feel ashamed because of inflexible ideas about how long it should take. We need to work on de-stigmatizing extended time for achieving high school diplomas. Extended time in high school with appropriately adapted instruction in academic courses may also lead to fewer students needing remedial coursework at the college level. Finally, many adults take more than four years to complete their undergraduate degrees (see here and here), for a variety of reasons. Nobody thinks less of those whose journey through college took longer.

Economic pressures can also cause students to drop out. Until recently, children in foster care "aged out" on their 18th birthdays, often without finishing high school. Lacking basic economic necessities makes it nearly impossible to envision post-secondary education for students in foster care. Recent changes in Michigan law may offer extended health, housing and caring support until the age of 21.

Even with these new diploma requirements, we're not yet at a place where we can brag about improved college graduation rates. Completion may be especially difficult for first-generation college students, many of whom may be poor. Pell grants help fund tuition and other college expenses for students with low incomes. Many colleges, and not-for-profit organizations receive TRIO funding to help disadvantaged students prepare for and successfully make it through college. Upward Bound, and GEAR UP funds help support middle and high schoolers on their journeys to college. For students with learning disabilities, IDEA transition planning services can also be of help. Early preparation in organization and time management, strategic study skills, and self-determination can contribute to successful college completion.

It's also clear that "career and college ready" means different things to different people. Not all students "at risk" or with learning disabilities are interested in careers that require undergraduate college educations. For those students, we need to do a much better job of integrating the Michigan Merit Curriculum (the curriculum that leads to an earned diploma), into career and technical education courses. Then we need to identify post-high school programs that enable these students to train for skilled trades.

Michigan Merit Curriculum Update (with added editorial comments)

2011-04-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

by N. Kathleen Kosobud, for LDA of Michigan

The purple prose you see here is an addition to this blog post, to show the convoluted process that learning can take. Sometimes when you think you have learned something new you are merely questioning the rightness of something you previously believed. I admit to being fallible, gullible, and vulnerable to having my beliefs shaken. I didn't go in search of a rebuttal or, in an act of revenge, attempt to prove that I was right and "they" were wrong but somewhere, we seem to have meandered into the territory of what Stephen Colbert used to refer to as "truthiness". "Truthiness" is having an outward appearance of being correct, with an underlying shaky foundation. I believe that I was taken in by the "truthiness" of the following:

This month's meeting of the Michigan Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) included a presentation on the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC). I learned some new things about how things really work in the world of education.

1. The Michigan Department of Education can only flesh out policy. It cannot force districts to do anything that is not a matter of law. Because Personal Curriculum options are written into policy as an option (in other words, a school district may offer...) there is nothing to make a district offer a Personal Curriculum as an option.

Now, I believed that I had been corrected; I had been misinformed that districts must offer a Personal Curriculum, and this presentation corrected that bit of misinformation. And so, to soften the blow to readers, I wrote the following to show that there were many ways to achieve the end of making the Michigan Merit Curriculum more "user-friendly" for students with learning disabilities:

2. The Personal Curriculum option was envisioned as one of a number of ways to help students with IEPs achieve the needed credits for a diploma. Other options include: academic content embedded in career and tech education classes, academic courses offered in alternative formats (online courses, self-paced courses offered with online and face-to-face components, courses featuring multiple representations of the content, etc.).

3. The Personal Curriculum was seen as one component of a range of options. For students with IEPs, it was seen as a way of documenting modifications to the requirements for attaining a diploma, in recognition of the impact of an individual student's disability on learning in a particular area of academic content.

...and in recognition that not everyone's Educational Development Plan (EDP) would list "theoretical physicist" as their career goal--requiring a high level of achievement in math, science and technology. The EDP might list "house painter" as a career goal, which might not require as rigorous a curriculum in math or science, even though it might be a good idea to have some solid knowledge of business management, financial planning, cost bidding, materials estimation, and small business tax laws.

4. Once a diploma is granted or a planned program is achieved, a student still is exited from high school. Therefore, it may be to a student's advantage to take a longer time in high school to achieve the un-personalized curriculum, in order to take advantage of career-readiness opportunities.

... and here I was thinking of the "late bloomer" who might not have the foggiest idea of what she wanted to be in life, but by taking her time to complete all the requirements of the MMC, would have more options as she entered college.

So, if you ask for a Personal Curriculum for your child, and the school district says they don't offer a Personal Curriculum for students with IEPs, that may be true. (At least in the opinion of some MDE consultants...but read on). However, it might be worth your while to encourage the district to consider a Personal Curriculum for your child, if there is data on the impact of your child's disability on academic learning. This data could support needed modifications to an area of the curriculum in order for your child to succeed. ...especially, if your child's career goals may make other areas of learning more important than the standard MMC.

However, if your district says "No", you may also ask the district to explain what they are doing to support the graduation of all students. If there are alternative courses to help students master content, these should be available to your child, as well. School districts are still expected to show that they are improving graduation rates, and face a variety of consequences for failing to maintain or increase those rates. In addition, the State uses the test scores that virtually all high school students in Michigan take to evaluate school effectiveness. Schools with a record of low scores are likely to be changing what they teach and how they teach it to increase those test scores. Finally, if other district students have been offered the Personal Curriculum as an option, you may be able to appeal ...or legally question... the refusal of a district to consider a Personal Curriculum on the basis of equal opportunity.

This is not a static conversation. As the state gains experience with a highly prescriptive, outcomes-based curriculum, there may be more and more unintended consequences to be seen. And, there may be improvements in the preparation of all students to meet the challenges of a rigorous high school curriculum.

Again, this is not a static conversation. I re-read the box on page 2 of the Parents Guide to the Personal Curriculum: Focus on Students with an IEP: "Districts MUST offer the PC option and respond to all PC requests but are NOT required to approve all PC requests." I'm pretty sure that MUST still means "is required to". So, I learned something from "learning something new"--and that is to make sure that you have your information straight when you make a presentation. I'll be sending a note to all people listed below, to make sure that "MUST" means what I think it means...and not "may". It's not that I have anything invested in proving someone wrong, but in making sure that I don't misinform families when I make statements about the Personal Curriculum as an option.

In the meantime, if you are interested in becoming better informed about the Michigan Merit Curriculum, the Personal Curriculum option for students with IEPs, and the implications of achieving or not achieving a diploma, here are some additional resources for you to use:

Personal Curriculum Network (where personal curriculum liaisons share information). To gain access to the Personal Curriculum Network, use this link
ACTpoint Michigan (a site most districts use to identify key curriculum objectives for a Personal Curriculum)

General Personal Curriculum questions:

Gregg Dionne
Alternative Education Consultant,
MDE Curriculum and Instruction
Phone 517.241.6895

Mary Head
Department Analyst
MDE Curriculum and Instruction
Phone 517.241.6895

Students with IEP Questions

Sheryl Diamond
Policy Consultant
MDE Special Education
Phone: 517.335.0442

Algebra II Questions

Dan LaDue
Secondary Mathematics Consultant
MDE, Curriculum and Instruction
Phone: 517.241.6895

For further information, please refer to earlier posts on this same blog. And I hope to keep learning something new that will help families to make good decisions in concert with their children's needs.

A Call to Action for the Young Leaders with Learning Disabilities

2011-02-28T13:00:00.000-08:00

by Kathleen Kosobud

This is especially for the Young Leaders Group of the Learning Disabilities Association of America which held its' launch at the 2011 LDA National Conference—Many congratulations!

This morning (2/28/11) I was listening to The Craig Fahle Show[i] a Detroit local NPR program and Craig was interviewing some folks in Detroit who are using the web to leverage "micro-investments" in projects.

Recently the Michigan film industry launched a campaign to retain the Michigan film industry incentive which our Governor has proposed to place on the chopping block. I became a micro-producer in the film industry ad campaign[ii] by clicking a button, checking a box, and sending my $10 via PayPal. The initial ad is a collage of video posts from young people who had been, until now, starting careers in the film industry in Michigan. We, in Michigan, are seeing our young people leave the state as the prospects for jobs seem to be fading away. These young people sent short video clips, telling the governor how the loss of the incentive would affect them. I love the idea that, at every level of this project, it was done through micro-contributions of money, effort, and collaboration and became a truly empowered process as a result.

The "faces" of the campaign are Jeff Daniels[iii] (actor, musician, and committed resident of Michigan), Mitch Albom[iv] (Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, For One More Day), and Emery King, chair of the Michigan Film Office Advisory Council[v] (see an interview with him about the Michigan Creative Film Alliance at http://vimeo.com/14104906/).

I think that "empowerment" (Nothing About Us Without Us[vi]--the clarion call of the Disability Rights Movement[vii]) is key to activating the enthusiasm and support of young people in LDA causes. I have some ideas about campaigns that would involve social media and participatory activism and would love to implement them at the state level but it would be far better to do it nationally, because of a body of research[viii] showing that young people with learning disabilities often fail to disclose disability in college and on the job. I have had young people (my own children included) tell me that they are afraid to be considered to be less than they are, if they disclose disability. As a result, they often think that they are the only ones struggling to succeed and may wrongly blame themselves for the failure of the wider system.

We need a "You are NOT alone" "Proud and LD" kind of campaign--to get in the face of employers, public services, education policymakers, etc. to let them know what they are missing by excluding our numbers from full participation.

Many of us, despite our talents, have difficulties that would keep us from achieving high school diplomas in the current "high and rigorous standards"[ix] policy environment. We need to be there for our younger brothers and sisters (and their children) who are facing these policy challenges. Why is it still unacceptable for us to "read" with hypertext readers? Why is it still unacceptable for us to "write" using dictation software? Why does everyone (as opposed to those with a future in engineering or science) have to pass Algebra 2 in order to participate in the 21st Century workforce[x]? We already know that one size does not fit all.

Let's get ourselves motivated to get this going. I'll help (in between endless days of writing my dissertation), but we need everyone to join in to make our voices heard--loudly!

I'm a person identified with learning disabilities and I don't intend to stay quiet about my right, or anyone else's, to participate.

Kathleen Kosobud is a past president of LDA of Michigan, a National Board Certified Teacher, and a doctoral candidate in the field of Special Education with special interests in family-school policy and practices, teacher quality for children with disabilities, and education policy for persons with disabilities.

[i] Hook up to Craig Fahle at these links: http://www.facebook.com/CraigFahleShow/ or http://www.wdetfm.org/craigfahle/

[ii] This is a shortened link to the Michigan Film Industry’s campaign: http://bit.ly/e42jPA/

[iii] Read about Daniels at the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001099/

[iv] To buy Albom’s books, go to: http://www.amazon.com/Mitch-Albom/e/B000AQ79EY/ ref=sr_tc_ep?qid=1298924804

[v] More information about the Michigan Film Office’s Advisory Council: http://www.michiganfilmoffice.org/The-Film-Office/Advisory-Council/Default.aspx/

[vi] Charlton, James I. (1998). Nothing about us without us: disability oppression and empowerment. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[vii] About the Disability Rights Movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_rights_movement/

[viii] Link to the 2009 report on the state of Learning Disabilities: http://www.ncld.org/stateofld/

[ix] Link to the national standards adopted by the National Governor’s Association: http://www.corestandards.org/

[x] Link to the U.S. 21^st Century Workforce Commission’s 2000 report: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=key_workplace/

What's in a Name? "Highly Qualified" Special Educators

2011-02-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

This is my response to the "On Special Education" blog entry Are Teachers in Training Good Enough for Special Ed.? I've been thinking about this ever since I earned National Board Certification as an Early Adolescence Generalist, while teaching in a resource room.

I am a "career" special educator. I spent 20 years in the classroom, worked for a national non-profit organization on teacher quality issues for 5 years and I have been working on a PhD in special education to continue my work in support of quality special education.

Picture of student's finger pointing to text on a page
Image: federico stevanin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the past few years, I've heard and responded to proposals that would put students with disabilities in front of computers instead of human beings to provide instruction, I've heard of the increasing use of bright, inadequately prepared TFA recruits in special education settings, I've heard of special education interns (student teachers) being used as substitutes in special education settings, and I've heard about a variety of other "sow's ear into silk purse" solutions. I don't buy it, and neither should the general public.

The logic of these solutions eludes me. If we had a water shortage, we wouldn't drink substandard water; why should we accept the staffing of classrooms of our most needy students with substandard teachers? Ever since the oxymoronic term "highly qualified teacher" was defined, there's been an ever-increasing push to include more and more "non-teachers" under the umbrella of that term. "Highly qualified" implies, at minimum, that the teacher has credentials and has some expertise in the classroom where he/she is placed.

Since NCLB (No Child Left Behind) requires that the vast majority of students be provided access to the general curriculum, with appropriate accommodations (in the case of students with disabilities), and requires assessment in their mastery of the content of the general curriculum, I'm of the opinion that we need to take a different approach to the staffing of special education positions. I think that special education certification should transition into an added endorsement, only obtainable by general education teachers who have mastery of the content that they teach, and sufficient experience that they are able to teach with some fluency.

If we regarded special education as a specialization in the same way that we regard instructional technology specialists, or reading specialists (most of whom hold advanced certification, beyond their initial credentials), we would likely have the "highly qualified" thing line up better for special educators. IDEIA 2004 (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act) requires that secondary special educators have both content and special education credentials. Why do we keep expecting that a four to five year initial credential would even approach preparing special educators?

It's no secret that we have chronic shortages of special educators; we've had that since I was a newly-hatched special educator in the '70s. I think that Alexa Posny's claim of a special educator shortage makes a false connection. It's not retirement that we have to fear, it's the overwhelming attrition rate among special educators that has been the cause of the shortages. So, I would advocate for an intensification of the standard for "highly qualified" special educators, not a loosening of the standards to allow any warm body to staff our special education positions. We need special educators with solid foundations in content and a broad repertoire of skills in building access to that content in multiple ways.

Kathleen Kosobud, National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT)
Doctoral Candidate in Special Education, Michigan State University
Immediate Past President, LDA of Michigan

MITS Freedom Stick--Making Computer Use More Accessible

2011-02-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Ira Socol, a colleague of mine who has been working on his Ph.D. at Michigan State University, has a theory--Toolbelt Theory--which he has been blogging on for several years at SPeEDchange, his blog. He's currently working with Michigan's Integrated Technology Supports (MITS) on this possibility. The idea, which I am probably oversimplifying, is that people who need to have certain adaptations made in order to access content on a computer, should be able to carry their tools with them. In essence, the tools, stored on a USB flash drive, would allow them to customize any computer to their needs. He's currently working with Michigan's Integrated Technology Supports (MITS).

Picture of 3 flash drives. Source: secretarydpu.wordpress.com

Well, he's finally unveiled The MITS Freedom Stick, adapted and improved from a Scottish suite of applications stored on a flash drive. The MITS Freedom Stick is "designed to provide students with information and communication access on any computer using a Windows or Linux operating system." The best part about this "toolbelt" is that nothing needs to be installed on any computer, it's all self-contained on a 4 gigabyte (4GB) USB flash drive which you provide (and can be purchased for under $20). The applications can be downloaded for free, at the MITS website. There are instructions for customization at the link, and there's room on the flash drive for storing the files created by the user.

This suite of tools became possible through a collaboration between MITS, the Regional Support Center – Scotland North and East, the Mozilla Corporation, and Mozilla Education.
With netbooks available for under $300, this brings basic computer accessibility down to an incredibly affordable range for students in upper elementary and middle school, and beyond. What impresses me is that this means that there are few excuses for students with learning disabilities to be unfamiliar with the tools housed on the MITS Freedom Stick by the time they enter college. Parents and teachers will need to be prepared to become skilled users of these tools, to help reinforce their learning. The hope that I have for this suite of tools is that it will enable more students to become independent of others' help earlier, so that a less steep learning curve is required of them when they reach post-secondary education.

The opportunity costs of enacting the MMC

2011-01-17T16:53:00.000-08:00

by Kathleen Kosobud, on behalf of LDA of Michigan

2011 is the first year where high school graduates will be awarded diplomas based on the completion of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), a "rigorous" menu of 16 to 18 credit requirements. Although advanced students will have the opportunity to test out of some of these courses and will be able to make special arrangements for early college enrollment, and there are some provisions to enable students to extend the length of time for completing some mathematics classes, the course requirements have made graduation with a diploma far more rigid and prescriptive than in the past. Of course, in the past, Michigan had only one or two course requirements, so pretty much anything went, as long as a student completed 21 credits.

This new curriculum has had a negative impact on enrollment in Career and Tech Education (CTE) courses. Although there was talk of analyzing the course content of CTE to recognize the integration of math and science content in many of these courses, it seems instead to have had the effect of reducing enrollment in CTE courses, as students struggle to fulfill the curriculum requirements by taking the "plain vanilla" math and science courses. As a result, it has left students little or no room in their schedules for CTE. For students with disabilities, this means a loss of opportunity to develop some needed competencies in a meaningful context.

Image: Ladder going up into the clouds; Source: lifehack.org

The same result seems to have happened in the visual and performing arts. Although all students are expected to take one credit in this area, students whose strengths and interests would have led them to take more courses in the arts have found themselves unable to fit these courses into their schedules as they find them conflicting with other academic course requirements. For students with disabilities, part of career development is finding their niche(s) of competence. We don't identify students with disabilities through their failures in the visual and performing arts, nor through their failures in vocational skills. Educational disabilities are mostly defined through the academic cores of literacy, communications, and numeracy.

The "plain vanilla" Michigan Merit Curriculum, which is ideally suited for students who expect to complete 4-year liberal arts degrees in college may, in fact, be hindering students whose career choices are in technical fields or the arts, unless districts are able to see their ways clear to creatively reconfiguring academic coursework to link it with the applied fields in which many of Michigan's young people could be useful and successful. A meaningful, well-rounded high school education could be shaped around the MMC. There are hints of this happening around the state, despite an economic slump the size of the Grand Canyon. However, for many districts, course development is an added cost that simply cannot be taken on.

The problem is, because there are few resources available to devote to making the MMC a robust and truly innovative reform--the kind of reform needed to develop a 21st Century Workforce of unimaginable versatility--we are left with the "bare bones" of a high school education. Narrowing the range of course offerings is unlikely to produce positive graduation and career readiness for students at risk, or with disabilities. Further, moving students with disabilities into segregated "resource" courses may reduce their odds of meeting the MMC.

Readers who thought this blog entry was going to be a continued monologue about the intricacies of applying for a Personal Curriculum (PC) can rest easy. This is the entry where we talk about "fairness". Now, you've all heard it: "Fairness isn't when everyone gets the same thing, it's when everyone gets what they need." Yessir! That's right! But...

Sometimes things come in packages that look pretty darned promising (at least when presented to the legislature), but when you open them up, there's nothing there. I'm thinking this is one of those times: nice package, no substance. The Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), the golden calf that will save Michigan from a future of decline, has triggered a response that leaves many more children behind, as public school funds become scarcer, and curricular triage becomes the mode of the day.

The impact of the MMC on inclusion has turned the clock backwards. Yes, it is regressive. Students with disabilities who were included in general education classes are being re-segregated into "remedial" or "adjusted studies" classes; the old rational-technical factory model made popular at the turn of the 20th century. Students who fall behind in their studies are being funneled into "credit recovery" classes. Suddenly, the solution to learning diversity is no longer differentiated services, but "differentiated" places.

Instead of assuming competence, these "triage strategies" structurally re-segregate students away from their peers, and away from rich learning environments where everyone contributes their experience to aid in knowledge-construction. Instead, young people are being separated out, based on estimates of their limitations, and placed in environments of "knowledge constriction". This is indecent, at least, and a flagrant violation of the civil rights of individuals with disabilities, children who are English language learners, children in poverty, and children whose skin color triggers assumptions of (in)competence. It is a violation of every child's right to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment.

These strategies are punitive; they fail to recognize that people are not all made the same. Struggling students, are counseled out of electives (often the classes where they are able to develop skills in their areas of strength), so that they can take double loads of academics to make up for classes that they have already failed once. These are acts that shame, and discourage. The Dropout Challenge becomes just that--a challenge to be the first to drop out.

Individual districts (some but not all), overwhelmed by regulatory requirements "make it up as they go", often with little or no actual information. Parents call LDA of Michigan as they watch their children with disabilities fail classes where they have inadequate support, are told that they can't apply for a Personal Curriculum for their child until they are taking Algebra II, are told that they can't apply for a Personal Curriculum for their child until their child has failed a class, or they are told that a Personal Curriculum can only be written to adjust the Mathematics curriculum. Parents should be protected from these fabrications, but there is only a meandering path, with many diversions along the way, leading eventually to clarity if they remain resolute.

In crafting the MMC legislation, the legislature made an effort to provide for a Personal Curriculum for students with disabilities, but the information is made inaccessible through its' diffuse distribution. The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) has a Personal Curriculum web page, where official guides to the PC are posted, but much of the information that would help parents to become well-educated advocates for their children is housed in other places: videos on an REMC website, guidance documents, sample course outlines, and legal advice on the MAISA website, an invitation-only "ning" for PC Liaisons. Did you know, for instance that there's a PC liaison at every intermediate school district (ISD) and every regional educational service area (RESA) in the state? Further, the state has so embraced 21st Century Technology (a false economy if it is to serve all of our citizens) that many of these resources are simply not available for those who are "digitally divided" from them.

Information on the PC is distributed piecemeal across a number of people in any local district. School counselors (caseloads of approximately 350 general education students per counselor at many high schools) are identified as the first contacts for requests for PCs. School principals are the next point of contact. Special educators and school psychologists participate in PC development meetings to validate the need for course adjustment, but the PC remains a "general education" initiative. School boards set the cut scores for passing courses and receiving diplomas, and set the adjusted cut scores for PCs. A pay-for-service website (not all districts have subscribed to this) is available to streamline the adjustment process for the PC, and to calculate when the modified threshold is reached.

And then, there are the stories:

LDA of Michigan heard from a parent whose son had struggled mightily with academic content all through school. Anticipating that he would continue to struggle through high school, as he entered ninth grade his special education teacher told him that he would not be earning a diploma, but a certificate of completion. Later, he turned to his mother and asked, "If I'm not going to earn a diploma, why should I bother going to school?"

Another parent called when her child, in her senior year, was taking double courses in Algebra II (parts a and b) concurrently because she was unable to persuade the school that her child needed a PC due to her identified disabilities in mathematical reasoning. She was being asked to take her child out of band so she could take a team-taught course in science that was only offered in conflict with the band schedule.

A parent called because her daughter's school refused to allow her daughter to walk with her class for graduation, because she would need to complete an additional semester's courses before she actually graduated. The parent was not asking for an early diploma, only for her daughter to have the privilege of walking with her class in deference to the hard work that her daughter had already shown, and to her commitment to complete despite having to continue classes after this school year.

A parent called to ask why her son's school refused to consider a PC, and placed him in a first year algebra course, even though he was performing four years below grade level, and was already failing the course.

A parent wrote to say that her daughter, on the basis of her identified impairments had been taken out of general education classes and placed in a resource class. The assumption was that her daughter would derive no benefit from inclusion, in spite of having been included for years.

LDA of Michigan has been encouraged to write our legislators, or school boards if we encounter problems with our local district's enactment of the MMC. Although we have been discouraged (by personnel in the Michigan Office of Special Education) from filing special education complaints for such uncivil treatment of children with identified disabilities, we encourage you to file rather than letting your child's needs go unmet. We are reminded that this is a general education, and not a special education initiative, even though it involves children with IEPs.

Our children with disabilities are facing the denial of opportunity to earn diplomas, under such perverse enactments of the MMC. Further, they face an uncertain future beyond high school, without diplomas. It remains to be seen what other opportunities will be closed to them: technical training, college, jobs with robust career ladders, and the opportunity to earn a living wage. We just don't have very much information about what the lack of a diploma might bring.

Contact LDA of Michigan and let us know what your district is doing to ensure that your child is able to successfully attain a diploma, and if not, how that may affect your child's post-school prospects. We need to know, and share the practices of districts that have risen to the occasion, as well as solving problems where they exist.

MORE ABOUT THE PERSONAL CURRICULUM

2011-01-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

by K. Kosobud, for LDA of Michigan, 1/16/2011

Some of the curriculum requirements of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC) can be very challenging for students with disabilities. We knew that from the start. The MMC raises the threshold for achievement across the board; along with raising the anxiety of many parents whose children have struggled with various aspects of the curriculum all through school. The MMC, enacted in 2006, is the standard for the graduating class of 2o11. Districts have had several years to prepare for the first class to graduate under the new requirements, and to learn how to make adjustments for students who are struggling through credit recovery options like the Michigan Virtual High School, and through limited Personal Curriculum options. This video (approximately 1 hour long) captures a discussion of the Personal Curriculum, from a State Board of Education meeting held November 2008, two years after the MMC was approved.

IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004) makes it clear that students with disabilities should have access to the general curriculum as much as possible. There is no "special education" curriculum in Michigan, only the general education curriculum: the MMC. This is the curriculum that must be followed in order to receive a diploma.

For four years, I've been LDA of Michigan's representative to the Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC), an IDEA-mandated state advisory panel to the State Board of Education and the Michigan Department of Education. We were briefed about the Personal Curriculum, and made public comment on it (including some of the possible unforeseen consequences of not starting early to provide access to a rigorous curriculum; see pages 19 to 24 of the aforementioned link). Even so, for the general public, it seems that information is still hard to come by. The information that we find at the MDE website tells a very limited version of the ins and outs of planning for students with disabilities.

Line of telephone booths toppling like dominoes; Source: soundplusdesign.com

I'm not sure what bothers me the most: that a great deal of information about the Personal Curriculum is available on the web but not at the MDE website; or that there are so many professional players in the system who know limited amounts of information about the Personal Curriculum planning process for students with disabilities. The reality for parents (and occasional advocates, like me) trying to navigate this process is that it is a lot like playing the Telephone Game, only not nearly so fun.

Here, in a nutshell, are some of the things parents need to know and understand as they negotiate the Personal Curriculum:

Special education is not a place; it is a plan for services and supports;
There is no "special education" curriculum; instruction of students with disabilities is guided by the general curriculum (in Michigan, these are the Grade-level Content Expectations, and the High School Content Expectations--the GLCEs or "glicks", and the HSCEs or "huskies");
In middle school, it is a general education requirement that all students complete an Educational Development Plan (EDP) in seventh grade, which school counselors use for high school course selection. The EDP comes partly from inventories of student career interests. The EDP is also useful and important for IEP transition planning.
When students with disabilities transition from middle school to high school, it is the school counselor who develops the 4-year high school course plan, with advice from parents and special educators, and based on student career goals in the EDP;
Because the MMC is a general education plan, modification of the requirements through the Personal Curriculum starts with the school counselor. For students with disabilities, any part of the MMC is open for modification based on a student's disability;
The special education Individualized Education Program (IEP) describes a student's levels of attainment, needs for supports and services based on the student's disabilities, and sets goals and objectives for key areas of growth--academic, social, and/or psycho-motor. It does not develop a Personal Curriculum plan;
Each local school board in the state sets the standard for students to receive a diploma, with, and without, a Personal Curriculum. The standard is under local control, not a state or federal standard. Many districts use the ActPoint decision-tree for developing a plan that meets the local district standard for course credit.
Each intermediate school district (ISD) or regional educational service area (RESA) in Michigan has a staff member (search at this link) who is the "Personal Curriculum liaison". This person is usually a curriculum leader, and coordinates the flow of information from the legislature, the MDE, and other districts in the state on this topic linked with other liaisons through an invitation-only "ning"; there is open access to information at the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators (MAISA) website; and there is also open access at a wiki developed by the Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education (MAASE).
Once a Personal Curriculum meeting is held, the local superintendent or designee either approves or denies the request. If the plan is approved, then a diploma is granted as long as the student meets the requirements outlined in the Personal Curriculum;
The EDP, IEP, and Personal Curriculum can all be modified, if there is justification: changes in career goals, identified needs for added support, or additional modifications to course requirements;

Extended time for course completion is one variable that seems to be up for grabs. Right now, budgetary constraints and Adequate Yearly Progress requirements under No Child Left Behind seem to be the factors limiting school districts' eagerness to support five-year plans for high school completion. Ironically, time is often the adjustment most needed for students with "high incidence" disabilities (specific learning disabilities, cognitive impairments, emotional impairments, other health impairments (AD/HD), and speech and language impairments).

Parents should be aware that even with special education supports and services, special education, as it is currently written, is expected to provide access to the general curriculum, as much as possible. This is not just rhetoric. In Michigan, it is becoming practice to include a high percentage of students with high incidence disabilities in the general education classroom, where the new, improved High School Curriculum is being taught. That's where the "highly qualified teachers" of academic content are teaching, and that's where students who are anticipating graduation with a diploma are expected to participate, with supports and services from special education.

LDA of Michigan receives calls from parents whose children are in high school, or about to enter high school from all over the state. It is my hope that this blog entry helps to "de-mystify" the process of developing a workable plan that allows students with disabilities to be successful in the core academics of the MMC and, if possible, to leave high school with a diploma. I have provided links to online resources that may be helpful for understanding the process of planning, requesting a Personal Curriculum, aligning their high school course plan with their EDPs and supported through their IEPs and Individualized Transition Plans, and ensuring that these students leave high school having completed the education that will allow them to take the next step toward further training, education, or entry into a meaningful area of work.

Group of graduates throwing caps in the air,

Picture source: adamblueproductions.com

Michigan Merit Curriculum and the Personalized Curriculum (PC)

2011-01-14T17:10:00.000-08:00

adapted by K. Kosobud for LDA of Michigan, January 14, 2011

The Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC) includes these requirements:

4 English Credits
3 Science Credits
.5 Civics Credit
1 P.E./Health Credit
2 World Languages Credits (Class of 2016)
4 Mathematics Credits
3 social Studies Credits
.5 Economics Credits
1 Visual, Performing or Applied Arts Credit
An online learning experience [1]

A Personalized Curriculum (PC) can be written for students with IEPs, when there is:

A documented need to make modifications because the student’s disability affects access to and/or demonstration of proficiency in the curriculum.
Lack of progress on the MMC despite documented interventions, supports, and accommodations.

In addition to identifying content or credit modifications, the PC should:

Align with the Education Development Plan, postsecondary goals, and the IEP.
Establish measurable goals.
Provide a method to evaluate whether the student meets the goals.
Include quarterly communication of progress with parent(s).

Picture of mortarboard cap, books and rolled diploma, Source: k12alerts.com

High School Completion Without a Diploma—Students who require significant modifications may not be eligible for a diploma or a PC. Students who need these modifications are still able to progress to good careers, college educations, and more. The significance of completing high school without earning a diploma depends on career choice, future employment requirements, and plans for education beyond high school. According to the Michigan Department of Education, a student who completes high school without earning a diploma can enter a trade or vocational school, attend most community colleges, enter certain branches of the armed forces, and apply for scholarships and financial aid. [2]

Advocacy suggestion: As parents, you may have additional concerns. You may want to be sure that your children will have access to a diploma, while still having a full high school experience: extra-curricular activities such as sports, a balanced schedule of challenging academics offset by electives in students’ areas of interest, and participation in traditional grade-level events along with their age-mates: dances, field trips, and other rituals including graduation. Although schools may not see these accommodations as their obligation, parents may ask for these arrangements, as part of an equitable and inclusive educational experience.

From: A Parents Guide to Personal Curriculum: Focus on Students with an IEP http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/PC_IEP_Parent_Guide_5-18-09_281053_7.pdf.

See also: Personal Curriculum: Parent and Educator Guide http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/PC_Guide_Final_5_12_09_277958_7.pdf

Michigan Department of Education resources on Personal Curriculum are at: http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-6530_30334_49879---,00.html

[1] A Parents Guide to Personal Curriculum: Focus on Students with an IEP, May 2009

[2] Michigan Dept. of Education, Personal Curriculum Guidelines, August 2009

SMALL VICTORY: SLD Determination Processes Must Be Public

2010-05-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

This fall it will be easier for parents and advocates to know what their district process is for determining if a child should be identified with Specific Learning Disabilities under IDEA. All districts must post what they do.

In a memorandum to all Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) and Public School Academies (PSAs), Eleanor White, Assistant Director of the Office of Special Education and Early Intervention Services is requiring them to provide public notice of district processes for determining Learning Disabilities, with an attached publication, “Michigan Criteria for Determining the Existence of a Specific Learning Disability”.

For more information, see the memo and attachment.

Pay for performance?

2010-05-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the postings of faculty in special education on a private discussion board, lately. The discussion has turned to "pay for performance", since it is part of Race to the Top plans. Funny what people will do to get their piece of the action. With Michigan's economy swirling around the drain, our State Superintendent is eager to draft a proposal that will get some of that RTTT money for our state. But that leaves a lot of teachers very unhappy about what kinds of soul-selling we might be in for if we are granted the money. Here's my comment to the discussion board on "pay for performance":

This conversation takes me back to discussions I remember from my time as a teacher-in-residence at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Some professional perks are comparable and some just aren't.

We don't directly offer pay for performance to doctors, if you think about it. For instance, if a cardiac surgeon only takes on the most difficult and risky procedures, because she is one of the few who can do them, she may lose a large percentage of her patients relative to other doctors simply because these are patients who are all but dead unless they get this very risky surgery. If we pay for the number of patients she saves, she'd be out of business. But we pay her to compensate her for her rare knowledge, the costs of doing business (including malpractice liability insurances), all her years of training, and so on.

Attorneys (and I think of Geoffrey Feiger, Jack Kevorkian's attorney at one time, who is an incredible showman and may actually be a pretty smart and effective attorney in spite of his remarkably bad social skills) sometimes do actually get paid for performance in the same way that policy-makers are now discussing paying teachers for performance: achieve a favorable outcome and get a bigger piece of the pie. If an attorney like Feiger sues someone for damages on behalf of his client, and wins, he gets a cut of the "take"; if he loses, he gets a smaller fee, or if he was particularly confident of his success, he may get nothing for losing.

So, for a special educator, if he is the "teacher of record" and his students, using the "value added" growth model (William L. Sanders) achieve at a higher than predicted rate, he gets the bonus. If lower than the growth model would predict, he gets nothing, and may, in fact, get fired if he repeats this pattern for several years. Or, not using the "value added" model, his students achieve at less than a year's average growth, he never gets a bonus, and, after a certain number of years of this "failure to perform", he gets remediated right out of the profession.

So, where does that leave my friend, the beloved music teacher, whose students often were chronic "failures" in academics, but were able to shine in her marching bands and choirs? How is her pay for performance determined? Does she get the bonus for building self-esteem? Does she get drummed out of the profession (pun intended) for not building their math skills?

I like to think of teachers as members of a school community and hope that the children that they see are the responsibility of the whole school, from the custodians and cafeteria workers through the administrators and curriculum leaders. But the playing field is still so uneven that I have a hard time envisioning a pay for performance "system" that adequately smoothes out all the wrinkles. We thought that a good start was to incentivize National Board Certification, and then strategically cluster NBCTs in schools where the needs were high, to improve outcomes for kids. Emerging research is equivocal about the success of such ventures. We also have looked at differentiated career ladders, creating tiered licensure systems, and a number of other methods to recognize the commitment of teachers to continuing their educations, and to committing themselves to remaining in education. But we're still not getting the "one right solution" if ever a solution were to be found.

Sometimes I think that we just give up too easily, like exasperated parents who have exhausted their resources of patience with their children and spank them out of sheer frustration. The system of carrots and sticks, part of which is "pay for performance" seems to be going down that path.

Back to writing in the scholarly mode...