Tag Archives: special education

Common Core’s Implications for Special Ed Students

Posted in District Administration Magazine, News Briefs by

Forty one states, to date, have jumped on the Common Core State Standards bandwagon, adopting common curriculum benchmarks for general education courses in language arts and mathematics. The standards, created by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, are raising the bar for special education students as well. According to the standards, students with disabilities— defined as students eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA )—“must be challenged to excel within the general curriculum.”

“We have to provide all students with an education to be ready to have a career when they leave their K12 experience,” says Chris Minnich, senior membership director at the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Special education students will be held to the same both in the classroom and on the assessments. Two consortiums— Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PAR CC) and SMARTER Balanced Assessment—were granted Race to the Top funds to develop assessments for the new standards by 2014. The assessments apply to what’s known as two percent special education students, which are special education students without severe cognitive disabilities.

According to Minnich, states are in various stages of adopting the standards, with some states and districts farther along than others. Florida began modifying its special education curriculum nearly six years ago. As of 2011, Florida will no longer approve modified courses, in which special education students aren’t expected to master as much material as in general education courses.

“It’s about having higher expectations for all of our students,” says Bambi Lockman, chief of the Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services with the Florida Department of Education. According to Lockman, since the state began its alignment of standards, special education students have improved 3 to 5 percent annually on both language arts and mathematics.

“The transition to the Common Core will be challenging, but it’s not going to be extremely difficult because we’ve already had high standards in Florida,” she says. “I think we are going to see students having access to the general curriculum.”

Lockman notes that this change doesn’t come without intervention as specified in each student’s individualized education plan (IEP). Extra classroom support, variation in the instructional approach, small group discussions and assisted technology are just some examples of intervention that will be needed for the students to excel in a general education classroom.

District Administration magazine, Feb. 2011

12 Special Ed Positions on Budget Chopping Block

Posted in News Briefs, Patch.com by

Stamford Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr gave members of the press an overview Tuesday afternoon of his proposed operating budget for the 2011-2012 school year. The budget, which will be presented to the Board of Education at its fiscal meeting Wednesday night, lays out many ways the district plans to tighten up while not straying from its strategic plan.

Among the positions and services on the chopping block are 12 special education teaching positions, one administrator position, assistant director position for the ARTS program, one school bus, three non-public buses, and various high-school activities supervisor and custodial positions. Other miscellaneous cuts include copy paper and maintenance repairs.

“We’re just cutting a little bit out of everything and making adjustments wherever possible,” Starr said. “If you tighten up on these little ends you’ll find that it adds up a lot.”

Per usual with districts around the country, Stamford Public Schools is facing rising costs and reduced funding, which means roughly 3.8 percent of the budget must be trimmed to maintain the current level of staffing programs and services.

Starr noted that the reduction in special education staff was a difficult decision to make, but pointed to data that supported Stamford schools has some wiggle room in the special education department. The average ratio of special education students to support staff in a large urban district is 1:23 — and 1:17 in Fairfield County specifically. Stamford remains above par with an average of 1:15.

“There’s a little bit of room there,” Starr said.

Before introducing the major changes to the budget, Starr emphasized that fiscal constraints would not impact Stamford Public Schools’ mission of improving curriculum and assessment, instructional grouping, professional learning communities and school culture.

“We are continuing to work on our strategic district improvement plan,” he said. “The budget will not compromise our ability to do that.”

The budget will be presented to the Board of Education Wednesday night at 7 p.m. in Stamford Government Center. The meeting was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed due to inclement weather conditions.

Patch.com/ Stamford, CT: Jan. 2011

The iPad—Breaking New Ground in Special Education

Posted in District Administration Magazine, News Briefs by

After the release of the iPad, 3 million of which were sold in just 80 days, Apple received an unanticipated reaction from the autistic community. Unknowingly, the company may have stumbled upon a revolutionary framework to change the future of special education technology.

The iPad has the same multitouch capabilities as the iPhone, although the screen is larger—approximately 10 inches. Its lightweight nature makes the iPad portable, and its touchscreen is visually appealing, capturing the attention of special education students. Many different applications can be downloaded to the iPad to maintain schedules, tell stories, learn lessons, and reinforce positive behavior. Application capability aside, Apple products are a fraction of the cost of other communication devices from companies such as Dyno Vox and Prentke Romich Co., which can cost upwards of $10,000.

One of the most popular, and most expensive at $189.99, applications is Proloquo2Go, which is available for the iPhone or iPad. This application is used for augmentative and alternative communication and provides natural sounding text-to-speech voices. The application list for communication, social skills, math, behavioral skills, and language arts is long—and growing.

The touchscreen capabilities of the iPad—along with its predecessors the iPod Touch and iPhone—have stirred interest among developers to create applications to suit the needs of special education students.

“There are so many different features developers can put into these applications,” says Eric Sailers, a speech-language pathologist at La Mesa Spring Valley (Calif.) School District. “It’s creating a multisensory product for children with autism and special needs. Kids who used to have difficulty using a mouse on a computer can use their fingers to touch and drag things and get immersed in the application.”

Janet Lishman, cofounder of the Autism Education Network and the Bay School, finds the iPad’s scheduling aspects to be the most effective, especially with her own children. “The structure of the schedules is really what works best,” says Lishman. “Long ago children would write their schedules on clipboards and carry them around. Now these schedules have words, pictures and audio reminders to stop one task and start another.”

Pilot Studies

Bill Thompson, a school psychologist with the Orange County (Calif.) Department of Education, is charting the iPad’s effectiveness with his students. The Orange County DOE has a special education program that consists of approximately 500 students from the districts within the county. This year, these students began pilot studies to see how well the device aligns with their curriculum and to evaluate its cost-effectiveness. The program currently has 10 iPads that are used with all students at some point in the day. Five of these 10 are under Thompson’s watch as he tries to develop a uniform policy for their use.

Thompson began noticing the advantages of touchscreen devices three years ago with the launch of the iPod Touch. Thompson himself developed two special education applications: Look2Learn and Stories2Learn. Look2Learn helps students develop communication skills by expressing their needs with recorded audio and photos, while Stories2Learn allows students, parents and educators to create personalized stories to demonstrate personal cues and teach social messages. Both are available for the public to purchase and download.

“We are able to do things that we couldn’t do with a single-use device,” says Thompson. “We can work with one student who is learning letters and shapes, then turn around and use it with another student who is learning yes or no questions. The applications allow for so many different levels and have so many purposes. It’s really critical for schools.”

According to Thompson, the Apple touchscreen products are more affordable than other single-use special education devices on the market; however their ability to serve other functions, such as delivering music, movies and Web content, may make them less desirable for funding by insurance companies.

In time, pilot studies being conducted in classrooms around the country will paint a picture of how these devices impact autistic students. In the meantime, many educators in the autistic community may agree with Lishman on the iPad: “For autism, it’s a dream.”

District Administration magazine, Nov. 2010