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1. Hard Lesson Mainstreaming -- Trend Tests Classroom Goals Disabled Children Join Peers, Strain Teachers; 'We Need More Help' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [For additional Special Education resources and articles, see, http://vor.net/choices_for_a_lifetime.htm, including the links at the top of that page.
By John Hechinger in the Wall Street Journal
Andrea suffers from a rare genetic condition called Williams Syndrome, which causes learning disabilities and medical ailments such as heart problems and difficulty eating. Knowing that Andrea had disrupted her kindergarten classes a year earlier, Ms. McDermott wanted to keep her new pupil under close watch.
The strategy backfired. One morning, Andrea swept an arm along the teacher's desk, scattering framed photos of Ms. McDermott's family across the classroom. A glass frame shattered, and another hit a student in the arm. Though no one was hurt, Ms. McDermott says she lost hours of instruction time getting the children to settle down after the disruption.
From the first weeks of school, Ms. McDermott found Andrea's plight heartbreaking. "No! No! No!" she remembers her student screaming at times.
"Want Mommy! Want Mommy!"
Years ago, students like Andrea would have been taught in separate classrooms. Today, a national movement to "mainstream" special-education students has integrated many of them into the general student body. As a result, regular teachers are instructing more children with severe disabilities -- often without extra training or support.
This year, Ms. McDermott counted 19 students in her class at Whittier Elementary School. Five had disabilities, including attention deficit disorder and delays in reading and math. The teacher worried that she was failing all her students -- especially Andrea. "It used to be a joy to go to work," she says. "Now all I want to do is run away."
In Scranton and elsewhere, the rush to mainstream disabled students is alienating teachers and driving some of the best from the profession. It has become a little-noticed but key factor behind teacher turnover, which experts say largely accounts for a shortage of qualified teachers in the U.S.
Each year, about 16% of teachers quit their jobs, either leaving the profession or moving to another school, according to recent U.S. Department of Education surveys. Of those, 35% cite difficulties with mainstreaming special-education students as a main reason for their dissatisfaction, according to an analysis of the data by Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
"It's a red flag," Prof. Ingersoll says. "Mainstreaming is putting pressure on teachers... and the proponents of this reform are going to need to address it sooner or later."
Neil Hunt, a seventh-grade math teacher in the Fairfax County, Va., public schools, recently quit his job in part because of mainstreaming. "I don't feel I can do what's necessary for these kids," says Mr. Hunt, a former Navy lieutenant who plans to return to the service in a civilian job.
"And some of the kids' behavior is such a distraction for the rest of the class that they're losing a lot of time, too." In Arizona, Tom Horne, the state's superintendent of schools, says mainstreaming special-education students with behavior problems can be "extremely destructive" to teachers' morale and "a big factor in teachers' leaving."
Despite its key role, Pennsylvania was slow to embrace inclusion until 2005, when the state and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia received court approval to settle a decade-old class-action case brought on behalf of 280,000 special-education students who demanded inclusion in regular classrooms. Districts that aren't sufficiently inclusive risk losing funding.
But even some advocates of inclusion say it isn't working as they had hoped. Judith Gran, the plaintiffs' lead attorney on the case, says that some districts aren't mainstreaming but "main-dumping" -- packing classes with disabled children without adequate staffing. "You hear a lot about it from teachers," she says. "They are the ones on the front lines, and they aren't getting support."
The Scranton district has 9,800 students, 16% of whom are in special education. About half have learning disabilities, such as dyslexia. Others struggle with problems that include intellectual impairment, autism and emotional disorders.
LEARNING CURVE n The Issue: The trend of mainstreaming special-education students is drawing increasing criticism, especially from teachers. n Behind the Debate: Some parents and educators say students with disabilities get better treatment in general classroom settings. But many teachers lack training and support. n The Bottom Line: Dissatisfaction with mainstreaming has become a factor driving teacher turnover, a major problem in U.S. education.
Until 2004, most of these students were set apart in about 70 special-education classes. By last year, the system had eliminated most of those classes, which generally had 15 students, a special-education teacher and an aide. Last year, 75% of students with disabilities in the Scranton School District spent 80% of their day or more in regular classrooms, up from 28% in 2003.
The shift has sparked fierce opposition from the Scranton chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, which has long been critical of mainstreaming. The issue is expected to be an important part of negotiations next year, when the teachers' contract expires. In a recent union survey of Scranton's 750 teachers, two-thirds of those responding listed inclusion as their No. 1 or No. 2 complaint, outranking all other concerns. (The survey didn't ask about pay and benefits.)
"Inclusion doesn't work unless class sizes are
greatly reduced," wrote one teacher.
"Children are suffering due to lack of
support," wrote another. "We need more
help!" added a third.
Ms. Strelecki says as many as 40 Whittier parents have complained about inclusion. "The general consensus is that it doesn't work having all these kids together," she says.
Some, however, praise inclusion. Sarene O'Malley says her dyslexic daughter Jessica felt "ashamed" when she was in a separate special-education classroom. Educators say that's a common sentiment among children with learning disabilities. Through the inclusion program,
Ms. O'Malley says Jessica, who just graduated from Scranton High School, won new friends and confidence and plans to go to college next year. "She never would have gone on this path" without inclusion, Ms. O'Malley says.
Michael Sheridan, Scranton's school chief, says he sees only "pockets of resistance" to inclusion. For evidence that the policy is working, Mr. Sheridan cites the system's overall results. Last year, Standard & Poor's, the bond-rating agency, listed Scranton as one of only 29 Pennsylvania school systems that were "outperformers" in state tests of reading and math proficiency for each of the preceding four years.
Mr. Sheridan says that President Bush's No Child Left Behind law requires that all students take the same state tests and be instructed by a teacher "highly qualified" in each subject. In his view, inclusion is the best way to meet the demands of both No Child Left Behind and the federal disabilities law.
Special-education instructors assist in regular classrooms and pull students out for extra help, but there are few to go around. Scranton has 86 specially trained instructors, along with a support staff of 30 speech and language experts, psychologists and others. Together, they must serve roughly 1,600 special-education students in 18 schools.
Under the teachers' union contract, the district is supposed to place no more than two disabled students in each classroom "where possible." But, despite that wording, principals often use their discretion to place more special-education students in certain classes.
Ann Langan, a ninth-grade teacher at Scranton High School, teaches a basic science class.
This year, she had 16 children in one class, 12 of whom were in special education. Another of her classes had 20, 14 with disabilities. Jennifer Zaleski, a fifth-grade teacher, had 16 students, half of whom were in the special-education program. She says the IQs in her class range from 50 to 150. As far as understanding how to teach disabled children, she says, "How much knowledge did I have? Probably zip."
Last October, the union filed a grievance with the school system, alleging a violation at the high school of the teachers' contract.
Administrators told the union they would divide
special-education students more evenly
this fall. Few have struggled more with inclusion than Ms. McDermott, who teaches at Whittier Elementary, a century-old red-brick building perched on a hillside with views of downtown Scranton's faded storefronts and factories.
Ms. McDermott tries to maintain a bright, welcoming classroom, with shiny laminated paper apples hanging on strings from the ceiling, a "birthday train" marking each child's big day with a cake and a candle, and a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. by the door.
The daughter of a fireman and a Scranton schools' secretary, Ms. McDermott wanted to be a teacher since she was in kindergarten. In 1974, she graduated from Penn State with a degree in elementary education, then worked as a substitute teacher until she won her own classroom a decade later. "I ran to work," says Ms. McDermott, now 54 years old. "I couldn't wait to get there. I loved being in charge of this world of learning."
Whittier, which is housed in two buildings
several blocks apart, has only one
special-education teacher -- and two
aides -- for the entire school, leaving
Ms. McDermott largely on her own. Larry
Miner, Whittier's principal, says he
tends to concentrate special-needs
students in one classroom for each grade
to make it easier to schedule services.
He acknowledges that Ms. McDermott has
an unusually large number. But to handle
those children, he says he looks for the
most capable instructors. Ms. McDermott
"is a very gifted teacher," he says.
"She is very patient."
Mr. Miner says the school system offered to have her attend one of the district's few separate classrooms for the severely disabled. Her parents, Philip and Johanna Gavern, recall no such offer. Based on the report of a private psychologist they hired, they believed that Andrea could make academic progress in a mainstream classroom, as long as she had a full-time aide trained in special education. They asked the school system for one, but were refused.
Mr. Miner maintains that the approach wouldn't have made "much difference." The school's special-education aides, he says, have only high-school diplomas and scant disability training. Andrea did get full-time classroom assistance from a local mental-health agency, paid for by the state. But that aide has no education training and was present only to help Andrea stay focused and perform basic tasks.
Andrea received 6-½ hours of special services a week. These included speech and language support and occupational therapy -- mostly in half-hour or one-hour pullout sessions, according to Andrea's individualized education program, or IEP, the legal document that outlines what the district must provide. After school, Andrea's family privately arranged for her to spend afternoons receiving a variety of physical, music and social-group therapies.
Ms. McDermott has no expertise in handling Williams Syndrome or any of the other disorders she must manage each day. So she improvised, finding a number board with tiles that engaged Andrea, and, with her own money, buying kindergarten reading primers.
Soon after the start of the school year, Ms. McDermott started keeping a journal, recording her time with Andrea to document what she considered an intolerable situation.
Ms. McDermott wrote of Andrea touching and hitting other students -- albeit gently, with a kind of slapping motion that didn't pose any threat. Andrea also threw papers and tore up assignments.
Her behavior could be unpredictable and
unnerving. "At story-time, Andrea turned
to children next to her on either side
and was making forceful spitting sounds
into their ears," she wrote in an entry
for Aug. 31. -----------------------------------------------------------------
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