Special education is middle aged (or is it young adult?).  A true milestone.

It’s time to celebrate how far we’ve come in this civil rights legislation. All students with disabilities now have access to  a free appropriate public education.   An awesome achievement.

Yet, even as we honor the success, we also need to acknowledge that much of the system is broken.   It is far too bureaucratic and burdensome–for schools AND parents.

We need to refocus our efforts to teaching and learning, not paperwork, compliance, and alas, that ever-present threat of litigation. 

The good news is that we in Massachusetts are working on several fronts, including SpedEx and Procedures Lite.  These have evolved through the annual celebrations of Special Education Day. For more information, please visit www.specialeducationday.com

Please let us know about systemic reform efforts in your state and community!

Here’s to a powerful December 2 anniversary.

An article in today’s Boston Globe caught my attention.  While the best students in Massachusetts seem to do well when compared with other states, they fall behind when compared to other countries.

http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/11/10/mass_losing_ground_in_advanced_math/?p1=Local_Links

And see this in The Atlantic Monthly. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/your-child-left-behind/8310.  Thank you, Rick Hanushek and Paul Peterson for this necessary research.

Closing the gap?  Hopefully, articles like this one will spur us to act.  While wecontinue to focus on closing the  achieivement gaps between our struggling students and others in our schools, we are not focusing on the other vital gap–between our best students and the rest of the world. That focus is long overdue.  Hopefully, this article will  move the agenda to close this key gap.  Without closing this second gap, our nation cannot succeed in the new world.  Complacency in Massachusetts (the constant mantra….”We’re the best in the nation!”)  will not help. It’s time for it to go!

The New York Times ran a story yesterday about the fact that, for now,  higher college tuition rates seem to be paired with the current increases in student aid through Pell Grants (federal) and other moneys. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/education/28college.html?hpw

My question–how many of the students who receive Pell Grants are students with intellectual disabilities who are now, under federal incentives, being encouraged to attend college and who are eligible for these grants. Does anyone have data on that?

My loyal readers may have noticed that I’ve been AWOL–no posting since early October. In part, this was because I traveled to China, fulfilling my long-held dream. It was as fascinating and fun and fabulous as I had hoped.

In part of the tour, we went up the mountain to Ping An, a small village surrounded by rice paddies. Totally beautiful and traditional–very very different from the cities like Beijing and Shanghai. 

In Ping An, we visited a nursery school/kindergarten. And the scene that has stayed with me is the mothers (or sisters or grandmothers) who wait by the gate of the school to take their child him.  They put the child on their back and head off to home. That is the school bus. Very cozy, very heavy, very different from our experience, where parents may wait in their cars or kids go to school on the bus.

More to come!

(Interesting article from Great Britain on the matter).

I’ve thought about this a lot, also. Another interesting read for a Saturday!

(bullying not only cause of suicides, experts warn)

I’ve thought about this issue–as more states pass anti-bullying law. An important read.

(President Obama on his choice of schools for his daughters).

Our president gave an honest answer. We understand that. But as long as people can walk away from the public schools, they will continue to be for other people’s children. I wrote an essay many years ago that the only way to fix our public schools is to CLOSE all the private schools! Nutty? I don’t think so. By doing that, we would force all players to the same table and I do believe that improvements would come fast. Very fast. In fact, it’s really the only way.

(The Responsibility Deficit).

It’s great to see our friend, Philip K. Howard, featured in David Brooks’ column. Of course, he’s right. Teachers need the freedom to teach and students need to know that it is their responsibility to learn.

It’s always amazing to me that when we make comparisons of student achievement with other countries (Finland, comes to mind) we ignore the student, parent, and teacher responsibility parts. There are key. Yet, not on the table usually.

Instead we focus on systems and more rules and more requirements, taking us further and further away from what works: responsibility by key players. Thank you again, Philip, and thank you David Brooks for recognizing his important work!

(Should we rethink inclusion??

Yes, it’s time to rethink inclusion. Inclusion grew out of the civil rights model. (student have a right to be in regular classrooms) not out of the education model (what works for students!). So sad. Instead, our schools should be driven by research or education-based practices–not legal mandates or concepts cooked up by legislators and judges.

It is, indeed, time to rethink inclusion so we can do what actually works for kids in schools.

My mother always told me, “It’s the tone that makes the music.” Can that be the message from Washington D.C.’s vote? That it was a rejection of style, approach, tone–even as the schools were improving? Can it be that mother was right–again.

(Children are the losers in D.C. vote)