The Homeschool Adventure Begins

Image via WikipediaWell, it is finished. My husband and I have decided to pull our son out of Perry Township schools and teach him at home. There is a rumor of a Franklin Township group of parents, sick of the RISE Special Services failure, who are working on the starting phases of a charter school for our students. Anyone who knows this group, I'd love to get in touch and talk to them about the idea. This blog will continue as long as I continue to volunteer my time with families still in the system. It's our hope to move and find a program that works for Darrel.
If our homeschool experiment is successful, I may begin to blog about what we learn about that as well.

Does Indiana have FAEPE? Meh.

Image by Jim Nix / Nomadic Pursuits via FlickrOur recent experiences as a family in the special education system of Indiana have illustrated a new social problem for Hoosiers, but perhaps for others across the nation. The idea behind IDEA and all its sister laws was to guarantee equivalent education for the disabled, and maybe, at the time, we didn't know what that really meant. There's great cost involved.

To be realistic, there are good teachers, bad teachers, great administrators and bad directors everywhere. People are people, and just being an educator doesn't guarantee good intentions. It's true of any job, but in few places does it have more effect than in education. Education becomes slave to local politics. That is directly juxtaposed to the intention of Article Seven and IDEA, the laws governing our treatment of disabled students.

Parents, already financially strapped due to massive medical bills, have a law that allows them the right to advocate for their child. Great! How's that working in Indiana?

It's not. Not really.

Children take what they are given, and services do not always follow the individual needs of the child as they are meant to do. Why? Because politics demands cost cutting somewhere, and these kids are most vulnerable to that reduction of funds. Sadly, discrimination still exists, and it's most apparent at school board meetings where equal is defined in a school district. So why don't parents sue? There's a law, right?

While the law guarantees the right, it doesn't guarantee access.
Money does that. Money that disabled children and their families don't have because they are disabled. The weakness in the law falls in the category of socio-economic disenfranchisement. In the next few posts, I intend to explore the subject further; looking at the details and discussing options that lawmakers and administrators have at their disposal.

What's a good program?

Image via WikipediaA good special ed. program should be engaging. There should never be more down time than work, but it can't push too hard.

A good program gives direction. Appropriate structure is a must.

A good program reports its findings. Conclusions can be drawn from documentation and should be reported to parents regularly.

A good program offers the standard. When parents investigate a program, they should find that the appropriate supports and services are offered.

T-shirts for education: the RISE Learning Center trade-off

l

What do we know?

At the beginning of the school year, RISE Learning Center in South Indy sent home free shirts to the student body. While that may sound like an awesome deal, parents didn't react well.

The 175 student school routinely has problems with service delivery, say the parents of the students there. Given the $10 million shortfall in the Perry Township school district, parents were astounded at such largess from a flailing school.  A few parents looked into the purchase made by principal, Dr. Tim Smith.

What they found was astounding; Dr. Smith had ordered the shirts from his own t-shirt company, Quality Ts. The T shirt company operates under TWS Enterprises in the Carmel area and allegedly employs a teacher and job coach from the school in their spare time. The sale generated complaints to RISE and was reported to authorities. There has been no word on a resolution of the allegations.

Parents fear this is the signal of a giant ethics problem at the school. For most of the school year, they've struggled, they say, with case conferences and obtaining services for students on the mild to severe end of the disability spectrum.

AASA's Statement of Ethics for Educational Leaders
An educational leader’s professional conduct must conform to an ethical code of behavior, and the code must set high standards for all educational leaders. The educational leader provides professional leadership across the district and also across the community. This responsibility requires the leader to maintain standards of exemplary professional conduct while recognizing that his or her actions will be viewed and appraised by the community, professional associates and students.
The educational leader acknowledges that he or she serves the schools and community by providing equal educational opportunities to each and every child. The work of the leader must emphasize accountability and results, increased student achievement, and high expectations for each and every student.
To these ends, the educational leader subscribes to the following statements of standards.
The educational leader:

1. Makes the education and well-being of students the fundamental value of all decision making.
2. Fulfills all professional duties with honesty and integrity and always acts in a trustworthy and responsible manner.
3. Supports the principle of due process and protects the civil and human rights of all individuals.
4. Implements local, state and national laws.
5. Advises the school board and implements the board's policies and administrative rules and regulations.
6. Pursues appropriate measures to correct those laws, policies, and regulations that are not consistent with sound educational goals or that are not in the best interest of children.
7. Avoids using his/her position for personal gain through political, social, religious, economic or other influences.
8. Accepts academic degrees or professional certification only from accredited institutions.
9. Maintains the standards and seeks to improve the effectiveness of the profession through research and continuing professional development.
10. Honors all contracts until fulfillment, release or dissolution mutually agreed upon by all parties.
11. Accepts responsibility and accountability for one’s own actions and behaviors.
12. Commits to serving others above self.

Hair pulling moment

Sometimes I like to do a more personal post. Our family has struggled with behaviors in school for the whole school year thus far, and it finally culminated in a case conference. Personal note, I dread case conferences.


Conflict isn't an issue for me, but I get pretty wound up at injustices. One of my biggest frustrations is that I so often have to be the catalyst for change in my son's education. One would expect that to be the professionals in charge. Our boy needs a new program, and I'm usually the first one to say it. 

He needs data collection and new methods. He needs more one on one help to conquer out short term eruptions and move us past it. He needs focus. Unfortunately, it feels like so many experience the frustration of knowing individual plans, individual kids,  don't get individual focus.


Because I'm watching parents who are uninvolved and seeing their kids education continue in a rut, without results to back up the plan, I know it can happen. If parents don't become the catalyst, children slip through cracks in the system simply because it's policy not to rock the boat.


While self-advocacy is essential for families to learn, it's sad that they have to learn it. Isn't it? Shouldn't special education students have plenty of advocates to go round?

Medical systems, education and juvenile courts; filling the doughnut hole

Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr

A common occurance in Indianapolis, perhaps around the country, for special needs kids is slipping through the cracks. Usually when we hear that phrase, we think of kids in schools getting failed forward, moved on to the next grade without the performance to back it up. However, there is a much bigger crack in the pathway special needs kids are walking these days, and it begins with behavior.
As any parent can attest, behavior is a challenging aspect of developmental disorder. Quirky, jerky movements are the commonplace assumption for those outside the circle of a family dealing with disability, but this is the mildest kind of behavior. Aggressive behaviors happen in households all the time; hitting, pinching, biting, kicking. These behaviors can start a kid climbing the ladder of more and more restrictive educational environments. What happens when the ladder ends?
Professionals call it the doughnut hole. Just like Alice, a kid can disappear in that hole.
Let's Suppose . . .
A kid has severely aggressive behaviors. He's moved from general education to a special education inclusion classroom. He can't make it there, so he's off to a separate facility like RISE Learning Center or Damar, a live-in facility on the southwest side. He eventually lands in a six week program to work on his behaviors and tweak the medication. Medicaid or Insurance pays for it because a doctor sent him.
This child returns to the classroom after some improvement where he gets into a fight, and there have been a lot of fights because he has an emotional disability. Here's the trap; remember that medicaid or insurance already paid for a six week program that didn't work, so the school is left to make the call. However, if they do, the school district pays. This makes schools hesitate to make the call.
What will inevitably happen is a round of suspensions and placement changes while parents and teachers alike pull their hair out by the roots. This will go on until someone pulls the plug. That someone is usually a juvenile court judge. The child will then be placed in an extended treatment program using department of correction funds.
What's the solution?
Easy answers are hard to come by. Our medical system could change the way they do business and pay for unlimited hospitalizations, but that isn't likely, nor is it guaranteed to work. Our juvenile justice system actually has no choice by the time they are involved. Some action is required. That leaves the school, and funding just doesn't grow on trees.
We have to find the solutions and methods that work if we hope to close the doughnut hole. General education inclusion has to become far more successful than it generally is by utilizing peer training and behavior interventions that work in practice, not just in theory. Schools systems will have to become more aggressive in their inclusion programming, perhaps even better staffed.
Schools will have to recognize the importance of social training, especially for children on the autism spectrum. Right now, in Indiana schools the typical IEP reads that social skills training happens twice a week for fifteen minutes. It's important to realize that social skills training can happen all through the day wherever the opportunity presents itself, and educators have to take those opportunities.
It is inevitable that tax dollars will be spent on the children who slip through the cracks, but schools can intervene early in a child's education to stop that spiral into the justice system through comprehensive intervention. Until society finds a cure for every developmental and neurological disorder, there has to be a plan. Education is the best shot at early identification of need and delivery of service. The money Americans save by early investment in special education is unlimited. Diagnosis isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card, and adults with disabilities who commit crimes or pose a danger to others will be housed somewhere in our system. Educational intervention may be the only chance they have to avoid the revolving door of the justice system.

Related articles

• What Is Juvenile Rehabilitation? (brainz.org)
• Adaptive Behavior Techniques for Special Education Classrooms (brighthub.com)

A word on inclusion from Wisconsin

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There are no comparative data available on special education students' academic gains, graduation rates, preparation for post-secondary schooling, work, or involvement in community living based on their placement in inclusive vs. non-inclusive settings. Therefore, an accurate comparison between separate programming and inclusive programming cannot be done.
The following is a brief review of a number of studies of various inclusive strategies. There are a number of reviews and meta-analyses that consistently report little or no benefit for students when they are placed in special education settings (Kavale, K.A., Glass, G.V., 1982; Madden and Slavin, 1983). However, in 50 studies comparing the academic performance of mainstreamed and segregated students with mild handicapping conditions, the mean academic performance of the integrated group was in the 80th percentile, while the segregated students score was in the 50th percentile (Weiner R., 1985).
Using this evidence, inclusion proponents claim that segregated programs are detrimental to students and do not meet the original goals for special education. Recent meta-analyses confirm a small to moderate beneficial effect of inclusion education on the academic and social outcome of special needs students. (Carlberg, C. and Kavale, K. 1980; Baker, E.T., and Wang, M.C., and Walberg, H.J., 1994-95).
Another study assessing the effectiveness of inclusion was done at Johns Hopkins University. In a school-wide restructuring program called Success For All, student achievement was measured. The program itself is a comprehensive effort that involves family support teams, professional development for teachers, reading, tutoring, special reading programs, eight-week reading assessments, and expanded opportunities for pre-school and kindergarten children.
In assessing effectiveness, a control group was compared with the students in Success For All programs. Comparative measures included:

• Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (1984)
• Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty (1980)
• Student retention and attendance.

Comparisons were made at first, second, and third grades. Students identified with exceptional education needs were included in all comparisons. While assessments showed improved reading performance for all students, the most dramatic improvements occurred among the lowest achievers. In spite of the fact that these inner city schools have normally high retention problems, only 4% of the fourth graders in the experimental group had ever been held back one or more grades, while the five control schools had 31% who had failed at least one year.
There was a similar finding in the comparison of attendance rates. The research also found the best results occurred in schools with the highest level of funding. They concluded that when resources are available to provide supplementary aids, all children do better.
The primary importance of research on Success For All is that it demonstrates that with early and continuing intervention nearly all children can be successful in reading. Common practice in compensatory and special education is to identify children who have already fallen behind and provide remediation services that last for years (Allington and McGill-Frazen, 1990). Research on Success For All and other intensive early intervention programs such as Reading Recovery (Pinnell, 1991) and Prevention of Learning Disabilities (Silver and Hagen, 1989) suggests that there are effective alternatives to remedial approaches.
While researchers are cautious in their conclusions, there are some positive signs. In particular, students in special education and regular education showed several positive changes, including:

• A reduced fear of human differences accompanied by increased comfort and awareness (Peck et al., 1992);
• Growth in social cognition (Murray-Seegert,1989);
• Improvement in self-concept of non-disabled students (Peck et. al., 1992);
• Development of personal principles and ability to assume an advocacy role toward their peers and friends with disabilities;
• Warm and caring friendships (Bogdan and Taylor, 1989).

The final issue shared by proponents of inclusion relates to cost-effectiveness. A 1989 study found that over a fifteen year period, the employment rate for high school graduates with special needs who had been in segregated programs was 53%. But for special needs graduates from integrated programs the employment rate was 73%. Furthermore, the cost of educating students in segregated programs was double that for educating them in integrated programs (Piuma, 1989).
A similar study by Affleck, Madge, Adams, and Lowenbraun (1988) demonstrated that the integrated classroom for students with special needs was more cost-effective than the resource program, even though achievement in reading, math and language remained basically the same in the two service delivery models.

It is normally not my practice to cut and paste, but this information is hard to come by for parents. It's especially hard to find unbiased resources like the Wisconsin Educational Association Council who report just what is. 

Decatur Township Keeps Superintendent

Image via Wikipedia

There are somewhat conflicting reports tonight that Don Stinson has turned down a job offer in Alabama to stay in Decatur Township. The Indystar reported that he "felt his mission was here".  The conflict appears to be in the email to the Alabama school district who offered the position in which he cites personal reasons for staying in Indiana.

So, at the moment, the Governing Board remains the same.

Don Stinson, looking for love?

Image by lemonad via Flickr

The local blog Had Enough Indy? reports that Dr. Don Stinson of Decatur Township is in the process of changing jobs. I'm pretty familiar with his attitude toward the special ed. students in the townships. We're back at square one when it comes to political jockeying and local interests because the likelihood is that a school board may want to find someone who will follow their own vision. Vision these days seems to be limited to cutting corners.


Special education in the townships is already highly political and contentious. With the interlocal storm brewing, it's a whole new Governing Board on the horizon for families in Perry, Beech Grove, Decatur and Franklin Townships. This is especially true if the school boards wash their hands of the interlocal and allow it to self-govern.

Documentation? Of What?

Oh, how often do parents feel this is how schools are responding to them when they ask for daily record keeping! Truth is that we're running into a lack of professional standards in Southern Indianapolis. I don't know about the rest of the state, but documentation here is overall dismal.

Parents can more effectively ask for documentation if they know exactly what they want. Today, I intend to walk you through a fictional scatter plot. It's written for little Johnny Smith:

We want to figure out why Johnny is getting all hitty with his teachers. The plot simply defines the activities of the days with corresponding boxes to be checked quickly. They are marked x for severe aggression, / for mild aggression, and blacked out for no aggression in that time period. You can quantify this, if you like going from 0 to 5 instances, 5 to 10, etc. At the top, you fill in blanks with student information. The respondent is the chart keeper or keeper's identity. When defining the behaviors, be concise and specific. In this case, aggression is further defined as hitting, biting and kicking.

What do we determine about little Johnny's day from the data before us? Well, he does NOT like lunchtime, and recess is no picnic. He had two days of near angelic goodness in the middle of the week. We have a pattern.

The teacher takes this data, or should, and can collaborate with others to determine why Johnny can't eat in peace. Did I mention Johnny's sensory issues? We should look at those. How are his relationships with staff? When the teacher really scrutinized Johnny's day, here's what she noticed.

The noise in the cafeteria really wound him up. He grew more agitated, until Sally, the T.A. working with him, got flustered and out of sorts. When really watching, she noticed more, like Sally really didn't seem to like Johnny and couldn't handle him with any sensitivity to his condition. Further, Sally had a cold for two days and missed school mid-week. Hmm. Did we just find two correctable problems?

Data helps parents track their child's condition, and it makes for excellent professional review. Parents may have to push like the dickens to get this in place and make schools adhere to it. But say you have a non-verbal student, how valuable would this chart be? These are standard tools, so if you meet resistance in the classroom, an explanation would easily be in order from administrators as to why this is too hard to implement. Honestly, how hard is it to check a box?

A Good Day for Change!

Image by Pikaluk via Flickr

Obama set to take on Teacher's unions










Jonathon Martin writes on politco.com this morning that teacher's unions may not hold the sway they have in past years. There is no question that the unions back Dems at 90 percentile range almost across the board. It's also true they are party faithful working the campaigns across the nation, however, in a fit of principle, it appears the president may be going a different direction in calling for teacher accountability and year round school years.

From a special education standpoint, this could be big news. Students with disabilities at this moment have an option that is rarely used for extended school year services should they regress on a regular basis and at much faster rates than their typical peers, which most of them do. It is, of course, expensive. Moving away from the agrarian calendar we now use would change all of that for a great many students. Of course, this change would mean longer breaks in the middle of the year and would require adjustments on the part of parents. Some Sped students would still need ESY during long breaks, but I suspect a large number would retain better and progress farther should the change be implemented. Our family relies on school as childcare to keep us both working which means, for three months out of the year, I'm on the bench. Many families with special needs would be on board right out of the gate. Single income families on the spectrum are so often not that way by choice.


The calls for accountability could change things for the better as well. Having an incredible teacher is like getting hit by lightening; when it happens, you feel it. It's also about that rare. Great teachers are talented and lucky is the family that finds one, but good teachers just aren't the standard these days, in part because the standard pay doesn't meet the cost of education for teachers and in part because of the protection of the unions.


Many teachers stop school with a degree in mild disability, leaving the mild to severe range of students working with an extremely small pool. Professional development costs money and is often the first thing to go. Training is cut short. So calls for accountability must also address the concerns of the unions while not allowing them to dominate the conversation.

It's a surprising turn taking on the unions pet issues this way. Critics of unions cite the big money the lobby throws into the pot at election time, likening their opposition of reforms to the behavior of big oil or the coal industry. One such website aimed at "exposing" the unions is teachersunionexposed.com.


They state on their site, "There is no disputing that America’s teachers unions -- in particular, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers -- are the most organized and powerful voices in education politics." As an involved parent, I find I can't dispute it. Our difficulties with Indiana special education find me often stumbling over the interests of the Indiana State Teacher's Association. I've even been warned not to take them on in a meeting because I "had no idea how powerful ISTA could be."

On the other hand, why do we have unions in the first place? The short answer is because education is steeped in local politics. Cronyism and closed door deals have dominated the entire institution, and unions were supposed to fight that. My observations suggest, however, that a union can become too locally politicized. This makes the union a prize to be sought in local elections which can be ugly and corrupt. Unions have a very specific function that may not be compatible with the goals of education. They may work well for individuals, but many, including myself, question whether they are good for society if education gets compromised along the way. Our president speaks the truth when he says we aren't competitive on the global stage.

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Oops, We Did It Again

Perry Meridian Middle School in Indianapolis and RISE Special Services have done it again. The story found here at channel 6's website charges that teachers have once again used bad methods to correct good kids. There are better ways to correct behavior, but the Powers That Be don't seem to know it.

Documentation. Documentation. Documentation. To change a placement for a student or start an intervention of any kind, a family needs to be able to produce raw data on that student. In the absence of data, the school can be forced to comply with the request. Within the townships, there seems to be a standing policy to avoid documentation of behaviors. Why? Because a more restrictive environment is costly? Perhaps. It could be laziness. It could be inattention to detail; but, whatever the cause, it's pervasive.

The Director of Special Services has repeatedly denied the consideration of cost at case conference committees discussing placement. He has also discussed at length the 20,000.00 per child cost for sending students to RISE Learning Center in Perry Township. When requested, parents have been told on many occasions that the 20k price tag cannot be, or simply has not been, itemized to determine what the facility truly costs line by line. Some parents charge that it shouldn't be that high. The cost of a satellite classroom is a comparable 7,000.00, and GenEd settings cost even less.

School staff are blowing the whistle in all the townships, telling others that they have been told RLC is not an option for new students. Preschoolers are directed to the least restrictive setting automatically, however, no new students are assigned to the comprehensive intervention classrooms each year. As a parent, I can be my own source on that point. My son's class does not grow. I'd be overjoyed at that fact, if so many kids didn't pop up in bad placements every year. Putting a child in a less restrictive environment should be based on data that is routinely not done in the four townships. I believe some of this is cost cutting, but some of it is something else.

What does a separate facility do for students? Some will tell you they promote discrimination as surely as any segregated school ever did for African-American students. Some say it allows peers to avoid contact with disabled students and sets them up for prejudice. That could be considered true, if general education settings weren't appropriate for verbal, high functioning individuals. Children who need less intervention should ALWAYS be placed in these regular classes. Some would call it warehousing. That is a matter of opinion. I would call a bad placement with insufficient services warehousing, and through no fault of the schools that is exactly what is happening. They just aren't set up for the severely disabled.

What happens at RLC that is so different? Focused attention on behaviors and concentrated effort to make a child as academically and socially abled as possible with the intention of dialing back the intervention is the goal of that facility, which is one of two in the whole state. The goal should be inclusion, but including students without skills makes little sense. Satellite classes are understaffed and under trained in Rise Special Services Program which brings us right back to where this article started. OOPS.

We did it again.

Teacher's Union, Did We Create a Monster?

Image via Wikipedia

Oh, I have a conflict this week! In special education, I've seen two levels of bad teachers. Some are just teaching impaired and can be fixed, but some are scary bad. Scary bad means they don't really change, in spite of it all. My encounter with one such teacher has taken me all the way to the administration of our school where I learned even scarier things.

Contracts are important, however one year flying by with a bad teacher could be catastrophic for my son, while only a nuisance for other people. Unions guard even the worst teachers with tenacity, I'm told. Our hands are tied, I'm told. They are waiting on Union approval to introduce training on programs like ABA and TEAACH which are industry standards. What? You ask them what they want to do at work? Did they answer 'take long naps' because I'd be tempted if given a choice what to do?

I'm being flippant, I know, but it can't be understated how this undermines the very idea of unions! Unions serve a protective function that can't be denied. They make employment fair and available to anyone. They help workers make decent wages and protect them from personal political pressure. Never in the inception of the institution was it meant to shield a worker from the consequences of a job badly done. You still have to do a good job!

Have we created a monster here? Surely, teachers shouldn't have more protections than students. My administrators know me well. I see something that isn't working and I just may take a swipe at fixing it. One of them told me with a look of concern on his face, "you have know idea how powerful the ISTA is." Part of me sat there feeling like I'd been swallowed up by On The Waterfront, an old black and white Brando film. You know, "I coulda been a contender, Charlie, instead of nuthin' which is what I am." What are they going to do? Mess with my kid's education? They're already doing that.

I started some research, and what did I find out? That the only people out there saying anything about this are union busters, who I do not intend to emulate. I found that Indiana schools are not developing teacher standards like they should be, and that our national rating for getting rid of bad teachers is very low. Where are the parents?

Are we all too blind to connect this with ISTEP failures? This is going to be the beginning of a series of posts about teacher's unions and how they affect special education. Because the bottom line is our children already have enough to slow them down, and sometimes you need to change staff. It's just a fact.

He wasn't there again today!

Antigonish by Hughes Mearns

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

Sometimes poetry says it all, and, for some reason, this says it for me this week. Dealing with teachers and administrators can be easy, and it can be hard.

Today, I went to my son's school, and I was the man upon the stair. There was a visit in the offing of township special ed. coordinators, and a parent advocate in the building . . . well, it just isn't done. I'm not saying I was asked to leave, but had I been another parent of another type of disposition I would have been.

It's that old conundrum, go-away-come-back, that all parents involved with a child's education get to experience at least once. The pervasive attitude in schools these days is to complain that parents are uninvolved and to push them away should they get too involved. It's a frustration, mostly for the parent.

My suggestion is to always begin as you intend to go on. Start from the first to let your teacher's know you're there to stay. I tend to make the assumption that they want me there, even when I know they probably don't. No one usually contradicts my assumption and collaborative relationships are born.

How we overcome this institutionally, I don't know. As parents though, check in with teachers before you go in, but let them know you intend to check into the classroom occasionally and expect to be able to do so. It's so important, especially when you have a nonverbal child. Volunteer to read to the students or find a way to become a part of the classroom occasionally. You'd be amazed how much teachers appreciate this kind of support.

Progress! What's that?

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Parents get progress reports every year. It comes with the regularity of the morning paper and often with just as much bad news. Progress by school standards can differ greatly with our assessment and vice versa. Yay, he writes so well, the teacher says to Mom. But, he has no friends! Mom says freaking out.

My advice to all parents is to define first, for yourself, what progress is, and then determine if you're seeing any. We don't just want kids who can copy and paste learning. We want functional, social individuals with thinking skills. This goes for all students.

Istar is a monitor of progress, too. If you see over the course of the IEP that your child has stalled out and appears stuck on the same goals. It's time to try something else. Step one, check for a medical issue undiagnosed or recently developed. Step two, look at classroom structure to see if anything can be done differently. Step three, repeat step two or look at the options like placement or extended schoo year. Does your child need more drastic measures to move forward?


Parents can define priorities, and that helps prepare for writing your plans each year. It's okay to ask yourself what you and your child need this year and expect an answer!

Extended School Year Services

It's a touchy subject, ESY. Still, parents and teachers and administrators are supposed to sit down once a year and discuss it. Really discuss it. Not dismiss it off-hand and sweep the subject under the carpet. Istart 7 makes that more likely, but we still have a long way to go.

When does a kid need extended school year? When they will not retain over long breaks the information or skills they got in the school year. When they get "stuck" at break time with a burgeoning skill that should be cultivated. When students have "special considerations" like a degenerative condition or seizure disorder. Unfortunately, I encounter lots of educators who think of ESY as some kind of hand out and not the useful, invaluable service that it is.  Don't ask me why. I don't get it.

Parents can advocate for their children with data. Make sure you collect as much data on your child as possible.  A trend of regression can usually be spotted in the patterns found in constant record keeping. It's imperative that you collect your own and insist on collection at school. Another important note to remember is that there should ALWAYS be a discussion, a serious, lengthy discussion, on every individual child's needs. This is covered in the guidelines for ESY provided by the state of Indiana.

Case conference committees are supposed to be a collaborative effort. That requires more work than typically observed. Teachers get in a hurry because they are genuinely swamped with work. Parents don't always know what should be discussed and how much is left out on any particular subject. The guidelines (based on case law by the way) are extremely important.  When we follow the law and the data, it removes the emotion of the decision. By analyzing our evidence, schools and parents can leave their own baggage at the door and truly focus only on the child, not the cost or fear of failure or anything else.

The Art of Creative Thinking

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Behavior strategies can be creative. There's no law against it. In fact, some professionals even encourage creativity with behavior issues. I thought I'd take a minute to blog about some strategies that I've seen work.

Making a team- Several kids I know need serious help during a meltdown. A meltdown, which any veteran survivor of special education can tell you, is the moment after the moment when a kid has had way too much. You can write a team approach into your behavior intervention plan. Who works with your child best? A teacher? A coach? You simply write up a game plan for dealing with a meltdown and those are the people you put in the game.  The goal is always the same; Get the student passed the meltdown and calm, then you move on to the business of his day.

One-on-One- Schools don't want to do it because they just can't afford it too often, but it does work. One aide to manage one student is sometimes called for when interventions will be intensive and of long duration.  This is likely something a parent has to put on the table. Don't wait for a teacher or administrator to put it out there. You could be waiting a while.

Give Sign a Try- I know all the arguments. It's not widely used. Others won't know how to talk to them. Okay, I get it, but communication is the biggest stumbling block there is for a child with Autism especially. I have two responses to the argument drawn from my own experience and philosophy. First, my experience is that it really reaches kids who work better tactilely or visually. Second, my philosophy is that people need to stop being lazy in our society. If you are in a social situation with a sign speaker, then get off your bum and learn some! Could I have put that more diplomatically? Yeah, but what fun is that?

These are by no stretch of the imagination the only creative interventions you can use. These are examples only. Parents drive the case conference committee, and while some educators disagree with me that it should be that way, it's the way it is. Think about it. Every other person at that table has multiple other students to work with this year. Yours isn't the only one. You are the only member of that committee who is exclusively focused on your child. A teacher doesn't live with the result of that committee's hard work. The family does.

Most Restrictive Environments

Every one knows the phrase, but so very many educators don't understand. My son attends RISE Learning Center in Indianapolis. It's considered one of these environments. However, let me tell you why it's least restrictive for him.

Darrel couldn't be given the time and attention in a gen ed setting or even a simple special ed. classroom to learn simple things like walking in the line or not hitting others to get attention. His understanding and his behavior would cause him to be ostracized socially and under-educated in a less restrictive environment.

D can't sit down for very long, and it's not just behavior. He CAN'T sit down for long periods of time. It is painful, uncomfortable, distressing. Regular academic environments have the restriction that you must. It must be done this way, and that makes them too restrictive for Darrel. This is the reason a more restrictive environment belongs on the continuum of services for special education students.

It shocks me everyday to meet professionals in education who are against these environments touting inclusion, inclusion, inclusion like it's the magic cure. We have numbers that inclusion has good side effects, but my question is; Has anyone actually looked at its effects in terms of effectiveness compared with intensive, comprehensive service environments like RLC? I doubt it. The severe end of the autism spectrum interferes with our preconceived notions. My hope is to see education truly individualized as we profess to want it. Inclusion isn't right for every child, or it may not be right for right now. With intensive work on behavior and symptoms of the spectrum, a child who would never be included like Darrel or who would never learn if included, might have a hope of inclusion in the future.

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• Studies Show Autism More Common Than Previously Thought [Broad Spectrum] (jezebel.com)
• Higher autism rates detected: Now 1 in 100 kids (msnbc.msn.com)

How do you like those odds?

Image by jasoneppink via Flickr

1 in 110. With an adjustment for cell phone versus land line use. Those appear to be our new odds of having a child with Autism. NPR reports in its' blog that there appears to be an increase, but no one knows what that means.

Can I say something as a parent and advocate of special needs children? Well, duh! Welcome to our world. People may disagree about why it happens, what happens exactly, or how to deal with it, but, one thing remains the same, we all know it's happened a lot.

Several facts come to mind now as I write this. First, we put only a fraction of our research dollars into autism's cause. Second, special education services are cut far too often when our autistic children's numbers are increasing. Third, bureaucrats and scientists spend way too much time debating stupid things like whether we put mercury in flu shots or 15 minutes of social instruction v. 5. Can we announce now that everyone is on the same page?

We've got to M.O.V.E.

You know that intel commercial, right? Our rock stars aren't like your rock stars. I had that experience today at school. Linda Bidabe visited our site today, and I had no idea she would be there. It was awesome! My admiration for this woman is infinite.

M.O.V.E International is a program dedicated to improving the quality of life of those students with multiple disability. Great Britain has adopted this as a national curriculum. Across Europe, MOVE is widening it's reach and making a difference. What is that?

You see that equipment? Simply by getting these kids and adults up and moving, we are engaging both minds and bodies in learning, building muscles and avoiding injury, and bringing choice and freedom back into their lives. The difference I've seen in the kids I work with is nothing short of miraculous.

So today I got to see one of my rock stars. If we can make half the difference for children with Autism that Linda makes with her program, I'll be well and truly happy.