Students with disabilities left out — again
May 21, 2010
Students with disabilities left out — again
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestvoices/index.html
May 17, 2010 at 4:00 PM
Race to the Top
Posted by Letters editor
Students with disabilities left out — again
We applaud the state’s efforts to seek $250 million in federal grants, but question why students with disabilities have been left out. ["Race to the Top education grants: a tipping point for Washington students," Opinion, May 14.]
Among the goals for “all Washington students” is attaining “high academic standards regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender.” The glaring omission from this list of protected classes is students with disabilities.
This disregard for students with disabilities tracks with the Legislature’s recent report from the Achievement Gap Oversight and Accountability Committee, which examined Washington’s education record to discern why “academic achievement is highly correlated to students’ race, ethnicity, and economic circumstances.”
Why does our state “forget” about students with disabilities? Why are these students not considered when talk turns to giving all students equal opportunity to access quality education? In our state, students with disabilities lack consistent access to the general-education curriculum and those who show giftedness frequently are denied entry into advanced learning classrooms.
We urge our state education leaders and legislators to stop underestimating the potential of our most vulnerable students. Many are children who can succeed when given appropriate supports and access to challenging academics. Do not leave students with disabilities behind as you are racing to the top.
— Janet Anderson, president of Seattle Special Ed PTSA, Seattle
this is what I’m talking about - read what Gary Cohen has to say - but he should not have had to suffer through 6th grade before someone knew how to provide him with an education! consider all of the teachers who went before that one special one and consider all the anguish and the potential lost opportunity!
May 20, 2010
http://rethinklearningnow.com/stories/story/?storyId=34351
Thirty-five years ago, I was struggling to pass English. Last year I became a published author. How did I find my way from failing to where I am now? Someone took the time to “see” me. In the sixth grade, I had a third-grade reading level and a fourth-grade math level. I struggled with graphomotor skills, low active working memory, and attention issues — none of which was really diagnosed at the time. Hardly a recipe for success in the classroom, particularly when my teachers didn’t really know how to engage kids like me. So I showed up each day, sat in my seat, stared at the chalkboard, and didn’t learn a thing.
It’s not like my teachers didn’t care. Knowing I was a struggling learner, one of my teachers asked me to spell “a” during a spelling bee. I froze. That moment, which seemed to last forever, still haunts me, with the images of students staring at me, whispering their advice, while the teacher’s question rings louder than a fire station’s horn. I knew it was a simple, easy question, and that the teacher was only trying to help — which made my inability to answer even worse. Inwardly, I crumbled. It wasn’t about learning anymore, it was about my value as a person.That moment for me was the start of a downward spiral into shame, hopelessness and defeat.
Pat Zimmerman, a special education teacher, threw me a lifeline, but I let it lie in the water for a while. Sometimes when you’re drowning, you’re unable to see or unwilling to accept help. But Pat persisted. She saw my potential and, eventually, helped me to see it, too. When I came to Pat, I was usually demoralized and beaten. But by the end of each period with her, I was no longer slumped in my chair; I felt inspired and excited about the possibilities ahead.
Pat “saw” me. She knew that I had a voice and important things to say. She buoyed my spirits and convinced me that my mind was fine, just different. It brought information in differently, sorted that information differently, filed it differently, and retrieved it differently. She helped me see the gifts I was given instead of the deficits on which others had focused. Not only did she help me craft narratives for my ideas and my coursework, she helped me craft a narrative about who I was and what I could become. By ninth grade, I was not only doing my grade level of work, I was coaching other struggling learners at school during my choice time. A few years later, I graduated early and in the top 10% of my class. In college, I triple majored and graduated Magna Cum Laude. I went on to co-found a call-center company and helped it grow from two employees to 2,200. And, last summer, McGraw Hill published my book, Just Ask Leadership: Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions. I’ve passed Pat’s gift forward to many in my life — as a board member of All Kinds of Minds, as a parent, and as an executive coach. Thanks to her, I’m able to share the value of letting go of rigid categories and labels and celebrating the different way each of us learns. At the same time, Pat’s ability to understand me as a unique learner and to help me find and value my strengths demonstrates the power of an educator who understands learning diversity — something I believe can help us transform our schools. Because there are countless students struggling in classrooms right now who are dying inside, just as I was. And I’m proof that an educator who truly understands learning can help those students find a brighter future.
Parenthood: A “lack” is not same as wrong
May 14, 2010
Parenthood%3A%20%22lack%22%20is%20not%20same%20as%20wrong.
Ok. I wholeheartedly agree that every child is unique. And, I completely agree that schools and the majority of teachers can’t deal with their uniqueness, and certainly can’t teach to it.
I think the author is trying to make the point that because the schools and educators aren’t doing their jobs in having any ability to teach to differences, that this has caused the proliferation of diagnosed “disorders” - that, then, the schools and educators can wipe their hands clean of these kids and send them off to special ed and also can get more funding for their schools.
The author should have been more clear that it isn’t “child advocates” that are at fault here. I mean, it isn’t like parents “want” their child to be diagnosed with a disorder in order to get “special” services. Good God, those “special” services aren’t anything to desire. Not to mention the lifetime of other issues we face with a disorder.
If this article has any merit, it is that we need to reform education to reflect the fact that most kids learn differently from each other. Perhaps, teachers shouldn’t be teaching if they don’t know how to teach to kids with learning differences - particularly when so much of our population has these so-called “differences”.
But, please, don’t try to make that point by suggesting that the kids with diagnosed “disorders” don’t need help. We advocate for our children because they are drowning in these schools without properly trained educators. If we don’t do something about it, our kids have no hope for the future and I know for sure the schools and educators aren’t going to follow our children through their life to insure they get what they need from the education system. That’s why we do what we do. And I’m proud of it!
A new era for EEU (and so fortunate for me and my kids at APL!)
May 7, 2010
A new era for the Experimental Education Unit (so long, Jennifer Annable)
http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?articleid=57649
NYT - Little-Known Disorder Can Take a Toll on Learning
May 1, 2010
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/little-known-disorder-can-take-a-toll-on-learning/
NYT article - Mind Over Meds
April 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/magazine/25Memoir-t.html
Interesting read. I am not against meds. I know they help people with serious mental health issues and diseases. And I am glad they exist for when people need them. However, I am a BIG believer in therapy. IT IS TIME CONSUMING! I spend more time in waiting rooms every week than I care to add up. But it is worth it.
Too many parents are medicating their children and not doing the hard work that goes with therapy. As a parent, you end up getting educated by the therapists on how to carry on with the therapy principles at home. So you, sometimes unwillingly, have to learn about things that you don’t have time for or have little knowledge about. It is also time consuming to find the right therapist, determine what the right therapies are, etc. I see how medication is the easy route. But I also see how it can be done without medication and how this is providing children with the skills that they can carry with them throughout their life.
Parents need to do what is right for their child. And medication may be the answer. But, more often than not, the children that I know of that are on medications are not receiving any kind of therapy to go along with the medication. The important work is not being done.
Sibiling of children with autism learn tolerance at an early age - baltimoresun.com
April 23, 2010
Sibiling of children with autism learn tolerance at an early age - baltimoresun.com
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good read from All Kinds Of Minds blog about teachers believing in their abilities as teachers but not believing in the abilities of their students
April 21, 2010
Survey Reveals a New Achievement Gap
I find the study to reflect real life in our schools. I am always amazed that general ed teachers believe they have the skills to teach kids of all abilities. And even if they secretly do not believe in themselves, they are not open to saying to administration that they do not feel confident in their abilities to teach certain kids. I wish more teachers would ask for more help - more training, more resources to allow them to teach all kinds of minds. And perhaps our administrations need to face reality that not all teachers are capable of teaching all kinds of minds. Instead, some teachers lose hope in our kids. They secretly believe that our kids won’t succeed in school and life and they lower their expectations of themselves as teachers and of our kids as students. And when this happens, we all lose.
EEU - Experimental Education Unit at the UW
April 21, 2010
This came across one of my email groups. It describes so well the EEU. If you have a child pre-kindergarten (developmental disability or not) this is an amazing school. I was fortunate to have Jennifer Annable, current Principal of EEU (and new principal of APL!), give me a tour of the EEU and see first-hand how they teach kids of all abilities. Their classrooms have 50% typical kids and 50% kids with a developmental disability. The mark of a great school - I could not pick out, in any of their classrooms, which child had a developmental disability, and half of them did! Also, to see how they teach learning differentiation is absolutely incredible - every child is participating in the classroom together but learning in their own unique way.
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What does the University do for society? How do its knowledge, its theories, its expertise play out in the world? Of course there are scores of good answers to those questions. But if you’re looking for a case that’s especially vivid and engaging, you might pay a visit to the UW’s Experimental Education Unit (EEU) at the Norris and Dorothy Haring Center for Applied Research and Training in Education. Few things are more concrete and immediate than a roomful of very young children learning how to be in the world, and that’s the business of the EEU.
The program began life some forty years ago as a pilot school for children with neurological injuries. Then as now, its focus was on using UW research and skills to help young children make the most of lives that had begun with bad luck and impairment. Tucked in behind the Medical Center along the Ship Canal, the EEU is now jointly run by the College of Education (specifically, the Special Education area) and the Center on Human Development and Disability (CHDD). It serves about 250 children from birth to age 7, roughly half of whom have a developmental disability—Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, fetal alcohol syndrome, language or motor disabilities, challenging behavior, or problems with no official diagnosis.
Whatever image you may have of a school for children with disabilities, you will not find it at the EEU. The most striking thing about the school, if one arrives knowing its mission, is how hard it is to see the disabilities. The preschool class sitting in a story circle, the kindergarteners getting ready for lunch, the children swarming over brightly colored playgrounds (one designed by UW architecture students) or filing carefully through the halls, the cheerful parents arriving or departing with kids in their arms—the whole scene is scarcely distinguishable from any other early childhood center. What you see is children—bright-eyed, upbeat, lively.
This is not an accident. “The EEU is unique in integrating disabled children with their typically developing peers,” says special-education chair Ilene Schwartz, who has been the school’s director for 3 years. “What you’re seeing here is the power of good models—the ‘normal’ kids—which is why we believe in inclusion and work really hard to achieve it. The disabled kids rise to the occasion—they look better here, and they look more disabled in segregated classrooms. It’s like tennis: if you’re trying to learn the game, it really helps to have someone there who can volley with you.”
But of course there’s more going on in EEU classrooms than immediately meets the eye. Dr. Schwartz points out the casually-dressed adults mingling with the children in any given room: the head teacher with a master’s degree in special education, the assistant teacher who’s a UW graduate student, the occupational or physical therapist, the speech and language pathologist, the classroom aides (undergraduates in early childhood education), and perhaps a visiting psychologist. Unobtrusively, children are getting highly specialized and individualized therapy in the midst of regular classroom activities and social play. Behind the scenes, meanwhile, parents have their own support and counseling services, starting with home visits and play groups for infants and continuing through the transition to “regular” school after kindergarten.
Years of educational research, much of it conducted at the school itself, underlie the curriculum, methods, and philosophy of the EEU. It is indeed “experimental.” When the school opened its doors, many people believed that children with Down syndrome could not learn. Today, these children are being educated in classrooms all over the country with an approach that was developed at the EEU. “We did the seminal work,” says Dr. Schwartz. “It is now recognized that people with intellectual disabilities can lead fulfilling lives.”
The urgent issue now is autism, which some are calling an epidemic. The current rate of diagnosis, says Dr. Schwartz, is one in a hundred eight-year-olds. School districts are mandated to provide appropriate education for these (and all disabled) children, and in 2008 there were 6,025 autistic children in Washington public schools.
“What we are demonstrating at the EEU,” says Dr. Schwartz, “is that children with autism can succeed in school settings.” Her own Project DATA (Developmentally Appropriate Treatment for Autism) gives autistic children small-group or individual instruction in addition to their time in a regular EEU class. “We have to teach many of these kids to play,” she says. “It’s critical, because play is the medium in which children learn.” For parents, the EEU is an alternative to the kind of intensive, home-based autism therapy that can overwhelm family time and resources. Most of the Project DATA children (and indeed of all EEU disabled students) gain enough independence and social skills to go on into blended public-school classrooms. Some succeed spectacularly, like the boy who entered Seattle’s gifted program and is now first-chair trumpet in his middle-school orchestra.
But not all have such happy outcomes. Much remains to be learned about autism, and it is a subject of intense study by UW scientists, along with other aspects of human development that pertain to the EEU. As part of the UW and CHDD, the school has a direct line to these researchers, many of them national leaders in their fields. “We don’t do the basic science,” says Dr. Schwartz, “but we learn from people all over campus, and sometimes they do research right here.” The EEU draws on the science to understand and attack practical problems in the classroom, doing what Dr. Schwartz calls “translative research.”
The UW funds only 10-20 percent of the EEU (the building and two salaries), but the school’s campus location, its ties to both the College of Education and CHDD science, are crucial to its work. Most funding comes from contracts with Seattle Public Schools and other agencies, which in effect hire the EEU to teach disabled students (those aged three and over), to develop model programs, and to train people who work in the field. These contractual arrangements, and the program’s many grants, mean that the parents themselves pay nothing. (The program even includes two Head Start classrooms, which work with both disabled and “normal” children from low-income families.) Hundreds of observers spend time at the EEU every year and take new ideas and expertise back to their own schools and agencies across the country.
A year ago, the EEU learned of a planned bequest that will likely augment still further its work and influence. Norris Haring, the school’s founding director, and his wife Dorothy have established an endowment that will ultimately bring the school more than $4 million. The gift will fund 15 graduate fellowships every year in special education, as well as supporting other aspects of the work of the new Norris and Dorothy Haring Center for Applied Research and Training in Education.
Meanwhile, you will find no greater fans of the EEU than the parents whose children have learned there. “It’s world class,” says Tracy Brown. All three of her children, the middle one with Down syndrome and the other two without disabilities, have been EEU students. “I’ve been astounded by the professionalism of the staff but also by their personal qualities—their understanding and compassion, their encouragement and willingness to try anything, to work on whatever you want, academics, social skills, anything. It’s really a family. I’ve so appreciated the parents who brought their typically developing kids there, because the disabled kids really do learn by mimicking. But the typical kids also learn—the EEU breaks down those walls of fear about relating to people who are different. This school is a hidden gem.”
So when people ask you what the University contributes to the larger world, remember the EEU.
from WAA - preparing for mental health parity 7/1/10, will it work for autism?
April 19, 2010
Is Autism treatable? Is the treatment attainable and widely accessible? Are highly trained and competent treatment providers covered by insurance companies and Medicaid?
With scientific advances in the last decade promising treatments have emerged and are gaining national attention. Yet the payers (insurance carriers and self-funded plans managed by insurance carriers) continue to arm themselves with old, carefully selected misrepresenations of the truth that autism is treatable and these treatments are attributing to better outcomes for patients with ASD’s.
For this reason, 18 states have now passed laws that ban specific policy exclusions of autism treatments and require coverage of evidence based diagnosis, develpment of treatment plans and the treatments by private insurance.
In Washington State, Full Mental Health Parity will become LAW on 7/1/2010. Mental Health Parity covers medically necessarty treatments for individuals with a DSM diagnosis for life, with the same dollar cap as medical & surgical benefits.
After that if evidence based diagnosis and treatment is still being denied, then the law has to be court tested. You may have read about class action lawsuits that have required insurance to cover autism. Several prominent WA attorneys have expressed serious interest in testing out WA’s Mental Health Parity in courts. If you’re insurance is denying treatment that is prescribed and found to be medically necessary to treat autism, this may be of interest to you. Please get the denials in writing, ask a lot of questions:
- Is the treatment being denied by XYZ or is it not included in my employers plan?
- Is the treatment covered for other conditions?
- Is the treatment covered for patients who are not insured through XYZ company?
Ask them to put all the information in writing, if they refuse, get their contact information, you put in writing what they told you & send it to them. You need a paper trail for any appeals or other action. Keep a separate folder with all these records.
Please distribute this information to your local listserves and among those with ASD’s. Insurers have worked hard to create barriers to assure minimum payouts on claims. Consumers will have to be well informed and know their rights.
All my best,
Arzu Forough
