Teach Effectively!

Chris Ardis, a school teacher who writes a weekly column for the McAllen Monitor (McAllen, TX; US) paper, addresses education issues ranging from NCLB to protecting children from sex offenders. Some of her columns refer to special education, including her recollections about teaching deaf students.

In one recent column she reported her concerns about what I call unspecial education. Unspecial education occurs when we fail to keep the individual in individual education plans, when we choose one-size-fits-all approaches. Here’s part of Ms. Ardis’ description of the problem from her column entitled “Recent laws not good for students”:

Public Law 94-142 has a critical section we seem to be forgetting because of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). That section requires that all special ed students are placed in their Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). This means that we look at each special ed student individually. One student may be capable of being mainstreamed for all subjects except math. Another student may only have the skills to be mainstreamed for English. It is critical that each student is looked at individually and placed in the classroom settings that will allow him/her to advance academically at the highest rate.

However, because of NCLB, our schools are forced to go overboard with inclusion. In its true form, inclusion involves a special ed teacher and a regular ed teacher team-teaching. There are both special ed and regular ed students in the classroom. What we are seeing, though, is many classrooms with a regular ed teacher, a part-time special ed teacher (because of lack of funding and lack of personnel, the teacher cannot stay in one room the entire class period) and as many special ed students as regular ed students.

In other columns she discusses other matters related to special education. I’ve not seen anything about teaching effectively, but I have seen observations that ought to be made and I’m glad she’s publishing them. Here are links to two of Ms. Ardis’ columns:

• Special-ed students, teachers are a team
• Recent laws not good for students