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News- Page 34
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Education : As special-needs kids start school, preparation counts
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Posted by sylvia on Thursday, January 29, 2004 (11:27:36)
The Oregonian News 29/01/2004
By Maya Blackmun
Thinking ahead to when a child starts kindergarten can bring apprehension for many a parent.
"For parents with kids with disabilities, there's a lot more to worry about," said Shelley Joyce, a consultant with the Salem-based Oregon Parent Training and Information Center who serves Clackamas County and three other counties.
But Joyce, who has a teenage son with Asperger's syndrome, which is related to autism, said it doesn't have to be a confusing, stressful time.
She will lead a free workshop Feb. 9 in West Linn, sponsored by the center and the West Linn-Wilsonville and Lake Oswego school districts, for parents whose children will start their first year of school next fall.
Joyce will share tips on smoothing the way to school for both parent and child, including the importance of a positive attitude.
"Parents can tend to get anxious - then if they're anxious, the kids may get anxious and they don't even know why," she said.
Preparation is key.
Families can practice getting to and from school, including a child's route to the bus stop, she said. They can meet with teachers in spring and late summer to get to know one another, find out about routines and ask questions. They can learn the school's layout through visits after hours and during the bustle of classes.
Joyce said that for those whose children have received early childhood special education services, the change to school-age special education can be striking.
"For some parents it's a very cold process compared to what they're used to," she said.
She will go over the process, which starts with developing an individualized education program, or IEP, in the spring before deciding school placement.
Families that have had early intervention services for their preschoolers may have become accustomed to a family focus, she said. They must adjust to an emphasis on the child in the individualized program.
Planning for school-age children also involves many more players - such as classroom and special education teachers, a district representative, a speech pathologist and other specialists. That can leave some parents feeling they have less of a say, Joyce said.
"It's not meant to be, it's just a different focus," she said. "Parents need to know they're now going to be part of a team,"
Joyce will give an overview of the key components of an individualized education program, which can include multiple pages of information that parents have never seen before, to prepare them for the team meetings.
"So when they get to this form they'll know what they're talking about and what to ask for," she said.
Joyce will also address parents' rights and strategies, such as the value of becoming well-versed in district handbooks and procedures, including complaints.
When it comes to advocacy techniques, Joyce urges parents to bring a constructive attitude and be prepared to contribute. They can help by coming up with a list of their children's strengths, struggles and goals.
Parents also need to document much of what they do, including requests.
"They have a right to be there and speak up," she said. "As long as they keep it polite and respectful, they can keep the lines of communication open."
Pamela Montoya of Lake Oswego, the mother of two elementary-age boys with high-functioning autism, said the workshop can make a big difference.
Her older son, Carl Jones, now in fourth grade, didn't receive early intervention services and she didn't attend a workshop the year he started kindergarten, so the family wasn't prepared for special education.
"We didn't know the teacher, the principal or anybody," Montoya said.
It took many meetings with school officials throughout the year to settle on a plan and figure things out, she said.
Her younger son, Quintin Jones, received early intervention services, and the family attended a workshop last spring where members got to know those at the school and the planning process.
Quintin "just sailed right in, into kindergarten," Montoya said.
When she got home his first day, she described to her husband how some of the other children cried and how she thought, "Wait a minute, I'm the one with a special-needs kid and he's doing fine."
Joyce said preparing a special-needs child and family to enter kindergarten can reap benefits that can last years.
"We're hoping with this class," Joyce said, "it starts on the right foot."
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Education : Special Education Report Raises Hope for Reforms
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Posted by sylvia on Wednesday, January 28, 2004 (19:44:16)
Berkeley Daily Planet 27/01/2004
By Matthew Artz
Like many parents of Berkeley special education children, Maya MacArdle has had to scratch and claw to make sure her son Anthony received the education she thinks he deserves.
Now, thanks to a special report commissioned by the Berkeley Unified School District, proposed changes could help make the task easier for her and less costly for the district.
District Director of Special Education Ken Jacopetti estimates that by reforming the system and providing better training, the district might reduce the $1.1 million they spend on sending some special education students out of the district, and prevent some hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses that in past years have gone to defend the district in due process hearings.
As the system now stands, “it takes constant baby-sitting on our part because everyone [in the district] is so overworked,†MacArdle said. “I don’t know of a single parent not pulling their hair out.â€
When Anthony MacArdle, who is diagnosed with autism and cerebral palsy, first entered kindergarten, his propensity to flail his arms around and hit people had school officials pushing to banish him to a segregated special education class. After she fought off that plan, she grappled with the district over an instructional aide who often showed up late and unprepared.
Eight years and three due process hearings later, Anthony is happily enrolled in general education classes at King Middle School with the help of an instructional aide and his mother, along with other parents of special education parents, hope that years of struggling against the district bureaucracy is finally paying dividends.
Last Wednesday, the school board enthusiastically accepted the report it commissioned calling for the overhaul of special education—which administrators acknowledged has failed some children and ballooned budget deficits.
“We cannot continue to operate the way we are,†said Superintendent Michele Lawrence. “The dysfunction especially in the budget process for special education is like mistletoe: It will consume and eat the tree and we’ll all die.â€
Special education students range from those diagnosed with autism or Down Syndrome to those with less serious learning disabilities and behavioral issues. Some are included in general education classes, but many are segregated—depriving them of opportunities to learn beside their peers and costing the district a chance to better allocate its limited resources.
Though report authors Kathleen Gee of Sacramento State University and Diane Ketelle of Mills College didn’t crunch numbers, they recommended reforms that could ultimately trim some of the $14 million spent annually on special education, $7.9 million of which comes from the district’s already tapped general fund.
The biggest problem, Ketelle said, was that the district viewed special education not as services within the regular school curriculum but as a separate place inside the school.
To ensure that struggling students received assistance, Ketelle said Berkeley pushed them into special education—often segregating them from classmates and erecting walls between the special education department and the rest of the schools.
She said Berkeley High School provides the worst example, often relegating special education students to “a school within a school,†but district elementary and middle schools face similar problems to varying degrees.
The authors said that mindset has swelled the ranks of Berkeley’s special education students to 1,128—roughly one out of every 10 students—and spawned an inefficient web of services, including 52 teachers and 124 instructional aides, many providing one-on-one service.
Ketelle and Gee called for reassigning many of those students, most notably the 191 assigned to special day classes, mostly students diagnosed with behavioral disorders, to general education classrooms with instructional aides inside to help them and other students.
“They need to rethink the organization of their services to put more resources and efforts into instruction and fewer kids into special education,†she said, recommending reassigning some one-on-one aides to classrooms where they could assist several students during a lesson.
Gee said that returning the bulk of special education students to regular classes will require extensive training for all teachers and aides to tailor classroom instruction to meet their needs, a process Lawrence said is already underway.
More training could also save Berkeley some of the $1.1 million it currently spends to send 47 of its special education students to private academies with staff qualified to handle severely disabled children, often those with autism or behavioral disorders.
To implement the classroom reforms, Gee and Ketelle call for structural changes to the special education department.
First and foremost is a plan already being implemented to shift responsibility for special education student assessments from district managers to schools sites.
Last year, state auditors found Berkeley Unified had mothballed around 300 student assessments and had failed to update students’ individual education plans, putting the district out of compliance with state law, and vulnerable to costly lawsuits.
“If the school doesn’t take ownership for assessing the child, it goes to the district office and falls into a black hole,†said Director of Special Education Ken Jacopetti, who found the district 240 assignments behind when he assumed his job in September.
He is acting on Gee and Ketelle’s recommendation to reform Student Study Teams in district schools, so students that are struggling in their general education classes can get early intervention and needed services without being assigned to special education.
Support within the schools varies, the report said, with some doing a fine job at integrating special education students and teachers into the school and others lagging behind.
The disparities in services are apparent to Lena Willis who is eager to move her five-year-old autistic son from Rosa Parks to Leconte after he cycled through seven instructional aides in his first five months of school.
“At Leconte they have people manage the aides so they have a plan to work with the classroom teachers. At Rosa Parks the aides are thrown into the classroom and they get commands from three or four different people and ultimately quit,†she said.
Berkeley’s problems are not unique, said Wendy Byrnes, a parent advocate with the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. “This is endemic of systemic problems across the board; it happens in a lot of places.â€
Like other districts, Berkeley gets little help in shouldering the burden of special education costs. This year the federal government will cover just 16 percent of all costs, though the 1975 Individuals With Disability Education Act had promised federal reimbursement of 40 percent. California exacerbates the money crunch by capturing federal dollars and funneling them to its own special education mandates.
This year the state is expected to take the estimated $74.5 million growth in federal aid earmarked for special education in California and put it towards the $107.4 million the state is required to supply districts in cost of living and growth adjustments.
Berkeley Unified officials pledged Wednesday to change their entire philosophy towards integrating special education students into their schools, which MacArdle believes will enrich the lives of other children as much as it has for Anthony. “He’s more motivated around typical peers. When he’s in an environment with only disabled kids, he just sits around and doesn’t do much,†she said. “In the regular class he’s stimulated to do his best.â€
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Education : Bay School settling into new location in Live Oak
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Posted by sylvia on Monday, January 26, 2004 (15:39:32)
Santa Cruz Sentinel 25/01/2004
By Amy Ettinger
Children with autism take tiny steps to learn about the world around them. Now students at The Bay School have more room to stretch their legs and grow.
The school, which uses science-based methods to help teach children with autism, moved to a new 6,000 square-foot campus at the Live Oak Business Park this fall.
More than $150,000 was raised for the new site, which officials showed during an open house on Thursday. Shiny new classrooms with computers and play areas, and laundry facilities are a few of the perks of the larger campus.
"We have room to breathe now," said Executive Director Barry Morgenstern. Fourteen students currently attend the school, but there is now room for up to 24.
Autism is a neurological disorder that causes impairment in communication and the ability to learn and relate socially. There’s no known cause and no known cure.
And the number of children diagnosed with the disorder is rising. According to research from the Cure Autism Now foundation, autism is believed to affect 1 in 250 people.
More therapies for autism are being offered all the time, but many are not backed up by research or science, Morgenstern said.
The Bay School’s teaching technique is called "applied behavior analysis." Children learn tasks by breaking activities down into basic skills. A student learning to make a peanut butter sandwich will follow pictures of each step along the way.
Data on progress is accumulated all the time, Morgenstern said.
"If there hasn’t been progress by the third day we’ll make a change by the fourth day," he said.
Cheryle Matteo’s 12-year-old daughter, Jesse, began attending the Bay School in November. Matteo, who lives in San Carlos, said her daughter was just not getting her needs met in the public schools and was not making any noticeable improvements.
But after just a few months at the new school, she’s stopped many of her harmful behaviors — including banging her head against her knee repeatedly.
"It’s the first time where we feel it’s a good fit," Matteo said. "We’re not even worried anymore."
The Bay School is a nonprofit that was founded five years ago by three Santa Cruz families. It has grown to include more children, and moved twice from its original site in Aptos.
The cost of teaching each child at The Bay School is about $180 a day. Most of that money is reimbursed through school districts. The remainder comes through fund raising.
Sally Larwood’s daughter, Claire, would not stop crying when she first started coming to The Bay School three years ago. Morgenstern would spend days just sitting with Claire as she cried. Claire now speaks when she didn’t before, using two to three words at a time.
"She’s 100 percent happier because she’s not frustrated," Larwood said. "She can use words for the things she needs."
The change has made a difference for her three siblings, who now are more comfortable interacting with her.
"As a family we can take her to eat at a restaurant or to parities," Larwood said. "She’s not loud or crying anymore. It’s enhanced the quality of our family."
For more information visit The Bay School
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Education : Inclusion: A Broken Promise?
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Posted by sylvia on Sunday, January 25, 2004 (22:27:51)
By Nancy Salvato
I am certified to teach public school students up to the 12th grade. In
order to teach kids in grades 6-12, I must have a major or a minor in a
particular subject. If I don't have the qualifications I won't be eligible
to teach at that grade level. It's as simple as that.
As a matter of fact,
even though I am already a teacher of middle school students and have a M Ed
in Education, I will be considered unqualified to teach middle school
according to the more stringent standards of NCLB if I do not take two
courses in middle school to understand the nature of the kids with whom I am
charged.
Now contrast this with what is expected of me when a student is
mainstreamed- nothing. Can this be true, you are thinking? I will have
taken one more course to be qualified in middle school than is required of
me to teach a special needs student. This can't be right, say you? Yep, it
's true. Is this an acceptable situation? That's another story.
According to Educating Children with Autism (2001), published by The
National Academy of Sciences, "children with autistic disorders.offer unique
challenges to families, teachers, and others who work with them. Their
deficits in nonverbal and verbal communication require intense effort and
skill even in the teaching of basic information. The unique difficulties in
social interaction may require more individual guidance than for other
children in order to attract and sustain their children's attention.
Moreover, ordinary social exchanges between peers do not usually occur
without deliberate planning and ongoing structuring by the adults in the
child's environment. In addition, the frequency of behavior problems, such
as tantrums and self-stimulatory and aggressive behavior, is high.
The need
for systematic selection of rewards for many children with autistic spectrum
disorders, whose motivation or interests can be limited, requires creativity
and continued effort from teachers and parents to maximize the child's
potential."
Wow! That sounds like a lot of work. It also sounds like I would need some
additional training in order to maximize an autistic child's potential.
That would be hard to do in a classroom full of kids without an aid or even
one workshop on autism. Even then, I'd need some first hand experience with
an autistic child to make sure that I can handle it. You'd agree?
I guess
that is why students in education specialize in certain grades and have
areas of expertise. I am glad there are people who choose "special
education" as their area of concentration. Those people have big hearts and
a lot of patience. I myself am a "general education" teacher, by nature.
But wait just a minute. I will be teaching "special needs" children such as
those with autism because PL 942 says that these children are to be taught
in the "least restrictive environment" which is widely interpreted to mean
"inclusion". It has been determined that this is what is best for everyone
involved.
I have to be honest, though, I'm a little uncomfortable with
this. I'm not sure any general education teacher could maximize the
potential of a "special needs" student unless they received further
training, which would mean more than one course overview on "special needs"
students. Thus far in my educational career there have not been any
additional classes required of me in this area of education.
Sharon Cromwell, in an article titled Inclusion: Has It Gone Too Far,
published in Education World, says "the idea that all children, including
those with disabilities, should and can learn in a regular classroom has
taken firm root in many school systems, although it is not specifically
required by law."
In her article she states that The National Association
for State Boards of Education (NASBE) strongly endorses the "full inclusion"
of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. NASBE released a report
which called on states to revise teacher-licensure and certification rules
so that new teachers would be prepared to teach children with disabilities
as well as those without disabilities. It also recommended training programs
to help special educators and regular educators adapt to collaborating in
the classroom.
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
(ASCD) also supports inclusion. This author went on to say that some parents
of students with disabilities feared that inclusion would result in losing
special-education services and believed their children would be "dumped"
into regular classrooms without appropriate support. I fear that this is
what is happening in a lot of cases.
Ms. Cromwell says that schools are "mainstreaming" special needs kids into
regular education classrooms but they are not taking the steps necessary to
make inclusion work. The Utah Education Association suggests that it is
necessary to implement the following for inclusion to work:
· adequate supports and services for the student
· well-designed individualized education programs (IEPs)
· professional development for all teachers involved, general and special
educators alike
· time for teachers to plan, meet, create, and evaluate the students
together
· reduced class size based on the severity of the student needs
· professional skill development in the areas of cooperative learning, peer
tutoring, adaptive curriculum, varied learning styles, etc.
· collaboration between parents, teachers and administrators
· sufficient funding so that schools will be able to develop programs for
students based on student need instead of the availability of funding, or
lack thereof
To be sure, federal law still requires that a full continuum of placement
options be available to each special education student and that placement
decisions be made by the Individual Education Program (IEP) team, based on
the student's needs. But as you can see, inclusion is the norm.
In Educating Children With Autism it says, "While successful participation
in regular classroom is an important goal for some children with autistic
spectrum disorders, the usefulness of placement in regular education classes
as an outcome measure is limited, because placement may be related to many
variables other than the characteristics of the child (e.g., prevailing
trends in inclusion, availability of other services)."
They are of the
opinion that, "States should have regional resource and training centers
with expertise in autistic spectrum disorders to provide training and
technical support to local schools." They also say that, "States should
have clearly defined minimum standards for personnel in educational settings
for children with autistic spectrum disorders at a minimum, teachers should
have some special preparation and should have well-trained, experienced
support personnel available to provide ongoing training and additional
consultation."
Teachers of autistic children must be familiar with theory
and research concerning "best practice", as well as have multiple exposures,
opportunity to practice, and active involvement in learning about autism to
become proficient in an inclusion classroom and meet the needs of an
autistic child.
In my experience, a teacher faced with inclusion does not normally receive
extra training or support. Most of the time the teacher is told to modify
the lesson plans for the class to meet the needs of the individual students.
Aids are a luxury and expensive.
Schools prefer teachers to be self
sufficient and not have too many needs or demands. A needy or vocal teacher
is a teacher that might not see a renewed contract. But that's another
story for another day.
Copyright C Nancy Salvato 2004
Nancy Salvato is a middle school teacher in Illinois and an independent
contractor for Prism Educational Consulting. She is the Educational Liaison
to IL Sen. Ray Soden and she works with national and local organizations
furthering the cause of Civic Education.
She is a columnist for American
Daily, and TheRant.us. Her pieces are published in The Washington Dispatch,
Opinion Editorials, GOP-USA, Iconoclast, the Free Republic Network &
Townhall.com.
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Education : Parents of autistic children doing it for themselves
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Posted by sylvia on Friday, January 23, 2004 (01:05:11)
Galway Advertiser 22/o1/2004
Ita Fitzgibbon was told that her son Tom was autistic last year. He was three years of age. "It felt like I lost him the day he was diagnosed. I just sank into a world of darkness, because I didn't know why this had happened to us, or what we could do for him."
What do parents face when they are told that their child is autistic? The situation is quite grim according to Dina Page, the director of education at Abalta, a school for autistic children that was established by parents in Knocknacarra in 2001.
“The parents are given very little direction what to do, but that is because there are very little services out there for them to be recommended to and the situation is not helped by the fact that incidences are on the increase†she said.
In 2001 a group of parents came together determined to provide services for their children that were not already in place. Alison McNabb was one of those parents. She and her husband had been teaching their son at home using a teaching model known as Applied Behavioural Analysis, which is proven to be effective in the development of autistic children.
"We got together with five other families who were running home programmes for their children like we were and we made a go for it. We took out loans and re-mortgaged our homes and paid for it all ourselves. With autistic children the key really is early intervention. The earlier the intervention, the better the outcome for the child," she said.
The McNabb family were meanwhile bringing a case against the State for not providing adequate services for their son. Over a one-year period from September 1999 to September 2000, Colum had received 60 hours of intervention including just five hours of speech therapy, and no occupational therapy. The State conceded the education offered was inappropriate, and as a result it agreed to fund the school based on the ABA system, Abalta.
The school has thrived ever since. It doubled its intake to 12 last year, and there are more on the waiting list. But even though the school is being funded by the Department of Education, it has yet to be provided with a permanent site. At the minute it is based in a house in Knocknacarra, and while cosy and well fitted out, it is not appropriate for a school.
"We are starting a major fund raising campaign now to get some kind of a site in Galway city. We figure that if we get the site, then the Department of Education will have no excuse not to give us a purpose built school," said Fitzgibbon.
"We have a long term plan for the school. Ideally we need a two acre site, because we would like to think that in years to come we would be able to provide a range of services for autistic children, residential and pre-school, the lot. We'd like to develop it into a centre of excellence for autism.
"When your child is diagnosed with autism, the clock it ticking. Early intervention is the best, and as the parent of a newly diagnosed child you need to have some kind of a positive support system," said McNabb.
The fundraising begins next week with a car raffle. Up for grabs is a 03 Citroen C2, and tickets are on sale in the Galway Shopping Centre or from Abalta at 091 - 589 646. But this is just the start, the parents are determined to go all the way to secure a site and are welcome to any offers from people who may have land to donate.
Autism is a biomedical and behavioural disability that affects communication and social interaction. It is usually diagnosed around the age of three and the severeness of the condition varies from person to person. It is not known what causes it.
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