City announces broad outlines of a special education overhaul

baby steps

February 1, 2010

City announces broad outlines of a special education overhaul

by Philissa Cramer, at 4:15 pm

School officials outlined a plan to change the way city schools serve students with disabilities at a closed-door meeting this morning with special education advocates.

The plan’s first step: Telling schools they have to accept, and “embrace,” students with special needs.

“For too long, educating students with disabilities has meant separating them from their general education peers,” Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said in a statement. “Today we are building on the premise that every school must be able to educate the vast majority of these children.”

That premise represents a badly needed advance for the city schools, according to special education advocates.

“The principles in [the plan] are wonderful, but they’ve been law forever,” said Maggie Moroff, who coordinates the ARISE Coalition but was not speaking on the coalition’s behalf. “The overarching goals are exactly what they ought to be, it’s just that in my mind they’re not so novel.”

In a statement, Laura Rodriguez, the department’s first deputy chancellor in charge of special education, explained that under the plan, schools will get more flexibility to design new programs for students with special needs; will collaborate more with parents; and receive a toolkit to help them improve instruction. They’ll also be held accountable for meeting students’ special education needs, she said.

How any of this will happen is not yet clear. A PowerPoint presentation given this morning offers few details, and Klein and Rodriguez did not offer more, Moroff said.

In the first phase of the plan this fall, about 200 schools will get specialized special education teacher training through 10 Children First Networks, the new unit of organization for how schools get administrative and instructional support. Those schools and networks have not yet been announced. The department told advocates this morning that it has the funds to carry out the plan.

Moroff said she was surprised by the vagueness of the plan revealed this morning, which comes more than six months after Rodriguez was appointed to lead special education reforms. “I sort of thought they were going to have something more fleshed out,” she said.

According to Moroff, the plan hews closely to the recommendations delivered by former DOE executive Garth Harries, who conducted a controversial study of the special education system during his final year at the department. When Harries released his report in July, special education advocates said they were heartened but would reserve judgement until the department announced implementation details.

Invictus

In all the years that Mr. Klein has been at the helm of the DOE, he and his associates had plenty of time to tell the newly minted small schools and some charters, that are more “successful” than traditional, large public schools, to take Special Ed students.

Isn’t it suspect that he is advocating this in public now, after years of neglect? What is he planning to do now?

In my experience, the first thing that gets axed in a to be phased out public school is special education services. The principals for life that are sent to some buildings to fix up what is wrong, really do a wonderful job at paring down and ignoring Special Ed kids and their departments.

The only thing that some administrators love about Spec Ed is the funding.
http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator

Sure, I believe they’ll do this. Right after they lower class sizes, as they not only agreed to do, but took hundreds of millions of dollars to do.
http://www.davidcbloomfield.com David C Bloomfield

Appropriate special education is a right, not a policy preference. In the absence of adequate services provided by the DOE (today’s announcement seems to be a tacit admission of non-compliance), where have the Jose P. litigants, State and federal governments been during the past 8 years in pressing for improvements? Will they now come forward or stand idly by during this “phase in” of students’ rights? Seems like a matter of meeting legal obligations based on an “all deliberate speed” standard, which was an insult in 1955, let alone 2010.
-David
Invictus

The Kleinberg, although having played their cards rights through major speech pieces and spreading influence and money everywhere, have failed to see a major factor that will forever tarnish the city and hit its finances in the near future. Staggering amounts of SpecEd students who haven’t been given their services where they were required. This has been ongoing for almost 8 years, it is a human rights issue and an outright crime that they have committed with their plans.
http://www.specialeducationmuckraker.com Dee Apert

I think that before the NYCDOE makes another change, it should be required to release the full – and I mean full – dataset on its Wilson reading remediation program, since this is the only identifiable reading remediation program it operates at this time. I’ve asked before and been blown off with nonsense beyond belief, such as that it doesn’t have to be evaluated for efficacy in the NYCDOE’s program model and configuration because it’s based on scientific research. If it’s really effective, one would assume the NYCDOE would be running to publish the data, complete with nicely-colored charts and graphs. But … not so far.

Then, before using these Children First networks, it should be required to release the full – and I mean full – dataset on the objective progress kids with disabilities have made over the past five years under the tutelege of the people in these networks.

Insofar as toolkits are concerned, why … the NYCDOE should be required to release all data and research upon which it relies in putting each “tool”‘ into the toolkit as well as information regarding which children each tool was, allegedly, sucessful for. Otherwise we’ll wind up with the usual compendium of feel-good best practices, which typically lack objective documentation as to efficacy and do most of the kids no good whatsoever.

This plan looks to me to be a compendium of what the law required well over a decade ago plus p.r. spin about what NYCDOE spedfolk will be doing. If they’re going to – finally – create appropriate, effective IEPs, for example, they’d better do an awful lot of training first, because right now the NYCDOE knowledge base for adequate IEP creation is virtually nil. As is its staff’s actual, thorough, in-depth knowledge of any research-validated programs for remediation or initial instruction of kids with any cognizable kind of disabilities.

It’s time for the NYCDOE to stop changing organizational and management processes and flow charts – and mantras – and get real about drastically upgrading the knowledge and skills bases of its officials, administrators and staff. This does not mean more 3-day “training” programs. It means real, professional-level courses taught by people with real doctorates. Expensive in the short term? Definitely. But over the mid- to long range, highly effective, both in terms of dollars and real students’ lives.
Michael M.

Even numbered years: When in doubt, reorganize.
Odd numbered years: When in doubt, privatize.
Every year: Stigmatize.
Need to rationalize… a third term?

Take TWO years to say you INTEND to do something EIGHT years overdue. In sports, don’t they call this, “Running out the clock?” Mainstreaming kids with disabilities is soooooo, well, 1970′s. It’s about time Klein and DOE caught up.

Then again, DOE is accelerating the closing of schools as per EdSec Duncan in his Chicago daze, BEFORE that policy was course-corrected by Chicago’s elders to (my phrase): “Fix Em, Don’t Close Em.” Why? Collateral damage to those students during the transitions for whose benefit the closings were nominally undertaken in the children-first place!

When Klein says, “for too long,” somehow he forgets the last eight years. We don’t:
Districts… Regions… ISC’s…. CFN’s…. DRAMAMINE!

When’s someone going to take the hit for the previous reorgs? No need to?
Then I would suggest chaos was the overarching strategic plan all along.
Shock Doctrine? Meet SHLOCK Doctrine.

Didn’t Bloomberg say something about how important it was to reinvigorate a third term with some changes at the top?

P.S. Given DOE’s track record gobbling up class size reduction funds only to see class sizes increase (while first arguing that the increases woulda been still higher; later Orwellifying over the earmarking itself), I’d be curious to see an audit of Fair Student Funding dollars that were incremental for Special Ed and IEP students, and on what those monies were spent.

P.P.S. Re “In the first phase of the plan this fall, about 200 schools will get specialized special education teacher training through 10 Children First Networks…” those CFN’s wouldn’t happen to be private or privatize-able for-profit entities that put DOE employees’ jobs on the lines, now would they?
Interested Observer

Can anyone ever understand Michael M.’s comments? LOL…..
Michael M.

Just trying to be edutaining.
will laRock

If you keep changing policy, and organization – you keep everyone confused so no one has time to see what is going on and ask appropriate questions. Bottom line – there are kids inviolved here! What makes Laura Rodriquez an expert in Special Education – her whole life has been ELL -
http://www.SpecialEducationMuckraker.com Dee Alpert

You get these new reorganizations as the data becomes available to the NYCDOE showing that the last reorganization produced no solid, objective, positive results. Of course, this data is never made public … .

As the NYCDOE’s internal information infrastructure has been drastically upgraded in the past few years, you should expect the pace of major reorganizations to increase exponentially. However, since these deal with process, and not with content, of educational programs and services – in other words, they’re just a reshuffling of the same old-same old folks with the same very old-same old knowledge base and skills sets – it is entirely predictable that the serial reorganizations will not do what they are intended to do.

But since the real underlying data is kept a closely-held secret, one can never tell what the reorganizations are really supposed to accomplish in the first place.
http://www.classsizematters.org leonie haimson

Nerve of DOE to say to “schools they have to accept, and “embrace,” students with special needs.”

Meanwhile, OPD keeps kicking special ed students out of buildings to make way for more charter schools.
Pingback: Insideschools.org » ARISE: DOE’s special ed reform plan falls short
santiago

I hope in the end this is not an attempt to get all students
with disabilities out of community schools and off to district 75 where they wont take standardized tests. I fear for my children who are receiving services in community schools. I cant see them integrated in a first or second grade class with 29 students.. We shall see what is being phased out. I hope not the children.
http://r7011.asktang.com/ynw.php 右脑学习

学习了，希望继续看到这类的文章!
http://www.luisjamesacademy.blogspot.com Wendy Ramos

I am a parent of a Learning Disabled Child, who is currently in a special education 12:1:1 class. He is diagnosed dyslexic. If he was to be put in a general ed class, he would be lost beyond belief, even if they provided him with a para for one on one attention. Every child is different, and every child learns differently. What will happen with these children?
http://1greenenergy.blogspot.com/ Daniel Stanton

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baby steps

February 1, 2010

City announces broad outlines of a special education overhaul

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