GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

introduction

July 20, 2012

At a critical moment, a new special education chief takes over

by Geoff Decker, at 8:45 am

The new head of special education at the Department of Education thinks long-planned reforms to the way city schools educate students with special needs are likely to be “very rocky” when they roll out this fall.

But Corinne Rello-Anselmi believes that not making radical changes would be far more damaging.

That’s what she told a group of parents who sit on a special education advisory board Thursday evening. It was Rello-Anselmi’s formal introduction to the board, the Citywide Council on Special Education, since taking over this month as deputy chancellor of special education and English language learning.

She replaces Laura Rodriguez, the first person to hold that position. Under Rodriguez’s leadership, the city launched sweeping reforms designed to integrate students with disabilities into classroom settings alongside their peers.

Those reforms have been underway in some schools for two years. But for most schools, the changes are taking effect only this year, bringing a new level of scrutiny to the special education deputy position.

The parent advisory board largely supports the principle that is guiding the reforms: that more inclusive classroom settings are better for students with disabilities. Research has shown students with special needs who spend less time in so-called “self-contained” special education classrooms have higher attendance, higher test scores, fewer behavioral problems, and higher graduation rates.

But board members have also joined a growing chorus of parents and advocates who say they are concerned about whether schools are prepared to handle the changes, which will bring students with disabilities to neighborhood schools that have served few students with special needs in the past. The parents and advocates fear that schools that have served few students with special needs will not be equipped to provide the appropriate services to meet academic goals stated on new students’ individualized education plans.

Jaye Bea Smalley, CCSE’s co-president, said at Thursday’s meeting that she didn’t believe the reforms were misguided or that they were being rolled out too quickly. She said her fear lay in something more fundamental.

“It’s just that I don’t think our school system really will allow for it to happen,” Smalley said.

During the meeting, Rello-Anselmi said she “personally” believed that the rollout would be “very rocky.” But she said reducing city schools’ reliance on segregated special education settings where student achievement tends to be very low would be worth the disruption.

In an interview after the meeting, Rello-Anselmi called her new job the culmination of “my life’s work” and indicated that she did not think she had been selected simply to carry out an existing initiative. Rello-Anselmi has spent more than three decades working in special education, first as a teacher and principal at P.S. 108, where she said the school eventually integrated eight self-contained classrooms.

“The journey of those years really was about setting a fully inclusive environment for all kids,” she said.

Most recently, Rello-Anselmi oversaw a branch of the Department of Education’s school support structure. The branch included dozens of schools organized under a cluster of 12 networks, three of which participated in the pilot of the special education reforms. Working with those schools gave Rello-Anselmi a firsthand look at how schools adopted to the mandate to serve higher-need students, she said.

“I saw a lot of how schools reform their practices to be more inclusive and it worked because it was supported by the network,” Rello-Anselmi said.

While Rello-Anselmi said she intended to carry out the reforms that began before her, she already had ideas about how to change her office’s approach to providing information to the public. So far, the department has provided only scant information about how the reforms have played out at the pilot schools, and at a City Council hearing last month, Rodriguez acknowledged that her office was not keeping track of certain data points that advocates were asking for.

Rello-Anselmi said she could not explain why those data points had not been part of the department’s assessment of the reforms. But she said she would make sure that they will be in the future.

“I can’t answer to that because I wasn’t part of it,” she said. “But the DOE always looks at how we are doing, so there will be a greater emphasis on looking at what is happening in terms of meeting the needs of students and how they’re progressing socially and academically. By that I mean we’ll be looking at things like suspension data, we’ll be looking at achievement data.”

Print Print
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397245457 Mary Conway-Spiegel

    One humongous core problem NYC DOE does not seem to comprehend are the impossible challenges students with special needs face when they are also poor, come from extremely dysfunctional “family”/living structures (parents w/mental illness, drug addiction) or have parents who do not speak English.  Once again the assumption is made that the neediest students come from intact home lives – it’s this type of denial that will be the ruin of many many many children’s educational experiences.
    I’ve witnessed first hand students with special needs who disrupt classrooms/class time (not because they are “bad”/ill behaved); they are then pulled out and have NO ONE to help them…and frankly/brutally…no one who wants them.
    I wish only the best for Rello-Anselmi, but until Ed policy makers, adults in powerful decision making positions repopulate Tweed with experts, I fear the worst.   

  • T5yuir

     placing special ed students with  regular ed sudents  will only lead to a further erosion of standards

  • Anonymous

    In response to Mary Conway-Spiegel
    What are you saying?  That every child with a special need comes from a dysfunctional home?  That’s a broad statement to make and indicates a lack of sensitivity, if not downright bias, on your part.  

  • Anonymous

    No, she did not say that “noryeln.”   Read her reply carefully.  As a fifteen year veteran who has worked with Students with disabilities in self contained as well as CTT/ITT classrooms Mary Conway-Spiegal does bring up a truth:  There are many – NOT ALL – students who have an IEP who do face poverty, come from a dysfunctional family or have parents who do not speak English.  It’s just the truth.  She did not say “every child.” 

  • Anonymous

    From what I’ve seen, it can work wonders, totally fail or not matter at all.  As a teacher who has taught self contained since 97 and both SC and CTT/ITT classes since 98, I’ve seen it all.  I’ve seen students excel and pass Regents where they would never have a had a chance in a SC classroom due to behavior problems or because the material had to be constantly “watered down” due to students entering high school LEVELS behind appropriate grade level.  I’ve seen behavior changed instantly because a new set of social peers were introduced in a larger classroom.  I’ve also seen students improperly placed in which no matter how much scaffolding, review, visuals, organizers, one on one, resources etc are given it would never matter because the student is just way below the appropriate level that it is IMPOSSIBLE in one years time to say bring him or her up to the rest of the class and expected standards – but we still try.  And finally, you have students where it really doesn’t matter what setting they are in.  The students who will put no effort forth, will show no concern even when parents or guardians are constantly notified or even say good morning to you after you welcome them in to the classroom personally. 

  • A.S.Neill

    As a SE teacher in HS who teaches both self-contained classes and co-teaches in inclusion classes, i believe the policy whether SE students should be moved to inclusion classes is more complex than usually portrayed. The biggest difficulty in my experience is that SE students who can make progress with patient but steady attention are placed in the same self-contained classroom with SE students who may have higher abilities but have severe attention or behavior disorders which chronically disrupt the classroom. In this situation neither student makes good progress. There are some behavioral problem students who do actually perform better in inclusion classrooms because the source of their disruption is that their higher abilities are not being challenged in a self-contained classroom, though this is the exception. Placing the slower learning but behaviorally appropriate students in an inclusion classroom may also be misdirected, since most of the classroom work is simply not appropriate grade level material for them. I believe it would be appropriate to separate the SE students on the basis of appropriate behavior as well as learning ability, but this is not done for some reason, possibly because IEP restrictions or more probably because staffing requirements do not allow it even in a large HS such as my own. Even more ideally, I believe behaviorally disruptive SE students should be transferred to Dist 75 schools where this condition can be dealt with more appropriately, but this is also not done. In fact, Ive noticed a reverse trend where Dist 75 behavior problem students are being released to my HS where the resources and consequences do not exist to maintain an appropriate classroom environment for them. So on the whole I do not expect any educational progress to result from moving SE students to inclusion classrooms, though I do understand that the school receives greater state or Federal funding for such students which i suspect is the motive for this policy change.

  • Careful reader

    Let’s read it together:”One humongous core problem NYC DOE does not seem to comprehend are the impossible challenges students with special needs face when they are also poor, come from extremely dysfunctional “family”/living structures (parents w/mental illness, drug addiction) or have parents who do not speak English. “MC-S is saying: let’s look at students with compound issues: disabilities and affect/domicile issues, extreme poverty, parents who do not speak English”Once again the assumption is made that the neediest students come from intact home lives – it’s this type of denial that will be the ruin of many many many children’s educational experiences.”Here MC-S seems to be saying that failing to understand and unwrap these many layers of compound issues by applying a one-size fits all”solution” will cause many students facing multiple challenges to have greater barriers to success.
    “I’ve witnessed first hand students with special needs who disrupt classrooms/class time (not because they are “bad”/ill behaved); they are then pulled out and have NO ONE to help them…and frankly/brutally…no one who wants them.”I imagine the point here might be that if the reforms depend on support, watch dogging, safeguards and follow- up actions by fully equipped actively engaged parents, then a number of students with compound issues will likely suffer from the unintended consequences of these initiatives, w/o strong advocates to support them.Becoming part of the growing school to prison pipeline, starting w/ long term suspensions seems like a very likely outcome IMHO, given the lack of teacher training, classroom supports and rising class sizes our schools all face.”I wish only the best for Rello-Anselmi, but until Ed policy makers, adults in powerful decision making positions repopulate Tweed with experts, I fear the worst. ”

    I don’t think this needs any translation since it is evident- we need experts making policy decisions, but Tweed is a political machine that belongs to Mayor Mike, as we have seen a million times over in the last 10 or so years.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397245457 Mary Conway-Spiegel

    No.  I did not.  As others have commented, my concern is for students with special needs who are in struggling/”failing” schools.  It’s these children/young people I come face to face with every day.  
    How did they wind up in “failing” schools?  When a school phases out/closes who looks out for these students?  Why are teachers without the correct credentials teaching these children? 
    Administrators city-wide tell me stories of parents who hand over IEPs and walk out the door.  Some walk out trusting their child will get the very best, some walk out and block the schools phone number, some walk out and run off to work three jobs.
    A “very rocky” start is the last thing any child, but particularly a child with special needs should deal with.  It’s my most sincere wish the pain of the “rocky-ness” is forgotten for the gains that result, but the last decade has already been rocky for so many of our students…

  • Anonymous

    What does this support from the network look like?  What strategies are going to be put in place to help general education teachers adjust to the influx special needs students and the increase of CTT/ICT classes that they will teach?  As a special needs teacher the biggest roadblock to teaching in the ICT environment has unfortunately been the general education teacher.  

Tips, questions, feedback?

Contact us at .

Word from Our Sponsor

Follow GothamSchools

RSS
Subscribe to the daily email digest:

Chalk It Up

Recent Comments

0 comments so far today
View all comments »

RSS Feeds

Newsroom posts Community posts All GothamSchools content

Archives

May 2013
M T W T F S S
« Apr  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Copyright Notice