RESTRUCTURING+OF+SPECIAL+EDUCATION

=Rethinking the Structure of Special Education to Better Serve Individuals with Special Needs=

The No Child Left Behind Act leaves many children behind, especially children with disabilities. It is time to revamp our special education system in order to truly meet the needs of all students.

Response to intervention in all schools
This will allow quality education, early detection and intervention, and fewer referrals to special education. Response to intervention is a model of support for students which involves a 4 tiered approach. In Tier 1 there is a solid core curriculum in the classroom provided by a general education teacher using research-based methods. Progress monitoring includes reading and math asessments 3-4 times a year. The data collected from these assessments will determine which students need intervention. Those that do, would move into Tier 2. Tier 2 involves strategies that the classroom teacher puts into place such as differentiated instructions, classroom accomodations, targeted small group instruction using research based methods. The teacher then uses curriculum-based measures to assess every other week whether these Tier 2 students are responding to her intervention. If after 8-12 weeks the students have not shown sufficient progress then the students move into tier 3. Tier 3 involves intervention specialists who either pull out small groups of students or push into the class to co-teach with the classroom teacher. This intervention specialist then monitors the student's progress on a weekly or twice weekly basis. If after 4 weeks little or no progress is made, the intervention specialist then changes the form of intervention either by more time per week or by the method of intervention. Progress monitoring continues and if after another 4-8 weeks, if little or no progress is made, the student then is moved into tier 4 which is a referral to the committee on special education.

Professional Development

 * Teacher training** in differentiated instruction and inclusion techniques is necessary in order to better meet the needs of all students within a classroom.

Resource Awareness
Workshops and information sessions devoted to exploring the vast amount of resources made available to students with all different special needs and the teachers who educate them. Sessions would include explanations of the various tools, manipulatives, and other innovations and how they could be used by educators, students, and parents to increase students' ability to succeed in education and in life.

Co-Teaching Classrooms
More co-teaching classrooms should open with a lot of professional development and common planning time for co-teachers.

Disability Differentiation
When student's disabilities are severe enough to warrent a self contained classroom there should be **classrooms that specialize in each disability type**. At the present time each self-contained class is a mix of learning disabled, speech and language delayed, emotionally disturbed and mentally retarded. Any special educator knows that each of these disabilities requires different teaching methods and classroom management techniques to address the student's unique needs. A parent with financial resources who has a child with a disability puts their child in a private school designed specifically to meet the needs of that child's disability. We propose that we create these specialized schools for disabled public school students. Each specialized school building would be designed to meet the needs of a particular population with the structures, staff and programs in place to truly meet these student's needs and serve them in a way to bring them to their full potential of functioning. If the job is done correctly some of these students would then be able to rejoin their non-disabled peers in a general education setting.

This includes schools for bright behavior disordered students. At the present time if you have an average to above average IQ but have severe, mental illness or behavior disorders the district pays approximately $35,000 per student for them to attend a private school. Schools should open in the public sector to meet the needs of these students.

True Individual Educational Plans
Individual Educational Plans need to be written with the individual needs of the student in mind and not be constrained by the langage that has traditionally been used.

Rethinking Committees of Special Education
Urban CSEs need more staff to manage the paperwork and services for the numbers of students who require services in a timely manner.