Here are the main recommendations from the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative review of Seattle Public Schools’ special education programs: • Develop a unified mission to support integrated, comprehensive services for students with disabilities. • Assign all students with disabilities to the schools they would attend if they didn’t have disabilities, and place each child with a disability in the age-appropriate classroom he/she would attend without disabilities. • Allocate the percentage of time children spend in large groups, small groups and working one-on-one with teachers based on kids’ Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals, rather than by the program’s parameters. • Provide students with disabilities instruction in the general education classroom, using standard-based curriculum, when possible. • Restructure responsibilities so that consulting teachers and special education supervisors can advise and support general education teachers and provide continuous professional training. • Provide an “IEP at a glance” to general educators to help them understand the special needs of some of their students. • Have special educators provide detailed behavioral intervention plans for students with significant behavioral disabilities. • Develop a steering committee to examine, formalize and unify the district’s transition services (which help students with disabilities transition from high school to college or jobs) for all grades, beginning with career awareness and exploration in elementary and middle school. • Make “ownership” and accountability for the education of students with disabilities a system priority, not a special education department priority alone.
To Get Involved
The Seattle Special Education PTSA was formed in 2006 to help families of students with disabilities navigate the educational system. Its leaders are part of a task force discussing how to implement recommended changes, and they welcome input from all parents of students in special ed. The group meets the third Tuesday of every other month (next up is November, followed by January, March and May) at 7 p.m. at various locations. The Nov. 18 meeting will be centered on the topic “Inclusion: The Continuum” and will be held at the John Stanford International School, 4057 5th Ave. N.E. in Seattle. For more information, a list of priorities for this year and reactions to the review, visit www.seattlespecialedptsa.org.
Seattle Public Schools’ Special Education Department provides information for parents of children with disabilities entering the school district or for those who need help navigating the system or meeting their children’s needs. Call 206-252-0058 or visit www.seattleschools.org/area/speced for more information. Scroll down the Web page to view the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative review of Seattle’s special education programs. Go to the district’s home page (www.seattleschools.org) to read the “Excellence for All” strategic plan. Special education recommendations are addressed in the appendices. The Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Council (SEAAC) is a district-recognized forum to provide Seattle Public Schools with parental and community agency perspectives on special education programming. Key issues for 2008-2009 school year include: the special education program review, student transitions from school to school, program placement, and transparency in communicating information about special education services to parents. Meetings are held the second Thursday of each month, 7 - 9 p.m., at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence, 2445 3rd Ave. S., Seattle, Room 2776.
Special Ed: Seattle Pushed to Make Programs More Inclusive
By Wenda Reed
The experiences of Janet Anderson’s and Nancy Speer’s middle school sons illustrate what is wrong and what is right with the way special education students are taught in Seattle Public Schools.
In a comprehensive review of the district’s special education program last fall, the national Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative concluded that specialized programs are set up in schools, and students are placed in them based on their labels. Some students “fit” the programs and some are denied entrance, with the result that “students are slotted into programs that do not meet their needs” and do not spend enough time in general education classrooms with their peers. In short, the outdated process is program-driven, rather than child-centered.
Nearly 6,500 of the district’s 46,000 students – almost 14 percent – have a disability or require some special education-related services. These students often do not attend their neighborhood school or the school of their choice and are separated from their siblings, so that student and family life is fragmented, the review concluded. In fact, about three-quarters of Seattle students with disabilities can spend less than half of their day among the general population. The Seattle district’s special education Web site states: “We believe in educating students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment,” but the reviewers concluded that this is not the case for many students.
The Andersons experienced both the specialization model and the inclusive model. They moved to Seattle five years ago when their son was in the third grade. Ideally, he should have been placed in an autism inclusion program, but there were not enough seats and so he ended up in a sensory-motor integration program that did not fit his needs. However, he is now an 8th grader in an autism inclusion program at Salmon Bay, an alternative K-8 school in the Ballard neighborhood where the Andersons live. He spends almost his entire day in the general education classroom, with a little time pulled out to work on special skills and with peer mentors. There’s an instructional assistant in the classroom who works with several kids, so that those with special needs don’t feel singled out.
Speer had a similar experience. Her son started in his neighborhood school, but it did not have the services he needed and he did not succeed. Speer had to drive him to a school 45 minutes away. Now the seventh grader is in an autism inclusion program for eight students at McClure Middle School. An aide accompanies seventh graders in the program to their general education classes, and students can go to a resource room if they feel overwhelmed or need extra help. They attend a social skills class together.
While this is an ideal situation for her son, Speer points out that the program is limited to eight students. If a ninth student in the neighborhood qualifies for the program, he or she will have to go to another school. “We hear from lots of parents that … can’t get into programs their children need because there weren’t the seats,” Anderson says.
Anderson, president of the Seattle Special Education PTA, and Speer, who is past president, agree that the review’s concerns about lack of inclusion are valid. “We urge that a child’s special ed program be tailored to the child, rather than the child needing to fit into a special ed program,” they wrote in their mission statement.
Changes Coming
The reviewers recommend that Seattle assign more students with disabilities to the schools they would attend if they didn’t have disabilities and give them more time in general education classrooms. This recommendation has been embraced by Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and the “Excellence for All” strategic plan that the School Board passed in June. The district has promised to move to “a more inclusive model.”
A first step is to create a new position of executive director of special education. A nationwide search is being conducted this fall, and parents, teachers and special education experts are part of the interview process. A project team has been organized to analyze the recommendations and figure out how to put them into action.
Michelle Corker-Curry, until recently the district’s deputy chief academic officer, was the point person for the project team and the liaison with special education parents. (In early September, she took a new position as manager of family and community engagement.) The changes in the placement of special education students will be made as part of a new student assignment plan slated to roll out in 2010, she says. That plan will address the assignment of general education, special education, bilingual and advanced learning students. “We will move the system all at once,” she says.
The new assignment plan will bring “predictability and school choice together,” says district spokesman David Tucker. “The parent will know the student will have a seat in a particular school, while still offering choice.”
Corker-Curry acknowledges that the Seattle District does have a more “specialty” model than many school districts nationwide, and that some students with mild learning disabilities or autism could be in a regular classroom for more hours. “Special education is a service, not a place,” she says.
“We have done ourselves a disservice by the over-specialization of our profession,” says David Riley, executive director of the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative and one of three authors of the Seattle Public Schools review. The overwhelming preponderance of research shows that children with disabilities learn best when they are included in classrooms with their peers, Riley says. He adds that he “absolutely” sees a commitment on the part of leadership in Seattle schools to put the recommendations into practice by making programs more inclusive.
“I’m impatient … things could be better for kids,” Riley says. “But the recommendations are going to take some time. They have far-reaching implications for how the school district deals with all children who need support.”
Challenges and Concerns
If services are to be organized by learners – not by programs – all schools would need to offer flexible instructional opportunities that include large groups, small groups, flexible groupings and one-on-one instruction, as needed by the students, the collaborative review concluded. “It’s necessary to have kids go to school closer to home, but the support services have to be there, tailored to the individual child,” Speer says.
Anderson says many parents of special education students have concerns about the inclusion model: “How will the teacher handle my child? Will she know what to do if there’s a problem?”
Riley, Corker-Curry, Anderson and Speer all acknowledge that the most difficult part of moving to a more inclusive model is the review’s statement that “all teachers are responsible for all learners.”
Riley thinks that’s a realistic goal. “In education, you have isolation,” he says. “We have created ‘silos’ for general education, special education, bilingual education – as though we can dissect children.” In moving away from that isolation, “classroom teachers will learn how to do it (teach all kinds of students) by working together and exchanging ideas. It will take a lot of hard work and a lot of collaboration,” he says.
In its strategic plan, the district says one of its main areas of emphasis will be to work with the professional development department on a plan that will give all staff, both special education and general education teachers, training and support on both special education compliance rules and methodologies for educating students with diverse learning styles.
“We will be looking at 90 school sites – what every cluster needs for advanced learning, bilingual education, special ed …” says Corker-Curry. “What we’ll be asking is, what does it require for a teacher to be able to teach kids with special needs? It doesn’t happen overnight. The district will need to work with teachers on making lesson plans that adjust and modify to the needs of the learners.”
“I find teachers receptive about doing new ideas,” she adds, “although sometimes fear gets in the way.”
Indeed, Riley and the other interviewers from the review team write that they were “most impressed by the enthusiasm, commitment and obvious talent of individuals we met throughout our site visits. There is a genuine desire – a passion – to implement best practices and do the right thing by students and families.”
However, Speer and Anderson say they’ve heard teaches express grave concerns about how they will educate children with a wide variety of needs in one classroom. “It’s a huge challenge,” Speer says. “You have to get training across the board on how to work with so many different disabilities.”
She agrees with Riley’s assessment that special education teachers will need to be in the schools helping the general education teachers. This contrasts with the Collaborative review’s assessment that, at present, special education supervisors and consulting teachers often need “permission” from school principals to assist and coach general education teachers and there is a lack of coordination between the central district offices and the individual schools.
Additionally, Anderson says, many parents find “that the programs as they exist are comforting,” and they are concerned about losing them. “If you dissolve the programs, parents are apprehensive about where their children’s needs will be met,” Speer adds.
“We are not advocating the dismantling of programs without the replacement of programs that will do at least as well,” Riley says. “However, we sometimes keep these segregated programs because adults are comfortable with them, even if the long-term outcomes are not good for the students.” He adds that for some periods of time, some children will still need extensive intervention.
District staff will have to tailor the review’s recommendations to the Individual Education Plans (IEPs) of special education students, and Corker-Curry notes there may be some variations. “We would not make a recommendation that doesn’t make sense for a particular child.” She hopes that general education teachers can be trained to be part of the IEP process.
Speer and Anderson are optimistic that the upcoming months of work on carrying out the recommendations will raise the level of discussion about special education and result in benefits for all children, with or without disabilities. “The School Board so far has been receptive to our input,” Anderson says.
Parents’ ideas are vitally important, Riley concludes. “Whatever progress we’ve made in special education over the last few decades is due to the advocacy of parents.”
Wenda Reed is a Bothell writer and parent of a former special education student, who was – at various times – segregated and mainstreamed, according to his needs.
