Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EdNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University

Recently, someone forwarded an article to me published on Aug 21, 2007 by John Hechinger and Daniel Golden who were writing for the Wall Street Journal on line. I wondered what the Wall Street Journal was doing writing about children with exceptionalities, but the article was in fact, quite well done and discussed a number of salient issues. The link is below if you have the frustration tolerance to enter all of that into your browser.

Or you can click and hope for the best.

http://online.wsj.com/wsjgate?subURI=%2Farticle%2FSB118763976794303235-email.html&nonsubURI=%2Farticle_email%2FSB118763976794303235-lMyQjAxMDE3ODI3MzYyMzM5Wj.html

The basic "gist" of the article was the concern that parents typically have when their child with special needs finally graduates. They begin to question what he or she has learned and they evaluate what they have gotten for their tax dollars. A number of parents commented about the lax standards in the schools and a number of teachers discussed academic integrity and the "accommodations and modifications" that their son or daughter received.

The authors were writing about what they termed "a new voice in special education" and that is parents that are concerned about their children passing classes, but not apparently learning anything.

The special education maze, quagmire, conundrum, or whatever word that you want to use is indeed perplexing.

Parents are given their rights; they attend a lot of meetings and sign a lot of forms. However, not all parents understand what the term "learning disability" means and the ramifications and repercussions of that label or diagnosis.

Teachers and parents are supposed to have annual reviews to ascertain the progress of their child. It is at these meetings that concerns should be voiced, and questions raised. To wait until the child has graduated does no one any good.

The entire issue of grades and grading has been a perplexing one for teacher, special educators and administrators for many years.

How does a regular education teacher assess "annual yearly progress "for a student with a 50 I.Q. ? How does a regular education teacher give a grade when a student with a learning disability who is reading at the 4 th grade level enters their 12 th grade classroom? And how do teachers really "grade" students who may be blind or deaf or visually impaired or hearing impaired?

Some parents in the article wanted a guarantee that their son or daughter would go to college. Sometimes parents have unrealistic expectations, sometimes schools do not provide the services that students need. Sometimes we are going to have to have a meeting with teachers, parents, administrators, special education directors and maybe even the entire I.E.P. Team to try to ascertain what constitutes " passing " and " failing" and even more importantly whether that students shouldbe in that specific class. And of course the issue of what type of "diploma" the student should receive and what it should say, and how to communicate to colleges and universities, the amount, extent, degree and magnitude of " accommodations and modifications " the child received ( if any ).

Differentiated instruction may be here to stay. Differentiated grading may be more difficult to operationally define. And how to train teachers to grade students with special needs may be another chore that needs to be explored on the horizon.

Published August 28, 2007