TA Supreme Court Decision

In a decision made in June 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parents could ask for reimbursement of tuition that they would pay at a private school for their special education child even if they had not received special education services in the public schools.

Up until now the” Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) prohibited private school tuition reimbursement for students who never received special education services in the public schools”, (Lewin, June 2009). But the recent ruling in the TA case concludes that free and appropriate public education (FAPE) was not made available in a timely manner.

I understand the judge’s ruling but think that it is necessary for parents to give public schools the opportunity to address the child’s issue because they have the resources in place to assist the student. In the TA case the parents never gave the public school the opportunity to remedy the situation instead they elected to send their child to a special private school that costs over $5000 a month.

The public schools given the resources already in place provide the best economical choice to assist students. It is not practical to ask the public schools to fund the cost of private schools with the limited financial resources they are faced with every year. This choice made by TA’s parents is one that they decided upon with no collaboration from the public school.  Therefore the public school should not have to fund their choice when they have a resource in place but parents ignore it.

Lewin, Tamar, June 22, 2009. Retrieved from web based article in the New York Times Education Section  from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/education/23special.html?_r=1

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=105797012&m=105796997

Challanges in Special Education/504

I interviewed one of my assistant principals at my high school. I asked her what she believed were the two most challenging issues that she deals with in regards to special education, specifically 504's.

The first challenge she said was in the area of accommodations. Accommodations such as extended time, teacher generated notes, preferential seating, read alouds for tests, were requests that in her opinion and the opinion of the counselors, we reasonable. However, some parents tend to make requests that were just not feasible. Some of these were 200% extended time on tests, videos of all teacher lectures, calls to parents whenever an assignment, project, quiz, or test from the teacher was given, or expect the school to assign an EC assistant full time to their child when in fact it is not necessary. She runs into problems when parents make these request and when she has to say no and they insist it is necessary and their right by law.

Th second issue in regards to 504's was the amount of time she and counselors spend each week in IEP meetings. She on average attends three to four meetings a week (which she is required to do) and these meetings can take up to two hours, sometimes longer. Counselors have case loads of around 50 students per teacher in our school, some schools the number can be significantly higher. In addition to the meetings counselors have to follow up and ensure teachers are following specific accommodation for each child assigned to ensure compliance. The hours necessary for this can be at times overwhelming especially when you add the other responsibilities of an administrator.

Although she believes that this process is beneficial to most students however some students and parents take advantage of the process and insist upon accommodations that they really don't need and students can actually do themselves.

Teaching today and in the future...

The videos I decided to choose were somewhat related because each have an impact on the other to a degree. The first one is about the adolescent literary crisis (http://www.adlit.org/webcasts/makingroom), the second is concerned with how we can improve learning through free content usage through xml. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRymi-lFHpE), and the third video is on culture shock and how we need to mediate media relationships (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwyCAtyNYHw&feature=channel). 

Why I thought the adolescent literary crisis was important was because if half of the students in today's schools can never get past the 4th or 5th grade reading level then how can we ever expect them to become technologically savy and adapt to the future of how information might be shared and learned. This crisis should be dealt with at an early age, but students who enter high school that read well below their grade level will be "doomed to a life of second class citizenship" if educators can't get them into an effective literary program. I see students struggling in my school when I ask them to read from a textbook on how to construct decision structures in programming and all I get is a deer in the headlights look.

Richard Baraniuk is an advocate of open source learning which may someday be the wave of the future throughout the educational world. He gave examples of how electrical engineers have constructed a "textbook" through the use of xml where free content can be shared and customized. This can be produced economically, published on demand, at at a fraction of the cost of a regular textbook. Teachers Without Borders are using this type of learning tool to share content knowledge, teaching strategies, and a variety of related information in their organization. If this were available to me as a principal perhaps the freeze on purchasing new textbooks might not of had to happen and I could give my students the newest resources in learning their content area in a more economically way.

The last video is concerned with the cultural shock of new media and how we need to be concerned with mediating media relationships in today's environment. We need to ensure that the information we get in cyber space is somewhat controlled and not deceptive, transparent, or distracting. As we learn new ways to share information we have to ensure that the information is reliable. Advances in technology are constantly improving and these new connections will be changing the way we teachers have to teach.

I found the following website http://mashable.com/2009/07/24/education-social-media/ which discusses the initiative "The University of the People" founded by the UN's Global alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID). This initiative is designed to offer higher education opportunities to people who would otherwise couldn't afford it. The cost would never exceed $100. The concept is based on the open source learning leveraging social media ideas and technology. This initiative is also under study by President Obama as an alternative means of educating in America.