The Referral Process

The most interesting part of the special education referral process that I found was the involvement of parents. We often talk about how every student is different in our classes, but we rarely discuss how extremely different families of our students will be. The knowledge that some parents have of their children concerning school may be limited while other parents will have broad and extensive details to share in an IEP referral meeting. Some parents may even not respond to any effort made by the school to contact them for a referral meeting. Parents will add yet another element of uniqueness to each student’s IEP referral process.

There are many parts of the IEP referral process that are challenging. The part that I believe would be the most challenging for schools would be parental participation and scheduling. Schools must make it so one or both of the parents are able to attend the referral meetings (Wrightslaw, p. 25). There is another whole slew of professionals that the school must work to make a referral meeting attainable for. It would be very difficult to create meeting times that work for all individuals but this is necessary to create the best next step for the student being considered for special education services.

The parts that would cause me the most concern as a classroom teacher would be the parents right to revoke the IEP at any time (Wrightslaw, p. 24), the less specific elements of 504, and developmental delays role in the referral process. If parents revoke consent for a student’s IEP I would have trouble adjusting my plans for the student. Would it be appropriate to immediately stop all accommodations and modifications for the student? Would my opinion even matter if the parent revoked their consent for the student without warning? As a classroom teacher, if I was working with students ages 3-9, they would eligible for special education services or a section 504 plan if they were experiencing a development delay (deBettencourt, p. 17). I feel that I would have a considerable amount of difficulty with recognizing this specifically and not categorizing it as something else. Also, when the student turns 10, is he or she no longer eligible for special education services or a 504 plan if it only applies to their developmental delay? Lastly, I would have trouble, as a classroom teacher, with the vagueness of section 504. Eligibility for a 504 plan is less specific and has less regulations so I would have a hard time assessing whether or not a student was improving without support from the special education staff in my school.

Special Education Law

I understand quite a few more things about special education law following the readings. I did not know that in 1975, 1.75 million students with disabilities were excluded from public schools prior to the passage of IDEA (Yell, p. 52). I also learned what Rosa’s law was and that it was passed in 2010 which was very recent (Yell, p. 55). I did not know that the IDEA was comprised of two parts. Part A justifies the bill and defines terms while Part B addresses requirements and grant programs (Yell, p. 58). This is extremely important to understand as an education professional working in public schools. Another aspect of the law that I now understand is that mediation must be offered to parents before going to a due process hearing, then it up to the discretion of the parents whether or not to utilize mediation (Yell, p. 60). Also, I was not aware of the State Performance Plan and its 18 performance indicators (Yell, p. 74). I was surprised to read that the federal government only funds 19% of special education costs when the bill had intended for the federal government to fund 40% of the costs (Yell, p. 72). However, I believe that this is indicative of how our society values individuals with special needs, sadly.

That is why IDEA is so important to protect the rights of students with special needs in public schools. When left to the states alone, a huge portion of students with special education needs were left without support or sent to schools where they could not interact with their peers. The child find system makes it so that all students who need supports are identified and provided with the appropriate supports to create learning in school, not just passing them along (Yell, p. 58). It is also important to use all members of the IEP team to solve problems, including the parents, in order to best carry out the IDEA and create a meaningful school experience for all students (6 Things, p. 53).

I was confused about whether schools need to provide services to students from ages 3-21 or 6-17. I had thought that students needed to be provided services from 3-21, as soon as they were identified but Yell, p. 55 was saying that if the state does not normally offer public education for students age 3-21 then those states do not need to provide services to students with disabilities.

Accommodations and Modifications

I will be able to use accommodations and modifications in many different ways to support students in my classroom. Utilizing the different types of adaptations will be crucial to this support. Access accommodations allow students to access the content in the way that best supports their learning, such as enlarged text for a student with a visual impairment. Low-impact accommodations will change how a student will learn something but not change the final goal, such as providing graphic organizers when a student is taking notes. High-impact accommodations, or modifications, change the ultimate learning goal for the student, such as asking a student to write a paragraph summarizing the book instead of writing a two-page paper (Kruth, p. 35). These different adaptations provide challenging learning experiences for every student but allow all students to still be successful. I can also support students in my class with general and specific adaptations (Kruth, p. 35). General adaptations can benefit all students in the classroom by providing different types of supports, such as providing students with dictionaries, allowing students to wear headphones while they work, or creating study guides for a test. Specific adaptations address individual student needs such as giving a student extra time to complete an assignment or allowing them to take test in a quiet room.

Accommodations and modifications are crucial for student success. This is because every classroom will be full of different types of learners. Accommodations and modifications allow every student in your classroom to be successful in their own way. Inclusive environments do not say that every student will complete the same amount of work or get all A’s because that is not indicative of the diversity in every classroom. Accommodations and modifications make inclusive classrooms possible because they allow for all students to be successful in the way that is best for their learning. However, tailored adaptations should only be used when necessary to avoid students from feeling isolated from their peers (Kruth, p. 36). The more general adaptations available in your classroom, the more every student will feel good about doing things differently but in a way that is best for themselves. Also, it is important to always evaluate adaptations after implementation to ensure that they are effective and appropriate for the individuals in your classroom (Kruth, p. 42).

I have no questions about accommodations and modifications. I would like to practice talking about them with parents, though.

Response to Intervention

Response to Intervention is a framework that supports all students in schools that implement it. The “point” of RtI is to catch struggling students who need extra support before they start to fail (IRIS, p. 3). RtI also guides instruction with research-supported learning strategies for students to use which takes out the aspect of insufficient teaching when considering a student for special education services. In the past, and in many schools that do not use RtI, students that struggle needed to fail multiple times before being considered for special education services. RtI shortens the time that students go without extra supports when they are experiencing difficulty.

All students may benefit from RtI. This is because the universal screening process creates a baseline of data for teachers to use to guide their instruction. Universal screening allows teachers to see how all students are learning. RtI especially benefits students that need to be identified for receiving special education and those that need better or different instructional methods to learn certain content (IRIS, p. 4).

Implementing RtI would be a “good thing” for schools for the reasons previously described. Also, it decreases bias (cultural, racial, linguistic, etc.) from the special education referral process (IRIS, p. 4). There is a large discrepancy in the populations of students that are referred for special education that does not match the distribution of students in schools. RtI makes education solely about how students are learning and not about social prejudices or assumptions connected to how a students looks, talks, etc.

Differentiated Instruction

Differentiated instruction will be extremely important to my future role as a classroom teacher. This is because all students have different needs and those needs vary across subjects, personalities, work habits, and much more. Differentiated instruction will allow me to reach all of my students in the most effective way possible that will create the highest level of success for themselves. It will allow me to tailor my lessons and units to the specific learners in my classroom each day.

I will use differentiated instruction slowly, at first, and build up my confidence in the repertoire of skills and strategies until I will, eventually, have a classroom running on differentiated instruction. Ongoing assessment was one of the aspects that I will use the most, because this informs how and what the students will be learning and how they will demonstrating their newfound knowledge or skills. Flexible grouping is another key aspect of differentiated instruction that I will use in the process part of my lessons, while I am still gaining confidence and strategies with it. Then, I will use flexible grouping more in the content and product parts of my lessons.

Challenges I expect to encounter when implementing differentiated instruction are being well-versed in every students’ readiness, interest, and learning profile, and staying organized. Staying organized goes hand-in-hand with knowing your students well and ongoing assessments. These are tasks that can become immensely overwhelming if one does not have an efficient and well-honed organizational system for these tasks.

Universal Design for Learning

The Universal Design for Learning relates to many concepts I have learned in my previous education classes. All parts of a UDL lesson will be accessible through different methods. This allows all types of learners to understand and engage in the content and skills that they are learning. We talked about this in many education classes, especially when we were learning to create effective lesson plans. Building on this, UDL focuses on the difference between accommodations versus modifications. Accommodations allow the student to access the information or present their knowledge in different ways that do not effect the final goal of the lesson. Modifications change the final goal of the lesson to meet the abilities of the individual student so that they can be successful in the way that is appropriate for their learning. This was another thing we focused on when learning how to create meaningful lessons for all students.

UDL will impact the achievement of all students in the classroom in a positive way. This is because when every student has the opportunity to learn in the way that is most appropriate to them, all students will be reached in the learning process. Students who may fall behind when a lesson is focused on reading a textbook, will be much more successful when they have the opportunity to access the same material in an alternative way. Also, on the flip side, students who often are unengaged when writing a paper that is easy for them will be challenged to the appropriate level when the teacher provides them with more difficult ways to display their knowledge or skills.

Questions that I still have about UDL are related to finding more ways to adjust a lesson with greater accommodations and modifications. I am not confused about any parts of UDL, however, like earlier stated, I hope that we discover more ways to make our lessons universal for all learners.

Introductory Post

Hello, my name is Erin Kelley. I am writing a blog addressing various ideas concerning the broader topic of classroom inclusion. This blog will be a semester-long project for the class, Classroom Applications in Inclusive Education at Plymouth State University.

Hello world!

This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.

Happy blogging!