Report: Metro Nashville segregates students
August 26th, 2008Two reports from the [Nashville] Tenneseean: Special ed kids segregated, report finds; and Special education overhaul is urged:
A task force of parents, educators, and advocates has concluded that students receiving special education services in the Metro Nashville school district are unnecessarily segregated, and need to be more fully included in typical classrooms. The study also concluded that teachers need more training and support.
Among the report’s findings: Almost a third of the school district’s special ed students spend less than half their time in a general education classroom. Some 75 percent of students with intellectual disabilities are limited to self-contained classrooms for at least half of each school day.
The report by the task force, appointed by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, echoed many of the findings of an earlier state audit that called the district’s practices “horrifying.”
Mayor Dean has said that reforming special education services is one of his top priorities.
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on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 3:27 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, education, inclusion, special education.
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August 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Personally, as a society I think we are deluding ourselves about “mainstreaming” and “inclusion.” And I am always skeptical about reading the findings behind studies that usually have a political motives behind them. Generally, its an administator or a superintendent’s backdoor bartering to close schools because it will save money.
Indeed, inclusion should be the goal of the nation in general and one of the gateways are through the education system but not always into cognition-designed classrooms. Some of our children have needs that go beyond what can be adapted in the classroom for them.
My daughter attends school at a separately run therapeutic-based school operated by MR/dd through “continuum of alternative services.”
I would hate for somebody to come into that school, the school I identified along with my daughter’s special advocates, school representatives, and teachers, and tell us what is best for my child. Or close the school because somebody higher up deemed it “horrible.”
One size does not fit all. This is why we have Individual Education Plans and protective legislation to guarantee our children’s right to a special education based on our their individual abilities. Not according to what their peers are doing.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:55 am
How many other districts in our country are just as bad, if not worse than this one, and yet, have done nothing about it? How many other districts in our country have the courage to admit that they are failing our children? So many leaders avoid talking about what isn’t working because it makes them look bad. They only look bad if they don’t do anything to make it better. I might have to send this Mayor a note expressing how impressed I am with his efforts.