Closing The Gap

Picture yourself sitting in an IEP meeting and the team is discussing services for a student. Let’s say the student has a Specific Learning Disability in Reading Comprehension and Basic Reading Skills. As the team moves into discussing services, the district proposes 60 minutes a day for specialized instruction (For some reason, 30 minutes per area has become a “magic” number). They further propose the services be conducted in the special education setting, i.e., outside the regular education classroom. You may be saying to yourself, “That sounds reasonable”. I say it isn’t and here is why….

Remember, that is 60 minutes every single day the student will be out of their regular education classroom. They will be missing grade-level instruction from a teacher who is thought of to be the specialist in that area, the grade level, classroom teacher. They will, essentially, be missing out on whatever is being presented to their peers, at their grade level. Imagine this practice continues for the next 3-5 years. Think about how much grade-level instruction that student has not received or had the opportunity of exposure. It is a lot!

Now imagine a student who is pulled out for 90 or minutes a day for multiple areas and how much more instruction they are missing. Special education was never meant to become a student’s core curriculum. Special education teachers should be serving students the least amount of time possible in the least restrictive environment. In other words, they should be with their regular education peers to the maximum extent possible and still be able to make progress on their goals. It boils down to this: The job of the special education teacher is to serve goals, not teach the curriculum.

I assert that pulling students from the regular education classroom more than is absolutely necessary is doing nothing but making the gap between them and their regular education peers larger every year. Special education teachers should be doing short, intensive work on goals. They should not be teaching math or reading or writing. Special education teachers should focus their work only on the goals of the student and not the academic area as a whole. Otherwise, the student will remain behind their peers and possibly fall even farther behind.

Now I’ve been challenged about this with “they are below grade level and the regular education class is frustrating for them”. Ok, then let’s implement some accommodations and modifications for them so they can access that curriculum to the maximum extent possible. Trust me, this is far better than a special education teacher being responsible for math instruction for 6 different kids, on 3 different grade levels, with 6 different math goals all at one time. People!!! This happens. We are spinning our wheels and we are doing our students a disservice if we serve special education students in this fashion.

The challenge here is thinking outside the “30 minutes a day per area, 5 days a week box”. Think about serving 2 days a week or 3 days a week for 10-15 minutes. Try serving 1-2 kids at a time with more focused, intensive strategies instead of trying to group students according to a schedule. Train your teachers, both general and special education, to utilize special education time solely to serve the students’ goals and keep students in the general education classroom to close that gap. It takes time and a different mindset but has the potential for incredible academic and social impact for students.

Where do you start? Start with Universal Design and give your faculty the skills they need to teach to all students. Closing the gap is the responsibility of everyone, not just special education. Universal Design for Learning is the ultimate set-up for students with disabilities to be successful in the general education classroom and that success is key to closing the gap.