Obama vs. No Child Left Behind

CONCLUSIONS: Inclusive education/mainstreaming has been promoted on two bases: the rights of children to be included in mainstream education and the proposition that inclusive education is more effective. This review focuses on the latter issue. The evidence from this review does not provide a clear endorsement for the positive effects of inclusion. There is a lack of evidence from appropriate studies and, where evidence does exist, the balance was only marginally positive. It is argued that the policy has been driven by a concern for children's rights. The important task now is to research more thoroughly the mediators and moderators that support the optimal education for children with SEN and disabilities and, as a consequence, develop an evidence-based approach to these children's education.

Then I think the solution would be to stop accepting federal funding right?

Thomas wrote:

Let principals individually make their own decision for their schools, compare notes after a few years, and see how it works.typo corrected, T

As someone who works in schools and has children who attend schools - no thank you. I think I'd rather go with a more organized and democratically decided approach.

Thomas wrote:

(Don't like what your school does to your kids? Put them in a different school!)

That sounds really reasonable and simple unless you're a single mom who can't afford the transportation to and from or childcare afterward because your child can't go to his or her neighborhood school.

Overall, the weight of evidence reviewed in this paper cannot be said to provide a
clear endorsement for the positive effects of inclusion (see also Zigmond, 2003). Just 1%
of over 1300 studies published 2000"2005 reviewed addressed effectiveness and the
results from these studies were only marginally positive overall, although comparability
between outcomes for SEN and TD children could be interpreted as positive rather than
non-difference. Furthermore, the studies cover a range of ages and methods of inclusion;
used a variety of methods and produced evidence on a number of different outcome
variables. Taken as a whole, and with the pre-2000 evidence, which presents a similar
picture, there is a lack of a firm research base for inclusive education to support either
whether this is a preferable approach in terms of outcomes, or how inclusion should be
implemented.

Wanting/expecting people to have some level of empathy is not a social agenda. Lack of empathy is actually pathological

And yet, this is a total non-problem in my old country, where parents will simply let their children ride to school in a city bus. If it demonstrably works in Germany, why is it impossible in America?

Quote:

And yet, this is a total non-problem in my old country, where parents will simply let their children ride to school in a city bus. If it demonstrably works in Germany, why is it impossible in America?

sometimes quite young children......Americans would have a heart attack, and then they would accuse you Germans of neglect of your children if they knew what you do.

Dr. Sapon-Shevin: Mainstreaming was an attempt -- ill-founded and unsuccessful -- to place students with disabilities in typical classrooms, hoping that they might succeed. Mainstreaming basically says, "We won't change the regular classroom, the curriculum, the teaching, or pay much attention to the social environment, but if you can succeed here, you are allowed to stay." Not surprisingly, students with disabilities, many of whom had a history of school failure already, didn't do well, and then, their lack of success was seen as evidence of their inability to be with typical students.


Inclusion says, instead, "You have a right to be here. This is your classroom and your school as much as is any other student's. We will do what we need to make this classroom a safe, welcoming, and successful environment for you. We will make sure that the curriculum is broad, that the pedagogy meets your needs, and that the social environment is carefully structured to promote acceptance and welcome for you and for every other student in the classroom."

And yet, this is a total non-problem in my old country, where parents will simply let their children ride to school in a city bus. If it demonstrably works in Germany, why is it impossible in America?

One harsh reality is that every student has to pass the 10th grade state test in order to graduate. They can take the test over a couple times (it changes every year), but there's a limit. Some kids will never pass that test. I am not sure what alternatives there are.

Oregon is moving its 10th-grade tests in reading, writing, math and science to the 11th grade, saying many students need another year of high school to learn the skills covered on the tests.

Last year, 46 percent of 10th-graders flunked that test, 45 percent failed the writing test and 42 percent failed in science.

But perhaps most damning, Ravitch writes:

No school or school district or state anywhere in the nation had ever proved the theory correct. Nowhere was there a real-life demonstration in which a district had identified a top quintile of teachers, assigned low-performing students to their classes, and improved the test-scores of low-performing students so dramatically in three, four or five years that the black-white test score gap closed.

Yet suddenly this one theory is driving reform. This is why Obama wants states to gather more data. He wants to tie individual students' scores to individual teachers, so achievement can be monitored not only school by school but also classroom by classroom, and then teachers can be fired or given raises accordingly.

Ravitch, however, argues that the past eight years should leave us wary of relying solely on isolated test results for high-stakes decision-making. She isn't against tests per se"or even tests being used as one element in a more comprehensive evaluation system. Schools have to have some way of judging performance, and Ravitch praises the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, given periodically to representative samples of students, as the gold standard. But the state tests developed under NCLB, she maintains, are terrible. They are devoid of real content and have created a culture of test-prep that is inimical to real education. Such arguments are not new"indeed, many of Ravitch's old opponents (back when she was on the pro-NCLB side) have been making this case for years.

So, I am more likely to pick up specifics about what I see in school every day and less about the details of NCLB.[...]

The reason more mildly disabled students go to regular ed schools and classes is because they get more out of it. They are more likely to try to achieve higher grades because their peers are. Often they are tested according to their disabilities (they have to write less, answer fewer questions, get more time to take tests, etc).

The only reason Oregon would consider such a thing is because our schools here are absolute ****. The 10th graders can't pass the test because the schools are ****.

On this note, I'd be interested to hear about the group dynamics between the handicapped children and the "mainstream" children in your class. What are they like?

In my work as an educational advocate, I observe the children who are "included" in the general education classroom. What I see as an advocate and educator is a child who is sitting in a general education classroom with 29 other children but the child is isolated. This child usually has a dedicated aide, a person sometimes trained, sometimes untrained. This aide is to work only with that one child.

The result is that the child is often working one on one with the dedicated aide. The "dedicated" aide is often not helping to include the child in the activities of the classroom or the exchanges that occur between children in that class. The child may possess skills that are not known to the other children. If the child is an artist, the classroom teacher does not utilize this child's skill to establish communication with the child’s peers. How children in a classroom communicate with each other is a key in enhancing educational development. The classroom teachers are often more concerned with the child’s grades than the total inclusion of the child into the culture of the classroom or the total development of the child. There is often little or no communication between the general education classroom teacher, special education teacher and therapist. Therefore, the support to the child is often in isolation and therefore does not always enhance the child’s educational development.

Schools are meeting the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. Children are included yet isolated at the same time.