Ontime experts
One time, a teacher gave his special education world history class all of the answers to their final exam. He said he never had to study or actually learn anything to get an A. Rather than being challenged, he was allowed to use a teacher-made study guide while taking exams at his California high school. Mark Nelson also has dyslexia, along with dysgraphia, which means he has trouble writing. But, instead of getting that kind of instruction or preparing for college-level work with her peers, she left her general education classes in Oklahoma for one period every day in ninth grade to go to a special education class where students did activities like making cars out of cereal boxes and racing them. Her disability doesn’t mean she can’t analyze and discuss a text she can be taught strategies to help her decode words more easily. Janae Cantu has dyslexia and thus struggles with reading. Even students with cognitive delays may be able to attend modified post-secondary programs if given adequate preparation and encouragement in school.īut too often, schools aren’t providing students with the appropriate help. In some cases that means being given more time on tests or being offered the option of using technology for written assignments in other cases it means having an aide in the classroom working with them individually.Įxperts and parents widely agree that most students with disabilities do best academically and socially when they are in the same classrooms as their nondisabled peers, and when they are given the same opportunities to plan out their postsecondary lives. Students’ needs vary greatly by disability, and even two students with the same disability may need different supports to keep up with their peers. It includes students with specific learning disabilities (such as dyslexia and dysgraphia), hearing and vision impairments, emotional disabilities, autism and more severe cognitive delays. And of parents who either don’t know what their children’s rights are or feel forced to fight long battles to make schools comply with the law. Of students not being taught the soft skills, like communication and organization, that they’ll need in college and the workforce. Of very capable students being pushed into “alternate” diploma programs, limiting their future options. Of expectations lowered to the point where they do students more harm than good.
Of districts lacking the funding to provide needed supports. They spoke of teachers inadequately trained to support special education students. In interviews with 45 parents and students and more than 50 other experts, advocates and lawyers across 34 states and the District of Columbia, families and advocates described systemic problems with special education in high school. Their education “falls far short of what federal law requires or even what common sense dictates.” “For many children with disabilities, they’re capable of far more than their schools give them credit for,” said Kitty Cone, a special education lawyer who works in Arkansas. After high school, students with disabilities have lower college graduation rates than their peers and earn less once they join the workforce. Many of those that do earn their diplomas find themselves unprepared for the real world. Yet, just 65 percent of special education students graduate on time, well below the 83 percent four-year rate for American students overall. Their disabilities shouldn’t keep them from achieving the same standards as their peers - and experts estimate that up to 90 percent of students with disabilities are capable of graduating high school fully prepared to tackle college or a career if they receive proper support along the way. Kids like Michael make up the vast majority of them. There are 6.6 million public school children enrolled in special education in the United States, 13 percent of all public school students. “We could get no one to listen or do what was needed.” “Our son’s education was a waste,” his mother, Michelle McLaughlin, said.