My Interview With The Director Of Special Services

For this assignment, I interview a service provider for special education services. The service provider I interviewed, takes part in the educational team, and provide services. The service provider is developmental therapist. I was able to develop a better sense of the importance of inclusion. After interviewing the service provider, and learning her philosophy of inclusion I have was able to better understand the accommodations and modifications for special needs students.

Mrs. Alice McLoughlin-Doro is a Special Education teacher at Downers Grove South High School in Downers Grove, Illinois. The community is known for its excellent school districts. According to the 2010 census there were 47, 833 people living in Downers Grove with approximately 19,000 households and 13,000 families. The racial makeup of the school was reported to be 88% White, 3% African American, 5% Hispanic, 0.2% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 5% Asian, and 1.6% from two or more races. About 1.7% of families were below the poverty line. The school district report card reports the following racial/ethnic background for the school: 68.1% White, 10.3 African American, 11% Hispanic, 7.3% Asian, 0.2% American Indian, and 3.2% two or more races. The elementary schools, middle schools, and high school all perform very well academically receiving above state average scores on standardized tests. She has been working there for 10 years and is currently a Case Manager of 17 students, all with an IEP, all with different needs and goals in the LD department. She co-teaches two general education classes in English intervention, all freshman. Although she is a Special Education teacher, she works with all the students. She also teaches a READ 180, Tier 3 reading and english intervention. This is where we will be focusing on for this

High Stakes Testing has been overly integrated in the education systems. High-stakes testing are used to determine grade retention, school curriculum, and whether or not students will receive a high school diploma (Myers, 2015). Since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, high stakes testing has become the norm and mandating that students must pass a standardized test before moving up in grade. As a special education director, the focus is to ensure the student’s accommodations are being followed. Accommodations help increase students’ academic performance. “Both the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) call for students with disabilities to participate in the general education curriculum and in testing programs to the maximum extent possible for each student (Luke and Schwartz, 2010).” Throughout the years, high stakes testing is becoming more common than ever before. The reality is high stakes testing is one indicator in evaluating children with specific needs. This paper will discuss, the violation of the statutory language regarding assessment based on IDEA, the strategies and goals of a remediation, staff training, common Core and PARCC assessment, and funding for the remediation plan under IDEA.

Florida’s laws regarding the instruction of Exceptional students (Fla. Stat. 1003.57) reflect the national IDEA rulings. In addition, they specify that each school district must be in compliance with state law and provide not only instruction, but also the professional services for diagnosis and evaluation of student needs. Florida law requires that the student be served in regular school facilities if at all possible and that the facilities and services must be modified to meet the needs of the students. Segregation into self-contained classrooms is allowed only when evidence exists that the student cannot succeed in a regular class.

Ms. Melissa Arena, RHIT, CHC, HIM Manager and Corporate Compliance Officer at St. Ann’s Community in Rochester, NY, was interviewed on December 7, 2015. The interview started with asking Ms. Arena if she could talk a little bit about herself and what her position is. She continued to say that her current position was her second career, she was a mortgage loan processor back in the 80’s and 90’s. Ms. Arena had gotten laid off from three separate mortgage companies before she realized she needed a different career and college career in order to be successful. Being a single mother of two early teenage girls, Ms. Arena was holding two part time jobs and doing the HIT program took her 5 years to complete as well as another year before she was able to feel comfortable to sit in for the exam. There was an interest in finding out how long she had been in her position and when asked, she stated that she was in Corporate Compliance Officer since 2011, as an HIM Manager since March of 2002 and by the SAC HIM Department since 2000 as a part time file clerk.

For this assignment, I chose to interview Ms. Lisa Parker, who is a Math co-teacher and resource teacher for grades K-5 at Krahn Elementary which is a part of the Klein Independent School District and is one of the teachers I have been observing for my field experience. Ms. Parker has been a teacher at Krahn Elementary since 17 years. She started as a 1st grade teacher and was moved to 3rd grade after three years. The administration saw that she was really good with management and math, so she was given the below average, special education students and kids with adaptive behavior after seven years of teaching. With this, she adopted a style for teaching kids with special needs and decided to get a certification in Special Education. Ms. Parker has been teaching specifically in Special Education (SPED) since five years now and the special populations served by her in Krahn elementary include Gifted and Talented students (GT), students with Autism, students with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), students with Learning disabilities (LD), students with Other Health Impairments (OHI) and Emotionally Disturbed children (EBD)

For my EDU 260 Field Experience placement I was sent to Windsor elementary school which accepts students from grades PK-5 elementary. The principal of this intuition is Mrs. Beth Elliott while the superintendent is Dr. Debbie Hamm. The ACT Aspire assessment was given to students in grades 3-8 in spring 2015. The ACT has four readiness levels those levels include: exceeding, ready, close, and in need of support. The students were assessed in four subject areas in each of these areas a percent was given for the students who fell into the exceeding and ready level of the act. The table 1 out-lines the percent of student’s in who placed in ready or exceeding on the ACT. The SC Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (SCPASS) was given to

The leadership of the special education director is an essential role in the educational realm. Two of

It would be ideal if CSI would be reserved for those students that are really at risk as far as assistance with basic skills. It is apparent that the CSI program has been employing an entrance criteria that is too loose. Although the obvious remedy would be to make clear, strict entrance score criteria for CSI students, there are multiple factors that make this challenging. Legally, if a student is offered special services, and the parents refuse, we must offer that child the next level of service. For example, if a parent refuses the offering of resource room, the child may then be placed in CSI, thus compounding the challenge of teaching many students with a very wide range of ability levels. In addition, regardless of the changes we make to entrance criteria, we must

I interviewed Jarrid L. Green, a Project Associate for The Center for Social Inclusion (CSI), whom I connected with through University of Maryland’s Alumni Advisor Network. I chose to interview Jarrid because of his work with social policy and his ability to make himself available for a phone interview. Jarrid’s perspective provided some key lessons that have also been emphasized throughout the Practicing Public Policy course, including (1) jump into the work you want to do, (2) you do not need to be an expert, (3) building coalitions and motivating your stakeholders’ riders and elephants is incredibly important, and (4) remind yourself that change is slow, so always consider what is possible.

CSI was intended to assist students that are struggling with learning basic skills, and be the least intensive support service when compared to resource room, or self-contained special education classes. CSI classes are also ideal when class sizes are small, and the students in the classes are struggling with basic skills (and therefore of similar ability levels). We have a very high population of students in the CSI program, for several reasons. Often students are determined to need more intensive support services (resource room, self-contained special education), but parents will refuse these services due to the stigma associated with them. As a result, we offer these students CSI believing it is better for them to accept some support rather than receive none at all. The result has been a very large CSI population in each CSI classroom, with students of very wide ability levels. In addition, CSI teachers are not trained in special education, however

The Fifth Circuit developed a two-part test to use in determining whether the placement is too restrictive: 1) whether, with the use of supplementary aids and services, the child's education can be achieved satisfactorily in the regular classroom, and 2) if not, whether the child has been mainstreamed to the maximum extent appropriate. Daniel R. R. v. State Board of Education, 874 F.2d 1036 (5th Cir. 1989). In making an LRE determination, the regular education teacher is not required to act as a special education teacher in the regular education setting or to so radically modify the curriculum that it is unrecognizable. What is required is an understanding of the nature and severity of the child's disabilities and whether the child is able

Next, I asked Mrs. Bernard about the changing structure of schools, including the dynamics between general and special education classrooms. She elaborated on the fact she tries to stay out of politics, but it is difficult since politicians make the most of the decisions for educators. She states, “Those who teach will teach and those who cannot teach will make laws

By creating and completing my project, I believe I will learn about numerous aspects of school leadership, as well as gain skills in working within a department in which I have little prior experience. I chose a student learning problem involving special services, and will learn about how special education students are provided with services, the challenges this entails, the legalities of this area of education, and how to take on a leadership role with staff members. I will learn about the gathering and analysis of relevant data, how it drives decisions in an educational setting, and will learn about the differences in instruction for special education students vs. general educations students. In addition, I will learn about the nuances that are present within our community, potentially involving the stigma that parents struggle with when their child is in need of special services, and how a school leader can address these issues with each child’s best interests in mind.

For my interview, I interviewed a woman by the name of Mrs. Miskell. She is a close family friend and also teaches at the elementary school that I used to attend. Mrs. Miskell has been teaching for fifteen years. She has a class of 21 including 2 special education children who are mainstreamed into her class for a few areas of study. She team-teaches one day a week with the remedial math teacher, and one day a week with the remedial reading teacher. Her children switch classes with one other class for social studies and science. In this interview, I covered her views on special education and security in today's schools.