Psychoeducational Interviews

Special education teachers make a conscious decision to work on a daily basis with students who display various disabilities. Some of the disabilities include autism, negative social and emotional behaviors, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, mobility disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, as well as students who suffer from being blind and deaf. When these disabilities interfere with the daily educational activities of a child, the child is in need of the valuable opportunities provided in a self-contained classroom.

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.

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.

On March 6, 2017, I interviewed my host teacher, Ms. Moos. The interview took place in Ms. Moos’s room at Hamline Elementary at 11:30 A.M., which is during her prep hour, lasted for almost a half hour. Ms. Moos is an EBD (Emotional Behavioral Disorder) teacher for Kindergarten through second grade. She uses a combination of pulling students out of a general education setting, giving more intense educational support, to inclusion within a general education setting, so students are actively engaging with their peers with a more personalized and supported approach. Students that she provides services for have exceptionalities such as developmental delays, learning disabilities, and other heath disabilities.

This report compromises evidence surrounding the use of standardized testing for students with disabilities. Testing protocols for minority students necessitates a great deal of reform. Yielding a corroborated framework, two powerful research professionals join forces; producing pragmatic analysis and improvement ideals in regards to assessing students with disabilities, a vastly marginalized minority in regards to standardize testing. Karen Barton, lead Principal Research Scientist for Power of U, McGraw-Hill, obtained her Ph.D. in Educational Research and Measurement from the University of South Carolina preceding Barton achieved her M.S. in Special Education at Longwood College. Offering unique and extensive research abilities, she consults often regarding education-based research. Barton’s co-collaborator, Daniel Koretz is an expert on educational assessment and the impact of high-stakes testing. His research has includes the assessment of students with disabilities. Koretz obtained a doctorate is in developmental psychology from Cornell University. Koretz maintains fifteen national affiliations with educational associations and forty, globally referenced publications. Prudent to my research, by utilizing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and policies pertaining to students’ Individualized Education Program (IEP) these two authors and their publication assists in supplementing validity to this essay as these sources along with additional methodically integrated

“A Critical Practice Analysis of Response to intervention Appropriation in an Urban School” written by Kathleen A. King Thorius, Brendan D. Maxcy, Erin Macey, and Adrienne Cox, highlights some key difficulties urban schools face through the enactment of Response to Intervention. Response to Intervention emerged in the early 2000’s when the field of special education was critiqued on the way they diagnosed and identified students with learning disabilities. RTI is done through interviews, mentoring and monitoring. The intensity of the intervention undergoes three or four tiers in particular; Tier 1 is when all students are provided with general education and are supervised based on the improvement and expectancy for the age and grade and Tier 2 occurs when the teachers are not noticing improvements. Tier 2 is simply when the specified students receive more skill-oriented testing and monitoring. If there is no improvement seen, they are moved to Tier 3, which is when the students receive the most intensive instruction. If there is no improvement in this tier, they are then receiving Tier 4 instruction, which is otherwise known as special education. RTI provides a structure of how to supply intervention for those children struggling academically in fields that they previously lacked. However, as displayed in this article, the context of what occurs during this meeting still requires a bit more structure.

Originally, he started working as a High School social studies teacher. A typical workday for Mr. Studnicka includes coming in contact with 50-60 kids. As a special education teacher, he spends his time re-writing test, quizzes, and assignments for those who need it. There are many challenges that come with Mr. Studnicka’s line of work. One of the hardest parts of his job was switching from a normal

In fact, studies show that 73 to 90 percent of the students referred by classroom teachers for special education evaluations due to academic problems are found eligible for services" (National Education Association, 2007, p. 6). Teachers need to set appropriate goals and keep students moving forward. Use the appropriate test for each student. Teachers need to stay current with the proper training and education needed to help these students academically, know what assessments to use, and where to place

My interviewee’s father died of a massive heart attack at the age of _______. She stated that she has never felt as safe in this world since her father passed. Her mother died of breast cancer at the age of ________. She said that she did not have a great relationship with her mother but they were fine at the time of her death. Her mother had remarried and her stepfather was the primary caretaker for her mother during her illness. Her second oldest sister, the one she was closest to, was the first of her siblings to die. She died at the age of _______ from ovarian cancer. The youngest sister died a couple of years later from complications of Type I diabetes at the age of ______. My interviewee described her sister as a “brittle diabetic” with

Orr (2009) conducted interviews with special education teachers and the attitudes they have seen in their schools since inclusion was implemented in their schools. Orr (2009) chose fifteen teachers, which included fourteen female and one male teacher who agreed to participate in the study so it was a purposive criterion sample. Twelve of the fifteen teachers taught in a suburban area, two in a rural area, and one in an urban area; but they varied in the age they taught and school. Seven of the fifteen teachers taught in a self-contained classroom while the remaining eight taught in a resource room, where they only saw a student for less than an hour or two a day. Another pattern that showed was that many teachers found that they did not receive any classes that focused on differentiation or inclusion while completing their undergraduate work (Orr 2009). These results are important when considering the implementation of inclusion because it may mean that there is a need to reteach teachers. It is important to consider professional development classes district-wide before implementing inclusion in the classroom.

This week, the author sat down with a seventh grade special education student to gain insight on how he feels about his learning and overall educational experience. The student’s name is Nate, and he has an Individualized Education Program (IEP) with goals in the areas of reading, writing, math, and behavior, and he has been diagnosed with ADHD. Nate was a new student to the district in August and was adopted within the last year. Since the teacher-student relationship was newly developing, the author staged the interview in a very informal manner. The student and teacher sat across the table from each other and simply chatted back and forth. The author also presented the interview to the student as an opportunity for the teacher to get to know him better since he was new to the district.

Students with intellectual disabilities face the dilemma of high-stakes testing. Some students with intellectual disabilities are expected to complete such tests although the tests are beyond their capabilities (Friend, 2014, Pg. 259). The expectations set by professionals are too high as students with intellectual disabilities are expected to learn from the same curriculum as those without disabilities. In some institutions, they are seen as the cause of school failure to attain federally mandated goals of sufficient yearly progress. Even though learning the core curriculum is essential for students with intellectual disabilities, there are several disadvantages of setting the standards too high.

On January 20, 2016; an interview was conducted with Jessica Pope in her classroom. Mrs. Pope is a Special Education Coordinator for the Judson Independent School District; whom teaches at Millers Point Elementary. She provided extraordinary information on LRE. LRE in general is stated in “In Special education and the law: A guide for practitioners”, “to the maximum extent feasible, students with disabilities must be educated with peers who are not disabled” (Osborne, A., & Russo, C., 2014, p. 29). “The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004) addressed the issue of least-restrictive-environment” (Lecture 1, 2010). The act requires states to set up methodology guaranteeing that children with disabilities are taught properly and comparatively with children who don 't have disabilities (Lecture 1, 2010). This essay will cover interview questions and answers from Mrs. Pope, legal cases and decisions that may have affected LRE and the school district, and parent involvement.

Increasingly young children with disabilities are being served in inclusive environments the least restrictive environment is within the general education setting unless the severity level of the disability makes this impossible. While inclusion emphasizes the need to educate students with disabilities in the regular educational setting, it is much more than just the physical placement of a student with disabilities in this setting (Allen & Cowdery, 2009). The past several years has also seen an increased emphasis on accountability for schools and educators which has primarily been defined as the performance of students on high stakes testing. The teacher’s ability to teach academic content is then inferred from the performance on these

This semester I visited the Reach Academy in West Harrison, New York. My experience observing gave me incredible insight into the world of special education. The Reach Academy is a residential treatment facility. Many of these students did not work well in the inclusive classroom setting. The school features students with various different disabilities, including autism, emotional and behavioral disorders, and speech and communication disabilities. During my fieldwork I observed two social studies special education classroom. I observed an American History class and a global history class.