The Performance Of Students With Disabilities

In recent years, legislative mandates, like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), have required students to participate in the same assessments that general education students are taking. Although these new, controversial mandates resonated with a lot of people, critics argue that they cause more harm than good. According to Inclusion: The Pros and Cons—A Critical Review, Carl Savich states that the federal legislation on inclusion took the attention away from the general and advanced students with “a concomitant lowering of standards” (Savich 1). However, supporters of these new mandates state that the pros vastly outweigh the cons. According to Assessment and Accommodations, Stephen Luke states that inclusion

The author performed two separate interviews face-to-face, selecting two individuals with different backgrounds in order to obtain unique perspectives. The first interviewee, named Jennifer Hodge, works for Allen ISD as a special education teacher for a self-contained DEAR (Developing Early Academics Readiness) class for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. In addition, her experience includes teaching for 22 years, with seven of those years teaching students with disabilities in both self-contained classrooms along with resource and inclusion environments. The meeting to discuss psychoeducational testing occurred in Jennifer’s work place during her conference period over a 45 minute period on Friday, August 28, 2015. The second

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.

Students with special needs need deserve the same education general education students are presented with. The philosophy of “ Disability Inclusion” concentrates on creating a safe, loving, and effective learning environment for students who suffer from physical, learning, and behavioral disabilities. When a student with disabilities is placed in the same environment as a non-disabled student, the results show wonderful improvement. When we are able to discover the strength of the student we are able to see just how much the student can improve in an inclusion classroom. Disability Inclusion not only sets a new beginning for an equal education of special education students, but it allows for more interaction with the child, and a more hands-on assessment.

In return, this hinders their level of intelligence capabilities. Geurts , 2004; Joseph & Tager-Flusberg, 2004 suggest that children with autism have impaired executive processing which effect their skill sufficiency (Berk, 2010). Their ability to think goal oriented, strategies and memorize is defected. In addition, (Welsh, Nix, Blair, Bierman, & Nelson, 2010) submits that executive functions, also known as cognitive aptitudes are vital to children ability for goal oriented learning. If the child’s cognition is defective their intellect and drive to accomplish goals are threated.

The teacher can encourage this inclusion by teaching the students, parents, and other community members about negative stereotypical attitudes about students with disabilities by avoiding negative words, such as “disabled”, or “crippled”, or “handicapped” and to promote positive ideas about disabilities into class work, the student’s play time and other activities. To further ensure that the classroom is promoting equality for the child with the disability, the teacher should incorporate an inclusive curriculum mindset, by adapting the lessons, learning materials and classroom to suit the needs of all the different types of learners including the child with the disability within the classroom.

As part of our training for the month of March, I watched Philip Zelazo’s talk on executive function (EF) and the developing brain. I learned that EF is different from “intelligence” (although it is related), and refers to using knowledge in service of goals. EF has three main components: cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. By looking at these components in early childhood, researchers can predict outcomes such as social understanding, school readiness, and SAT scores. Zelazo pointed out that EF is a better measure of school readiness than an IQ test because the education system enforces children to pay attention, follow rules, and sit still. Furthermore, EF in childhood can predict physical health, drug use, criminal

Every year, approximately four million children are born in the United States; in those four million children, “one and five children are born with or will have a childhood disorder” (U.S. Department of Human Health and Services, 2015). Childhood disorders range from attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD), autism, however, these are only a couple well-known disorders. Be that as it may, some individuals are dysfunctional from the myelination, limited working memory or selective attention, all of which can contribute or be linked to ADHD and autism, hence the executive function of individuals are affected by these disorder.

poor executive functioning was associated less engagement and increased isolation on the playground, indicating social functioning is negatively impacted by executive dysfunction.

Another cognitive process that develops in this stage is working memory capacity. Between the ages of 6 and 12, the time it takes to process information decreases quickly (Berk, 2014, p. 302). The speed of thinking has a direct effect on working memory, and this is where a difference in the individual intelligence of children truly begins to reveal itself (Berk, 2014, p. 302). Another cognitive development is the development of executive function, where it “undergoes its most energetic period of development” (Berk, 2014, p. 302). Even more noticeable of a development in cognition is the development of attention. While infants and toddlers and even young children can be distracted easily, a child in middle childhood has a more focused attention (Berk, 2014, p. 303). Children learn to only pay attention to information that is relevant to their current focus (Berk, 2014, p. 303). Another advance in cognition is the development of metacognition, where children are more aware of their mental activities (Berk, 2014, p. 306). Despite this awareness of their own mental state, children are still not fully able to achieve cognitive self-regulation, or the “process of continuously

The idea of children with disabilities, whether they be mild or severe has been a very controversial and misunderstood topic. In the past inclusion has brought about huge changes for not only the students, but also the parents and families of these children, and staff at schools. Teachers and education professionals were the first to really feel the wrath and intimidation of this dramatic shift in education. There were several different factors that were coming about that made it very difficult for schools and teachers, the unorganized mandates were strict and didn’t allow much time for change. “President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) into law in 1975. Since the original passage of the EAHCA, the law has been amended four times and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)” (Conroy, Yell, Katsiyannis, & Collins, 2010, para.1).

In my opinion the education departments are not doing enough to encourage schools and explain to the teachers the benefits of inclusion to both the children with disabilities and the rest of the students (Ashman & Elkins, 2009). Children are our future and it is important that through inclusion they learn to understand that differences make us who we are. I think it also further teachers the message to booth the children and the rest of the community that of social justice which says just because your different doesn’t mean you don’t deserve fair treatment (Ashman & Elkins, 2009).

Many children have had learning disabilities for many years. Each year more and more of these children are being helped. Schools are working to improve their special education programs and to have all kinds of students work together in the same classroom. The practice of inclusion was started because educators felt that special needs students would achieve more in traditional classrooms with non-learning disabled students than they would in special education classes. However, research findings suggest that there really is no difference in academic achievement levels for special needs students when they are placed in regular classrooms.

In today’s educational environment, all students expect to receive the same level of instruction from schools and all students must meet the same set of standards. Expectations for students with learning disabilities are the same as students without any learning difficulties. It is now unacceptable for schools or teachers to expect less from one segment of students because they have physical disabilities, learning disabilities, discipline problems, or come from poor backgrounds. Standardize testing has resulted in making every student count as much as their peers and the most positive impact has been seen with the lowest ability students. Schools have developed new approaches to reach these previously underserved students while

One of the most controversial issues facing educators today is the topic of educating students with disabilities, specifically through the concept of inclusion. Inclusion is defined as having every student be a part of the classroom all working together no matter if the child has a learning disability or not (Farmer) (Inclusion: Where We’ve Been.., 2005, para. 5). The mentally retarded population has both a low IQ and the inability to perform everyday functions. Activities such as eating, dressing, walking, and in some cases, talking can be hopeless for a child with mental retardation.