Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello, my magnificent and inquisitive tribe and welcome to revoke rewriting our kids education podcast. My name is Michelle person, and we are on a journey to change the face of education. We are rethinking re-examining and re-educating ourselves and our children. This week, we will be exploring the topsy turvy world of special education, special education. Two of the dirtiest words in the public education system, we've all heard the jokes about the little yellow school bus, the classrooms in the basements of the school, the classrooms with the extra teachers. In my experience, people tend to laugh and poke fun at what they don't understand. And if there is any topic in education, less understood than cultural diversity and responsiveness it's special education, no one understands what it is, how you qualify or what happens once you enter. And we should all know because 80% of all special education students are black and Hispanic males.
Speaker 0 00:01:06 There are instances where special education services are warranted and in those cases, parents should be familiar with the terminology and the processes that make up the special education landscape. Our guest today, Lisa Adams is a former special education teacher, a former building principal, and currently the owner of LA education consulting. I saw a quote about special education and preparing for this episode that I love and special education, hard work, persistence and competence. A label is only a means of receiving the tools and resources needed to reach maximum results. I wish everyone looked at special education like that, and oh yeah. Are you woke?
Speaker 0 00:02:18 In my experience, people tend to find themselves on two very different ends of the special education continuum. Either a label is being pushed on a parent by a school or a teacher or a school or a student is in need of services and not being adequately served either way. The parent is overwhelmed and the student isn't getting what they need. So what is special education? How do you qualify? When did you request an evaluation and when did you push back? When one a suggested my guest today is going to help us make sense of the labyrinth that is special education and hopefully shed some light on this complicated Lisa Adams. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are happy to have you.
Speaker 2 00:03:06 Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 0 00:03:08 Great. Well, I hope today that you are able to drop some nuggets on our parents about special education. It is by far one of the most misunderstood. Um, and I think purposely by the powers that be overly complicated, um, aspects of public education, and it does not have to be, but they make it so hard. So hopefully today you can, um, you can explain to our parents and even some newbie teachers, maybe who might be listening about, you know, what special education is, but it's not. Um, and the goals of it, what is it supposed to do for our kids? Well, before we dive into special education, what it is, what is that and what we want people to know about it. Let's tell people a little bit about you. What's your background?
Speaker 2 00:03:54 Well, my background is I have over 15 years of experience as an educator, I started off as a substitute teacher and realized that working with students was my calling and passion. I went back to school and became a special ed teacher or licensed intervention specialist. And that role expanded to me then going back to school to get my master's in education, to become a school administrator. So, um, I've worked in various schools from suburban to urban. I've worked in charter schools and public schools just to get a different feel. It's so different when we work in different environments, but the need is still the same. So just having a passion for working with students and being their advocate and their support is very, very important as well as helping other professionals.
Speaker 0 00:04:42 So I'm going to actually start by asking the first question, which is what are three things you wish regular folk knew about special education?
Speaker 2 00:04:50 Um, great things that I think it's really important that non-educators and parents and even new educators, as you referenced know about special ed, is that every student doesn't qualify, um, special ed is a way to help students learn. It's a service. It's not a place. And students who do qualify for special education services are not limited and they should not be excluded.
Speaker 0 00:05:16 Every everything like the mindset, that special education is a service and not a place. So often teachers at teachers who've been teaching for years, they purposely will get or try to place a kid in special education for the purpose of, oh, well, that's not my kid anymore. I don't have to serve them. They should go to the special education room. That is not what special education is not. And not every kid qualifies because not every issue that a child has means that the child has a disability. I need parents, teachers. And non-educators to understand that when you're saying that someone qualifies for special ed, what you are saying is someone has a, a quantifiable disability that makes it difficult or harder for them to perform successfully unaided in the classroom next to their peers. Um, and some issues are not at the level of meaning it's a disability could just be, you know, needing extra assistance, um, you know, extra time to process, or maybe you just need your notes taken in a different way, meaning something different does not mean you have a disability, meaning something different does not mean you have to be placed in special ed.
Speaker 0 00:06:35 And even if you do have a cognitive issue that requires you to get more services, it is just that it is a service, not a placement. I thank you so much for saying that.
Speaker 2 00:06:48 Um, and in line with that, um, accommodations and modifications are the two things that many students would receive modifications. She could only come after accommodations have been met. And when we think of accommodations, you just hit a few of them. As far as how students learn. Everybody has a learning modality. You might be an audio learner. Someone else might be a visual learner. So when the teacher presents something, they have to address both modalities. I tell people all the time when it comes to learning modalities, I have to see something. You can tell it to me, but I have to see it to be able to process it. So teachers have to provide accommodations according to how students learn. And that's really important. And sometimes when teachers figure out that they have to do things differently, some of them make the adjustment, but sometimes when that adjustment is more than they might want to or feel comfortable doing, that's when special ed gets brought into the picture. Um, as an administrator and as a teacher, I've heard people say, well, you know, you've been trained in special ed. When I went to school, we didn't get trained on differentiation that came with regular pedagogy for being in the classroom. We did not get trained or have classes on teaching students this way, versus that way. Some things you get to experience, and we can't push everything off to special ed because a lot of students don't get.
Speaker 0 00:08:08 I think that that's a very important point. Like it's not just about making a student a part of special ed because their issue might not be a special ed issue. Um, especially if all they really need is a, um, uh, accommodation in the classroom to make them successful. I think sometimes people do not understand the difference between those two terms, accommodation and modification. So can you explain a little bit what you mean when you say like it, you might have trouble with something, but all you might need is an accommodation that your regular teacher can provide for you. That means that you don't need to be put into the special education category. Um, and the difference between that and an actual modification.
Speaker 2 00:08:53 So an accommodation is what a teacher or an educator, because sometimes you have aids and Peros, that's what that person does in order to allow you to access the curriculum. What are they doing to allow you to understand that two plus two is four? So that might mean for math need again, visual art, or you might need manipulatives. And if you think back to when we were in school, we had manipulatives, we had to do everything in multiple forms. Um, so accommodations provide you with the tool to access the curriculum. It's the, how modifications should only come after all accommodations are done, because modifications now take the two plus two equals four and it breaks it down. And it changes it as far as what the student is required to know you're modifying what that student has to do, which means you're modifying potentially the curriculum.
Speaker 2 00:09:45 So you want to be very careful with modifications versus accommodations. Um, a modification is also what's being taught. So accommodations are how they're assessing the curriculum and a modification is, um, what they are assessing. And that's where the extended standards come in. When we're speaking of students that have a very low functionality in certain areas, curriculum rise, reading or math, extended standards breaks down the curriculum. It breaks down what is being taught at that specific time. Students eventually get to the whole standard, but the commodification would break that down. And again, we have to be very, very careful with modifications because if you've never accommodated them, how can you modify them?
Speaker 0 00:10:33 Now, my question is, do you think that black and brown kids are overrepresented in special education? And why do you think that happens?
Speaker 2 00:10:43 Well, that question is, is a great question, but it depends on your school dynamics. It depends on the demographics and the school district. So in education, coming from an urban, highly populated brown and black community, you will see more students that are brown and black that are identified as special ed or having a need for special ed services. But again, that's a demographic based question because we could go to a suburban area where the population of black and brown students is low and then your special ed higher. But speaking from my experience and working in an urban school setting with a predominant black and brown population, a lot of our students are identified, but as you touched upon, initially, students are identified for the wrong reasons. So when you have a few things that you've done behaviourally, or you didn't do good on the test, um, then you're automatically, oh my God, he got a 40% on the test.
Speaker 2 00:11:47 Two times he might need services. There are some specific things that have to be done. And the RTI process, which is the process that we take data and collect it to see if a student qualifies that information is very important because it asks you, what is the student doing? What did you do? How did you do it? And how did you change things to meet the student's needs? So before a student can even be identified, there's a protocol that has to be followed. And it's very in depth, very thorough as far as what are the educators do to help help the students. Um, so that's important that we look at that. And sometimes, unfortunately our students don't get all of that.
Speaker 0 00:12:28 And I know you and I both worked in a large urban education, uh, as districts. And, um, I know that part of my frustration as a building principal is the, like you said, not following that RTI and RTI means response to intervention, but not following that RTI process thoroughly. So the teacher is kind of responsible on a lot of levels for collecting this data and tracking these interventions and these accommodations that they're trying to give them and try and, and sitting in on these meetings and watching teachers try to honestly push through a kid who might not need services. What they need is a change and how the information is presented, which again, falls back on the regular education teacher, which is now in our teacher's defense, love my teachers. They are overworked, underpaid, highly stressed and, and too many kids in the classroom and a lot of cases.
Speaker 0 00:13:29 So they're trying to juggle a ton of balls. So while I can totally empathize with our regular education teachers who have these ridiculously large class sizes and all these standards that they have to cover, and they're frustrated. So they're like, you know what? I don't have time to do these accommodations. I just need to see if this student can qualify for services and gets the help someplace else. But I need parents. I need for you to recognize that when you're sitting in those meetings, um, and, and they're trying to say to you with your child quality, you know that your child needs these services. You should be asking these types of questions you should be asking, well, what interventions did you put in place? How long did you put the interventions in place for what improvements did you see after the interventions? Are you going to try any other interventions? And those are questions that I think parents need to come armed with when they're sitting in these meetings in order to, in order to advocate effectively for their students,
Speaker 2 00:14:26 I'm parents, each state in Ohio, it's called the procedural safeguards. It breaks down everything there is to know, in regards to a student being identified as having a disability, it breaks down the process of what should happen, who should do what, who is a part of the IEP team. Um, it talks about what happens when students are discipline within the schools. It's a very, very important read. I know, as an intervention specialist and as an administrator, we had to give that out for every single meeting in regard every year, the parents got them in sometimes translate, oh no, I got it last year. Last time, take it, take it and read it. They do update it from time to time, but that's very important to understand your rights. Parents are a very important part of the IEP team. And that's something to me that has been missed for a very long time, is that it's a lot of professionals that get together, create this document and then give it to the parent.
Speaker 2 00:15:26 That's not how the process works. Parents are supposed to be a part of the team. So just like we collect data in school. And even though we're talking about the school environment, there's data from home that we have to collect and understand. Um, so there's some dynamics that the parent only the parent can provide input on that. It can't be guessed. It can't be supplemented. Parents are important and they are required member of the IEP team without them, the student can't have an IEP, regardless of what anyone says. So parents have to understand their rights and know that many things when it comes to their child's education, when it, especially with special ed, without them, it can't happen.
Speaker 0 00:16:07 So can you break down for our parents and our listeners? What is an IEP, an individual education lives program, and how does a student qualify for one? But then also we've been spending a lot of time talking about districts that want to push them on their kids. I've also been in districts where, because of the type of district it is, they don't want to see too many kids qualify for an IEP. So a parent might be saying, no, I really think that my kid needs this extra surface, this extra assistance, this modification. And the district is saying, no, we don't do that here for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the placement that they might need might be something that the district does not offer. It's going to cost them a lot of money. Um, sometimes they weren't, they're trying to keep their numbers down for whatever their reasons, but we need to understand, um, what an IEP actually is. How do you qualify for one and as a parent, how do you navigate, you know, an advocate for your child, if you believe that that's best.
Speaker 2 00:17:08 So, as you stated, an IEP is an individualized education program. Some people also call it an individual individualized education plan. It is a document that outlines a student's area of strength and area weakness and how those areas of weaknesses or needs will be addressed. But before the student has an IEP, there was a document called the ETR and evaluative team report. That specific document is something that is, uh, a battery of assessments. Um, the school psychologist or a psychiatrist or psychologist outside of the school can administer the assessments. These assessments are behavioral, social, behavioral assessments. Some of them are knowledge based assessments that really dive into what the student does and doesn't know, and where the deficit in their learning may be in order to qualify for an IEP, the RTI process has to have been completed. And it's been identified through that process that this student might need more structured individualized assistance.
Speaker 2 00:18:20 Once the psychologist or psychiatrist does the assessments, then the team comes together and they need to go over the results of those assessments. And as a team, parents included, the decision is made as to whether or not the student qualifies for special ed services. Once that determination is made, then the IEP is created and the team comes back together to go over the IEP, which should not be a copy and paste of the ETR. You shouldn't see everything that the psychologist said dumped into the IEP. This is an individualized plan. That's saying for this school year, this is what this child isn't doing. This is what they should be doing. And this is how we're going to get them to where they shouldn't be doing. Um, so it's very important that those steps are taken, but the parent has to be a part of every single process.
Speaker 2 00:19:15 They cannot be given a meeting. They can not have, um, a student cannot have an IEP without a parent's signature. It's very, very specific. And again, parents can not be excluded from the team as well as regular education teachers. Sometimes they're scooted to the side a little bit as well. It's not a one man show, and you did make a good point about some districts do not service. Um, there are some schools, some type of schools. Um, a lot of times that do not accept students with IEP or they accept them, but they can't accommodate the IEP. That's a decision that a parent has to make. Do I want my child to go to their school, knowing that they have an IEP, but they're, they won't receive servicing because the school doesn't have it. When we talk about numbers, some schools want to keep the number of students with a disability at our law.
Speaker 2 00:20:06 Um, it's not a bad thing, but it's something that cannot be helped by a number. If a student qualifies and need services, they need to receive the services. Some schools are equipped to have support enough for each student that maybe they don't need an IEP. And they're going to get that intense accommodation within the classroom setting. So some school districts operate differently. Um, but again, it should never ever be told to a parent that we don't accommodate special ed or no, your child doesn't qualify because our numbers are too high, correct. That should never ever happen. Those are loss of words very much, so, very much so. Um, and parents can be advocates for their students and their children by communicating. When you get the report cards, when you get the progress reports, when it's open house time, when it's parent teacher conference, you have to be a part of every step of the educational process.
Speaker 2 00:21:04 It's very, very important that, you know, and understand, um, what a great means. Why did this student not do good on this? What was done to help this student? Is there tutoring after school or on the weekends? Do they have Saturday school? These are questions that parents have to ask sometimes when they're not seeing the answer a lot now with technology, you have Schoolology, you have different platforms that parents can monitor what's going on with their students, the teachers, and how the student is doing on a day-to-day basis. So parents number one have to be involved.
Speaker 0 00:21:38 You mentioned earlier the resource for parents to know exactly what the process is, and we'll put a link to, um, to bat to that resource in the description. Um, but do you have any other resources or places where parents can go to find out more about the, um, special education process to find out more about how to become a better advocate? Um, any suggestions that you have?
Speaker 2 00:22:02 Well, again, here in Ohio, we do, if you Google special ed O D E, and for many states, when you Google special ed and whatever your school district is, or your state it'll bring up the manual for the, um, special ed special ed program and how it works, because each state operates different. Most of them mirror each other because it's federal law and rules that regulate this special ed process, but some states have some specific interpretations of the federal law. So that's why I say check with each state. But again, you can Google the, um, special ed for any department of education or for any school district. And you will get that manual. I've looked at a few across the country and I mean, they really, really do a good job, breaking it down for the parents and making sure that they understand, but also any documentation should be given to the parents.
Speaker 2 00:22:59 Once the RTI process begins, parents need to know that a child is being looked upon to collect data, to see if they qualify for special education. When the team meets to say that we're going to do the RTI process, that parents should be getting that paperwork or that document manual to say, this is what is going on because the documentation also explains the RTI process. So this shouldn't be something that happens after the child's been evaluated. And the IEP is written no. As soon as the teams at school suspects of disability or sees that there's a deficit, they should be meeting with the parent already. You cannot give that parent that meeting that RTI result and say, Hey, your child qualifies that child, that parent should have known when you first expected. Correct. Um, and, and that right there is a point of contention that happens a lot where the parents are excluded and the professionals that we are sometimes just go to the parent and tell them what it is. That's not how it works, and that's not how it should ever, ever be.
Speaker 0 00:24:04 Where can the listeners reach out if they have more questions about, um, about special education services?
Speaker 2 00:24:10 So reaching out to me personally, would be at LA educational consulting, gmail.com. And our website is LA educational consulting.com. We do answer questions within a 24 hour range, but we're here to provide support for educators and administrators to help them better understand the process in special ed and an education and totality. And, you know, being an administrator, there is so much that we don't know that we're held accountable for that. You, you gotta figure it out. So we try to add that piece to be able to provide support to the people who have to support the biggest load of all. And those are our students.
Speaker 0 00:24:50 I want to thank you so much for being here with us today and talking to us about all of this information. Um, you've been invaluable and hopefully you've helped somebody break down and demystify. Um, the special education process, special education is a service, not a placement. If there is one idea that I hope you took away from today's show it's that it's a service that helps children reach their full potential. It should not be exclusionary or limiting on the contrary students receiving the service should feel competent and be empowered. I want to thank my guests, Lisa, for taking the time to speak with us today. Show notes, resources, and links to the things we mentioned are available on our website at www just like me, presents.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and share this podcast with other parents and educators in your circle. And if you wouldn't mind, leave us a review, it will help other people find the show and start their journey. Thanks for listening. And remember, if our children can see it, they can achieve it.
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