Recently I attended a state training that addressed four
major initiatives that public education in New Jersey has either already
embarked upon, will embark upon this year or will embrace in a matter of a
year’s time. These include instruction
based on the Common Core, teacher lesson evaluation based on a four point rubric,
Student Growth Objectives and the PAARC assessment for students. Without exaggeration, it may be stated that
these four elements propose the largest changes to public education in its
history.
A common theme among these areas is what Ken Robinson refers
to as a Culture of Standardization. At the national and state level there has
been a pervasive mind set that uniformity of instruction and assessment will
lead to improved outcomes. As with any
movement, there are both positive and negative aspects. The recognition of essential elements of good
instruction, the expectations for greater objectivity and consistency among
teacher evaluators, the ability to define expectations for students skills
along a developmental level and the ability to define a common assessment all
appear to meet needs in our state’s public schools. At the same time there is a fear, an anxiety, perhaps even
some dread that the individuality of students, the creativity of teachers and
the goal of a truly balanced curriculum will be sacrificed along the way.
Among those who service students with special needs and
students with disabilities there are familiar thoughts as to whether these
students have been adequately considered in the formulation of these
concepts. Indeed there has been little
attention drawn to students with individualized learning plans and how the
educational approach for these students may be altered by competing priorities
of the IDEIA and the current educational agenda.
I would propose that special educators are in a unique
position to apply these initiatives within the context of an approach that
keeps the individual student at the forefront, that continues to stress the
personalization of learning, that promotes curiosity of students, which continues
to require teacher creativity, that stresses strength based learning and preserves
true partnership with the family in the learning process. These aspects are, after all, the hallmark of
what is special about special education.
Indeed, in the many years since 1975 and the advent of IDEIA, the
educational community has evolved to see that the approach for students with
identified special needs work well as an approach for all students.
The thirty-eight years which have ensued since the
individualized concept of instruction was legislated has painstakingly moved
many in the lager orbit of schooling to a point where Universal Design has been
acknowledged as good educational practice.
The struggle for advocates of individualized instruction was made
significant by an attitude, pervasive from the time of the industrial
revolution, that schools be run in a lock-step factory-like manner where
instruction was aimed toward the middle and little deviation occurred for
individual differences.
I would therefore propose that special educators at both the
instructional and administrative level bear the duty of ensuring these major
initiatives do not forsake the achievements made by this generational
journey. Special educators must be the
leaders at the district and school level to reconcile the personal approach to
education and the standardization efforts currently underway, not only in New
Jersey but throughout the country.
