Teachable Moments
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Misdiagnosed
Traditionally, there have been many challenges with the special education programs in our districts. Since the Chanda Smith Decree, there have been more concerted efforts to maximize policies, strategies and programs that enhance our special needs learners and fewer instances of students being placed in the special education program because it was more "convenient". More often than not, many of the students who found themselves in these programs were minority, disadvantaged or males.
Recently, I spoke with a colleague who teaches the Severely Mentally Retarded class on her campus. She was puzzled by one of her students who seemed very bright and was able to access knowledge at high ordered levels of thinking. Her gut feeling was that this student showed daily indicators of intelligence that would not necessarily be common among the students enrolled in her class. She checked the IEP and he had been identified "MR" since the first grade!
She was still not convinced, so she pulled up the student's CST scores and to her amazement...the student had scored proficient in both math and English!
Please educators, you are the ones closest to your students. If they need to be identified in any category-bilingual, special needs, gifted/high ability-stay on the pulse of the qualities and challenges of your students.
Continue to be an advocate for your students!
We cannot afford for any student to be "misdiagnosed!!
Recently, I spoke with a colleague who teaches the Severely Mentally Retarded class on her campus. She was puzzled by one of her students who seemed very bright and was able to access knowledge at high ordered levels of thinking. Her gut feeling was that this student showed daily indicators of intelligence that would not necessarily be common among the students enrolled in her class. She checked the IEP and he had been identified "MR" since the first grade!
She was still not convinced, so she pulled up the student's CST scores and to her amazement...the student had scored proficient in both math and English!
Please educators, you are the ones closest to your students. If they need to be identified in any category-bilingual, special needs, gifted/high ability-stay on the pulse of the qualities and challenges of your students.
Continue to be an advocate for your students!
We cannot afford for any student to be "misdiagnosed!!