I'm curious - percentage of students with IEP/504/etc

[DizBelle]

She normally does this in her free time at home or duing conference/meeting times. At younger levels all the tests(at least here) for one grade level is the same. In Jr. High when a teacher makes another test for my son it only takes a few min to either rework the question or take some questions out. Sometimes he needs things read to him and this is done by an aide in most cases. And I had a teacher last night volunteer to do go above and beyond for my son with special needs. He has an IEP and his teacher wants him in the level class. I was worried bc of his accomadations and she said "whatever he's having trouble with I will help. My goal is to find out if he knows the material and I'll do whatever I have to do find out" And she won't do it in class time and disrupt your precious perfect child. She will do in either before or after school or during advisory.

Don't teachers deserve to have free time to spend with their family and to spend conference/meeting time actually participating in the conference/meeting?

 

[princessmom29]

She normally does this in her free time at home or duing conference/meeting times. At younger levels all the tests(at least here) for one grade level is the same. In Jr. High when a teacher makes another test for my son it only takes a few min to either rework the question or take some questions out. Sometimes he needs things read to him and this is done by an aide in most cases. And I had a teacher last night volunteer to do go above and beyond for my son with special needs. He has an IEP and his teacher wants him in the level class. I was worried bc of his accomadations and she said "whatever he's having trouble with I will help. My goal is to find out if he knows the material and I'll do whatever I have to do find out" And she won't do it in class time and disrupt your precious perfect child. She will do in either before or after school or during advisory.

yes, but this is in fact taking the teacher away from other things she could be ding for the rest of the class. Not saying that this is a bad thing, but it does effect the other students. The teacher is doing less somewhere because she is doing more for your son. If it is what needs to be done then by all means it is ok to do it, but she should be realistic about what it will take away form other students and/or her family.

 

[Liberty Belle]

Don't teachers deserve to have free time to spend with their family and to spend conference/meeting time actually participating in the conference/meeting?

What would be the solution for you? Should kids with disabilities not have IEPs? Should they be all put in one special classroom? Of course then the teacher would have even less time per student.

 

[Liberty Belle]

I've taught for about 15 years and I've had from 2 to 5 out of 25 - 28 students in my classroom with IEPs. Like other PPs have stated, there are many other factors that play into the classroom dynamic. I have found that having students with IEPs is helpful because there is extra support given for those students and the classroom teacher who has them. What was more stressful for me as a teacher were those students who were not low enough to get extra support(and there are usually more of these than IEP students), but were not achieving grade level in a subject/subjects. Students need to be about 2 years behind to qualify for spec. ed. services. I would need to do intervention plans for these students, giving them extra instruction and documenting progress. You also would have a few above and beyond students, who also need to be challenged, although they can usually work pretty independently if you do the legwork of planning and accountability. After all this you would have about 10 - 12 average students, but this is the whole essence of living in a community. I would hate to see students separated out and not learn how to work together with our strengths and weaknesses. As students get to middle school, students are offered special labs for extra help, regular classes, and advanced courses.

I have learned as a parent that we do need to be our child's greatest advocate. No one knows our child like us, and sometimes we need to speak up in a respectful way. If you feel like something is taking away from your child's education, bring it up to the teacher. Sometimes a parent voice will help the teacher more clearly see a need or get the support they need from administration.

What I always found frustrating (as a para) were the kids who were too low to get support (they were performing to their ability, which was, unfortunately, very low).

 

[1girln3boys]

Don't teachers deserve to have free time to spend with their family and to spend conference/meeting time actually participating in the conference/meeting?

Conference and meeting times are used for a number of things. And yes they do deserve to spend it with their families. But they know when they become teachers they have do give up so much time. Also it doesn't take much time to adjust a test. There should be a better system in place to help teachers but till then it's not effecting your child what the teacher does in her own time. and ones like my son's teacher is willing to do it it's why she became a teacher.

 

[DizBelle]

What would be the solution for you? Should kids with disabilities not have IEPs? Should they be all put in one special classroom? Of course then the teacher would have even less time per student.

In a class with 25 students, if 15 are getting only 50% of what they need so the other 10 can get 100% of what they need, that is unacceptable.

What would be more acceptable is if all of the students got 90% of what they need.

Resources are not infinite. Someone is going to get shorted and that is to be expected. But if so many get extremely shorted so a few can get everything, that is an unacceptable inbalance.

I am by no means saying that this is the case in every classroom that has students that require accomodations. But you can't tell me that this doesn't happen.

 

[princessmom29]

What would be the solution for you? Should kids with disabilities not have IEPs? Should they be all put in one special classroom? Of course then the teacher would have even less time per student.

No, the solution is reasonable accomodations that balance the needs of the IEP child with the needs of others. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen, for various reasons.

 

[1girln3boys]

In a class with 25 students, if 15 are getting only 50% of what they need so the other 10 can get 100% of what they need, that is unacceptable.

What would be more acceptable is if all of the students got 90% of what they need.

Resources are not infinite. Someone is going to get shorted and that is to be expected. But if so many get extremely shorted so a few can get everything, that is an unacceptable inbalance.

I am by no means saying that this is the case in every classroom that has students that require accomodations. But you can't tell me that this doesn't happen.

Most of my son's classes have a helper for kids with special needs. They will change his schedule if they feel he could really benifit from having the extra help.

 

[Liberty Belle]

In a class with 25 students, if 15 are getting only 50% of what they need so the other 10 can get 100% of what they need, that is unacceptable.

What would be more acceptable is if all of the students got 90% of what they need.

Resources are not infinite. Someone is going to get shorted and that is to be expected. But if so many get extremely shorted so a few can get everything, that is an unacceptable inbalance.

I am by no means saying that this is the case in every classroom that has students that require accomodations. But you can't tell me that this doesn't happen.

Kids with IEPs get only enough needs met to make the chance of their success equal to that of their typical peers.

 

[alaskanabbott]

about the innocence of curiosity:

Other factors that could impact students in a classroom-
Your religion, whether you and your spouse drink, if you are divorced, or going through a divorce. How much money your family makes, if there is mental illness that runs in your family, if your family is dealing with any major life circumstances, such as a death, serious illness, legal problems. All of these things would affect a child in the class, and spill over into other areas of learning....about as much as my son's IEP does. Is it MY business to know these things, or be "curious" enough to come out and ask you? What's the problem, I mean, I'm just curious!

 

[DizBelle]

Conference and meeting times are used for a number of things. And yes they do deserve to spend it with their families. But they know when they become teachers they have do give up so much time. Also it doesn't take much time to adjust a test. There should be a better system in place to help teachers but till then it's not effecting your child what the teacher does in her own time. and ones like my son's teacher is willing to do it it's why she became a teacher.

Anything that affects the teacher will affect the class and the students in it. The teacher is a human being, not a machine.

 

[1girln3boys]

No, the solution is reasonable accomodations that balance the needs of the IEP child with the needs of others. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen, for various reasons.

Here it usually does. My son doesn't take away from your childs classroom time. His accomadations are met with either an aide or outside class time.

 

[princessmom29]

In a class with 25 students, if 15 are getting only 50% of what they need so the other 10 can get 100% of what they need, that is unacceptable.

What would be more acceptable is if all of the students got 90% of what they need.

Resources are not infinite. Someone is going to get shorted and that is to be expected. But if so many get extremely shorted so a few can get everything, that is an unacceptable inbalance.

I am by no means saying that this is the case in every classroom that has students that require accomodations. But you can't tell me that this doesn't happen.

It absoultely does, and I have seen it. Classrooms wher the tacher takes so much time accomodating what she is legally required to that others get left behind DO exist more often that one would think.

 

[1girln3boys]

Anything that affects the teacher will affect the class and the students in it. The teacher is a human being, not a machine.

OK I can see you are just going to be stuborn about this. I'm sorry my son was born with something that he get help. And that bc of that he's taking so much precious time out of your perfect little darlings education.

 

[alaskanabbott]

And BTW- can someone give me a specific example of how kids with IEPs/504's are negatively affecting the learning capability on non-IEP students? How are their private accommodations and modifications making it so that the rest of the class is only getting (as PP said) 50% of their educational needs met?

 

[princessmom29]

Here it usually does. My son doesn't take away from your childs classroom time. His accomadations are met with either an aide or outside class time.

that's just the thing though, that outside of class time is important to other students as well. It is the time the teacher uses to tailor her instruction to best meet the needs of those students. It is the time she uses to correct student work and provide feedback. It is the time she uses to communicate with parents. When that time is cut, the quality of her instruction goes down. A teacher can only do so much on her own time to compensate for that loss. Her family deserves some of hertime as well. That is what I mean when I say accomodations must be reasonable. If i am spending a large part of my planning time outside of class dealing with them, then my students are suffering for it.

I am not saying your child does nto need or deserve what they are getting, just that you have to deal with the reality that someone else isn't getting as much becuase of it.

 

[DizBelle]

Here it usually does. My son doesn't take away from your childs classroom time. His accomadations are met with either an aide or outside class time.

If they had to eliminate teachers and make class sizes larger to be able to hire that aide, that would affect every student in that larger class.

Again, resources are limited. The number of aides that must be hired will affect the number of teachers they can hire. The number of teachers they hire will affect the number of students in the class (fewer teachers, larger classes). Most people seem to agree that smaller class sizes are better for education.

Money doesn't magically appear because a school district has to hire an aide.

 

[princessmom29]

And BTW- can someone give me a specific example of how kids with IEPs/504's are negatively affecting the learning capability on non-IEP students? How are their private accommodations and modifications making it so that the rest of the class is only getting (as PP said) 50% of their educational needs met?

there are days when I have NO plannig time to be spent on my regular ed students becuase I am dealing with IEP accomdations or related paperwork. On thoes days, my students might not be getting the cool demo I had planned to help them understand a concept becuase I didn't have time to get it ready. Or, there is no resource teacher to read a test so I have to do it and give my class seatwork instead of the lab we planned to do. I have a visually impared child so I have to spend a couple of hours at home re-writing atest on graphing to accomodate them so I don't get to put feedback on the tests I graded. Students don't get to find out exactly what they did wrong. I could keeep going, but these are all real examples from my personal experience where my kids have suffered becuase I didn't have enough time to do everything and be everywhere. It happens more than you would like to think becuase teachers need to sleep too.

 

[LuvsDragonflies]

What about Advanced kids? Aren't they also a drain on the teacher? The teacher needs special, advanced courses for them, needs time to make their tests, needs time to talk with their parents, needs to cater to what they need.

But this isn't considered a problem??? Only the kids who need extra help because they are behind are a problem, not the ones who need extras because they are ahead???

 

[Liberty Belle]

And BTW- can someone give me a specific example of how kids with IEPs/504's are negatively affecting the learning capability on non-IEP students? How are their private accommodations and modifications making it so that the rest of the class is only getting (as PP said) 50% of their educational needs met?

My son is removed for 30 minutes every day for writing (he has a writing disability). He also gets two warnings before he "gets in trouble" (not sure what that means - he's only ever gotten one warning)to start doing his work or to get back to doing his work (easily distracted). He rarely gets warnings, so it maybe takes three seconds at most of the teacher's time every day. He gets to wear earplugs in the cafeteria, but he places them in himself. He also is supposed to get a reduced workload/not as many problems on a paper, but I've yet to see that happen. I'm not fighting it, though because it doesn't seem to be an issue for him anymore. It takes less than three seconds to make a big x over some of the problems, if she did do it.

Yes, the teacher has to go to ARC meetings sometimes during her planning. And she does need to read up on his accomodations at the start of the year. Other than that, I can't think of how he takes anything away from the rest of the class. In fact, he adds to it more than the typical child, if you ask me, since his teachers say he is an excellent problem solver and helps them find solutions they'd never thought of.