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Teachers leery of new standards

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Special education students may see biggest changes

School work:
Jacob Reiman (right) works on a class project with the help of teacher Peggy Bloczynski in the fiifth grade at Osolo Elementary School. Special education teachers, like those who work with Jacob, are leery about new requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Photo: Fred Flury / The Truth

ELKHART -- Tougher requirements on teachers are intended to guarantee a highly qualified teacher in each classroom and better learning. But special-education students' needs may be neglected as the new standards are implemented, local experts warn.

They worry that school administrators will try to get around the particularly tough requirements on special-education teachers by mainstreaming special-education students from self-contained classes into regular classrooms.

"It's not always in the best interest of the child to be in the classroom," said Jeanna Salyer, teacher for the Clarion alternative middle-school program in Goshen. "I'm afraid a lot of kids will be caught in the middle.

Clarion, which operates from the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Goshen, is a voluntary program that provides an alternative environment for students who have difficulty functioning in a traditional school environment.

"We'll probably have many students going to special education for English going into regular classes, classroom sizes are going to be bigger, they may not get the help they need, there'll be frustration in general education teachers as to how to adjust the material."

According to the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act, teachers must be "highly qualified" with a state license and college degree in each core subject they teach, for instance English, math, reading or language arts, science, history, civics and government, geography, economics, fine arts and foreign languages.

The problem is that special-education teachers must be highly qualified in each of those subjects if they are the primary teacher. There's no such requirement if they're teaching alongside a regular teacher.

Mary Beth Hamilton, director of the Elkhart County Special Education Cooperative, said most regular teachers will meet the requirements at the end of the school year, but that many local special-education teachers won't be qualified by the new standards.

"We're OK within our cooperative with the exception of providing direct instruction in self-contained classrooms," Hamilton said.

ECSEC includes six school districts -- Goshen, Concord, Baugo, Middlebury, Fairfield and Wa-Nee.

Hamilton didn't know how many local special-education teachers aren't qualified, but said some districts are already mainstreaming students.

She said she has received several e-mails from area teachers worried about their special-education students being placed in regular classrooms to avoid having "unqualified" teachers in pull-out sections.

"They'd be in hot water if they said that publicly," she said.

Some special-education students, such as Jacob Reiman in Osolo Elementary (see related story), have taken general education classes with success, as long as they follow certain core subjects as special education.

At Memorial High School, it has been a positive experience to have special-needs students in regular classrooms so far, said Mary Jo Sartorius, director of special education at Elkhart Community Schools.

ISTEP scores for special-education students have gone up from 25 percent passing in 2003 to 33 percent in 2006, she said.

"We have kids passing ISTEP now that we couldn't even think would take it 10 years ago, but there's a point where we have to be realistic," Sartorius said. "Kids can make improvements in general education. If we do this well, we can have some success stories, but at Memorial, we still offer self-contained math classes."

In Elkhart Community Schools, about 2,300 students, or 17 percent, receive some kind of special-education services, she said.

The deadline for meeting standards is the end of this school year, but may be extended until 2007. If not, it would be almost impossible for Elkhart schools to continue to offer self-contained classes in seventh through 10th grade in the new year, Sartorius said.

On the other hand, it would be problematic to put students with mental handicaps, autism, severe behavioral or emotional disabilities into regular classrooms all the time.

"If it triggers behaviors; it's not good for anyone," she said. "It's very disruptive and could put others at risk. It's not fair to special-education students to put them in a situation like that. We have an obligation to keep children safe and we don't want anyone to get hurt."

Sally Schleuter, who teaches emotionally disabled students, said students in her class can't function in a general education setting because they need smaller class sizes and more support.

"One of the benefits to these students is, being in self-contained rooms, we can take care of them individually," she said. "There's a lot less anxiety and more structure. And I know what their triggers are. If there's a problem, I can attend to it right on the spot. If you're one teacher with 20 students, that's just not feasible."

It all boils down to one question, said Salyer of Clarion.

"The issue is, is it in the best interest of students, or will they be cheated out of what's best for them?"

Contact Gitte Laasby at glaasby@etruth.com.

http://www.etruth.com/News/Content.aspx?ID=370258&page=

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