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Special-Needs Students Transform into Pop Stars

Tuesday 20. of December 2011

Dozens of adoring fans flocked to the Fair Lawn High School Library in New Jersey last Friday morning for the world premiere of a new music video by nine of the school's Bridges II students. Accustomed to the film cranes, scoop lighting and boom mics from their last shoot, the day's stars -- dressed in award show garb -- seemed unfazed by the horde of photographers and videographers on hand to capture the unveiling of their moving rendition of Miley Cyrus', "The Climb." Doreen Yates, the primary instructor for the Bridges II program, which serves 16- to 21-year olds with cognitive disabilities, said she truly considered the students superstars. "This has been an amazing journey for [the Bridges II students]," Yates said. "What began as a small idea, quickly evolved into a life-altering experience...Today you will see the students, who not only enjoy life, but now also truly believe in themselves." To read more, click here

'Teaching Interns' Help Lacking Schools

Thursday 08. of December 2011

Three months ago, at age 54, Jeffery O'Keefe embarked on the career of his dreams. Not running a multinational corporation or coaching a professional sports team -- although he does toss around a football fairly often throughout the day while teaching and coaching at Apache Junction High School. O'Keefe teaches math, science and life skills to kids with severe learning disabilities and spends most afternoons working as an assistant coach for the school's freshman football team. "I love it," said O'Keefe, who left a stressful career in public administration before making the career switch. "People complain about their lives. I say 'Change it.' You can reinvent yourself at any point in your life if you have the will and the energy." A key part of O'Keefe's new life is a relatively new type of teaching certificate granted by the Arizona Department of Education to people who already have college degrees and want to become public-school teachers but don't want to go back to college for another four years. To read more, click here

Early Child Sleep Loss Increases ADHD Symptoms

Thursday 15. of September 2011

Preschoolers who get less sleep are more likely to be hyperactive and inattentive in kindergarten, U.S. researchers found. Lead author Erika Gaylor, a senior researcher for SRI International, an independent, non-profit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif., says although less sleep in preschool-age children predicted worse parent-reported hyperactivity and inattention at kindergarten, but hyperactivity and inattention at preschool did not predict sleep duration at kindergarten. The study involves about 6,860 children with analyses controlled for gender, ethnicity and family income. To read more, click here

Federal Judge Holds Bullied Special Education Student Denied Education

Thursday 07. of July 2011

In a case where a 12 year old with autism was subject to routine bullying, Judge Jack Weinstein recently issued an important decision in a precedent setting New York case, TK v. NYC Department of Education. The judge ruled that "when a school fails to take reasonable steps to prevent such objectionable harassment of a student, it has denied her an education benefit protected by statute." The case is remarkable in a number of contexts. First, Judge Weinstein overruled the Independent Hearing Officer (IHO) and the State Review Officer's decision to the contrary. Second, the decision was one for first impression for the 2nd Circuit, and Judge Weinstein blazed a bold trail in ruling for the parents and in establishing a new test to be used in deciding whether bullying can be found to deprive a child of a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). Finally, no other judicial circuit has come out as strongly against the bullying of special education students. To read more, click here

Common-Core Tests to Have Built-in Accommodations

Wednesday 08. of June 2011

When Michael Hock was a special education teacher, he spent hours slicing quarter-inch slits in the center of index cards so that his students could use them to isolate individual words and sentences while taking standardized tests. When a new generation of tests-the common-core assessments-is unveiled in a few years, special education teachers should be able to put away their index cards and all the other shortcuts and homemade solutions they have created over the years to make paper-and-pencil tests accessible for many students with disabilities. That's because the new, computerized tests will have accommodations for most students with disabilities built right in. To read more, click here

Early Childhood Education Program Yields High Economic Returns

Wednesday 09. of February 2011

For every $1 invested in a Chicago early childhood education program, nearly $11 is projected to return to society over the children's lifetimes -- equivalent to an 18 percent annual return on program investment, according to a study led by University of Minnesota professor of child development Arthur Reynolds in the College of Education and Human Development. For the analysis, Reynolds and other researchers evaluated the effectiveness of the Chicago Public Schools' federally funded Child Parent Centers (CPCs) established in 1967. Their work represents the first long-term economic analysis of an existing, large-scale early education program. Researchers surveyed study participants and their parents, and analyzed education, employment, public aid, criminal justice, substance use and child welfare records for the participants through to age 26. To read more, click here

Mentoring Issues in Question for Special Educators

Thursday 13. of January 2011

While teacher mentoring has become nearly ubiquitous as an education reform, new research suggests state and district mentoring policies may leave gaps in support for special education teachers. Mentoring, in which a new or struggling teacher is matched with an expert instructor for support and training, has won broad support from union leaders to governors; federal school improvement grants even recommend it as an intervention for improving low-performing schools. Nearly all states have a teacher mentoring program of some sort-most as part of induction for new teachers-but some, such as Alabama and Virginia, for any teacher who isn't meeting state teaching standards. Most states require preservice student teaching for special educators, said George A. Giuliani, the executive director of the Washington-based National Association of Special Education Teachers, but he agreed that those teachers often have less access to mentors once they actually begin to teach....Mentors can help general and special education teachers alike, Dr. Giuliani said, if they focus on helping teachers differentiate instruction and use a universal design for learning. Universal design, a term taken from architectural design, involves teaching and classroom space that allow a wide variety of students, including those with disabilities or English-language learners, to access the curriculum. To read more, click here

U.S. News and World Reports 50 Best Careers in 2011: Special Education Teacher

Wednesday 08. of December 2010

Whether teaching a class of special-education students or working with individual students in a general-education classroom, as a special-education teacher, it's your job to ensure that these students learn despite their disabilities. You may spend your day using sign language to teach deaf students, or working with students who were born with mental retardation. Or maybe you'll work with students who have learning disabilities, ensuring that they receive the necessary test-taking accommodations, such as removal of time limits. Your responsibilities may also include helping general-education teachers adapt their lesson plans for students with learning disabilities, working with parents on ways they can help their children at home, or learning about assistive technologies that could improve the classroom experience for your students. To read more, click here

Parents' Efforts Key in Children's Educational Performance

Wednesday 10. of November 2010

A new study by researchers at the University of Leicester and University of Leeds has concluded that parents' efforts towards their child's educational achievement is crucial -- playing a more significant role than that of the school or child. This research by Professor Gianni De Fraja and Tania Oliveira, both in the Economics Department at the University of Leicester and Luisa Zanchi, at the Leeds University Business School, has been published in the latest issue of the MIT based Review of Economics and Statistics. The researchers found that parents' effort is more important for a child's educational attainment than the school's effort, which in turn is more important than the child's own effort. The study found that the socio-economic background of a family not only affected the child's educational attainment -- it also affected the school's effort.

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Teaching Interns Illegally Rated as "Qualified"

Wednesday 06. of October 2010

California has violated federal law by classifying thousands of inexperienced, noncredentialed teachers as "highly qualified" and assigning them to schools with heavily low-income and minority enrollments, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was a victory for impoverished families in Richmond, Hayward and Los Angeles who filed suit in 2007. They claimed their schools were saddled with disproportionate numbers of untrained interns because of federal and state regulations that flouted federal law. The appeals court ruled 2-1 against the families in July 2009, saying the federal No Child Left Behind Act leaves such decisions largely up to the states. On Monday, after reviewing further arguments, the same panel reversed itself, reinterpreted the law and ruled 2-1 against the government. The ruling doesn't require school districts to fire interns or bar them from teaching core subjects. But it requires districts in California - and potentially other states - to change their assignment policies so that the least-prepared teachers are not routinely placed in the neediest schools, said John Affeldt, a lawyer for the families. To read more, click here