Restraint is a Good thing- Wait, no it's a Bad thing

Restraint is a Good Thing- No It’s a Bad Thing

Well which is it?  Is restraint a good thing or is it a bad thing?  Maybe it is both.  There is no question in my mind that restraint is over used as a behavior management technique. I was stunned to learn not long ago that the Montgomery County MD school system was the second largest user of restraint in the country. That is a school system generally considered to be one of the best! There is also no doubt that sometimes (though not as often as used), restraint is necessary for the safety of the child and others.  So how do you differentiate?

One of the excuses that I don’t buy, is that because of the child’s disability, “they can’t help it”.  All behavior serves a purpose for the person exhibiting the behavior.  We may not be able to immediately discern that purpose but it exists and serves a purpose for the child.  To suggest that the child (or adult) cannot help the behavior diminishes the humanity of the child. Some behavioral approaches treat the child as if he/she were an animal needing to be trained.  All of our children have feelings that need to be recognized.  The very first effort in changing behavior is to try to figure out from the child’s point of view, the purpose the behavior is serving.  Sometimes a child can tell you and sometimes the child doesn’t have the verbal facility or insight.  Until the adults can figure that out, there needs to be logical consequences for the behavior.  Children with (and without) disabilities will be living in the broader society which does not care if a person has a disability.  There are certain behavioral expectations for living in the larger world and those charged with that preparation, parents and professionals need to take on that responsibility .   Consequences should be immediate and logical.

When is restraint acceptable?   People who are responsible for children with disabilities cannot allow children to hurt others.  Nor should children with disabilities be allowed to hurt themselves.  If a child (any child) is hurting someone else that behavior needs to stop.  If the only way you can get that behavior to stop is a VERY short-term basket hold, then that needs to happen. Just be aware that holding child sends a contradictory message.  On the one hand you are holding the child because you are telling the child he/she cannot be aggressive toward others.  But at the same time you are being aggressive toward the child by holding him/her.  That is one reason the basket hold or any other restraint should be used only as an absolute last resort. The same thing  is true if a child is hurting him or herself.  Most often once the behavior has been stopped the child is grateful for the restraint.  Kids don’t want to hurt others and they don’t want to hurt themselves.

So the answer to the question is restraint is a bad thing- except when it is a good thing necessary to provide safety for someone.

Too many, too few

Too Many, Too Few

One of the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is that significant disproportionality of minorities in special education programs needs to be reported and addressed.   Truthfully, that requirement always troubled me because it took away from what is supposed to be an individual program.  So why not increase the requirement that assessments be culture free to ensure that all children are appropriately identified and provided with the individual education program that the law requires.  

Instead, enforcement has taken a very simplistic approach.  If there are 13% minority children in a district then there should be no more than 13% minority kids receiving special ed services. As usual simple solutions are just that simple.  As a consequence trending data are showing a dramatic decrease in African American and Hispanic children receiving service and a growing increase in the disability rate of white children.  Since these are just data figures, we don't know if kids are missing out on the service they deserve.

Now there appears to be a growing body of research that is seriously challenging these simple ideas.  Where children attended school seemed to be a prime indicator of who would be diagnosed with a disability.  But the results were sort of counter-intuitive.  Researchers looked at children based on factors OTHER than race. Instead they used birth weight, the educational level of the mother, and/or complications during delivery as some of the factors.  Black and Hispanic children were more likely to be identified with a disability if they attended a school that was majority white.  AND much LESS likely to be identified if they attended a school that was majority minority.  One of the reasons offered for these findings is that mostly white schools were more likely to have services to offer all children.  Whereas mostly minority schools did not have the services and under the law, if a child needs a service it must be provided whether or not the school can afford it.  Another interesting finding was that white children were more often identified as having a disability in schools that were mostly minority and that white families fought for their children to receive service even in schools with limited provision. The most predictive factors for all students were poverty, the school the child attended and scores on standard tests.   Another interesting wrinkle in the studies is that some disabilities are considered to have higher status than others and are often more likely to be diagnosed for children with higher social economic status independent of race or ethnicity.  So autism, speech disorders or other health impaired (usually used for ADHD) were more likely to be applied to higher socio-economic groups; while intellectual disabilities and emotional/behavior disorders were more often applied to lower socio-economic groups.

Asking states to do a better job of sorting out proportionality is not likely to happen any time soon.   Just too much trouble.  So how many are too many and how many are too few- simple question, complicated answer.

Where have all the teachers gone?

Where have all the teachers gone?

Gone to other jobs everyone, when will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?   For those of you of a certain age or a fan of the 60’s folk music, you might recognize the play on the lyrics of “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?”  

Today teachers’ salaries are higher than ever.   In Maryland, they are among the highest in the country.  Carroll County Maryland has just announced new teacher salaries will start at $48,000 this coming fall.  Yet in spite of dramatic salary increases, with even more expected as the Kirwan Commission goes into full operation, school systems are having a very hard time hiring and keeping teachers.

In the olden days, workers on the assembly lines at GM, Ford and Chrysler could earn 85-100,000 dollars a year with minimal education and experience, some limited overtime, and great benefits.   These folks worked the job for the salary, retired when they could.   I had a good friend who worked for GM as an engineer. He told me to never buy a car made on a Monday or any day after a holiday. He said workers often came in hung over and were sloppy in their work.

I doubt that teachers come in hungover today.  But what I don’t doubt is that many of them feel much like the workers on the assembly lines.   They are not getting the emotional return on their jobs that they once did.  In many ways they are working on an assembly line.  Pacing guides tell them when to teach and when to move on.   Tight curriculum plans spell out what materials to use and how to teach each concept. They are cautioned against getting emotionally involved with the students.

But what is the point in being a teacher if you can’t get emotionally invested in your kids?   What is the point in being a teacher if you can’t look to creative ways to teach them better?   What is the point of being a teacher if you can’t stop a lesson to find out how a kid is doing now that her parents are separating?   What is the point to being a teacher if you can’t authentically get to know your kids and change up methodology to meet their needs?  Forty-eight thousand dollars a year for a starting teacher will be one of the highest starting salaries in the state.  But it doesn’t answer any of the foregoing questions.  Answer those questions and you will know why all the teachers are going.  And unlike assembly line workers teachers are well-educated and have options.

Not so Quickly

Not so quickly!

Too many people with disabilities are being rushed into guardianships rather than families exploring less-limiting options.  A report out from the National Council on Disability seems to indicate that this pipeline begins at the schoolhouse door.

The study found that 58% of people with intellectual or developmental disabilities ages 18-22 have guardians.  Once this happens, people sometimes remain under guardianship for decades.  The process starts when students turn 18.   In many states that means the child has reached the age of majority and that parents no longer have jurisdiction over the child’s education.  In Maryland, if the child is receiving special education services the parents retain education guardianship until the child graduates or fulfills his/her entitlement.  Many educators do not know the options and often inform or misinform (depending on state law) that guardianship is the only way the family or friend can still have standing at the child’s IEP meeting.  

There are several different types of guardianship and the process for an individual regaining his/her adult rights is often complicated or unknown to the family. In Maryland there are two major types of guardianship for adults (people over 18).   A guardian may be authorized by the court to make decisions for the disabled person about his/her health, care, shelter, education or other daily needs.   A guardian may also be appointed  by the court to manage the property of a disabled person.  A guardian of property may be a person or agency, including a state agency.

In Maryland, each local jurisdiction has an Adult Public Guardianship Review Board that acts as consultant to the guardian.  Every six months the board reviews the case and makes a recommendation to the court to continue, modify or terminate the guardianship.   The local Board consists of a representative from the local department of social services, one physician, one psychiatrist, a representative a non-profit social services agency, an attorney, two citizen representatives, a public health nurse and a professional in the field of the individual’s disability.   This Board does NOT have oversight of private guardianship cases.

Guardianship is very serious and should be imposed on a person only as a last resort.  Educators need to be trained to explain the multiple options that families have for protecting their children’s safety AND respecting their dignity as adults. There are multiple guardian options and families need to get good advice before making such a serious decision.  That good advice seldom comes from a school person.  Let’s not act so quickly without knowing the full menu that is available.

Too scared to think

Too Scared to Think

A test can be an opportunity for a student to show off just how much she has learned.  Or it can be an opportunity for your course grade to plummet or for your high stakes testing to throw you into the pool of students who need an alternative path.

Test anxiety is a very real condition.   People who are afflicted with it can see the work of an entire semester go down the tube in one two-hour period.   Tests really don’t do a good job of measuring how much we know, and students with test anxiety are set up for failure.

We are living in an era when the common wisdom is that standardized tests raise the teaching/learning standard.  That means there is an increasing number of high stakes testing experiences.

There are things teachers can do to alleviate some of the issues.  First of all, prior to the test experience, give students examples of what the test items are going to be like.  Allow kids to answer questions and to question the questions.   Let them break into groups and work out problems together.   If the test is multiple choice, before the test give the students some multiple-choice items on the topic and lead them through the process of figuring out how to pick the correct answer from the several detractors. Directly teach the strategy for eliminating one or more of the detractors and narrowing the field down to the correct answer.

If the test has true/false items, directly teach the children how to look for “red-alert” words such as “never”, “always” and other always words.  

When the test experience is over, review the test with the class.   Ask students to tell you what they answered and why they did.  For items a student got wrong, walk them through the process to get it right.

Some people will tell you that is cheating.  That attitude always confuses me.   If the point of testing is to discover what the child knows about a topic as opposed to tricking the child, why is it cheating to help the child have the best shot of showing what they know.  I once had a teacher tell me that she knew in advance of any test which students would do well and who would not.  I couldn't figure out what the point was of giving the test. 

Of course, there is one more question to ask.   If we know that there are some humans who have such great test anxiety that they literally can’t think straight on  a test- why are we still giving them tests?   Could it be that we are too scared to think of another option to measure learning besides a written test?   Something to think about.

Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather

When I was a kid, my mother regularly reminded me of the old adage “birds of a feather flock together”.    Usually this was issued as a warning sign to be careful of who my friends were because if I chose poorly, I would be judged by their behavior as well as my own.

In the course of human events, we seem to have forgotten that old saw. It is both a warning and a commentary on human nature.   Advocates of full inclusion tell us that when children with disabilities are in the same classrooms as plain kids, the plain kids will embrace the children with disabilities and invite them to parties and to hang at the mall with them.  Somehow, these folks have neglected to look at their own feathered friends.   In doing so they will find that their friends are all “of the same feather”.  So it is not at all unusual for people of deep faith to socialize with others of deep faith.   Ditto political progressives, sports fans, and a multitude of other areas around which people affiliate.   It has also been noted by the recently divorced or widowed, that they are frequently now left out of their previous social set. 

So it is with adults with disabilities.  Cast out into the world, often lacking places of employment where they can make new friends, people with disabilities are deeply missing a social component in their lives.   It is not surprising that when an organization is willing to leap into the breach, many are clamoring to come.  Once a month, an organization in Baltimore transforms its setting into a night club event for adults with disabilities.   Folks come with walkers, support aides and parents.   They also come with enthusiasm, excitement, and an eagerness to make new friends.   They are even looking for love in all the right places.  Refreshments are served (no alcohol), music is played, people are dancing, chatting and just having fun.  Attendance continues to grow every month. Attendees pay a fee, support people for the attendee do not.

 Everyone wants to be some place where they are typical.   As humans we want to be like the other folks in our pack.  That is why there are restaurants and clubs frequented by people of similar ethnic backgrounds, socio economic status, or religious beliefs.   Now we have a once-a-month club for people with disabilities. It is the only one regularly operating in spite of the huge need.   Hopefully there will soon be more.  After all birds of a feather do flock together including those birds who are not your typical flock.

Is it really necessary to attend school

Is it really necessary to attend school?

How often does a student need to attend class to receive credit for that course?   That is not a rhetorical question.   Recent reports show that some students in Montgomery County Maryland high schools have attended class only 60% of the time and yet have earned credit for that course.  How can that be?   Isn’t it necessary to be in class in order for the student to learn the course content?

I think the answer is yes and no.

First of all many high school students miss school because of family responsibilities.  Some kids have jobs to help their families survive day-to-day.   Some kids take care of younger siblings so that both parents can work.  Are these good reasons to miss school?  Well it depends on just how critical that student’s contribution to the family's economy is.

Some kids miss school because they are bored to death.   The required pacing guides mean that teachers can’t stay on a topic longer than needed because they have another topic to do on another day.   That also means, teachers can’t dig deeper into a topic if students are really interested or curious.   Tomorrow is another day in the pacing guide.   Each day’s curriculum is carefully laid out.  Like Goldilocks, teachers can’t go too fast or too slow; they need to get it just right.  Smart kids can miss school, come back later, and as with a soap opera, know just where the story is going.

The issue is not whether it is terrible that some kids are graduating this June after having missed 40% of their classes, the issue is why are these kids missing so much school and why don’t we look to see if there are things we can do about that.

On the other hand, maybe the answer is that kids don’t really need to be in school all that much in order to master the material as it is currently being delivered to them.  One of the students who attends school regularly, complained that it was not fair that the students who missed so much school were going to get the same diploma he was getting and he went to school every day.   That boy is totally missing the point of going to school.  While it is true that both kids might get the same piece of paper, it is also true that each student is getting a totally different education.  Hopefully the boy who attended school every day had learning experiences that far exceeded those of the boy who was absent a great deal.  State regulation says that students need to meet the aggregate time requirement of the local school system necessary to earn the credit.  Some school districts have moved away from a set number of hours and instead use an academic standard.   If one looks at the situation from that perspective, maybe some kids only need to be in school 60% of the time. Then again, that premise presumes that all we learn we learn in school.   Maybe we can learn as much or more without being in school.