Presenter: Mary Beth Rolak-Sieracki: NBCT: Project Collage

1. Are We There Yet?Critical Issues in Urban Special Education: Improving Outcomes for Students with DisabilitiesHarvard Graduate School of EducationA 2006 Retrospective Presenter: Mary Beth Rolak-Sieracki: NBCT: Project Collage Illinois Reading Council Springfield, Illinois October 3, 2014

2. My Background • From July 18 to July 22, 2006, I joined the Chief Officers and representatives from Specialized Services, Literacy, Math, Language and Culture, and the Area Instruction Offices of Chicago Public Schools at the Critical Issues in Urban Special Education Institute held at Harvard University. • I wrote the summary report of the Institute for CPS.

3. Conference presenters shared findings of their extensive research related to serving the needs of all children – from birth to graduation. • Two robust themes emerged and were interwoven throughout the research presented – relationships and access – critical factors in ensuring that all students benefit from their schooling experiences.

4. Jack Shonkoff, M.D. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University Author of: “The Science of Early Childhood Development” “Closing the Gap Between What We Know and What We Do to Promote Early Learning During the Early Childhood Years”

5. Social, emotional, and cognitive development are highly interrelated. Tweet Like9 people like this. Be the first of your friends.

6. Healthy development depends on the quality and reliability of a young child’s relationships with the important people in his or her life, both within and outside the family. • Even the development of a child’s brain architecture depends on the establishment of these relationships.

7. Preparing children to succeed in school requires that we pay as much attention to children’s emotional well-being and social capacities as we do to their cognitive abilities and academic skills.

8. Children who develop warm, positive relationships with their kindergarten teachers are: • More excited about learning, • More positive about coming to school • More self-confident • Will achieve more in the classroom.

9. Essential features of “effective interventions” • Individualization of service delivery • Provider knowledge, skills, and relationship with the family. It’s all about relationships. “You can’t provide state of the art intervention if you don’t have state-of-the-art knowledge.”

10. Quality of program implementation • Family-centered, community-based, and coordinated orientation. “Children are not educated by curriculum; they are educated by people.”

11. Broad access to high-quality preschool for 3 and 4 year olds, with proactive enrollment from low-income families, can be an effective strategy to reduce early inequalities in opportunity. • It’s morally wrong for children to begin life with limited opportunity.

12. Warm hearts and a bag of toys are noteffective interventions.

13. Margaret J. McLaughlin, M.D. Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Exceptional Children and Youth at University of Maryland Author of: “The School as the Unit of Improvement” “Moving Beyond the IEP”

14. From from the mid to late 1980s, we had a model that solidified the “separate system” of educating children. During this time special education’s focus is on uniform implementation of a complex law and solidifies itself as a separate program with its own policy goals and practices.

15. The “inclusion” years followed in the 1990’s. Assessment and accountability “hit” schools and general education teachers begin to lose control over curriculum and pedagogy. Special educators maintain control over special education through the IEP.

16. During the NCLB years (2000 - ) “accountability” hits special education. Improving test scores, not just assessment participation, becomes the policy goal. All children must now attain an adequate level of achievement of the state standards.

17. The Result: • Special educators sense a loss of control over the IEP and tension between individual versus school accountability and improvement emerges. • Special education begins to grapple with its identity.

18. What do we see inside good schools? • Curriculum is linked to standards and allteachers know what is in the curriculum. • General education teachers know what they are to teach and how to teach it (strength observed in using strategies in large and small group settings).

19. Collaboration and communication is fluid and almost informal. • Special educators have strong pedagogy and work in flexible support roles.

20. Curriculum access is becoming the driverof special education-the IEP supports access to the curriculum. • The focus of special education is to support the student learning important and challenging knowledge, skills, and processes, therefore special education must be organized as a curriculum support – not simply reactive to individual needs.

21. Creating the conditions for access to the curriculum… • Develop “collective responsibility”. Expect that every teacher accepts responsibility for all children’s progress in the curriculum and in the social and behavioral domains.

22. To provide real access to the general education curriculum… • Teachers must understand the “intended” curriculum (related to standards) as distinguished from the “taught” curriculum (modified). • IEPs must align with the intended curriculum and goals must reflect a systematic scope and sequence of a knowledge domain.

23. Teachers must distinguish between accommodations and modifications • Accommodations are supports or services that do not alter the construct being taught or assessed. • Modifications change the content and/or performance expectations in the intended curriculum.

24. Remember…Special education is a service, not a place.

25. Thomas Hehir, Ed.D Professor of Practice in Learning Differences at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Author of: “Effective Inclusive Schools” “Designing Successful Schoolwide Programs”

26. In an age of standards-based reform and inclusion, what is the proper role for general education, and to what degree are regular educators accountable for students with disabilities? • Are the only important results of our efforts performance on standards-based assessments, or do we have a more robust agenda?

27. Negative cultural assumptions about disability continue to have a pervasive influence on the education of children with disabilities, contributing to low level of educational attainment and employment. • The assumption that disabilities must be “overcome” means that school time is devoted to various therapies that may take away from the time needed to learn academic material.

28. The reasons for the lack of acceptable educational outcomes for students with disabilities are complex. The main symptom of dyslexia is the failure to learn to read, and yet dyslexic children are not the only children who struggle with reading. • Some students’ failure to read may be due to poor instruction.

29. There is evidence that of the 12 to 18 percent of the K-1 student population that has the most difficulty learning to read, research-based interventions are effective with 70% (Lyon et al., 2001). • These students are described in the literature as those who fail to respond to intervention (RTI).

30. Most experts agree that dyslexia, the most common disability served by special education, is a life-long disability (Shaywitz, 2003). • The point is that dyslexia is highly responsive to context (how reading is taught) and that some students may be functionally disabled due to educational and environmental deprivation.

31. “I believe the role of special education should be to minimize the impact of disability and maximize the opportunities for children with disabilities to participate in general education in their natural community.”

32. The importance of integration into general education environments should be a central consideration.

33. Special education teachers teaching subjects they are not qualified to teach is a common practice that likely increases the impact of a disability.

34. Using the analogy of architecture, we often attempt to retrofit the children with inappropriate interventions after they have failed in school rather than design the instructional program from the beginning to allow for access and success.

35. Given the centrality of competent reading to all educational attainment, is it possible to design reading programs that prevent reading failure among those at risk, both disabled and non-disabled?

36. Loujeania Boost Director and Co- Principal Investigator at National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities Intervening early and getting students “back on track” to graduation will not only reduce drop-out rate but will positively impact: Middle grade and high-school test scores Attendance Learning environment

37. Academic solutions include: • Remedial education/fast-track curriculum models • Language! (corrective and strategic reading) • Institutionalizing the curricula (relates to Tom Hehir’s concept of universal design) • From a developmental perspective, academic engagement is the key to dropout on the personal side of the equation. (Alexander, Entwisle, $ Horsey, 1997) • Engagement has been describe as the critical variable in dropout prevention and intervention efforts (Grannis, 1994).

38. Guiding principles of dropout prevention initiative: • Think about your end goal – a focus on school completion encompasses a broader view than simply preventing dropout. • Engaging students in school and learning is a key ingredient in preventing dropout and keeping kids in school (participation, identification, social bonding, personal investment in learning). • Use evidence-based practices and interventions. • Measuring the effectiveness of your efforts is essential to assessing progress and replication by others. • Beginearly – high school is too late!

39. Some effective strategies: • Establish systems to routinely monitor alterable variables. • Help students build relationships at school. • Increase family engagement and school involvement. • Invest in improvements in early childhood education – reading and math. • Invest in mentoring and tutoring. • Provide enhancements that increase school-wide social competence-positive behavioral supports. • Improve quality of instruction that leads to academic success.

40. Karen Mapp Ed.D Senior Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Author of: “The Why, What and How of Effective School, Family and Community Partnerships”

41. Parent and community involvement that is linked to improved student learning has a greater effect on achievement than more general forms of involvement.

42. The keys to building partnerships: • When programs and initiatives focus on building trusting and respectful relationships among school staff, families, and community members, these programs are effective in creating and sustaining meaningful partnerships. • Programs that effectively connect with parents evidence the three-step process: Welcoming, Honoring, Connecting.

43. Overall finding: There is a positive and convincing relationship between family involvement and benefits for students, including improved academic achievement. This relationship holds across families of all economic, racial/ethnic, and educational backgrounds and for students of all ages.

44. Four years after publication of the findings presented at The Critical Issues in Urban Education Institute and using the best they know about a field still evolving: What practices/policies in classrooms and schools best minimize a student’s disability and maximize his/her participation with grade level peers?

45. Fast forward to 2010… During the same year that brought Common Core State Standards to more than 40 states, I attended: The 25th Annual Learning Differences ConferenceHarvard Graduate School of EducationPrograms in Education: Overview of 25 Years of Research and PracticeMarch 19 – 20, 2010

46. The 25th Annual Learning Differences ConferenceHarvard Graduate School of EducationPrograms in Education: Overview of 25 Years of Research and Practice Presenter: Mary Beth Rolak-Sieracki: NBCT Originally presented: March 26, 2010 Chicago, IL

47. Dr. Thomas Hehir Dr. Lynn Meltzer Dr. Robert Sternberg Dr. Kurt Fischer Dr. Donald Deshler Dr. Robert Brooks Dr. David Rose

48. Conference Presenters Dr. Lynn Meltzer President/Director of Research at the Research Institute for Learning and Development; Associate Professor of Education: Harvard; Past-president and fellow of the prestigious International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities Dr. Thomas Hehir Professor of Practice at Harvard Graduate School of Education; Director of the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (1993-1999); played a leading role in developing the Clinton Administration’s proposal for the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

49. Dr. Robert Brooks Faculty: Harvard Medical School; former Director of the Dept. of Psychology at McLean University Dr. Donald Deshler Received a presidential appointment to serve as a member of the National Institute for Literacy Advisory Board; advisor to U.S. State Department; Distinguished Professor of Special Education and the Director of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) at the University of Kansas Dr. Kurt Fischer Charles Bigelow Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Founder and Director of the Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) program

50. Dr. David Rose Lecturer: Harvard Graduate School of Education; Specialist in developmental neuropsychology and in the universal design of learning technologies; Founder of CAST (the Center for Applied Special Technology) in order to expand opportunities for students with disabilities through the innovative development and application of technology Dr. Robert Sternberg Professor of Psychology: Tufts University; IBM Professor of Psychology and Education and Management at Yale University; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; past-president of the American Psychological Association (APA)