GCSD starts a long journey to close gaps, include all students
The Enterprise — Melissa Hale-Spencer
It takes a village: Peter Brabant, principal of Altamont Elementary School, at right, introduces staffers who have helped Michael Puzio. From left, in front, are Rachel Ehatt, a special education teacher; Kelly Vrooman, a physical therapist; Carol Wheelock, an occupational therapist, and, in back, social worker Louisa Lombardo, seated, and nurse Kathy Oliver, standing. The introductions were made at the Nov. 11 Guilderland School board meeting.
GUILDERLAND — Last year, Demian Singleton stood in the back of a classroom at Altamont Elementary School.
“I was tearing up,” he told The Enterprise. “It was my a-ha moment.”
He was watching third-graders interact with Michael Puzio, a bright classmate.
“They saw Michael not as a child with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair. They saw Michael as a person,” Singleton said. “I believe in the core of my soul every child will have a different perspective because they know Michael.”
Singleton, the assistant superintendent for instruction at Guilderland, wants to “transform the culture” of the district as part of a nationwide movement for inclusion.
Last week, the State Education Department released a blueprint for special education inclusion in New York.
Singleton said about 13 percent of the students at Guilderland are classified as having disabilities. At this point, there is no timeline for the transformation, and no tallies of what it might cost, he said.
As school leaders have pored over data from standardized tests in recent years, Singleton said, “We have been observing some notable achievement gaps between students with disabilities and the general population,” he said.
Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA, made into law in 1975 and updated since, students are to be educated in the least restrictive environment.
“Some of the approaches we’ve used for a long time,” Singleton said, emphasizing that these approaches were well intentioned, “have inadvertently denied the access we are legally and morally required to provide.”
He went on, “The spirit of the IDEA is you have to exhaust all related services before you segregate them out…It’s easy to say, ‘This child has a disability so he won’t perform at the same level’” But, he went on, “It’s crystal, crystal clear in the research that lack of access to general curriculum compromises their ability to achieve.”
The 2004 IDEA states, “Almost 30 years of research and experience has demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by having high expectations for such children and ensuring their access to the general education curriculum in the regular classroom, to the maximum extent possible.”
Last Tuesday, Singleton made a presentation to the school board outlining some of the common practices Guilderland currently uses that undermine inclusion:
— Pull-out programs, where students leave the classroom for extra help, missing lessons and being stigmatized;
— Self-contained programs, usually for students with significant disabilities, which lead to teacher burnout, and low rates of employment and independent living for students once they graduate;
— Dense clustering of students with special needs, often exceeding natural proportions; and
— One-on-one support from teaching assistants, which reduces teacher involvement and can lead to separation from classmates and unnecessary dependence.
Singleton outlined a “a new direction” for the district in which general education would always be the starting point; the focus would be on what students can do, not what they can’t do; competence would be presumed; natural proportions would be the goal in all classrooms; students would be placed in their home schools; special education would be viewed as a service, not a place; and strategies would be used to make students more independent.
Singleton stressed that children must feel like they belong before they can learn. He also quoted from the landmark 1954 United States Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Topeka board of Education, that led to school desegregation.
“Segregation…has a detrimental effect upon the [segregated] children…[as it is] usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the [segregated] group,” the decision said. “A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn….Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Director for Pupil Personnel Services Lisa Knowles told the board, “Inclusion is a philosophy, not a program.”
She went over a series of “common myths” to be dispelled by facts grounded in research. One myth is that it’s unrealistic for general-education teachers to meet the needs of students with disabilities.
“No studies conducted since the late 1970s have shown an academic advantage for students with intellectual and other developmental disabilities educated in separate settings,” she said quoting a 2004 study by M. A. Falvey.
Knowles also said the National Longitudinal Transition Study looked at 11,000 students with a range of disabilities and found more time in the classroom correlated with fewer school absences, less disruptive behavior, and more success at holding jobs and living independently after graduation.
Knowles also cited research that showed the presence of students with disabilities in a classroom results in more typical students making reading and math progress compared to the progress of typical students schooled in classrooms without special-needs students.
“There’s no self-contained McDonald’s. There’s no self-contained Walmart’s,” said Knowles, indicating the world at large doesn’t segregate people with disabilities.
Knowles also said, “All teachers in their heart are teachers of all students.” So, she said, when it comes to including students with disabilities, or students who come from poverty, or students who come from different cultural backgrounds, “You can share ownership.”
“It’s not easy work,” Singleton told The Enterprise. “Special education is a service that is portable and should be brought to the classroom. Right now, we’re mapping out how we deliver those services.”
The district has hired a consultant, Julie Causton, a professor in the Inclusive and Special Education Program in the Department of Teaching and Leadership at Syracuse University. She has been working with Guilderland educators at various grade levels, Singleton said, on such techniques as collaborative teaching, behavioral strategies, and the universal design of lessons.
Universal design of lessons allows students of varied abilities to have choices in how they learn. “It’s presenting information in models and ways students can access it differently,” Singleton explained.
Behavioral problems sometimes emerge, said Singleton, because students can get frustrated “with things we do.” He gave the example of transitions to pull-out sessions. “When you remove students from the classroom,” Singleton said, “they lose sight of the norms and expectations there; they miss the routines.”
Although “mainstreaming” special-needs students was popular in an earlier era, Singleton said “inclusive schools” are different because there is “a whole school shift of community-wide expectations and norms.”
Singleton explained, “Every child in a classroom has strengths and weaknesses, disabilities, if you will…That’s acceptable and valued.”
With mainstreaming, he said, a light was shone on the disability. With inclusiveness, “We shift our expectations. We’re not trying to make everyone normal. We shift to a mindset of focusing on what the student can do, not what the student can’t do.”
He concluded, “It’s complex work; it will take years.”
Asked how students with special needs would be supported when they are not in the classrooms, such as on bus rides or during lunch periods, Singleton said, “Very encouraging things are already happening in our district.” He named the Best Buddies programs at the middle school and high school where general education students become friends and mentors of special-needs students.
“Compassionate, empathetic kids make sure they are valued and supported,” Singleton said.
