No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

There have been many developments in the world of education recently, particularly in New York City.  However, there is one issue that is very personal and most pressing for me, as decisions which will affect the life of one child will be made tomorrow.

Several months ago, in November, one student was brought up as a concern because she was making very little academic progress.  According to observations, there seemed to be a delay in comprehension, oral and written.  A request was submitted for the child to be evaluated (in November).  The school social worker filed the request – in her filing cabinet.  Subsequent inquiries were met with the response: it takes a few weeks to process the paper work.  In January, after more than several weeks, the issue was finally looked into, and it was discovered that the case was never really opened.  However, that is neither here nor there at this point.

The child was evaluated and found to be functioning at or above average in all but three areas, which pertained to reading comprehension.  A recommendation was made by the administration to place the child in a self-contained special education classroom.  However, this particular child’s learning disability is not so severe as to warrant a self-contained room with students who have severe behavior problems.  There will be a recommendation, and a decision, tomorrow to move the child into a cooperative teaching (CTT) classroom where there is a mix of special ed and general ed students.  I do not believe that moving the child into the CTT room is the right decision for several reasons.

Ideally, in a CTT classroom, the two teachers work in tandem to provide instruction and services to ALL the students in the room.  When you walk into a CTT room, there should be no visible differentiation between the general ed kids and the special ed kids.  In this CTT room, the special ed students are separated from the general ed students, and it is clear that one teacher works with special ed and one with general ed.  This observation has been made by many teachers who frequent the CTT room. This child needs extra time and help in her reading.  She does not need lowered standards, as the special ed kids in the CTT room need. Additionally, she does not need to be separated from other children to complete her work; she does everything that is asked of her.

The other reason is that there are only three months of school left.  Why move a child at this point in the school year?  She is making progress, albeit slowly, but progress, nonetheless.  To move her now would be psychologically and emotionally detrimental to her.  The child is cognizant of the fact that she is not performing on standard, but she is trying.  She would understand that  her move to a CTT room is reflective of her work now.  What she needs is reinforcement, not a new environment.  She is also being removed from her friends and the environment that she has adapted to over the year.

When concerns were brought to the administration, their response was that a seat needed to be filled.  If the seat in the CTT room is not filled, then the school is open to receiving an outside student.  Essentially, the belief is “the evil we know is better than the evil we don’t”, except that the “evil we know” is not really so bad.  There would be more damage done to the child in this move.  However, the concern here is not the child; it is the prevention of any new special ed student coming into the school.  The damage done to one child is worth the unknown behavior problems that we might have.

I brought this child up as a concern, and to determine whether there was a learning disability that I didn’t understand.  There are other teachers and I who want to provide the child with more support and help.  However, what we are “providing” for the child now seems more like a punishment.