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Marin County parent Alyson Sinclair said it was difficult to notice data that clearly explains the options available to students in special education. Credit: Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource

Viii minutes into a public meeting on how to reform the state's vast special education system, the adult female who ran special education in California for nine years came up to the microphone. Alice Parker was blunt.

"I wish I could have a 'do-over' for the 45 years I worked in special education," Parker, who retired in 2005 as director of the California Department of Instruction's Special Education Sectionalisation, told representatives of a new Statewide Special Teaching Task Force at a public forum Monday. Parker regretted a system that she said has a history of labeling children as barely able to learn, rather than revamping the manner teachers provide instruction in reading, writing, oral communication and math – particularly for the vast numbers of students with learning disabilities.

In an interview after the meeting Parker, who likewise served as an assistant superintendent of public teaching in the state, added: "Our kids aren't disabled, our system is."

Parker and many of the 25 parents, teachers and advocates who attended the  forum on a rainy afternoon in Redwood Urban center strongly urged the task force to printing forward with its work of re-envisioning how the state educates nearly 700,000 children in special educational activity. Those students brand up almost ten per centum of all public education students and take a wide range of disabilities, including dyslexia, speech impairment and autism.

The iii-hour meeting at the San Mateo County Role of Education was the second of 7 public forums scheduled by the 34-member task force, which was formed in November at the request of Country Board of Educational activity President Michael Kirst and Stanford School of Pedagogy Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who also chairs the California Commission on Teacher Credentialling. The task force is charged with recommending policy and legislative changes to address areas including finance, teacher preparation and the commitment of special educational activity services.

In its project summary, the task force called attention to the persistent accomplishment gap amidst students in special didactics and the prevailing view that special education should operate as a separate arrangement, isolated from full general pedagogy programs that teach the vast majority of the state'south students. The group noted that some school districts across the country are providing what research has established as more effective systems of integrated supports for disabled students, but that this was far from the norm. The group is expected to brand its recommendations to the Country Board of Education, the California Committee on Teacher Credentialing and the California Department of Pedagogy in tardily 2014.

Representing the task force were its co-executive directors – Vicki Barber, a retired superintendent for El Dorado Canton, and Maureen O'Leary Burness, a retired assistant superintendent of Folsom Cordova Unified – and Brooks Allen, deputy policy director of the State Board of Education. Allen works with the task force in conjunction with Beth Rice, education programs consultant to the State Board and an ex-officio chore force member.

Learning disabilities such as dyslexia and dyscalculia (difficulty learning math) represent the largest category of California students in special educational activity – virtually 45 percent – followed by the categories of voice communication and language impairment (xviii percentage) and autism (10 percent.) Less prevalent categories are health impairments such as leukemia or Tourette syndrome, intellectual disabilities, emotional disorders, hearing or vision impairment and traumatic brain injury.

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Vicki Barber, co-executive director of the Statewide Special Teaching Taskforce, speaking at a public forum in Redwood City. Credit: Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource

Repeatedly, speakers at the meeting praised the task strength'south efforts to modify an education civilisation that they said oftentimes sent the message that students who receive special education services aren't capable of achieving.

Sue Digre, a retired second grade instructor and the parent of a now-grown kid with Down's syndrome, said that she was often told in special education meetings not to expect that her child could larn much. "Too oft, it's a ceiling," Digre said. "You're told, they've met their potential."

Alyson Sinclair, a Marin County parent of a pupil with disabilities, echoed the telephone call for improved training for all teachers – both full general education and special education. And she said that superintendents could do more to demonstrate that students who receive special education services are first and foremost students in the school, the same as any other students.

"It'south the adults who are stymieing the children," she said.  To the job force members  she said, "I applaud everything yous all are doing."

As described in an outline of the task force's mandate, a key consequence that information technology will take on is how to transform special instruction "from being a identify where students go to receive more or different services, to a viewpoint that includes special education services equally one of many programs of back up under the umbrella of general pedagogy."

Only Sean Henry, a school psychologist in Pajaro Valley Unified in Watsonville, voiced concern that bringing special instruction services nether the umbrella of general education would dilute legally mandated specialized services for students with many needs.  "There's a lot of business organization and fright that dramatic changes will practice more than harm than good," Henry said. He said that integrating special education services and general instruction could put funding for special education programs at risk.

Task strength co-executive director Hairdresser responded that the group was focused on improving special educational activity services, non diluting them. Making those improvements, including providing constructive instruction for students with potential reading and math disabilities before they get labeled as special education students, requires changing practices in general teaching, she said.  "If you're going to change special educational activity, you can't do it in isolation," Barber said at the beginning of the public meeting. "You lot accept to make certain our general education folks are with us."

The adjacent public forum of the task forcefulness will be in Riverside on March 17.

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