Re: Open Letter

[aburke5054@aol.com]

 I said that I considered NCLB an advancement of the educational rights of children with special needs because NCLB gives schools the responsibiity of improving services for these children co-equally with other children. NCLB can not be expected to solve the problems of what to do for children with IQs of 30 or how to teach deaf children to read - the examples given by the poster I was responding to. I also said that NCLB's mechanisms for the children with these very special needs are being reviewed. Before NCLB school districts were getting sued left and right by parents of children with special needs who felt that schools were not giving their children what they need. Districts are still getting sued over the same issues. What more do you want out of NCLB in this area?
 
 In going off on your flights of fancy concering proficiency, you continue to miss the point of NCLB entirely. The point of NCLB is improving schools. Whether some children will never reach proficiency (and whether children with very special needs will never reach proficienciy) does not impeach NCLB. If anything, it demonstrates the need for it. 
 
 Watching you torture logic and language in an effort to wring our anti-NCLB implications is a hoot. 
 
 Art
    
 -----Original Message-----
 From: shays@ccwebster.net
 To: arn-l@interversity.org
 Sent: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 7:24 AM
 Subject: Re: [arn-l] Open Letter
 
  On Nov 24, 2006, at 3:23 AM, burke5054@aol.com wrote: 
 
 > I look at these issues involving students with special needs this > way. 
 
 Well, at least there is a breakthrough, of sorts, on Art's part. He recognizes, in the first place, that possibly children with severe disabilities are not best served by NCLB (though he quickly points out that the severity in question is rare, so not too many kids are impacted). He also admits -- for the first time, ever, I think -- that "sanctions" are a part of NCLB (though he quickly points out that NCLB also mandates that schools provide "intensive and sustained support" when they are "in need of improvement" -- though, once again, he fails to identify from where states are to find the resources to provide that "intensive and sustained support"). 
 
 He fails to mention whether he read the letter printed in Jay Matthews' "Extra Credit" column, yesterday ("Using the Wrong Standards for Students With Disabilities", http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/22/AR2006112201193.html), which stumped even Mr. Matthews with its broad description of disservice to special needs' students wrought by NCLB and attention to testing. I encourage him to do while his sympathies are so clearly feeling a twinge of understanding. 
 
 I would, simultaneously, point out the obvious fact that all people everywhere are not by any means proficient. Academic proficiency is just one skill area in which human beings are not 100% proficient ... never have been, never will be ... and yet have managed to survive for a pretty long time without being so. Those who are not academically proficient may compensate with proficiency in some area, and find they can still contribute to those around them without untold misery or suffering imparted on anyone. To seek 100% academic proficiency may be a noble goal, but one must be realistic in the setting of goals and recognize that some (probably many) will come up short. To "sanction" one who comes up short is therefore amongst the worst types of cynicism imaginable. Instead, one measures progress individually and recognizes that we all take different size steps at different times in our lives, and work to help each individual child learn to walk when he or she is ready ... not at some arbitrarily determined time or in some arbitrarily proscribed manner. 
 
 Scott Hays 
 shays@ccwebster.net 
 
 "Wrinkles only go where the smiles have been." 
 - - Jimmy Buffett 
 
 
   
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