From the perspective of socially and educationally optimal outcomes for all students, it's still striking to me that the lists we're producing would benefit *all* students. I have had a bee in my bonnet about this recently, but it would not be unduly costly - and potentially cost-saving - for schools to implement a few broad-brush changes to teacher competencies and curriculum choice that would mitigate risks downside for LDs and 2es, while also offering further reach for gifted students.
Low-hanging fruit like...
Standardizing OG reading instruction for all elementary teachers. The estimates I'm finding vary, but they seem to coalesce around 5-10% of the population with dyslexia.* If we save that 5-10% of the population the discomfort and learning loss of delayed identification and remediation, with the SAME amount of teacher time on reading instruction, that seems like an obvious win out of the gate, and especially equity-based. My DS has a family member who has dyslexia, and I used an OG system with him when he learned early spelling for that exact reason - prophylaxis cost the same as the standard approach out of the gate.
*Source 1:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528651/Standardizing, at a minimum, elementary math curriculum, avoiding the verbal diarrhea garble that has come in vogue recently among math-phobic instructors. Singapore Math is evidence-based, has a bunch of different regionally-linked curricula, and the text books are dirt cheap (as in, and I'm going from memory here...$20 or less.) Get the basics right, then delve into individualization off a stable, well-researched method. Ideally, math teachers would be specialists, but I think we could cover 90%+ of learners even by having teachers qualified to teach +/- 2 grades around their placed class.
And instead of obsessively testing students,
why not have annual credentialing check-ins for teachers during summer months to ensure they're still effective. I'm not talking a cursory checklist of CPE credits or a box tick for a diploma. I'm thinking fulsome evaluations of teachers on the subject matter AND related pedagogy, anonymized and conducted by independent assessors outside the school district. What would you need per-capita, a half-day? IMO, far better cost-wise than subjecting students to multiple weeks of standardized testing, instead of offering the students a more streamlined pulse check and putting the focus where it belongs: on what teachers are teaching, and how well they do so!
Implementing vigorous daily physical education with specialist phys-ed instructors, ideally for an hour.
ADHD accounts for between 8-10% of students, depending on estimates I've seen.** The CDC produces estimates of childhood mental health
prevalence, which is on the rise. And 18.5% of US children are
obese. What ALL these conditions have in common is that, with limited medical exceptions, the prognosis improves with exercise! This is such a no-brainer it doesn't even require further explanation.
**Sources embedded in the above paragraph. Excuse any wonky duplicate words.
With a stable base in literacy and numeracy, and healthier students who are less "behavioural", we could then start getting fancy and address cross-grade-grouping, models of teacher partnerships in the class (I particularly like DS' class, which has a core teacher and a specialist assistant trained in special education, and specials taught by specialists). I wonder what share of behavioural "presentations" in classes would disappear by eliminating these basic issues.
One of the lessons I believe we *should* be learning in this pandemic is that virtual learning and grouping is a tool that can be used in brick and mortar schools to support student needs. It avoids the awkwardness of being singled out if all students can migrate to their devices and plug into a synchronous lesson at the appropriate level, with a teacher in their home school.
There is a lot of need out there. We need to land the basics and not squander children's lives, or taxpayer money, on programs of dubious value, which often have (unintended) socially regressive implications. Then, with less waste and a better foundation, we can design more intelligent individualization for those who need it.
/off soapbox
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to informing these opinions over the years, whether in PMs or threads.
Individual staff continue to be the most important factor...my parents used to select placements year to year based on where a specific, most accommodating, administrator was.
I can believe it. I feel like a bit of an itinerant parent/home educator myself and suspect that will be our approach.
