I am APPALLED at our district school board, which has pledged to cut special education services in half over the next few years under a misguided policy of "inclusive education"! In a district research report I found supporting the initiative, gifted students were identified as comprising a quarter of all special education students, and it was suggested that the gifted, the LD, and students with "only" IEPs would be the easiest to mainstream. I am beyond disgusted!!! This is a misguided attempt to shave a few dollars off the district budget and engineer equality of outcome irrespective of students' right to an appropriate education.
Do we have any Canadian lawyers here with a sense of whether there might be a constitutional basis for a challenge to such a policy? I appreciate that this is extremely limited information I'm providing. I'm happy to PM as needed so as not to disclose identifying information.
I'm so sorry that you do, puffin. The irony is that the students most likely to be penalized by this bogus change (low income gifted, all LD students) are the students the district believes this initiative will help. Ugh!!! When will these local administrators learn that their attempts at social engineering are totally regressive in a socio-economic sense?!
This would be a good moment to band together with the parents of 2E, LD, and other special-needs families. They are likely to have substantial evidence handy of why their kids cannot do OK in school without supports.
The case that is often made for allowing gifted kids to languish ("they'll be fine") is unfortunately more plausible to school board members and the public; but taking all the special needs together will make it clearer to them why mainstreaming without supports isn't going to work.
This would be a good moment to band together with the parents of 2E, LD, and other special-needs families. They are likely to have substantial evidence handy of why their kids cannot do OK in school without supports.
The case that is often made for allowing gifted kids to languish ("they'll be fine") is unfortunately more plausible to school board members and the public; but taking all the special needs together will make it clearer to them why mainstreaming without supports isn't going to work.
I agree, DeeDee, that the entire special education community is going to have to present a unified case. Good advice.
No Canadian lawyers here, just wanted to give you extra support.
Elementary school in a traditional public school setting (USA) has been mainly social. We think the teachers are not trained at a high level at all. They do not even realize how under-educated they may be.
Cluster is happening for Middle School and just in time. We can tell that the children, pre-pre-teen, are already starting to get meaner, tougher, how ever you want to express it.
From our experience, we look forward to never having to be in classes with or work with those folks ever again. Onward and upward. So, advocate as hard as you can for the cluster or we would probably do research and move to a better district if at all possible.
The more sensitive the child the harder it is on them to be grouped altogether year after year.
I don't think the teachers realize that the high-IQ people prefer to work together and we don't think the other people miss us one bit.
In fact, when we moved to the neighborhood we are still in now, one of the neighbors told us they can't stand 'book people.' Needless to say, no close ties there.
Be careful about jealousy. People can get very negative when they perceive a large difference in intelligence. Just facts (don't want to be negative, just honest). The jealousy ( or how ever to categorize the reaction ) can lead to physical and / or verbal abuse.
Thanks for the moral support, Wesupportgifted.
For full disclosure, before this announcement was made, I was already in the process of putting together a private gifted elementary in our city for DS to attend. While the policy move is good for business, ideologically I would prefer the start-up school to be unnecessary. It pains me to think that income is ultimately going to factor into access to an appropriate education here.
This really doesn't sound good. I hope the affected families can find a way to lobby together. Inclusion model that delivers appropriate services is extremely expensive and no matter what, some children require pull-out services. If anything, if the district wants to implement an inclusionary model, they should be looking into increasing their budget, especially during the transitional period.