A classroom for all

Editor's note: This is the first in a four-part series on special education in southeast Iowa

Between 12-14 percent of school children in Iowa receive some form of special education.

This special education can take many forms, such as additional instruction in a particular subject, and one-on-one tutoring from a teaching assistant called a paraeducator. Rather than to isolate these children from their peers, school districts have sought to integrate them into the student body as much as possible. That means they're in the classroom with their fellow students, receiving instruction from the same teacher. If they require a paraeducator, the paraeducator is in the classroom with them, helping them understand the concepts the teacher has just explained.

Samantha Brinning is the special education director for the Washington Community School District. She said the school district wants to offer the 'least restrictive environment” for its special ed students, which means pulling them away from their peers as little as possible.

How does a student enter special ed?

Brinning said the process usually starts with a parent or someone in the school with the parent's support requesting an evaluation of their child. In Washington's case, a member of the Grant Wood Area Education Agency sends someone to meet with the student to review whether they are falling behind their peers and need an IEP, an individualized education program. This refers to special instruction the child would receive. Some students need an IEP covering all their subjects, while others are simply behind in select subjects such as reading, writing or math. Still other students have IEP goals beyond their academics, such as improved behavior or speech development. A few students have an IEP because of a visual or hearing disability.

'All IEPs are individualized to the student's need,” Brinning said. 'No two IEPs are identical.”

Change in recent decades

Katie Gavin, director of instruction at Mt. Pleasant Community School District, said that special ed was done differently decades ago. Back then, students in special ed were taught separately from the rest of their peers.

'In the past 25-30 years, more data has come in which says that is a restrictive environment for anyone with an IEP,” she said. 'The [special ed] students were losing access to high quality instruction.”

Gavin said that the old model isolated the special ed students from the teachers with specialized training in math, reading and other subjects. The modern model, by contrast, exposes the special ed students to that same teaching their peers receive, and later supplements it with additional instruction from a special ed teacher or a paraeducator.

Some paraeducators are one-on-one, meaning they stay with the same student all day. Gavin said students with a one-on-one paraeducator tend to be those with behavioral or attention issues. Other paraeducators help multiple students. Gavin said that model works best at the elementary level.

'About 270 students in the district have an IEP, and we have 90 paraeducators,” Gavin said. 'Maybe 80 percent of those paraeducators are one-on-one.”

Gavin said one purpose of the paraeducators is to keep a student with behavioral problems safe.

'The paraeducator might work with the student on redirection because they are having a hard time paying attention to what's going on,” Gavin said. 'The student might be anxious, and that anxiety comes out in strong behaviors like pushing. The paraeducator works with them on how to stay calm in the classroom.”

Fairfield Community School District superintendent Laurie Noll said there is a change in how children with IEPs are tested. About 15-20 years ago, if a child in special ed was in third grade but reading at a second grade level, for example, they could take the state standardized test for second grade. However, the new rules require the child to be tested based on their age (third grade, in this example), rather than their ability level (second grade). The idea was that making all the students test at their real grade level would better reveal how far they had to come to match their peers.

The fact that a student has an IEP early in life does not mean they will need one through their whole academic career. Brinning said many students 'staff out” of IEPs because they are able to catch up to their peers. In recent years, she's noticed a trend of fewer students 'staffing in” to special education, because the general education teachers are able to give them the attention they need so they don't need an IEP in the first place. Special education teachers craft an instruction plan to meet each student's IEP. Gavin said special ed teachers have between eight to 15 students of different grade levels.

Noll said she job shadowed one of her teachers recently and saw the 'beauty” of all kids in the classroom have the same experiences.

'You'll see students with an IEP who are out for sports or on the speech team,” she said. 'Because the students are not segregated, it provides them with an opportunity to progress through the years. It teaches them that there's nothing they can't achieve if they work hard and have the right support.”

Budget

Gavin said Mt. Pleasant is spending more on special education than it did just a few years ago, and that's a trend visible throughout the state and beyond.

'Our special ed budget requires millions of dollars to support the program, and the number has increased every year,” she said. 'We are identifying more students who need IEPs. If we have to hire a paraeducator for one student, it costs $25,000 plus benefits for one year. If that's what the student needs to be successful, that's what we have to do.”

Why are more resources going to special ed? Gavin says it has to do with greater awareness of special ed among the public, and a greater ability to identify problems in a child at a younger age.

Noll said differences in student ability are noticed now in a way they weren't before.

'We want to support [the students] when they're young, and give them the opportunity and foundation they need,” she said.

Noll said the techniques used to monitor students have advanced in the past 10 years. Teachers and administers can see if a child is learning at a rate below their peers, the educators will change what they're doing to meet that child's needs.

'We're always asking ourselves, ‘What can we do to help the student succeed?'” Noll said. 'They're being compared to their peers all the time. ‘What can we do to help them get to the level of their peers?' Everybody is doing more data collection now, and teachers are able to notice gaps in a group of 20 students that they couldn't before.”