Inside the great teacher resignation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Randi Weingarten does not represent your kids‘ best interests.

She doesn’t not represent any of your kids’ interests, best or otherwise.

Randi only cares about more $$$ for her union coffers, more $$$ she can give to PACs and political campaigns, and more benefits for unionized teachers (like adding more paid, days off while YOU have to figure out childcare).

Right I mean the organization she represents is called the American Federation of Kids!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work.

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years. If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide. If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher. OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced. This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue. Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB. And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families. We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full. It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.

So, we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students? I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.

If we burn out our teachers by requiring them to meet the needs of every single individual child, some of whom has extensive needs, with little to no support - which is what is happening now -- we are end up with no teachers and all students will suffer.

So what do you suggest then?

Some of these parents and advocates are going to learn the hard way.

Or the public school districts will. In another generation all they will be left with is poor kids and sped kids. Everyone else will have left.

PP here. "Poor kids and sped kids" have parents, too.

Yes and they will have advocated their way into a school where the only other kids have needs like theirs.

If you're referring to children with significant special needs, that would be a return to the way it was years ago -- special schools for students with special needs.

But there goes Least Restrictive Environment.

The reality is that this means least supported environment at most schools.

unfortunately, you are correct.

1:1 aides for every kid are not the answer. At some point we need to acknowledge that some kids just don’t belong in a mainstream school. The bar is already quite low, really. If they can’t even reach that bar then they need to be in a special environment where the standards are different.

And then send them to special internment camps when they “graduate” from those programs, since you’re obviously not interested in integrating them into society?

It is very sad, but it is also the truth that many kids and adults will not make it outside of a highly supervised group home or residential placement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why people keep talking about the effect of COVID. This thread is about why teachers are resigning.

I'm an elementary school teacher. I know three teachers who resigned last year, a few years earlier than they had anticipated. Last year was an exceptionally hard year, it is true. We had so many teacher absences, and were constantly covering for teachers who were out and had no subs. This year it is even harder. We still have a lot of teacher vacancies; in addition we have a large number of brand new teachers, or conditional teachers without formal teacher training and student teaching. They can do OK for a while, but they really need mentors; yet the mentor teacher support isn't there because most of those teachers have been moved back into the classroom themselves.

Meanwhile, our school district is going like gangbusters with the next new big thing. They do NOT understand how tapped out we all are. More and more teachers are leaving or planning to leave.

The ONE thing that the school district could do, to retain experienced teachers, IMO is just to calm the eff down. Just let it be OK for us to be competent. Everything doesn't have to be bright and shiny and amazing. And beef up HR however you need to hire more teachers. Retrain administrators who are experiencing staff attrition. When `10% of your teaching staff resigns, that's a sign you have a poor administrator. Look at the principals who have managed to retain their experienced staff and ask "What is he doing, that other principals aren't doing?" And then train your administrators to do those things.

Are you referring to the switch away from Lucy Caulkins' Readers and Writers workshop? That change had to happen. Leaving that curriculum in place would be negligent given what is known. It had to go and should have never happened.

HAHAHAHAHA- god no. Most teachers hated that anyway.

That is small potatoes compared to the exit tickets, bulletin board mandates, showing growth every week for objectives that are year long ones, explaining repeatedly why a child who has never spoken English doesn't understand the latest test, testing for _______, progress monitoring for each objective (even tho the kid doesn't speak English), making sure kids are using sentence stems, turning on the right video for the next segment, checking lexia status and minutes per child, managing dreambox, and providing IEP updates, monitoring all the standards on the report card on the same google document and reporting out monthly on the standard during the data meeting, unpacking the latest standard and mapping the bought curriculum to the standard AGAIN even though the district already did this.

There is so much you don't understand that doesn't boil down to Lucy Caulkins. It is like all parents know how to say is Lucy Caulkins because they are listening to the next education podcast.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work.

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years. If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide. If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher. OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced. This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue. Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB. And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families. We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full. It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.

So, we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students? I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.

If we burn out our teachers by requiring them to meet the needs of every single individual child, some of whom has extensive needs, with little to no support - which is what is happening now -- we are end up with no teachers and all students will suffer.

So what do you suggest then?

Some of these parents and advocates are going to learn the hard way.

Or the public school districts will. In another generation all they will be left with is poor kids and sped kids. Everyone else will have left.

PP here. "Poor kids and sped kids" have parents, too.

Yes and they will have advocated their way into a school where the only other kids have needs like theirs.

If you're referring to children with significant special needs, that would be a return to the way it was years ago -- special schools for students with special needs.

But there goes Least Restrictive Environment.

The reality is that this means least supported environment at most schools.

unfortunately, you are correct.

1:1 aides for every kid are not the answer. At some point we need to acknowledge that some kids just don’t belong in a mainstream school. The bar is already quite low, really. If they can’t even reach that bar then they need to be in a special environment where the standards are different.

And then send them to special internment camps when they “graduate” from those programs, since you’re obviously not interested in integrating them into society?

It is very sad, but it is also the truth that many kids and adults will not make it outside of a highly supervised group home or residential placement.

Not at the numbers that would if you isolated kids with special needs into separate classrooms as suggested in this thread.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work.

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years. If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide. If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher. OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced. This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue. Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB. And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families. We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full. It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.

So, we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students? I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.

If we burn out our teachers by requiring them to meet the needs of every single individual child, some of whom has extensive needs, with little to no support - which is what is happening now -- we are end up with no teachers and all students will suffer.

So what do you suggest then?

Some of these parents and advocates are going to learn the hard way.

Or the public school districts will. In another generation all they will be left with is poor kids and sped kids. Everyone else will have left.

PP here. "Poor kids and sped kids" have parents, too.

Yes and they will have advocated their way into a school where the only other kids have needs like theirs.

If you're referring to children with significant special needs, that would be a return to the way it was years ago -- special schools for students with special needs.

But there goes Least Restrictive Environment.

The reality is that this means least supported environment at most schools.

unfortunately, you are correct.

1:1 aides for every kid are not the answer. At some point we need to acknowledge that some kids just don’t belong in a mainstream school. The bar is already quite low, really. If they can’t even reach that bar then they need to be in a special environment where the standards are different.

And then send them to special internment camps when they “graduate” from those programs, since you’re obviously not interested in integrating them into society?

It is very sad, but it is also the truth that many kids and adults will not make it outside of a highly supervised group home or residential placement.

Not at the numbers that would if you isolated kids with special needs into separate classrooms as suggested in this thread.

PP here. I've taught and evaluated kids with special needs for a long time and advocate for them whenever needed to get the best possible placement, instruction, and supports. I also recognize and have seen firsthand that teachers are burning out and that many of these students would be better served with smallwr classes and well trained, certified teachers. There are no easu answers for the students who are highly volatile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work.

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years. If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide. If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher. OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced. This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue. Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB. And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families. We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full. It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.

So, we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students? I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.

If we burn out our teachers by requiring them to meet the needs of every single individual child, some of whom has extensive needs, with little to no support - which is what is happening now -- we are end up with no teachers and all students will suffer.

So what do you suggest then?

Some of these parents and advocates are going to learn the hard way.

Or the public school districts will. In another generation all they will be left with is poor kids and sped kids. Everyone else will have left.

PP here. "Poor kids and sped kids" have parents, too.

Yes and they will have advocated their way into a school where the only other kids have needs like theirs.

If you're referring to children with significant special needs, that would be a return to the way it was years ago -- special schools for students with special needs.

But there goes Least Restrictive Environment.

The reality is that this means least supported environment at most schools.

unfortunately, you are correct.

1:1 aides for every kid are not the answer. At some point we need to acknowledge that some kids just don’t belong in a mainstream school. The bar is already quite low, really. If they can’t even reach that bar then they need to be in a special environment where the standards are different.

And then send them to special internment camps when they “graduate” from those programs, since you’re obviously not interested in integrating them into society?

It is very sad, but it is also the truth that many kids and adults will not make it outside of a highly supervised group home or residential placement.

Not at the numbers that would if you isolated kids with special needs into separate classrooms as suggested in this thread.

PP here. I've taught and evaluated kids with special needs for a long time and advocate for them whenever needed to get the best possible placement, instruction, and supports. I also recognize and have seen firsthand that teachers are burning out and that many of these students would be better served with smallwr classes and well trained, certified teachers. There are no easu answers for the students who are highly volatile.

Of course there is. Get those kids 1:1 aides and make appropriate changes to the classroom environment for both safety and trigger reduction. If the teacher and aide still can’t handle the student, placement in a different classroom or school may be necessary, including private placement at public expense.

The comments here proposing to send any disruptive kid to self-contained classrooms first, ask questions later, is ridiculous, and obviously has no hope of happening anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work.

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years. If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide. If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher. OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced. This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue. Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB. And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families. We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full. It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.

So, we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students? I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.

If we burn out our teachers by requiring them to meet the needs of every single individual child, some of whom has extensive needs, with little to no support - which is what is happening now -- we are end up with no teachers and all students will suffer.

So what do you suggest then?

Some of these parents and advocates are going to learn the hard way.

Or the public school districts will. In another generation all they will be left with is poor kids and sped kids. Everyone else will have left.

PP here. "Poor kids and sped kids" have parents, too.

Yes and they will have advocated their way into a school where the only other kids have needs like theirs.

If you're referring to children with significant special needs, that would be a return to the way it was years ago -- special schools for students with special needs.

But there goes Least Restrictive Environment.

The reality is that this means least supported environment at most schools.

unfortunately, you are correct.

1:1 aides for every kid are not the answer. At some point we need to acknowledge that some kids just don’t belong in a mainstream school. The bar is already quite low, really. If they can’t even reach that bar then they need to be in a special environment where the standards are different.

And then send them to special internment camps when they “graduate” from those programs, since you’re obviously not interested in integrating them into society?

It is very sad, but it is also the truth that many kids and adults will not make it outside of a highly supervised group home or residential placement.

Not at the numbers that would if you isolated kids with special needs into separate classrooms as suggested in this thread.

PP here. I've taught and evaluated kids with special needs for a long time and advocate for them whenever needed to get the best possible placement, instruction, and supports. I also recognize and have seen firsthand that teachers are burning out and that many of these students would be better served with smallwr classes and well trained, certified teachers. There are no easu answers for the students who are highly volatile.

Of course there is. Get those kids 1:1 aides and make appropriate changes to the classroom environment for both safety and trigger reduction. If the teacher and aide still can’t handle the student, placement in a different classroom or school may be necessary, including private placement at public expense.

The comments here proposing to send any disruptive kid to self-contained classrooms first, ask questions later, is ridiculous, and obviously has no hope of happening anyway.

PP here. I didn't read the whole thread and would never make this bolded recommendation. Truth is...one on one para is almost impossible to get in most school systems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work.

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years. If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide. If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher. OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced. This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue. Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB. And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families. We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full. It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.

So, we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students? I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.

If we burn out our teachers by requiring them to meet the needs of every single individual child, some of whom has extensive needs, with little to no support - which is what is happening now -- we are end up with no teachers and all students will suffer.

So what do you suggest then?

Some of these parents and advocates are going to learn the hard way.

Or the public school districts will. In another generation all they will be left with is poor kids and sped kids. Everyone else will have left.

PP here. "Poor kids and sped kids" have parents, too.

Yes and they will have advocated their way into a school where the only other kids have needs like theirs.

If you're referring to children with significant special needs, that would be a return to the way it was years ago -- special schools for students with special needs.

But there goes Least Restrictive Environment.

The reality is that this means least supported environment at most schools.

unfortunately, you are correct.

1:1 aides for every kid are not the answer. At some point we need to acknowledge that some kids just don’t belong in a mainstream school. The bar is already quite low, really. If they can’t even reach that bar then they need to be in a special environment where the standards are different.

And then send them to special internment camps when they “graduate” from those programs, since you’re obviously not interested in integrating them into society?

It is very sad, but it is also the truth that many kids and adults will not make it outside of a highly supervised group home or residential placement.

Not at the numbers that would if you isolated kids with special needs into separate classrooms as suggested in this thread.

PP here. I've taught and evaluated kids with special needs for a long time and advocate for them whenever needed to get the best possible placement, instruction, and supports. I also recognize and have seen firsthand that teachers are burning out and that many of these students would be better served with smallwr classes and well trained, certified teachers. There are no easu answers for the students who are highly volatile.

Of course there is. Get those kids 1:1 aides and make appropriate changes to the classroom environment for both safety and trigger reduction. If the teacher and aide still can’t handle the student, placement in a different classroom or school may be necessary, including private placement at public expense.

The comments here proposing to send any disruptive kid to self-contained classrooms first, ask questions later, is ridiculous, and obviously has no hope of happening anyway.

PP here. I didn't read the whole thread and would never make this bolded recommendation. Truth is...one on one para is almost impossible to get in most school systems.

Will add that many students in schools with a population of more limited resources aren't taking any medication and/or get limited support at home. The classroom teachers cannot teach effectively with all the interruptions, and school systems can't provide that many 1:1 paras. It's not realistic for most school systems. As teachers retire, it's going to get worse. Those children will suffer even more.

[Anonymous]

I taught in self-contained rooms for ED kids for years and they do work. Kids are taught at their pace, learn to use self-control strategies, and are not in trouble all day. These kids that are so often in heightened states are damaging their brains, and the kids that have to witness it all day ate experiencing secondary trauma. A self-contained program is not for life. It’s a reset, time to heal and get in control. The ones in my county have incredibly low enrollment, because the bar is so high to move them now. It’s not juvenile detention. It’s meeting their needs, building success, and then determining scaffolded returns to gen ed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why people keep talking about the effect of COVID. This thread is about why teachers are resigning.

I'm an elementary school teacher. I know three teachers who resigned last year, a few years earlier than they had anticipated. Last year was an exceptionally hard year, it is true. We had so many teacher absences, and were constantly covering for teachers who were out and had no subs. This year it is even harder. We still have a lot of teacher vacancies; in addition we have a large number of brand new teachers, or conditional teachers without formal teacher training and student teaching. They can do OK for a while, but they really need mentors; yet the mentor teacher support isn't there because most of those teachers have been moved back into the classroom themselves.

Meanwhile, our school district is going like gangbusters with the next new big thing. They do NOT understand how tapped out we all are. More and more teachers are leaving or planning to leave.

The ONE thing that the school district could do, to retain experienced teachers, IMO is just to calm the eff down. Just let it be OK for us to be competent. Everything doesn't have to be bright and shiny and amazing. And beef up HR however you need to hire more teachers. Retrain administrators who are experiencing staff attrition. When `10% of your teaching staff resigns, that's a sign you have a poor administrator. Look at the principals who have managed to retain their experienced staff and ask "What is he doing, that other principals aren't doing?" And then train your administrators to do those things.

Are you referring to the switch away from Lucy Caulkins' Readers and Writers workshop? That change had to happen. Leaving that curriculum in place would be negligent given what is known. It had to go and should have never happened.

Eyeroll. No.
Every year there is a new initiative in my district. Every freaking year. New SEL curriculum. New place to input our math data (which NO ONE is ever going to look at). New DEI initiative which is awesome, but at some point you can't just keep adding more and more and more without taking anyone away. I'm just over all of it. All of it. My small district has lost 3 teachers since August who have simply quit and walked away from teaching all together. Tonight, we learned a 4th turned in her resignation. I interviewed tonight over zoom, in between parent conferences, for a non-school job and if I get it, I'll be the 5th. Schools need to stop saying "You're the experts" if they aren't going to treat us like ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I taught in self-contained rooms for ED kids for years and they do work. Kids are taught at their pace, learn to use self-control strategies, and are not in trouble all day. These kids that are so often in heightened states are damaging their brains, and the kids that have to witness it all day ate experiencing secondary trauma. A self-contained program is not for life. It’s a reset, time to heal and get in control. The ones in my county have incredibly low enrollment, because the bar is so high to move them now. It’s not juvenile detention. It’s meeting their needs, building success, and then determining scaffolded returns to gen ed.

This! Thank you for the work you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I taught in self-contained rooms for ED kids for years and they do work. Kids are taught at their pace, learn to use self-control strategies, and are not in trouble all day. These kids that are so often in heightened states are damaging their brains, and the kids that have to witness it all day ate experiencing secondary trauma. A self-contained program is not for life. It’s a reset, time to heal and get in control. The ones in my county have incredibly low enrollment, because the bar is so high to move them now. It’s not juvenile detention. It’s meeting their needs, building success, and then determining scaffolded returns to gen ed.

Yes, but that’s not what’s being proposed in this thread. They want to move all of the kids that are significantly disruptive in gen ed classrooms into the self-contained classrooms. And then they only want to move them back out after they’ve been able to demonstrate self control in the self-contained setting, where we all know they’re not likely to provide the necessary and appropriate resources.

How do you think that would go?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught in self-contained rooms for ED kids for years and they do work. Kids are taught at their pace, learn to use self-control strategies, and are not in trouble all day. These kids that are so often in heightened states are damaging their brains, and the kids that have to witness it all day ate experiencing secondary trauma. A self-contained program is not for life. It’s a reset, time to heal and get in control. The ones in my county have incredibly low enrollment, because the bar is so high to move them now. It’s not juvenile detention. It’s meeting their needs, building success, and then determining scaffolded returns to gen ed.

Yes, but that’s not what’s being proposed in this thread. They want to move all of the kids that are significantly disruptive in gen ed classrooms into the self-contained classrooms. And then they only want to move them back out after they’ve been able to demonstrate self control in the self-contained setting, where we all know they’re not likely to provide the necessary and appropriate resources.

How do you think that would go?

Are you a teacher? If not, do you understand what you're expecting from classroom teachers? It is too much. That's why they're quitting. I know a young teacher whose nose was broken by a student 6 weeks before her wedding. Most teachers do not have the training and do not want to deal with those types of behaviors day in and day out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that teachers, students, and parents would all be better off if discipline policies were changed to protect those in school buildings from the most disruptive students (who are a minority). Those truly disruptive, abusive, and unruly students take up too much time and emotional weight. Teachers should not have to suffer abuse at the hands of students, just as students should not lose out on their education due to serious disruptions by other students. Children need structure. By allowing this minority of students to have so much power, teachers are exhausted, and children learn that rules are optional. Parents, too, wind up in defense mode. Getting zeros for late or missing work seems excessive when other students can burst in and out of classrooms, throw items at teachers, and attack other kids at recess. Seriously. If you want discipline, then find a way to address the kids for whom conventional discipline strategies don't work.

What do you propose?

It's hard to imagine a path to implementing it, but I do think elementary rooms should have two teachers.

Teacher here proposing a few things:
1) There needs to be a way to "fast track" kids like this into a special education self contained classroom within a few weeks, not within a few years. If, with interventions, the child can learn to self regulate, then said kid returns to gen ed, with a full time, 1:1 aide. If they are successful with that support, then fade the TA out.
2) Every single K-1st grade room needs a certified teacher and either a full time TA or a co-teacher. OR, limit K-1 rooms to no more than 10 kids.
3) Pass legislation that requires insurance companies to provide for the educational needs of kids who need to be outplaced. This is primarily a health issue and then second, an education issue. Insurance companies DO YOUR JOB. And the government needs to build, staff, train and supply schools to deal with kids like this.

From your posts (at least, the posts I think come from you), you seem to be at breaking point. And as a parent of a child with special needs and behavioral challenges, I get how exhausting and painful (emotionally and physically) it can be. So I suspect your intentions are pure here. But I don't think you're really thinking through how this would play out for kids with special needs.

The reason we have IDEA to begin with is that states and local school districts were not providing appropriate educational services to kids with disabilities. And I get it-- it is expensive to do so. But essentially eliminating principle of Least Restrictive Environment would bring us right back to that. Kids would quickly get shuffled out to self-contained classrooms that would likely become even more short-staffed and resource poor. Once there, many kids would likely regress. Kids that might otherwise be successful in a gen ed classroom with an aid would never get that chance. Rather than giving kids the benefit of the doubt that they could be successful with supports, they'd instead have to prove themselves in an environment stacked against them. And much of the political pressure to provide resources for the needs of these students would disappear as quickly as the students would disappear into their segregated classrooms.

I don't think health insurance is the right funding path for a variety of reasons. For one, I hope we'll move to single-payer relatively soon anyway. But even more, it sets a bad precedent, would be complicated to regulate, and would likely pose serious challenges to low-income and/or underinsured families. We don't expect insurance companies to reimburse schools in order to make the environment accessible to kids with physical disabilities- why should developmental disabilities be different?

Developmental disabilities come in spectrums that are particularly hard to define and measure. I don't see how you could ever separate educational services that could be covered by the school from habilitative and support services covered by insurance. Any attempt to do so would likely result in battles between insurance companies and schools, where ultimately only the kids would lose. While there are some related challenges already in public schools related to this, at least public schools are arms of the government and ostensibly should have an interest in the public good. The same cannot be said for private insurance companies.

And this would likely get incredibly expensive, assuming these services would be billed like other habilitative services paid through insurance. Since my child was diagnosed with ASD as a toddler, we've simply accepted that we'd hit our out-of-pocket max every year, sometimes exceeding coverage limits and having to pay for things in full. It isn't easy financially, but we're able to do it. But while our income bracket may not be particularly high by DCUM standards, we're in a pretty high HHI percentile with good employer-subsidized health benefits. Not everyone is so lucky.

Every child -- those with special needs or not -- deserves the best we can give. Unfortunately, the number of students with special needs in public schools has increased substantially, along with parents who have very high expectations for services, correspondence updates, and paperwork; and they bring advocates and/or attorneys to meetings. I understand why that's being done, but the reality is that the typical school system across our country does not have the resources or personnel to provide that level of service. We are facing a crisis with too few teachers.

So, we should sacrifice the students with special needs for the benefit of the other students? I think you're starting from a place of good intentions, but there's a fine line between being burnt out and simply not caring.

If we burn out our teachers by requiring them to meet the needs of every single individual child, some of whom has extensive needs, with little to no support - which is what is happening now -- we are end up with no teachers and all students will suffer.

So what do you suggest then?

Some of these parents and advocates are going to learn the hard way.

Or the public school districts will. In another generation all they will be left with is poor kids and sped kids. Everyone else will have left.

PP here. "Poor kids and sped kids" have parents, too.

Yes and they will have advocated their way into a school where the only other kids have needs like theirs.

If you're referring to children with significant special needs, that would be a return to the way it was years ago -- special schools for students with special needs.

But there goes Least Restrictive Environment.

The reality is that this means least supported environment at most schools.

unfortunately, you are correct.

1:1 aides for every kid are not the answer. At some point we need to acknowledge that some kids just don’t belong in a mainstream school. The bar is already quite low, really. If they can’t even reach that bar then they need to be in a special environment where the standards are different.

And then send them to special internment camps when they “graduate” from those programs, since you’re obviously not interested in integrating them into society?

It is very sad, but it is also the truth that many kids and adults will not make it outside of a highly supervised group home or residential placement.

Not at the numbers that would if you isolated kids with special needs into separate classrooms as suggested in this thread.

PP here. I've taught and evaluated kids with special needs for a long time and advocate for them whenever needed to get the best possible placement, instruction, and supports. I also recognize and have seen firsthand that teachers are burning out and that many of these students would be better served with smallwr classes and well trained, certified teachers. There are no easu answers for the students who are highly volatile.

Of course there is. Get those kids 1:1 aides and make appropriate changes to the classroom environment for both safety and trigger reduction. If the teacher and aide still can’t handle the student, placement in a different classroom or school may be necessary, including private placement at public expense.

The comments here proposing to send any disruptive kid to self-contained classrooms first, ask questions later, is ridiculous, and obviously has no hope of happening anyway.

You’re totally out of touch with reality if you seriously think that we the taxpayers should be funding a personal assistant for every single kid who has crappy or absent parents, food allergies, traumatic childhood, medical problems, or whatever else causes them to be disruptive at school.

American taxpayers are ALREADY paying the most per student in the entire world to educate kids in our public schools.

No, the answer is not to double those costs with private aides. And why shouldn’t other kids get an aide anyway, like their own private tutor? It would help them too.

This country absolutely does need to get disruptive kids out of classrooms and let the rest of the kids learn.

And don’t be so smug and quick to assume that changes will never happen. People make the laws in this country, and people are seriously fed up with the way things are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught in self-contained rooms for ED kids for years and they do work. Kids are taught at their pace, learn to use self-control strategies, and are not in trouble all day. These kids that are so often in heightened states are damaging their brains, and the kids that have to witness it all day ate experiencing secondary trauma. A self-contained program is not for life. It’s a reset, time to heal and get in control. The ones in my county have incredibly low enrollment, because the bar is so high to move them now. It’s not juvenile detention. It’s meeting their needs, building success, and then determining scaffolded returns to gen ed.

Yes, but that’s not what’s being proposed in this thread. They want to move all of the kids that are significantly disruptive in gen ed classrooms into the self-contained classrooms. And then they only want to move them back out after they’ve been able to demonstrate self control in the self-contained setting, where we all know they’re not likely to provide the necessary and appropriate resources.

How do you think that would go?

Are you a teacher? If not, do you understand what you're expecting from classroom teachers? It is too much. That's why they're quitting. I know a young teacher whose nose was broken by a student 6 weeks before her wedding. Most teachers do not have the training and do not want to deal with those types of behaviors day in and day out.

As a parent of a child with special needs, few would understand as well as I. My kid is younger, but I can certainly imagine what it would be like to scale him up by 2x or 3x.

I would certainly agree that teachers need help with these students. But you’re not asking for help. You’re trying to hide those students away so you can forget about them.