The latest Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF) survey reveals that public education is in a sorry state and it’s impacting upon teacher effectiveness in the regular classroom. Over 90 per cent of the 8, 096 teachers surveyed online in February and March 2014, identified “class composition” as a source of “work-related stress.” “In general, teachers feel they do not have adequate supports and services to address the broad range of special needs in their classrooms,” CTF President Dianne Woloschuk stated upon release of the ” Work-Life Balance” study.
Teachers certainly feel “stressed -out” even though public school enrollment, except in a few high growth school districts, is mostly in decline and more educational tax dollars are being spent to educate fewer school children. Their biggest concern is the changing composition of the regular classroom and, in particular, the constant demands to provide “individualized support” in that classroom for every type of special needs. Given those broad trends, making the case to spend more money to sustain the “all-inclusive” classroom model, especially after Grade 6, is difficult to fathom.
The CTF findings do point to a “stressed-out” teacher force and this is worrisome for those of us committed to improved education, sounder policies, and better schools. They also raise serious questions about the state of education and effectiveness of current policies. Here are the most glaring examples:
– meeting the individual needs of all special needs kids in an inclusive classroom is next to impossible;
– three out of four educators cited interruptions to teaching by students;
– student absenteeism concerns 71 per cent of teachers;
-over six out of ten reported challenges in dealing with students’ personal or health-related issues.
Special Education services have turned regular classroom teaching into a virtual paperwork ordeal. Lack of time to plan assessments with colleagues was reported as a stressor by 86 per cent of teachers surveyed, while 85 per cent indicated marking and grading as a source of stress. Other stressors include increased administrative-related work and outdated technology.
The five policy changes proposed by the CTF all involve pouring more money into the ailing school system. They appear, once again, in predictable fashion: lower class sizes, improve SE supports, expand prep time, reduce non-teaching tasks, and increase teaching resources. None of them, except possibly creating smaller classes, really address the fundamental problem – “class composition” under the current inclusive education regime and the undercurrent of resistance to providing alternative special needs programs and expanding the range of specialized intensive support schools.
Given the daily classroom challenges and complex needs of today’s kids, it’s fair to ask “Is more money really the answer?”
The CTF is a national political action organization, representing teachers’ unions, and claiming to speak for nearly 200,000 elementary and secondary educators from 17 organizations (15 Members, one Affiliate Member and one Associate Member), from coast to coast to coast. Most of the constituent union groups produce “Teacher Stress” studies on a regular basis, usually in advance of province-wide bargaining sessions.
Among regular teachers, especially in junior and senior high schools, inclusive education is widely seen as desirable but next to impossible to implement. It was invented and implemented over the past two decades, but never intended to accommodate the number of children now “coded” or “designated” for special education supports. Even though class sizes have been declining in most provinces, managing let alone teaching those classes has rarely been more of a challenge.
A recent report produced by the Ontario funding lobby group, People for Education, is not helpful at all. It’s founder Annie Kidder and core membership support the status quo in the all inclusive classroom, constantly pushing for more money and “more student supports” for every conceivable classroom problem. Appointing a Special Education Ombudsman, as conceived by P4E, would only solidify the existing student supports regime.
The odd teacher union leader breaks the faith and speaks out-of-school. That happened again this week when Shelley Morse, President of the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union, attempted to explain why more funding and supports were needed, once again. “Years ago, when the inclusion policy was introduced, it was a wonderful concept but it has never been fully funded and that’s where a lot of the issues arise from,” she said.”We don’t have the proper materials and the funding is not there for the human resources that we need.”
Teacher stress, real and perhaps embellished for effect, is a legitimate educational workplace issue. Yet the proposed policy changes advanced by Canadian teacher union advocates don’t really address the “elephant in the schoolhouse.” If “class composition” is the heart of the problem why beat around the bush? What’s so sacrosanct about the current Special Education model based upon “inclusion for all” in a one-size-fits all classroom system? It’s time to ask whether inclusive education, implemented as a whole system approach, is either affordable or effective in meeting student needs along the full continuum of service.
Educhatter 
More money is ALMOST ALWAYS the correct answer. Canada a world leader in post secondary graduation rates. More $$= more graduates.
More MONEY is always the answer when your objective is to build upon current conditions and to perpetuate existing frameworks. It is also clear that the main worries of Canadian classroom teachers have surprisingly little to do with their own personal financial circumstances.
Recent surveys of Teacher Stress speak overwhelmingly about school climate and the challenges of current expectations pulling them in all directions. A 2008 Nova Scotia Teacher Stress survey identified the same stressors, but revealed that salary, benefits and pension were not really concerns. Very few had any concern over job security. In other words, teacher’s concerns were not those of most people in today’s workplace.
School leadershjp is an unreported but real concern of classroom teachers. When that is on the table, teachers are quite consistent in expressing concern over top-down decision making and administrators who “do not listen or act upon their concerns.” Only 24 per cent of over 800 Nova Scotia teachers surveyed by SMU researchers had “ever witnessed transformational leadership.” In the absence of inspiring leadership, concerns and complaints multiply.
It seems apparent to me that “more money” for special education is not going to its targeted purpose, but rather in to school board general coffers. More money is not the solution. The time has come to take a hard look at the black hole that special education has become.
Actually I agree but stressed out inner city principals ask for more support under any other budget line the answer is NO. If they identify more SE kids they get more money. Duh. After a while like a rat in a cage, they hit the lever that gives a food pellet not the one that gives a shock.
The largest category of Special Ed is a a catch-all called ‘Specific Learning Disabilities’, and the biggest subgroup of SLD are ‘dyslexic’ kids that don’t know how to segment, blend, and sound out phonics.
These sare smart, capable students, but they are ignored, bored and hate being the ‘dumb’ kids. So they act up and disrupt the class.
The solution is simple – teach them how to read. Put aside the discovery learning that clearly isn’t working for these kids, and teach them in a guided, systematic, prescriptive way.
Right Tom it is that simple. Eyes roll.
In a 2011 educational review of the school system in NS, it was reported the special education population was around 17%. At the school I work at in NS, I would suggest we are reflective of this figure. In the same report, it was noted SEN population should be much lower at around 3-4%. Before throwing more money into inclusion and quick fixes, I think we need to look at how we are teaching our children and how we are training our educators. Currently, there is no long term plan- CSI is a short 5 year plan to bring up test scores for the mainstream. We talk about inclusion, but we do not practice inclusion. As a school system, we are stuck in our comfort zone.
You are honing-in on a critical issue, Heather. Dr. Ben Levin’s 2011 report, now hidden from public view, was the first study to actually address the underlying problems in Nova Scotia’s Special Education delivery system. He was also acutely aware of Nova Scotia’s looming “class composition” problem.
His analysis of the policy challenges was essentially accurate and, as a result, stirred up much controversy. Dr. Levin led off by expressing concern over Nova Scotia’s “culture of failure” and attributed it, surprisingly, to the overgrown SPED support system. For a school system with 128,000 kids, he was alarmed by the numbers “coded” and the growth of TAs. It provoked a firestorm because of the threat to employment levels, always a factor in Nova Scotia education politics.
I support your contention but want to suggest that your Special Education student numbers are a little off the mark. Across North America, Special Education students average about 12-13 per cent of the enrolment and represent some 20 per cent of education costs. What Levin found was that Nova Scotia’s SPED system was growing in uncontrolled fashion, especially the growth in EAs and associated costs. He was shocked to see how many NS kids were being served and questioned the effectiveness of the delivery system. With a more flexible system, offering more service options, we would be far better off because more children would be thriving and less dependent upon extra supports.
Thanks for the clarity- I was trying to pull from my memory of the figures Levin’s Report presents. At the school where I work in the learning centre, we do have a SEN population close to 15-17% (inclusive of students of adaptations and individual plans). It is worth noting my school is in a low socio-economic area. I did just go recheck the report- an alarming rate our SEN at which our SEN enrollment is rising. I am reminded of a common phrase at SPT by teachers (of varying years of experience) “I have tried everything, nothing works, this student needs an IPP”. This phrase is most common in the month is so leading up to assessments.
Dr Levin certainly wasn’t the first. 10 years ago, the Fraser Institute was recommending offering vouchers to Special Ed students. The students get a better education, the province saves money, and classroom teachers are less stressed. Win-win-win.
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/publicationdisplay.aspx?id=12682&terms=let+funding+follow
Anybody who sites the FI puts the far right wing corporate agenda label on themselves at peril of their own cred. The education community looks at FI like Godzilla. A dangerous but not too bright entity.
CD Howe, Frontier, Atlantic Institute same thing. Eyes roll.
If we look at intellectual distribution even from the old crude IQ bell curve stuff which had the advantage of a gigantic sample, 5-7% of us are born with fewer intellecual gifts than the main group and about the same 5-7% are born with superior intellectual gifts. The middle 85-90% have all they need to make it to college. This indicates to me that SE is oversubscribed even if the second group are in gifted or similar.
Special Ed Secondary SES at the TBE was about 15% but on an upward trajectory in my day.
Yes and the refusal of teaching explicit systematic synthetic phonics day one rather than the “balanced literacy” and RR marriage continue and will continue to exacerbate failure.
Dr.Jamie Metsala has tried to guide the Ministry,God forbid they should heed to her knowledge.
Research,who needs that?
As a reading therapist and at various times an advocate for parents & children (several different Ontario boards), I do not see the rather simplistic scenarios described here. The “inclusion” movement has many roots, but it is certainly not something imposed by the education hierarchy on the public: it is widely supported by parents, even — and sadly, often especially — by parents of the children who are most disadvantaged by it. The boards like it because it is well-received by the public, saves a lot of money compared to specialized instruction in part- or full-time separate settings, and is politically correct and can be trumpeted as “equity.” The reality is very different, but that is rarely discussed.
A point that no one here, and no one in the P4E report, seems to be aware of, is that a large number of children, many of whom have IEPs, are not classified/identified/designated “special education” because they do not meet Ministry criteria (as interpreted by the board) for an “exceptionality.” These are often the *most* at-risk children, and if from low-income families, the ones with the least ability to obtain the needed services outside of school. I volunteer for a community agency to work with these children and have seen this first-hand. Because they are not “special ed” they have no entitlements and are the first to be dropped from whatever resource support a school may offer, because the “identified” (meaning, IPRC’d in Ontario) students come first.
Boards are making it much more difficult for children to meet criteria for an exceptionality, including LD, behaviour disorder, specific language impairment, or mild cognitive disability (used to be called educable mentally retarded). I’ve been to IPRC meetings with parents who begged, in tears, with doctor’s notes and tons of documentation, for their child to be “identified” so he or she could receive services, even such few as are available, but most are refused on a technicality. Where the boards are stuck is with autism — that diagnosis is made by a medical doctor and the board cannot challenge it. Services for children with autism can be very expensive (I’m sure the majority of children alluded to in the P4E report who are sent home from school because of “inadequate supports” are children with autism, and the safety concerns for those children are very, very real and serious), the number of children is growing, and in this area at least costs are rising for legitimate reasons but I do not see any evidence of a concerted effort to design a long-term, economical and empirically effective response. Crisis management is the order of the day.
Many of the “dyslexic” children I have worked with have not been classified as “LD” because their IQ is not high enough (some boards insist it must be above the 25th percentile), yet these children have the same difficulty with blending, segmenting and so on as mentioned above, as children in the 25th percentile and up, and respond to the same instruction. Regardless of IQ, some need so much intensive instruction, 1:1 or 2:1, that I cannot see how it could be feasibly provided in an inclusive classroom, or indeed in most school settings even in a withdrawal program. Gough, Vellutino and others have found that some 6-year-olds needed up to 100 hours of 1:1 instruction in beginning reading to be safely on their way(and all of these were children with solid average ability). Lower ability, but still average, children may require much more.
Yes, “money” is part of the problem, but it won’t solve the problem, which is the lack of long-term,informed thinking and planning at the top. The special education courses for teachers do not teach them any of the validated methods of teaching exceptional children. I’ve seen plenty of hugely dedicated teachers (and many are teaching phonics skills directly and systematically, but they cannot provide the intensity some children need as things are). Besides which, “LD” students often have challenges unrelated to phonics, and need different instruction across curriculum areas. Some of the LD lab schools are pioneers and models in this area, but nobody is taking notice or lessons from them. .
I don’t know where Doug Little gets his idea that “stressed out inner city principals ask for more support under any other budget line the answer is NO. If they identify more SE kids they get more money. Duh” because that statement is *absolutely untrue.* A school does not get funding based on the number or kind of special education students – the funding for special education is based entirely on enrolment. Certain funds can be accessed (but they are small and do not go into the school’s budget) for special equipment or for personnel on an hourly basis to control very violent students. Principals have no advantage in identifying students for special ed, although they are required under the education act to implement an IEP for students who require accommodations or modifications, whether they are “special ed” or not.
The perspective from a parent who had a dyslexic child that successfully graduated grade 12 in the year 2013. If I had left it up to the K to 12 establishment, the inclusive policies would have ensure my child to remained at the bottom, and would be presently sitting at home without a bright future. Reading Therapist has shown the window of a trained reading therapist regarding the fallout of inclusive practices employed at the K to 12 schools. I do agree with all Reading Therapist has stated, and I shall add to her statements coming from the perspective of a parent.
Inclusive movements? Sounds almost like a religious revival of the Evangelical kind eh? There is nothing inherently wrong with ‘inclusive theories’ but when the educationalists decided to bring on the education inclusive movement into the schools, the education policy wonks saw it as the opportunity to put locks on the access doors to Special Education services and other education services that are beyond the inclusive classroom. In Wikipedia, ” Inclusion in education is an approach to educating students with special educational needs. Under the inclusion model, students with special needs spend most or all of their time with non-disabled students. Implementation of these practices varies. Schools most frequently use them for selected students with mild to severe special needs.[1]
Inclusive education differes from previously held notions of integration and mainstreaming, which tended to be concerned principally with disability and ‘special educational needs’ and implied learners changing or becoming ‘ready for’ or deserving of accommodation by the mainstream. By contrast, inclusion is about the child’s right to participate and the school’s duty to accept the child. Inclusion rejects the use of special schools or classrooms to separate students with disabilities from students without disabilities. A premium is placed upon full participation by students with disabilities and upon respect for their social, civil, and educational rights. Inclusion gives students with disabilities skills they can use in and out of the classroom.[2]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusion_(education)
Now that the locks are on, gatekeepers were employed to prevent the vast majority of identified and unidentified students from accessing education services that aids in higher achievement such as corrective remediation in the 3 Rs to other services such as assessments to determined and pinpoint learning struggles of students. The gatekeepers are the classroom educators who must followed the criteria and policies to ensure students met the criteria to access education services other than the education services and resources in the inclusive classroom. In concert and deliberate policy crafting, the school districts “are making it much more difficult for children to meet criteria for an exceptionality, including LD, behaviour disorder, specific language impairment, or mild cognitive disability. One criteria, is that the child must be failing in the core subjects of language arts and math in the younger grades before the assessment process can begin. It results in keeping almost two-thirds of students in a primary classroom from accessing education services that correct and remediates reading, writing and numeracy issues. I know when my child was in grade 1, the teachers could not have blind and deaf to the my child’s reading, writing and numeracy difficulties. My child was not assessed until grade 3, and that only came when I deliberately withdrew support at home, and I took my child for ice cream cones instead of nightmare homework sessions. Within three weeks, I received a phone call to signed the papers. My child was officially failing in all cored subjects except for French which was an A grade at the time. I than put back my support at home, and brought her grade levels back up to passing grades, without the support of the school who were all insisting that my child did not have a learning disability despite the documentation of other health professionals regarding a major speech delay and other additional documentation of lower phonemic awareness.
The design of the inclusive policies essentially imposes a glass ceiling on students with reading, writing and numeracy skills to prevent the children from excelling academically and progressing at grade level. Part of the glass ceiling are the arbitrary rules put in place of who does or does not have reading difficulties. As in the past, and now in 2014 if my child was attending a school she would be seen as not having reading difficulties, even though she would probably have one of the lowest score in phonemic awareness in the classroom. Reading Therapist states, “. Many of the “dyslexic” children I have worked with have not been classified as “LD” because their IQ is not high enough (some boards insist it must be above the 25th percentile), yet these children have the same difficulty with blending, segmenting and so on as mentioned above, as children in the 25th percentile and up, and respond to the same instruction” Rather foolish to imposed what are essentially arbitrary rules to ensure children remain low achievers by blocking children from receiving corrective reading services based on a IQ.
Another component of the glass ceiling are the belief structures of the education establishment where intelligence is fixed and intelligence corresponds with the ease that a child learns to read. The belief systems are rooted in the 19th century pedagogical theorists and are very much embedded in the 2014 classrooms of the K to 12 education classroom and pedagogical practices. I had the distinct pleasure of being told, “My child was developmentally slow” and in the next breath, “My child was too smart to be considered having any reading problems.” All in the name to prevent my child from receiving education services beyond the classroom in the inclusive classroom. No wonder the classroom teachers are stressed, but just asked a parent about the 2 to 4 hour meltdowns at home that are part of the fallout of inclusive policies that only serves the best interests of the K to 12 education establishment at the expense of the students and their education.
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