Student Behaviour and Inclusion: How well are “Coke Bottle Kids” being served in total inclusion classrooms?*

New Brunswick disabilities advocate Heather Chandler, the mother of a hearing-challenged daughter, is no fan of the what she describes as the “illusion of inclusion.” On an April 2023 CBC NB radio panel of parents, she described what it’s really like for her daughter Alison and far too many other children in New Brunswick’s one-classroom-for-all model.

Social isolation, anxieties and frustrations are an everyday school experience for many children. That’s what vocal N.B. parents such as Chandler are saying publicly, some for the first time. It all surfaced during the tension-filled consultations over the aborted French language reforms threatening the French immersion program

Chandler is far from alone in speaking out about how it’s adversely affecting her own daughter and children with disabilities of all kinds. “She’s holding it in,” Chandler says, while others are “blowing up in class” causing disruptions. It all comes out when she gets home. “For deaf kids, it’s actually exclusion.” In short, “it’s not working.”

Chandler’s daughter displays the classic behaviour of what are known as “Coke bottle kids.” That term, coined by American education observer Jay Elizabeth Brownlee, originally used to describe neurodivergent children, has far wider application. It helps to explain why teachers say school kids are “fine” or “had a good day” yet the second they get home (or before they leave the school parking lot), they simply “blow up in your face.”

Chandler and that CBC NB panel, including Moncton parent Clinton Davis and French immersion parent Weh-Ming Cho, identified, in considerable detail, how challenging it can be trying to cope in today’s classrooms. Each of them, to varying degrees, supported structural changes building-in more “fluidity” for kids, including a broader range of options to ensure meaningful inclusion for most, if not all kids, right across the spectrum.

Student behaviour and the remarkably rigid N.B. inclusion model are intimately connected. Investing some $30-million more may provide some temporary relief, but it’s not getting to the root of the matter. Without some fluidity in movement, it can be, in Chandler’s words, “an isolating experience.”

Listening to his children, Moncton’s Clinton Davis got a good sense of what’s actually going on in different schools. His kids simply don’t feel like the regular teachers know how to support students with disabilities nor do they have the resources to manage students with behavioural problems. Some unruly students, he pointed out, do not have diagnosed disabilities and are simply ‘acting up’ and disrupting classes.

While French immersion classes run more smoothly, Cho thinks they too might benefit from some variation in delivery models, including enrichment opportunities. Allowing students to periodically interact with “new faces” might provide some relief as long as it’s not perceived as punishment of any kind. Being stuck with the same people all day, whatever your age, he added, could become a “hellscape” for anyone.

The latest provincial plan to address student behaviour challenges, announced in late July by NBTA Executive Director Ardith Shirley and Assistant Deputy Education Minister Tiffany Bastin, came up considerably short. Hiring “behaviour mentors” and adding contract supply teachers was presented as a “near-term” response. It looks far more like a band-aid to patch-up the existing model and quell rising parent and teacher concerns.

Education Minister Bill Hogan’s statement supporting the latest plan sounded like it was simply a matter of providing more classroom supports.  The behaviour intervention mentors, he said, were aimed at helping students “learn to self-regulate” and helping staff to “co-regulate” guiding students on a “more positive path” and “reduce interruptions that happen in class.” Assigning supply teachers to specific schools, Hogan added, provided more predictability for teachers and consistency for learning-challenged children.

A year ago, former N.B. Education Minister Dominic Cardy was preparing to revamp thar province’s rather rigid inclusion model to address the incidence of behavioural disruptions. The policy change, he wrote, was aimed at “making it clear that we defined inclusion as being inclusion within the school, not the classroom.” That meant all students would be included in the class unless and until the behaviour of a single student disrupted the entire class. In such cases, that student would be provided with an alternative placement with resource support.

Sarah Wagner, executive director of Inclusion N.B., strongly objected to any plan deviating from Policy 322 on Inclusive Education, claiming that inclusion should continue to mean every student, all the time, without exception. “The right of the child is to be with their peers and within the classroom,” she told CBC News. “The way we need to look at it is — what supports are required to make that successful.”

The interim report issued by in June 2023 by Shirley and Bastin backs away from that inclusion reform commitment.  It tilts more in the direction of maintaining the status quo, in line with the position of Inclusion NB, formerly known as the Association for Community Living.

New Brunswick’s “Coke bottle kids” are not really integrated into those classrooms and some are disruptive because teachers are overwhelmed and unable to cope with the frequency of class disruptions.  When disruptions occur, teachers simply keep the lid on or evacuate everyone except the student acting out and causing a disturbance.

Legitimate parent concerns about disruptive students and the social isolation of kids with disabilities in regular classes are not really being addressed. New Brunswick has settled for What Cardy described as “ rhetorical inclusion” and it’s not only an “absurd situation” but not sustainable for much longer.  Let’s hope this isn’t widespread in our provincial school systems.

• Extracted and adapted from an Education Beat column, Telegraph-Journal, September 23, 2023. 

What is “meaningful inclusion for so-called “Coke-Bottle Kids”? Why are today’s teachers so overwhelmed by students with complex needs and struggling to maintain safe, calm and mutually cooperative class environments? Is adding “behaviour mentors” going to make much of a difference? How many adults can a regular classroom teacher manage along with a class of kids? Where might policy-makers look to find a school system where severely challenged kids are identified, supported and integrated back into the mainstream classroom? 

 

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Inclusive Education Test: What Good is an Inclusion Model sustained by Student Exclusions?

School districts across Canada are now gradually introducing “inclusion” and doing so by shutting down special education classes. Largely based upon research generated by leading academics like Mel Ainscow and championed by ‘inclusionists’ aligned with the Canadian Centre for Inclusive Education, they are replacing ‘intensive support’ with integration into mainstream classes. While the trend is not new, it is now facing stiffer resistance from a loose aggregation of parents of learning-challenged students and regular teachers on the frontlines of today’s complex, diverse and challenging classrooms.

Ontario parent Theresa McMahon, mother of 13-year-old Callum, profiled in a recent Toronto Globe and Mail feature story by Caroline Alphonso, is typical of the resistant parents. Her son who exhibits severe behavioural challenges, now splits his time between regular Grade 7 classes and an intensive support program space providing access to intensive support in the form of specialized teachers, education assistants, and social workers. It’s one of 18 congregated classes scheduled to close across the Peel District School Board this school year, bringing the total shuttered to some 71 over the past three years.

Promoters of the unitary inclusive classroom model, most fully implemented in New Brunswick, are facing significant pushback. Callum’s mother Theresa McMahon sees how her son is benefitting from the extra support and concerned about it disappearing next year. For their part, regular classroom teachers, already burdened with diverse and relatively large classes, have learned, over time, to expect little in the way of additional support. Inclusive classrooms, they firmly believe, are utilized to reduce education costs, especially by governments committed to austerity in K-12 education.

Proponents of the one-size-fits-all inclusion model rarely, if ever, confront the problems now visible and sparking intense debate in New Brunswick.   Class composition re-surfaced as the major issue out of the ashes of the failed French language learning initiative. It was raised forcefully in  Education Minister Bill Hogan’s February 2023 virtual consultation with some 350 English prime teachers and principals, held in conjunction with the New Brunswick Teachers Association (NBTA).

Classroom teachers used up the one-hour online conversation time driving home the message that they were “forced to ‘triage’ students’ because of the lack of resources.” While the teacher participants aired well-known teacher concerns, they skirted around the ‘elephant in the classroom ‘– the fact that the N.B. model of inclusion is crumbling and failing far-too-many students right across the spectrum.

Since then, disturbing stories about the incidence of exclusions in the province’s schools, sending kids home of 2-3 days a week, or weeks on end, have hit the local news. Former Education Minister Dominic Cardy, known for his outspoken style, did not mince any words.  Back on April 19, he told CBC News that maintaining the pretense of “inclusion” had become an “absurd situation.”

New Brunswick’s Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock was the first to blow the whistle on student exclusions. In October 2022, he issued a “guidance letter” to school districts warning them that it’s illegal to send a child home simply because a learning disorder made them too difficult to deal with. It was sparked by a series of parent complaints that school staff told them their children could only attend school for part of the day or a few days a week.

Child Advocate Lamrock put it clearly in October during a presentation to a N.B. legislative committee. “The Education Act in Section 12 is absolutely clear,” he stated. “All children have a right to be in school when their peers are in school. If the school’s open and kids are going, every child is receiving educational services.”

Speaking at the annual CAPSLE conference, on April 30, in Fredericton, Lamrock spoke on the Jeffrey Moore Decision (B.C. 2012) and its implications for Section 15 rights in the New Brunswick school system. That Supreme Court decision, he said, established the judicial principle that “inclusion” meant a child must have “meaningful access” to educational services. “If the child is sent home to do nothing, with no real support, that’s unacceptable.”

In New Brunswick, the province hailed by Ainscow and Canadian inclusionists as the exemplar, the reality is that it’s simply not working, largely because of the delivery model and the relative lack of resource supports. “There are too many cases of children being sent home, “Lamrock told his CAPSLE workshop attendees. “There is no legal or moral defense for that policy.” There are cases, he added, of kids being sent home for two to three years. “If a child is not progressing, it’s not defensible.”

“Are mainstream classrooms set up to accommodate the range of diversity we see in our students?”  That’s the key question posed by Globe and Mail education reporter Caroline Alphonso.  In the case, of New Brunswick, the answer is decidedly ‘no.’ Two Education Ministers, immediate past and present, and the provincial Child Advocate concur on that answer.

“Putting students first” is the priority, in Lamrock’ s words. That means providing “meaningful access” to educational services, ideally in that child’s home school. Where he disagrees with Education Minister Hogan is on the criterion for determining a student’s class placement. He’s concerned that Hogan is back-sliding by defending “inclusion as long as students meet disciplinary standards.”

Child Advocate Lamrock’ s next report, expected in mid-May 2023, will tackle the whole thorny problem. “We have to maintain inclusive classrooms,” he says, expressing a firm commitment to the fundamental principle of providing “meaningful access” to everyone. The only exception, in his view, would be in cases where students are so challenged that they cannot be expected to meet those ‘disciplinary standards.’  In such cases, it’s up to school districts to provide viable, properly resourced alternative provisions.

Is full inclusion in a regular classroom, widely acknowledged as an aspirational ideal, an achievable goal?  What are the lessons of the 2012 Jeffrey Moore decision on Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?  What is needed for the vast majority of students to be integrated into mainstream classes?  Is affordability an issue or is it a matter of human rights settled by the courts? Why is the New Brunswick model under so much critical fire?

 

 

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Teen to Adult Mental Health Reform: What’s Preventing Us from Connecting the Dots?

Dots can be hard to connect, especially when it comes to addressing the continuing challenge of teen mental health. The state of services in New Brunswick is replicated right across Canada, especially outside our major cities. Ten years ago, some 1,200 parents and ordinary citizens launched a New Brunswick movement to create a Centre for Excellence for children and youth with complex needs. In the wake of the tragic March 2021 death of 13-year-old Lexi Daken of Fredericton, it’s fair to ask why, since then, so little has changed for teens in crisis.

The images of that day stay with you. Mobilized by Fredericton parent Maureen Bilerman, hundreds of Dots for Youth advocates descended upon downtown Fredericton to form a human chain, connecting the dots, fingertip-to-fingertip, from the Victoria Health Centre to the Provincial Legislature. That demonstration was sparked by an equally disturbing personal story, but it drew powerful inspiration from a truly ground-breaking report, Connecting the Dots, produced in February 2008 by then Child and Youth Advocate Bernard Richard.

What happened over the past decade is a cautionary tale packing some profound lessons. Shocking and disturbing incidents stir outrage, visionary plans for systemic change appear, the momentum dies down, competing regional interests’ surface, and it all comes unraveled en route to effective implementation.

“Sadly, not much has really changed, “says Bernard Richard, looking back over the past ten to twelve years.  “We are still a long way from achieving the goals and implementing the recommendations set out in Connecting the Dots. Despite repeated commitments, revolving door governments, not much has transpired in filling the holes in our community-based network of support for teens in crisis.”

Richard’s report proposed systemic reform, far ahead of its time.  Breaking with the conventional social service model, he singlehandedly put “integrated service delivery” on the child and youth services agenda. Back then, it was considered revolutionary to recommend reengineering the system to focus on student needs rather than the priorities of competing government departments.

Seeing that children and youth at-risk were falling through the cracks, Richard proposed integrating services and focusing psych-social- medical resources. “The one child, one file” concept made perfect sense, but takes years to put in place in a siloed system. “Everyone should have access to the same case file, and no one should have to tell their story over and over again,” he insists. “No one would be missed if there was true integrated support and one case manager per file.” 

Successive governments, Liberal and Conservative, have bungled the most important file – the proposed Centre for Excellence, one critically-important project which had the potential to turn the situation around in child and teen mental health services. From 2011 to 2015, a province-wide network for service excellence gained momentum and a consensus formed around locating the hub in Moncton or Fredericton, closest the hospitals with youth psychiatric services.

The May 2015 provincial decision, since rescinded, to build a Centre for Youth Services in Campbellton, essentially ignored the demographics of teen mental health case-loads and ran counter to the vast majority of the community feedback. 

Long-time advocates like Dots.NB founder Maureen Bilerman were distraught over the decision and its ramifications. “It’s a sad day for families and youth in crisis,” she said in a series of media interviews. “Shock, disbelief and disappointment” were the words she used to describe her reaction. “Most of the youth-at-risk are from the urban centres of Saint John, Moncton, or Fredericton, and it makes no sense, so it must be a political decision.” 

Political advocacy for teen mental health reform may not have reshaped the system, but it has continued to raise awareness and generate plenty of activity. When Bilerman chose to step back, after a decade of pressing for change, her Dots NB organization merged with the longer-established Partners for Youth Alliance, also based in the provincial capital.

Youth in Action mental health activities peaked in the 2018-19 school year, just prior to the pandemic. Some 74,400 students were exposed to mental health activities, held province-wide for two days, dubbed “Ring a Bell” and “Bell Let’s Talk.” Specific programs were delivered in 7 high schools, and some 200 students participated in one-time mental health presentations.

Most students surveyed gave the high school mental health sessions an “Apple” rating, indicating that they found them to be positive experiences. Raising awareness is beneficial, but reaching the students most in need of help remained as elusive as ever. 

The Pandemic dealt a significant blow to such school initiatives. School closures in March of 2020 interrupted communications and the Partners for Youth group reportedly experienced “radio silence” from youth and educators in the partnered schools. Students and teachers were, according to the agency, “overwhelmed” and “treading to keep their heads above water.”

School shutdowns adversely affected those who needed guidance, counselling, and supports the most. The Partners for Youth 2019-20 annual report put it rather bluntly: “Many students who had difficulties with Mental Wellness ahead of school closures had fallen off the school’s radar completely.”  That has the makings of a youth social service crisis. 

The Fredericton agency’s Executive Director John Sharpe has seen it all, over thirty years working with youth-at-risk. Many investigations and reviews have echoed the findings of a 2009 report by Justice Michael McKee, all painting a similar picture of a system that’s “overwhelmed, understaffed and inadequate for the care of youth.”

“We don’t want to rebuild the system,” Sharpe recently commented. “We want a new system… we want a transformed system. What that means is we have youth, family and community at the centre.” Waiting for champions has turned this reform drive into an exhausting decathlon. 

The road to youth mental health reform is paved with good intentions, but initiatives either run out of high-test gas, are diverted into cul-de-sacs, or get co-opted by research groups chasing government grants. Far too many reform initiatives end up being ‘studied to death’ or kicked down the road through the commissioning of yet another government report.

What’s really standing in the way of the needed changes? “The outrage is now at an all-time high,” according to Dots for Youth founder Bilerman. “What we lack,” she believes, “is the capacity for transformational change management. Models exist and we could pull it off here in New Brunswick.”  Let’s hope the ‘Powers That Be’ are listening.

What’s the situation in your province, district or local community?  To what extent are the service gaps visible in New Brunswick present in your community? What does it take to “connect the dots” and establish a full continuum of support services from childhood to adolescence and on into adulthood?

 

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Implementing Inclusive Education: What Lessons Can Be Learned from New Brunswick?*

Implementing true inclusive education is one of the most formidable challenges facing Canadian provincial school systems.  Scanning the Inclusion and Special Education policy landscape from province to province, New Brunswick stands out as an outlier. The so-called “New Brunswick Model” adopted in 2006 and formally confirmed in 2012-13 focuses almost exclusively on integrating all students into regular or mainstream classes.

Education Minister Dominic Cardy’s recent announcement of a New Brunswick inclusion policy review was welcomed by concerned parents and teachers. Defenders of the existing inclusion model under Policy 322 reacted with dismay and trepidation, and for good reason.  Public consultations have revealed, once again, that the total inclusion classroom is not working for every student nor for far too many regular teachers.  While former Education Minister Jody Carr and his entourage are travelling the world promoting that model, it is on decidedly shaky ground at home.

Everyone today supports inclusive education and there can be no turning back.  Societal changes, human rights advocacy, and the growing complexity of classrooms in terms of capabilities, language, race, ethnicity and gender have combined to forge a broader commitment to truly inclusive education.

What looked progressive fourteen years ago when Wayne MacKay proposed the current N.B. inclusion model has now been superseded by newer, more flexible and more responsive approaches better suited to meeting the full range of student needs. We are also now more attuned to significant differences on the question of how to achieve meaningful, properly-resourced inclusion for all students across the full spectrum of abilities.

A lot is at stake in the latest review of inclusive education policy. That is because the so-called ‘New Brunswick Model’ is a provincial export product and is being considered for implementation in Ireland. An October 2019 report from the Irish National Council on Special Education (NCSE), heavily influenced by Carr’s policy advocacy, tilted in the direction of adopting a ‘total inclusion model’ and it has inspired a fierce debate in Ireland.

The proposed policy reform has put New Brunswick education under the microscope. No other Canadian province has chosen to follow the N.B. inclusion path, and this has been duly noted by vocal critics of the whole scheme in the widely-read Irish Times newspaper.

Much has been made of UN Special Rapporteur Catalina Devandas-Aguilar’s commendation of New Brunswick for its compliance with international human rights declarations. That was, it must be noted, one of the only positive mentions in her report which critiqued almost every other province for their ‘uneven application’ of policies across all public services, including heath, education, housing and transit.

Many educators and researchers in Ireland are puzzled as to why the N.B. model emerged as a preferred option when it is at odds with inclusive policy elsewhere. Most provinces, including neighbouring Nova Scotia, offer ‘inclusive education’ with options ranging from integration into regular classrooms to special ‘resource’ classes to specialized programs in alternative school settings.

Defenders of the N.B. model were rocked a year ago by a series of Toronto Globe and Mail investigative stories focusing on whether “inclusive classrooms” were working for most if not all students. The deeply moving story of Grayson Kahn, a 7-year-old Ontario boy with autism excluded from his school for assaulting an Education Assistant, captured nation-wide attention. It also departed from the usual script – extolling the virtues of inclusion – and, instead, raised serious questions about the difficulties of accommodating children with complex needs in regular classrooms.

Teachers in Canada, including many in New Brunswick, are reporting a dramatic rise in violent incidents disrupting their classrooms, and rising tensions with families who feel their regular stream children are at risk. For the past five years, periodic concerns have been voiced by the New Brunswick Teachers Association (NBTA) over threats to the safety of teachers and education assistants.

Some educators in the Globe and Mail series addressed the so-called ‘elephant in the classroom,’ daring to wonder if inclusion has gone too far for students with very complex needs.  Inclusiveness will not work, they claimed, without “a thoughtful rethinking of how we teach children with diverse needs and how we structure the school day.”

School districts in Canada are beginning to acknowledge the need for “time out rooms” to allow students experiencing meltdowns space and time to recover. Families with children who have intellectual and developmental disabilities are increasingly being asked to pick up kids early, start the school day later or simply keep them home for the entire day.

Complicating matters is the fact that apart from a few advocacy or parent group surveys, most Canadian school districts, including those in New Brunswick, didn’t formally track these exclusions or shortened days until recently mandated to do so.

The N.B. inclusion system is full of holes, judging from concerns raised by parents and teachers during Minister Cardy’s current round of consultations.  Co-founder of Riverbend Community School in Moncton, Rebecca Halliday, was one of those speaking up for changes. She has fought an uphill battle for five years to establish a school for severely learning challenged students. Her struggles mirror those of hundreds of parents and families effectively ‘excluded’ by the total inclusion classroom policy and practice.

Conducting a provincial review opens the door, once again, to providing support for the most severely challenged students and need relief for their exhausted parents. What Halliday’s school struggle amply demonstrates is that it will not happen in New Brunswick without the introduction of a tuition support program being extended to students and families without the means to pay the tuition themselves.

Such a program exists in Nova Scotia where, since September 2004, provincial education authorities have offered a Tuition Support Program (TSP). It not only plugged the service gap, but broadened public access to intensive support programs designed for students with acute learning difficulties. Under the TSP, a small number of private, independent Special Education schools  (DSEPS) (Grade 3–12) not only exist, but fill the gap by providing a vitally important lifeline in the continuum of student support services.

Inclusion is an ideal to which most advanced education countries, provinces and states aspire.  One of the best and most influential international statements, the Salamanca Statement on Principles and Practice in Special Needs Education (UNESCO 1994), continues to inform much of the current policy on inclusive education. Children should be learning together in schools – but not necessarily in one particular setting.

With the exception of New Brunswick, provincial ministries of education take their cue from the Salamanca Statement and are working toward inclusive education by removing barriers and improving student supports across a range of program service options, including intensive support for children with the most complex needs. Today, inclusive education is the overriding philosophy and the real challenge is to ensure that students, parents, and service providers find the ‘right fit’ for every child or teen.

Winning a September 2016 Zero Project prize and recent praise from a UN agency, it turns out, is a dubious honour for New Brunswick because it involves expending so much time and energy defending a regular class setting for everyone, when some fare far better in smaller classes with more intensive resource support and others thrive with more individualized attention.

Instead of merely complying with a UN philosophical declaration, Minister Cardy and the Department would be better advised to study carefully the findings of Nova Scotia’s 2018 Inclusive Education Commission and its prescription. Following that extensive and comprehensive review, Nova Scotia is now fully engaged in building a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS), much better aligned with best practice and evidence-informed research.

• An earlier version of this post appeared in the Telegraph-Journal, March 5, 2020.

Tackling inclusion stirs up passions and raises sensitive issues, but it’s time to address the key policy questions: Will the New Brunswick Model ever work, given the complex challenges in today’s classrooms?  What are the real and unintended consequences of mandatory inclusion in the absence of other viable, attractive or effective alternatives?  Is the properly-resourced all-inclusive classroom model feasible or sustainable?  If the N>B. model is optimal, why are school districts everywhere tilting more in the direction of implementing MTSS and attempting to support everyone across the full continuum of needs? 

 

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Inclusion Confusion: What’s Happening to Nova Scotia’s Inclusive Education Plan?

A year ago, a Nova Scotia Inclusive Education Commission headed by Dr. Sarah Shea of the IWK Children’s Hospital broke new ground in proposing a robust $70-million, 5-year plan to re-engineer inclusive education. The new model known as Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) attracted immediate and widespread support from classroom teachers, parents of learning-challenged students, and advocacy groups, including Autism Nova Scotia.

Today there are clear signs that the implementation of Nova Scotia Inclusive Education reform is going off-the-rails and the whole venture in danger of being turned to different purposes. Three critical implementation pieces have been dropped and the whole project is now under completely new management.

Education Minister Zach Churchill and his recently appointed Deputy Minister Catherine Montreuil have already abandoned three first stage recommendations: establishing an independent Institute for Inclusive Education (NSEII), appointing an Executive Director to spearhead the initiative; and commencing independent Canadian research into evidence-based MTSS practices.

Much of what is going inside Nova Scotia’s Education Department is now carried out behind closed doors and completely outside public view. Piecing together the puzzle requires the investigative skills of a Detective William Murdoch. Sleuthing in and around the Department does provide a few clues.

A January 2019 Provincial Advisory Council on Education (PACE) agenda featured a peculiar item under the heading “Inclusive Education Policy.” Assembled members of the appointed body, chaired by former HRSB chair, Gin Yee, were assembled to engage in an ‘interactive exercise’ focusing on “Dr. Gordon Porter’s work.” The published meeting minutes made no reference whatsoever to that discussion.

Seven months after Nova Scotia embraced the plan to build a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), the surfacing of Dr. Porter was downright strange on two counts. Canada’s leading champion of all-inclusive classrooms, New Brunswicker Porter, is well-known for advocating an approach at odds with the government’s stated policy. Not only that, but in October 2018, Education Minister Churchill had named Porter as the lead consultant responsible for overseeing implementation.

If there was any doubt as to where Dr. Porter stands on inclusion, that vanished on February 15, 2018 when he published a very revealing commentary in his house organ publication, the Inclusive Education Canada newsletter.

When a Toronto Globe and Mail feature story on an autistic Ontario boy, Grayson Kahn,  pointed out that his ‘inclusive classroom’ had failed him, Porter took great exception to the piece because it called into question the appropriateness of the all-inclusive model for everyone. “Classrooms, inclusive or not, do not fail students,” he wrote. “The responsibility for success or failure lies with officials of the Education Ministries and the leaders of the school districts who set the policies, allocate resources and are responsible to ensure accountability to both parents and taxpayers.”

After thirty years of fighting to rid the system of alternative settings and specialized support programs, he was not about to change, even when confronted with the current challenges of class composition posed by the dramatically rising numbers of students with complex needs and sometimes unmanageable behavioural disorders in today’s classrooms.

Porter and his Inclusive Education Canada allies, well entrenched in New Brunswick, continue put all their faith in the all-inclusive classroom. Most, if not all, of their public advocacy seeks to demonstrate how every child can thrive in a regular classroom. The whole idea of providing alternative placements, ranging from one-on-one intensive support to specialized programs is an anathema to Porter and his allies.  Instead of addressing the need for viable, properly-resourced multi-tiered levels of support, they promote provincial policy aligned with the international Zero Project, aimed at enforcing inclusion for all, including those, like Grayson, with complex needs and severe learning difficulties.

Defenders of the New Brunswick model, shaped and built by Porter, remain blind to the realities of today’s complex classrooms. Sending children regularly to “time-out rooms” or home as “exclusions” for days-on-end come to be accepted as expedients to keep, intact, the semblance of inclusive classrooms.

Further detective work reveals that Porter is not without an ally on the PACE.  The sole education faculty appointee on that essentially faceless appointed body is Professor Chris Gilham of St. Francis-Xavier University, trained at the University of Alberta and closely aligned with Porter’s thinking.

Gilham’s research and teaching are steeped in the Inclusive Education Canada philosophy. He’s a public advocate of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an educational framework designed initially for Special Needs children that aims to increase “access to learning for all students” by removing all school-level barriers, physical, cognitive, intellectual and organizational.

Classifying and coding Special Education students, Gilham and co-author John Williamson claimed in a 2017 academic article, is part of the “bounty system” which provides funding on the basis of designated, documented exceptionalities. It is clear, from his writings, that he’s opposed to the “bifurcation of students” into a “value-laden, deficit-oriented, gross categories” aligned with their particular learning needs.

Inclusion of all students is now virtually universally accepted, but the Nova Scotia Inclusion Commission, to its credit, recognized that it does not necessarily mean inclusion in one particular setting, but rather in the one best suited to the child along a continuum of services from regular classroom to specialized support programs. The Students First report pointed Nova Scotia in that direction and challenged us to build an entirely new model significantly different than that to be found in New Brunswick.

Reaching every student and building a pyramid of tiered supports were the Nova Scotia plan’s overarching goals, not endlessly seeking ways to integrate students into one universal, one-size-fits-all classroom and concealing the actual numbers of students on alternative or part-time schedules. It’s time to urge Minister Churchill and his Department find their bearings and return to the True North of MTSS as charted by Dr. Shea and the Inclusive Education Commission.

What is happening to the implementation of the new Nova Scotia model for inclusive education? Do the decisions to drop three first-stage implementation recommendations signal a change in direction? Why did Nova Scotia’s government hire Dr. Gordon Porter to review implementation?  Will Dr. Porter’s upcoming review report confirm the change in direction? 

 

 

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Inclusive Education: Are Inclusive Classrooms Failing Kids –and, If So, Where Do We Go from Here?

A feature story in the Weekend Globe and Mail on January 6, 2019 has successfully opened the door to far more meaningful public discussion of inclusive education, from province to province, right across Canada. National Education reporter Caroline Alphonso did so by posing the right question and re-framing the whole conversation. “Are inclusive classrooms failing students?” is just the kind of question that breaks new ground by inviting responses from a much wider range of perspectives.

The initial story focused on Grayson Kahn, a 7-year-old- boy with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the incredible struggles of his mother Lisa Kahn and father Dave to get their son’s needs addressed at John McCrae P.S. in Guelph, Ontario. Diagnosed with ASD in the summer of 2017, Grayson was “excluded” from attending school because of that school’s inability to meet his complex needs.  The story hit a nerve because it highlighted the plight of hundreds children like Grayson either on reduced timetables or excluded in schools across the country.

Most readers were shocked to learn that in the Ontario school system, among the most inclusive and resource-rich anywhere, children like Grayson were being marginalized and poorly served in their public schools. Upon closer scrutiny, they learned that the system-wide philosophy, for decades, has been one that welcomed students with special needs into the regular classroom. It came as news to many that, faced with behavioural problems and regularly disrupted classrooms, principals had resorted to sending children home for part of the week or months on end.

Schools across Canada, since the 1990s, have fully embraced an enlightened model of inclusive education and attempted to implement it right across the board. One of Canada’s province’s, New Brunswick, has gone so far as to adopt the “Zero Project” philosophy in an attempt to integrate every student, irrespective of the severity of their disabilities, into regular classrooms. Leading education provinces, such as Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, support inclusive education, but recognize the need for a variety of additional support programs and services.

The Globe and Mail feature reopened the fierce debate among competing factions, all of whom are committed to improving inclusive education. Many are asking whether we now have a system of inclusive education in theory but not necessarily in practice. It is becoming more widely recognized that the current model was never designed to accommodate and serve the incredible range of student needs present in today’s classrooms. The rise in the prevalence of children diagnosed with ASD alone is enough to overwhelm teachers attempting to manage their classes, with or without Education Assistants. Many Special Education experts now acknowledge that inclusion is not working and it’s not just a matter of the shortage of EAs or the lack of resources.

The Inclusive Education Debate tends to be polarized around three distinct policy positions, each exemplified in opinion pieces generated in response to the initial Globe and Mail story:

1) Students with Severe Learning Challenges and Complex Needs should not be excluded from regular public schools, especially for prolonged periods, and its a school district’s responsibility to either accommodate those children in regular classes or find viable options (Laura Kirby-McIntosh and Ontario Autism Coalition)

2) Inclusive Education is not working because of inconsistencies in implementation and the rationing of resources in the form of resource supports such as psychological services, para-professionals, and/or education assistants. Hiring more support personnel is the answer to realizing the potential of inclusion ( Gordon Porter and Inclusive Education Canada)

3) Inclusive Classrooms are highly desirable, but can never accommodate the range of needs, especially those with severe learning disabilities and complex needs. For a small proportion of children with complex needs (3 to 5 per cent) school districts need to support or provide the option of  alternative school programs and/or “congregated schools.” (Phil Richmond, Hayley Avruskin and the Congregated School Parent Network)

A growing consensus is forming that the conventional inclusion model, exemplified by the ‘one-size-fits-all’ classroom, has passed the breaking point. In the case of Grayson Kahn and hundreds of children like him, it’s not working now and it’s highly unlikely that simply pouring more resources into that classroom will resolve the problem. What’s surprising, however, is the reluctance of the competing factions to look at more flexible alternative delivery models.

No one, so far, has really gone beyond restating their positions and few, if any, have referenced the findings and recommendations of the Nova Scotia Inclusive Education Commission, published in the March 2018 report, Students First. Produced by Dr, Sarah Shea, Adela Njie, and Monica Williams, it represents a concrete attempt to break the policy gridlock. It differs from most policy initiatives, particularly those promoted by Inclusive Education Canada, in laying the groundwork for a re-invented model which is far more flexible and built around a “multi-tiered continuum of programs, services and settings.” 

Six months ago, Nova Scotia adopted this new Inclusive Education model that embraced inclusive education as a core philosophy, while implementing a re-engineered model based upon a “multi-tiered system of supports.”  All Nova Scotia students would be welcomed in a Tier 1 inclusive classroom and school environment, but students identified with severe learning challenges or complex needs would be provided with greatly enhanced supports through Tier 2 (Small Group), and then Tier 3 (Intensive – Individual or Alternative Program) options.

Educating the Grayson’s in today’s classrooms will require a more realistic, evidence-based, and effective approach to implementing inclusive education. It is time we confronted and tackled the “elephant in the inclusive classroom” and considered a more flexible and responsive way forward.

Why are inclusive classrooms failing so may children?  If our public school classrooms cannot accommodate all children, don’t school authorities have a responsibility to develop alternative support programs and services?  Should school districts be sending challenging students home and leaving families to fend for themselves? Why has the new Nova Scotia model attracted so little attention outside that province? 

 

 

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The Illusion of Inclusion: Why Did the New Brunswick Model Implode?

Melissa Jones teared up in late November 2017 talking to the Fredericton Daily Gleaner about the plight of her son, Grade 4 student Brayden Jones. Leafing through a box full  of school warning letters and suspension notices for his school behaviour, she was upset and frustrated with her local school’s latest policy of limiting her son to three hours a week for “soft-re-entry” to the regular school classroom.  The past four years have been hellish for the family because, as a result of Brayden’s behaviour outbursts, he had been on a reduced schedule and out of school altogether from November 2016 to October 2017. “He’s not getting any education,” Ms. Jones said. “They’re setting him up for failure.”

A nine-year old boy with autism, Alex Piper of Quispamsis, NB, was suspended from his elementary school in November 2017 for  a series of violent outbursts and the school district’s solution was to restrict the student to 30 minutes of class time per day. His father, Jeremy Piper, a 40-year-old RCMP officer, protested the decision to “kick-out” his son without providing any incident reports and for only allowing his son back for what amounted to three 10-minute classes between 8:45 and 9:15 am each day. “They consider this an education, I guess, ” he told CBC News New Brunswick. 

Saint John parent Heather Adams says the New Brunswick education system also failed her autistic son, Brian,who graduated from high school in 2015 with kindergarten-level reading and Grade 2 math skills. “He would come home from school saying, ‘I feel so stupid, I don’t want to go’,” she recalled.  “And I don’t think anybody should have to go to school and feel stupid, and that’s how he felt.” While she maintains that inclusive education can work for some students,”it failed Brian.”

Heartbreaking stories like these are now surfacing regularly in the Atlantic Canadian province of New Brunswick. Over the past year, a steady stream of distraught parents of students with severe learning challenges have spoken-out with personal stories of how the current model of inclusion has failed their children. A year ago, the President of the NBTA, Guy Arsenault, broke his silence and expressed alarm over the physical threats faced by teachers forced to wear “kevlar” vests to protect themselves.

All of this is happening in a provincial school system recognized in February 2016 by the global Zero Project human rights organization for championing the inclusion of all students in regular classrooms.  It is becoming clearer that the New Brunswick model is broken and badly needs to be re-engineered to better serve those with severe challenges and complex needs.

 

A year ago, NBTA president Arsenault painted quite a picture of today’s high school English class.  Out of 28 registered students, 12 have identified special education needs, 10-11 cannot write and require oral exams, five are chronically absent, three have ADHD or ADD, two have mental health issues, two speak little English, and only two read at the expected grade level.  That is why, he insisted, “class composition” is now the biggest concern of teachers.

Class composition and inclusion have also been linked to declining student achievement levels.  In October 2016, Education Minister Brian Kenny and Arsenault agreed that it was a factor in the latest abysmal Anglophone Education test results. Only 20 per cent of Grade 6 students met provincial standards in mathematics and 26 per cent in science. In reading assessment, only 54 per cent scored successful standing.

All of this evidence merely confirms the findings of my recent research comparing New Brunswick’s inclusive system with other provinces across Canada. It’s all there in my two researchED presentations in Washington, DC (October 2016) and Toronto (November 2017).

Since June 2012, when NB Education Minister Jody Carr reaffirmed the province’s unshakable commitment to “inclusion for all,” things have gotten far worse. Spending $62-million to shore up the existing model from 2013-2016 has made no appreciable difference. Between 2 % and 4% of all students, numbering 1,900 to 3,800 students are struggling with severe learning challenges and limited to 3 hours a week of supports. Perhaps as many as 1,200 of New Brunswick’s Anglophone students have Autism Spectrum Disorder and require significantly more specialized support far exceeding the three hours per week.

In March 2016, Arsenault shocked many with the revelation that New Brunswick teachers were facing “unacceptable” levels of violence in both their “frequency and severity.” “Some teachers, ” he told CBC News, “have to wear Kevlar because of the biting that is going on with students and some of the kicking and punching…” Then he added: “We feel that students are entitled and have a right to be in classrooms but it should not be at the detriment of others.”

New Brunswick Autism activist Harold Doherty, father of Connor Doherty, a 21-year-old with severe autism, intellectual disability and epilepsy, has been fighting for a fuller continuum of support services for more than a decade.  Year after year, he sees evidence gathering that the NB model is contributing to the problem.  It’s simply wrong, he contends, to think that one program could ever meet the needs of every student.  “It’s a huge mistake,” he says, to ignore students being failed by the system.  He’s also convinced that the province has to abandon it’s model based upon well-intentioned theory in favour of evidence-based program responses based upon “what works for each child.”

With the New Brunswick model imploding, a rough consensus is emerging that will bring that province more into line with the Canadian leaders in inclusive education, Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario. The neighbouring province of Nova Scotia already offers more program options, including a Tuition Support Program (TSP) providing improved access to specialized program schools.    “For inclusion to work, ” Arsenault’s NBTA successor George Daley recently stated, ” the system must fit the student instead of trying to make the student fit the system.” Five years after my June 2012 AIMS report, Building a Bigger Tent, the key message seems to be sinking-in up in New Brunswick.

Why has the New Brunswick model imploded over the past five years? What’s standing in the way of inclusive education reform in New Brunswick? What can that province learn from other Canadian provinces about what works for the full range of special needs students? What can be done to promote evidence-based policy in New Brunswick and elsewhere in Canada? 

 

 

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Inclusion and Class Composition: What’s the Real Impact on Teaching in the Classroom?

Striving for the “full inclusion” of all students in the regular classroom may be a worthy goal, but it makes teaching far more challenging and cannot satisfactorily meet the needs of all children.   A few Canadian provincial school systems, following the lead of New Brunswick, have elevated “inclusive education” to an exalted status. For many children and teens with severe learning disabilities or complex needs, it is not the most enabling learning environment. It’s also rendering today’s diverse classes, at certain times, nearly impossible for regular teachers to teach.

Teacher surveys identify class management as a fundamental problem and “class composition” as the biggest obstacle to professional satisfaction.  Building upon Canadian school research, it’s clear that special needs policy, designed by theorists, is not working and needs rethinking to achieve a better educational environment for teachers and students alike. That was the theme of my recent researchED presentation, October 29, 2016, in Washington, DC. 

Class size is a well-diagnosed and much studied question with much of the research driven by teacher unions. Back in September 2013, Gordon Thomas of the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA), used a class of 37 students as an example of the challenges facing stressed-out high school teachers. In his worst case scenario, out of the 37 students, four had learning disabilities, five were in transition from other provinces, one exhibited serious behavioural issues, three were repeating the course, seven were functioning below grade level, and one was chronically absent because of a dysfunctional home life.

In such overcrowded classes, Thomas asked, how can we expect teachers to provide constructive and rewarding learning experiences, let alone introduce innovative practices? Coping in such diverse classrooms goes far beyond class size and raises the hidden issue of “class composition.”

Most Special Education researchers concur that “smaller classes have the greatest positive impact on students with the greatest educational needs.” (OISE-UT/CEA, 2010). It is now clear that both class size and diversity matter.

Today teachers try to adapt their teaching to address the individual needs of the learners in their regular classrooms. As the classroom becomes larger and more diverse, this task becomes increasingly onerous. All of this has obvious implications for inclusive education. The success of “Inclusion” is, in large measure, determined by the extent to which teachers have the necessary supports and services to be able to effectively integrate students with special educational needs into their classrooms and schools.

Class size reductions from K to 3 and possibly beyond can produce student achievement gains (Canadian Council on Learning 2005), provided that the total context is conducive to such improvement. Three critical factors have been identified:

1.Complementary policies and practice supporting higher student achievement (i.e., raised expectations, positive discipline, regular assessment, teacher PD);

2. Contradictory policies and practice that undermines the potential benefit of class size reductions (i.e., full inclusion, social promotion, student competencies gap, language challenges);

3. Rising class sizes at higher grade levels – from grades 7 to 12 (i.e., removal of class size caps, integration of learning disabilities and ELL students).

Class sizes have actually dropped in all Canadian provinces except British Columbia over the past 15 years. At the macro-economic level from 2001-o2 to 2010-11, student enrollment has dropped 6.5%, the number of educators rose 7.5%, the student-teacher ratio declined by 12.9%, and spending per pupil rose by 61.4%. Class size reductions and caps from K to Grade 3 or Grade 6 may explain the overall smaller class sizes.

In the Spring of 2011, the Canadian Teacher’s Federation (CTF) conducted a national teacher survey on the theme of The Teacher Voice on Teaching and Learning to seek input from across Canada on teacher concerns. The CTF survey provided a snapshot of what class size and composition looked like across the country. The survey secured responses from  nearly 3,800 teachers representing 9,894 classes in English and French schools.  The sample teacher pool was drawn from 12 participating CTF member organizations.

Class Size Analysis: Average class size was 21.3 students, ranging from 22.1 students for grades 4-8 to 19 students for junior kindergarten or kindergarten (JK-K). English schools (including French Immersion) had an average class size of nearly 22 students, while French as a first language schools had a slightly smaller average class size of just over 19 students.

Class Size by Grade Level: Over a third of the classes for all grade levels combined contained 25 students or more (8.3% contained 30 students or more). For grades 4-8, nearly 39% of classes contained 25 students or more (6.5% contained 30 or more); for grades 9 and over, 40.3% of classes contained 25 students or more (13.5% – over 1 in 7 classrooms – contained 30 or more students); for grades 1-3, just over 14% of classes contained 25 students or more; for JK-K, nearly 12% of classes contained 25 students or more.

Average Number of Special Needs Students: Students with identified exceptionalities (i.e., designated behavioural problems or mental or physical disabilities, as well as other special needs students including gifted students); and English Language Learners and French Language Learners (defined as students whose first language differs from the school’s primary language of instruction, and requiring supports).  The average number of students with identified exceptionalities per class was 3.5, ranging from 3.8 students for grades 4-8 to 1.9 students for junior kindergarten/kindergarten.

Class Composition – Grade 4 and Over: Students with identified exceptionalities accounted for 16.3% of total students in the surveyed classrooms, ranging from respective shares of 17.1% for grades 4-8 to 10% of students for junior kindergarten and kindergarten. Of classes surveyed, over 81% have at least one student with formally identified exceptionalities, and 27.7% contain 5 or more students with identified exceptionalities. In grades 4 and over, not only were class sizes generally larger but almost 1 in 3 (30.6%) classes contained 5 or more students with identified exceptionalities.

Students with Language Learning Challenges: The average number of English Language Learners and French Language Learners (ELL/FLL students) per class was 2.6. The prevalence was higher the lower the grade, ranging from 4.7 students for junior kindergarten/kindergarten to 1.7 students for grades 9 and over. ELL/FLL students accounted for an average 12.2% of total students in the classroom, ranging from respective shares of 24.7% for junior kindergarten / kindergarten to 8.2% for grades 9 and over.

The CTF survey looked at students “identified” as Special Needs, but did not include students who were undiagnosed or those with other glaring needs such as students from low-income families (with poverty-related issues of hunger, illness, instability), students with mental health problems, or immigrant and refugee students.

My researchED 2016 Washington  presentation also delved into two Class Composition case studies – Inclusive Education in New Brunswick, 2006 to 2016, and Class Size and Composition in British Columbia, 2012 to 2016. In the case of New Brunswick, a province recently honoured by Zero Project for its “legally-binding policy of inclusion” in Feburary 2016, Guy Arsenault and the NBTA are now demanding a full Special Education review to secure “positive learning environments” and come to the aid of teachers forced to “don Kelvar clothing in the classrooms.”  Out west, in British Columbia, a five-week 2015 BCTF teachers’ strike has produced only meagre gains in containing class sizes, while more and more classes have four or more and seven or more Special Needs students.

The real life classroom is not only far more diverse, it’s increasing challenging to manage let alone teach anything substantive. Class Size based upon Student-Teacher Ratios has long been accepted and used in staffing schools, but its utility is now being questioned by front line teachers. Student diversity, driven by “Inclusion” and the growing numbers of severely learning-challenged and disadvantaged kids is the new normal. The rise of “Coddled Kids” and “Helicopter Parents” has compounded the challenges. Tackling Class Composition is emerging as the top priority in teacher-led school reform.

Why is class composition emerging as the biggest problem facing front line teachers?  Why do we continue to focus so much on simply reducing class sizes? What’s standing in the way of us tackling the ‘elephant in the room’ — class composition in today’s schools? 

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Autism and Schools: Should We Be Providing the Full Spectrum of Programs?

The rise of autism poses one of the biggest current challenges facing North American families and school systems everywhere. The latest education jurisdiction to step into the breach was the Canadian province of Ontario. In response to the mounting pressures for expanding services, the Ontario government announced a new $333 million, five-year autism program initiative packaged as good news.

Instead of being welcomed by parents of autistic kids, the move sparked a firestorm of provincial and local community protests. Hundreds of parents descended upon the Ontario Legislature to protest on April 12 and, three days later, local groups carrying signs reading “Autism Does Not End at Age Five” rallied in more than half a dozen smaller centres, including Ottawa, Kitchener, Aurora, Sudbury, Mississauga,and Waterdown, near Hamilton.

Young children with autism spectrum disorder in Ontario were promised shorter wait times for intensive therapy covered by the province, but those ages 5 and up will no longer be eligible as part of a revamped Ontario system. The New Ontario program aimed to cut wait times in half for Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI) within two years, and then down to six months by 2021, according to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.

The decision meant that 2,200 children ages 2 to 4 would be removed from wait lists over the next two years, while some 1,378 in treatment after age five, over half of the 2,000 currently served, would be transitioned out with an $8,000 grant intended to subsidize the less intensive Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) therapy.  Denying access to children over age five left many near desperate parents completely “heartbroken” and some totally outraged over being denied the needed services.

Ontario’s Minister of Children and Youth Services, Tracy MacCharles, broke into tears when faced with the barrage of opposition, and Irwin Elman, the provincial Child and Youth Advocate, sided with the aggrieved parents, urging the government to postpone its plans. “The debate is not about waitlists,” He added. “It’s about children. It’s about people, and it is about their possibility and futures.”

Addressing the growing incidence of children with autism is now such a critical public policy issue that it recently attracted the attention of The Economist, one of the world’s most widely read business magazines. Since 2000, the share of eight-year-olds diagnosed with some form of autism spectrum disorder, including Asperger Syndrome, has doubled to one in every 68 children or 15 in every 1,000 kids.

Autism affects different people in different ways, ranging from severe communications impairment and compulsive repetitive movements to milder forms of social anxieties with a few intense, almost obsessive interests.  School can be extremely difficult for autistic children, and they are three times more likely to be bullied or ostracized by peers, and many withdraw before graduation.

In Canada, the United States and Britain, they tend to be educated in mainstream classrooms with Special Education supports, which is considered less expensive than providing intensive programs. Regular classroom teachers in all three countries regularly report that they lack the training and resources to properly serve children with autism.

The Canadian province of Alberta stands out as an exception.  Since the mid-1990s, Alberta Education has embraced more school choice, especially in special education services.  Alberta’s direct funding system provides grant support for kids with developmental disabilities, based on each child’s needs, to pay for whatever services suit them best. Options include special needs schools, a range of behavioural, speech and occupational therapies, respite care, camps, and personal support workers to accompany children to recreational activities.

Children are assessed through the Family Support for Children with Disabilities program, which determines the amount. Wait times are minimal. Parents have choices, unlike in Ontario, where IBI is the only sustained treatment covered by the province. While Nova Scotia has a Tuition Support Program, it is limited to children with diagnosed SLD attending three designated schools enrolling fewer than 230 students. Financial support to attend specialized programs is extremely rare elsewhere in Canada.

One example of such a school program is Janus Academy, a Calgary, Alberta, school for children with autism. It’s a specialized private school where parents pay $12,000 in tuition each year for a program that costs $40,000 per student to operate. In other words, providing access to a specialized IBI program at a quarter of what parents would pay in Ontario.

Teaching autistic children using IBI can be expensive, but it can produce noticeable gains., especially if started in the early years. The Alberta government underwrites most of the difference, and the school also fundraises to support the tuition subsidies. “We don’t have to fight the schools (for what the children need), they’re partners with us. And I know they are learning,” reports Janus Academy parent Tim Ingram, formerly of London, Ontario.  The intensive and wrap-around support, he adds, helps the whole family function, but it takes some extra effort to secure a place in such a school.

School can be tough for autistic children and teens, but many have a worse time once they leave the system. A study by the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute in Philadelphia found that only 19% of American autistic people in their early 20’s lived independently, away from their parents. Wherever they live many are isolated: one in four said that they had not seen friends or received invitations to social events in the past year. Some autistic people prefer their own company, but many are unhappy.

Preparing and training autistic young people for the workforce is emerging as a priority in the new economy.  While academic studies on global employment rates for adults with autism are rare, the UN estimates that 80% do not work. A survey by Britain’s National Autistic Society, a charity, suggests that only 12% of higher-functioning autistic adults work full time. For those with more challenging forms of autism, only 2% have jobs.

Job training, life-skills coaching and psychotherapy could really help in tackling the problem. An American study found that 87% of autistic youngsters who were given assistance to find a job, got one. Only 6% who did not receive support were successful. But in most countries, services disappear the moment autistic people finish full-time education.

There is hope that the life prospects for those with autism will improve in the future. More progressive business leaders and enterprises, as reported in The Economist, are stepping-up and providing more flexible employment arrangements to take fuller advantage of the truly unique skills and aptitudes of autistic people. Providing early treatment and effective intensive behavioural intervention is where it has to start.

Why is autism considered one of the biggest school challenges of our time? Why is Intensive Behaviour Intervention (IBI) so much in demand– and so rationed in our public school systems?  What’s standing in the way of provinces and states adopting the Alberta model of school choice and tuition support for intensive programs? What more can be done to properly “transition” autistic students into the workplace?  

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‘Self-Regulation’ and Students: Is the Latest ‘Cure-All’ a False God?

Stationary bikes are now appearing in Canadian classrooms in the latest wave of the  North American “self-regulation” movement.  Frustrated , angry and fidgety kids and stressed-out parents are driving many teachers almost crazy and they are grasping for life preservers in today’s classrooms.  That may explain why principals and teachers in the Halifax Regional School Board and far beyond see spin bikes as almost magical in their powers.

Is this becoming the latest ‘cure-all’ and where’s the scientific research to support its widespread use in regular classrooms? Since the publication of British teacher Tom Bennett’s book Teacher Proof, more and more classroom teachers are raising a “skeptical eyebrow” and confronting the succession of teaching fads that have come and gone over the past twenty years. It’s becoming acceptable to ask whether “self-regulation” with or without bikes is destined for the same fate.

The current expectations for Self-Regulation and Spin Bikes are sky high. Discovery of the latest ‘cure-all’ has sparked incredible media interest with recent CBC-TV short documentaries and CBC Radio The Current feature interviews.

The sheer excitement created by spin bike frenzy is captured well in Aly Thomson’s March 9, 2016 Canadian Press story: “Frustrated at her inability to draw a sofa, five-year-old Mylee Lumsden began to cry. She liked her drawing of a TV, but the couch confounded her, and so she grew increasingly upset. Her teacher, Mary Theresa Burt, looked at the brewing storm, and suggested the little girl take a turn on the bright yellow stationary bicycle at the centre of her primary classroom at Ian Forsyth Elementary School.” Within minutes, Mylee was “bright again, cheerful, and smiling widely.”

That tiny yellow bike was simply working miracles — calming rambunctious kids down, quietening the class, getting restless boys to sit still, and making teaching life liveable again. “Now, amid a shift in how educators shift and embrace various styles of learning,” Thomson wrote, “such bikes are helping to boost moods, relieve stress and regulate energy in students of all ages.”

“Learning styles” simply won’t go away long after it has been exposed as fraudulent educational practice.  It’s the best known of the myths recently exposed by Tom Bennett, co-founder of ResearchED and Britain’s 2015 Teacher of the Year.  A year ago, in the Daily Telegraph, he pointed out that many such theories that fill classrooms in Britain have little grounding in scientific research.

“We have all kinds of rubbish thrown at us over the last 10 to 20 years,” he stated. “We’ve been told that kids only learn properly in groups. We’ve had people claiming that children learn using brain gym, people saying kids only learn when you appeal to their learning style. There’s not a scrap of research that substantiates this, and, unfortunately, it’s indicative of the really, really dysfunctional state of social science research that exists today.”

Bennett is far from alone in challenging the research basis for a whole range of initiatives floating on unproven educational theories. According to a research scan by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), trillions of dollars are spent on education policies around the world, but just one in 10 are actually evaluated.

Commenting on the research, Andreas Schleicher, OECD director of education and skills, said: “If we want to improve educational outcomes we need to have a much more systematic and evidence-based approach.” Speaking at the 2014 Education World Forum in London, Schleicher added: “We need to make education a lot more of a science.”

Cutting through the hype surrounding Self-Regulation, it’s difficult to find independent, validated research support. A very perceptive October 2012 feature in The Tyee actually bore down into the British Columbia self-regulation movement looking for the research basis while 3,000 teachers were being taught the strategy.

While much of Dr. Stuart Shanker’s work is compromised by his promotion of his own particular program, Kimberley Schonert-Reichl, of UBC’s Human Development, Learning and Culture research unit, has studied MindUP , an alternative approach to teaching self-regulation as the basis for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Over a period of six years, she only found one large-scale independent research study, a CASEL study of 270 programs, that documented its actual benefits.

“So little(in education) has actually been formed by rigorous research, as opposed to the medical field, Schonert-Reichl claimed. ” I heard someone compare where we are with understanding well-designed educational studies to where we were with clinical drug trials in the early 1900s.”

Self-regulation definitely holds promise, but the research basis is quite limited and teachers are wise to be skeptical until there’s more evidence that it actually works and is sustainable in the classroom.  A new study by Shanker and his associates, Child Development (September/October 2015), may add to the puzzle by demonstrating the the meaning of the term ‘self-regulation’ is still unclear and therefore expandable to accommodate an array of some 88 different concepts, including  self-control, self-management, self-observation, learning, social behavior, and the personality constructs related to self-monitoring.

Who is really being served by ‘self-regulation’ is particularly unclear. Much of the rationale has its underpinning in neurocience and that’s what is being debated rather than its efficacy for the majority of students.  Some like former BC Education Minister George Abbott see it as a way of serving severely learning-challenged kids and getting rid of the extensive, expensive Special Education system with all those individual program plans.

Child psychologist and elementary teachers, as The National Post columnist Marni Soupcoff  anticipated three years ago, are latching onto self-regulation believing that you can ‘teach kids to behave properly in schools’ because the job is not being done in today’s family homes. The real reason it’s needed, in other words, is because too many kids aren’t getting the “psychological stability and support” they need from their own families.

Is Self-Regulation — with or without Spin Bikes – another unproven educational initiative that will come and go without a discernable impact on students? Should researchers marketing their own programs be relied upon to provide the supporting research? Will ‘self-regulation’ end up resembling mother’s version of  “sit in the corner,” “go to your room” or “get down and do five push-ups, now” ? Should we intervene if kids riding those bikes ever come to look like hamsters on wheels in the Cage?  

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