Dr. David Rose, Harvard University: "In the era of No Child Left Behind and IDEA, the challenge of individual differences faces every teacher, administrator, and curriculum designer. The media and materials of the general education curriculum, once designed primarily for a narrow and illusive group of "regular" students, must now ensure results for students with a much wider range of abilities and disabilities."
Universal Design for Learning is a framework to help educators meet these challenges:
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent
Best,
Christina
May 10, 2006
Good Morning
Thank you Christina for posting this thread. Universal Design for Learning has been lucky to have Prof. Rose from Harvard University & others who have dedicated their lives to making education productive especially for children with special needs. I believe that the political powers of the federal government and state governments have reached into the lives of special needs children without a great deal of prescience.
Keeping records and trying to compare....compare....compare.....compare individuals by copious paper work does very little to help the special needs child. As I mentioned, compare, compare individuals....isn't this an oxymoron or something like that. The word 'individuals' connotes a separate unique human being and in case of children with special needs, you cannot compare neurologically typical children with children with special needs without revealing your profound ignorance.
Have you ever gone to the files where these copious notes are kept.
I have...it is a dead end....It use to be locked file cabinets row upon row. Now with technology, it is easier to store this information for .....
what? I interviewed
the keeper of the files many years ago....I was direct and he was direct. I wanted to know who check out the files for reading purposes and when the last date any files had been checked out for reference. The keeper of the files sat in a desk next to the files with his job being much different than keeper of the files...since "no one" had requested to see any files for as long as he had worked there. These files are just stored in suspense files or other....Now the big question is....did the billions of dollars [over time] make any special needs child learn better. Well, you can answer that....without any help.
Did any of the plethora of paper work help Johnny or Sally to ameliorate any skills....If so, please let me know. It is time to spend more time with our children and less time testing them. The classroom teacher needs all the help that he/she can get in providing a real education for life skills. The money needs to go to helping the students; not inculcating a statistic.
I really would like to hear from anyone who is caring about the education of special needs children. We have changes the name of the special needs child several times, which is tantamount to countries changing the name of their Capitol cities after losing a war.
Change or drastic reform is needed to place the money and the priorities of education with the people who work with the product [the teachers and parents].
Be well,
Rob