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Disabled Learner Operating System

Parents have the power to make their disabled child’s education better Better IEP Quick Start Guide, but, of course, there is a lot that schools and school districts can do to improve outcomes for ALL students with disabilities. It is not just possible, but doable… let’s explore how to implement that choice.

As previously discussed, for parents, the understanding the perfomrance of IEP team members is key:

  • Good Will
  • Competence
  • Adequate Resources

For the school district, this is reflected in the kernal of the Disabled Learner Operating Systems:

  • Goals
  • Staff
  • Systems

Beyond the kernal, a successful Disabled Learner Operating System nneds:

  • Leadership
  • Management
  • Resources
  • Data/Analytics

as part of an overall system that also integates Students, Parents/Caregivers, and other supporting services.

Goals

Our personal goal for our disabled child’s overall education is:

A real high school diploma or as close as possible.

For a school, the equivalent could be:

  • Better Life Outcomes for our Disabled Learners.
  • Better education and outcomes while in our education program.

QUESTION: What is (or do you think should be) your school or school district’s Disabled Learner Operating System Master Goal:

Staff

Using the IEP Team Scorecard, rate your entire special education team (teachers; classroom aides; speech, occupational, and physical therapists; psychologists, higher-level staff, leadership, etc.) to indentify areas of strength and areas for improvement. Also review other staff members who have important roles in special education (principals, superintendents, …), and finally the remainder of your staff.

Review suspensions, absenteeism, academic results, complaints, settlements, and other data to find clusters of strenthgs and areas for improvement.

Systems

What are your documented systems related to special education? Are they being followed? Is there consistency between classes, programs, schools?

What is the state of your non-special education systems (particularly those systems where disabled students turn up).

Integration of the Disabled Learner Operating System into your Organization

Improving systems and operations is very, very hard. Changing them is even harder. I’ve worked in information security for almost 40(ugh) years – since I was an intern at NSA in the summer of 1986. While everyone SAYS they want better security, when push comes to shove, security gets shoved aside or disappears shortly after the crisis that brought security people like me in fades.

I’ve found that the best way to improve security culture is to gently wedge it to the existing culture. Sometimes it starts with something as simple as adding a “What are the security implications?” slide into a standard decision package.

While I was at NSA, we had a very nice set of security documents that were built just for us by our contractors. When reviewing them for a major project, I found that the security documents that were supposed to be driving the entire program were kept in a locked safe in a secure office so that the only members of our contractor team that ever saw them were my counterparts.

The ordinary engineers and staff who were supposed to be building this “secure system” never saw them.

After that, I pushed hard against having pretty documents for me, and integrating security pervasively into the ordinary work documents, processes, and systems of the entire team so that everyone would be part of the solution.

I strongly think that the same approach should work better for disability.

It is not their failure to learn, it is our failure to teach

It is so tempting when things get hard to blame students (or parents) or ???? for failures or challenges or other problems.

This is extremely dangerous.

It lets us off the hook for finding ways to make things better (and maybe even succeed).

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