It’s Individualized NOT Unique Education

If your child is ready for and passionate about particle physics in third grade, there is no reasonable reason to expect your local public school to be able to meaningfully support that unless you are very very lucky.

Consider the same thinking about education programs for disabled students:

• It’s not about creating a unique education program for your child, it’s working with the available education programs at your school to find the one that is most appropriate for your child.
• And then using the IEP to provide the supports, modifications, and accommodations for your child in the chosen program.
• And if there isn’t a program available with the school district school or school district to support your child’s educational needs, it becomes a question of how those educational needs can be met and whether those are actually an appropriate request to ask of public school.

What bin are you in?

So we need to look and understand the bins the educational strategies and models that our schools support.

Before we can find where we fit in, start with with the school can and cannot do.

This is even true for general students.

When I was a kid in the 1970s and 80s there were (as far as I can remember) 5 basic models at the school:

• Advanced placement students.
• College prep.
• A standard diploma track that I don’t rememeber the name of.
• Remedial for students taking classes below the level of their age cohort.
• … and probably a SDC (Special Day Class) program for some disabled students (at least when I went to school, students with extensive support needs were kept separate from the general education students :( ).

In spite of all our advances, it seems like those exist today in many schools.

When parents talk about the challenges for “twice exceptional” students, in some sense, they are talking about students who don’t line up with the “default bins” that our schools support.

I think this is where we run into the most trouble and where we as parents and the school team members or schools together have to look at what are all of the school’s educational models and how do we support students who don’t quite fit into any of them …and how do we move students who don’t fit Into easily into one of the standard models into the model that that meets their educational aspirations.

Default Limitation vs. Default Aspiration

Instead – and I think this is where parents get frustrated – is that the school system tends to pivot on minimizing non-standard supports for a student instead of maximizing the support of plausible educational aspirations.

And this gets worse as we don’t actually have this conversation in an open and transparent way.

I find my current school district exceptionally frustrating in that they don’t lay out the different programs that they have available so that parents can see what the options are and have a sensible discussion about where their child’s educational aspirations can best be met.

Rather parents are presented with a single “choice” – which really isn’t a choice – because they don’t have a complete picture of the available educational program options.

And parents aren’t stupid.

They talk to each other (we talk to each other).

And when they find out about a program or an option or something some other parent has discovered or implemented… they get pretty pi***ed off.

Doing Better

1. Clearly lay out ALL the educational programs and options

This shouldn’t be a secret. It isn’t a secret. Let parents see the choices (both in general education as well as programs for disabled students). There are going to be plusses and minuses to all of them.

2. Make sure that the educational programs are coherent.

One of the frustrating things in my school district is the poor sequencing between the different school levels. Our middle school and high school programs do not seem to flow logically from the elementary programs and so the transitions are a mess. What are all of the programs? Are they sensibly available for all grades/ age groups? Are we steering students towards higher educational potential aspirations or limiting them by our programs and low expectations?

3. Support flexibility and transitions

Kids should be able to utilize the different educational programs in a school/school district and the school should work to enable students who are behind their age cohort… to catch up if they can. (future article on “Default Accessible” curriculum so that disabled students are learning the same material with an expanded toolset, not a separate, segregated curriculum).

High Expectations

An IEP can’t make a poor school district offer a world-class education. It isn’t likely to change a structurally segregated non-inclusive school district into a top-flight inclusive institution. If that is your problem, it is likely time to run for school board and get other parents involved to work for structural change – or run to a different school district.

We need to meet our disabled students where they are at, but also work with the school and school districts where they are at… and find a way to have (plausibly) high expectations for both.