We're now, according to an article in Education Weekly,up to 43 states which have adopted the core state standards (not Texas.  I blogged on the topic in Man Up Texas.)

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers sponsored the Core State Standards.  This is a healthy and appropriate way to see that states are on the same page.  Education has always been the purview of the states, which permits states to meet their specific needs and reflect the values of the state as well as avoiding nationalization of education.

I'm not enamored with the whole "states rights" thing since it smacks of Jim Crow and segregation, but I do feel that the United States is far too large and diverse a country to have a one size fits all education system,  In fact it may very well lead to failure, as we already have an unrealistic belief that high school should automatically lead to a liberal arts college education.  We have far too large a proportion of students who start higher education and never finish, on one hand.  And on the other hand, I know that I have one son for whom that track is just plain wrong.  He and many other students may be better suited to technical programs.

What surprised me about the Education Weekly article was that experts they consulted believed that tying IEP goals to standards was far from general practice.  In all my jobs as a special educator, I have written both lesson plans and IEP goals to state standards.  The hardest thing, for many educators will be to write goals to grade level core standards.  I know with lower functioning students, I usually end up with standards that are below grade level because of the importance of the skills, especially time and money.  (Telling time to the hour and half house is Standard 1MD3, OR first grade measurement and data cluster standard 3:  "Tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.")

The Common Core Standards will create lots of challenges.  The Federal Government has already given a 65 million dollar grant to the Chief State School Officers task force which is working on assessment: both for general education and special education students.  That alone will be a big expense for my state.  Nevada only introduced a new alternative tests, called the NAA (Nevada Alternative Assessment) two years ago, because the previous alternate assessment was letting the teachers pick and choose from students IEP's and were not standards based.

States will also need to re-evaluate texts and curriculum to see if they are meeting the new Common Core State Standards.  I was surprised to see how late data and central tendency were introduced in the Math Standards in Nevada.  They are introduced in 4^th grade, and students are expected to identify mean, median and mode, interpret bar, stem and leaf and line graphs, and compare groups using data.  Not in Nevada, but they also don't use Everyday Math, which introduces a lot of mathematical ideas much earlier than the old math text books.  I find myself catching some of my students up, because their IEP goals have not focused on the academic knowledge a child should have at 3^rd, or 5^th or even 2nd grade.

One of my goals for Specialed@about.com is to provide you with IEP goals written to the Common Core State Standards.  Other model lesson plans, unit plans and IEP goals I have written have used a variety of states' standards to illustrate how they are written.  It seems to me, with 43 states in the Core Standards camp, they are here to stay.

No doubt, we will be in a time of change and flux, as we work to see that the new standards make their way into practice.  At the same time, we will better be able to assess whether our schools and our states are doing a good job of providing a free and appropriate education for all children, not just children receiving special education services.

Technique 31 from Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion offers another way to create a strong classroom culture that supports academic success.  Just like you need to create efficient ways to transition or to begin a class period, you need to provide structure and control in the information your students assemble.  This is especially important for students with special needs.  Many students with specific learning disabilities have difficulty organizing materials, and children with ADD or ADHD can be recognized by the mess they leave in their wake.  This technique is critical.  So, for Technique 31:

Technique 31:  Binder Control.

Prescribe the specific kind of binder you want your students to keep for your class (or for each subject, in elementary school.)

Also, have a required format.  You may want to number or color code sections of the binder.  An example:  the divider with the blue tab has all the vocabulary sheets behind it.  The divider with the green tab will have structured daily notes, or perhaps a daily Cornell note page.  When a student is asked a question they cannot answer, a teacher may say.  "Check for yesterdays notes behind the green tab."

You might have a table of contents at the front of the binder, that lists the things found behind each tab.

A binder may stay in your classroom.  Students need a separate homework folder, and they can place what they need to complete their homework assignment in their folder.  If they need that day's notes, they can remove them and place them in the front pocket of their folder. Read more...

I've been surprised recently by the number of people who don't know what a blog is -- or at least they write responses as if they don't understand.  I thought it was time for a little education.  Sorry to you under 30's who grew up with blogging.  I'm sorry that many of us, your elders, are not so familiar with the genre.

Yes, genre, as in "fiction, novel, column, informal letter, etc., etc."  The internet has introduced several different "genres"  with their own conventions, and although the English teachers among us may wrinkle up their noses, blogs, forums, twitters and social networking are here to stay.  What does Webster's (the dictionary) have to say?

Blog: a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer; also : the contents of such a site. Merriam Webster Free Online Dictionary.

A blog is not an article.  I have readers call it that.  An article on my site at About.com is an informative non-fiction piece which will explain a disability, a process, a procedure, a kind of special education document, a method, a disability, or a practice.  An article may review a book or a product designed for special education children.  An article may present a lesson plan or lesson plans, IEP goals or goal examples.  Read more...

The president signed another continuing resolution that leaves 2010 spending in place until the new congress can pass a budget.   We know it won't be free of earmarks.  Real leaders like Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, saw that  earmarks were put in for Kentucky.  Then he will vote against the appropriations bill, trusting that enough Democrats and responsible Republicans will vote to see that the appropriations bill passes so Kentucky can have it's cake and he can say he voted against it.  Oh, all the while pointing his finger at those "free spending Democrats."

It doesn't look very hopeful for full funding of IDEA.  The Obama administration has not requested full funding in their budget, and is rolling the Javitts program for gifted and talented education in with other unrelated programs.

And we know where the Republican's priorities will be:  money for their friends and no money for education.  After all, the Chamber of Commerce is not a "special interest" but drat those rich, greedy teachers in the NEA and AFT (especially in Louisiana where they would make more money flagging construction zones.)

Last years budget included 515 Billion dollars for the Pentagon and 38 Billion for K through 12 education programs:  Less than 10 percent.  Of course, we need to remember that most funding for education comes from local and state governments. They, however, are sometimes left groaning under the Read more...

We continue with techniques from Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov that create a classroom culture that maximizes learning.  This is one that can have critical impact on the tone and efficiency of you classroom.

Technique 30: Tight Transitions.

Transitions are the time between different academic settings and activities.  Transitions in high schools and middle schools will be different because many transitions occur between classes (and out of a teacher's control.)  Still, keeping transitions tight, and controlled, Read more...

When I got a notice from our principal's secretary that we weren't to order any new textbooks because Nevada has adopted the Common Core State Standards prepared and presented by the Council of Chief State School Officers  (CCSSO), I had a very different blog in mind.  I wrote about the common standards when I was at the National Council for Exceptional Children Convention in Nashville last spring.  At that point the CCSSO had commitments from something like 46 states that they would adopt the standards.   I checked their site in preparation of this blog and discovered that there are currently 40 states who have adopted the new standards.

But not Texas.  Hmmmm. . .  Texas currently exercises more influence than any other state through their State Board of Education because they control the publication of text books in Texas.   As the largest purchaser of textbooks, no publisher will publish a book they can't sell in Texas.  So, your text book in Massachusetts is determined by what they can sell to right wing, Christian Conservatives on the Texas Board of Education.  The conservative faction of the board Read more...

This Sunday's New York Times asked some important questions about the future of the reauthorization of what is best known as "No Child Left Behind," the last reincarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  Both the incoming chair of the House Committee on Education, Republican Congressman from Minnesota and Arne Duncan agree that NCLB has not been a boon for public education.  But what's next?

The president and the Secretary of Education have been focusing on "Race to the Top," which is providing special funding on a competitive basis to states that have met certain requirements, including the willingness of teacher's unions to suspend some tenure and compensation rules.  With the incoming Republican House of Representatives bent on cutting spending, Race to the Top's days may be numbered. Read more...

We special education teachers spend a lot of time dealing with tough problems:  students with difficult challenges, parents with issues, administrators who don't get it.  I realized, with Christmas coming, that we may bemoan the fact that kids don't understand the real meaning of Christmas, blah, blah, blah.  Still, it is a season that brings a lot of joy.  Let's face it, if we didn't find any joy in what we did, would we do it?

I teach boys with autism diagnoses.  I'd have girls if there were any in my school service area.  If you know little about autism, you do know that children on the spectrum  have trouble with social relationships.  This week one of my boys made Christmas cards for each of the other boys in the class, and wrote long, detailed and personal messages in each.  I was moved.  I am awed.  When this student was in elementary school, he didn't see any need to have friends.  He was fine alone.  We've been focusing on friends in our social living class, and he is really interested in friends.  So he wrote long and detailed messages in his cramped hand (most boys with autism have fine motor issues.)  He wanted to show that he was the other boys' friend.

It's things like this that bring me joy and make my job a pleasure.  How about you?  I've created a short user article where you can add something that makes your job worthwhile.  Remember, no identifying information, to protect the confidentiality of your students.  Give us something to remind us why we do this work!  So, share your joy!

We continue to cover the environment that teachers create in the classroom to foster learning by examining Technique 29 in Doug Lemov's book, Teach Like a Champion. It's more than just "classroom management," because it is managing behavior, managing transitions and managing expectations.  Today's technique probably falls best in the "managing expectations" category.

Technique 29:  Do Now

A "Do Now" is part of the entry routine.  It's what Harry Wong, and many elementary teachers call "bell work."  It is an assignment that students engage in as soon as they enter the room.  It needs to be short, support instruction and students should be held accountable for its completion.  Lemov lists four criteria:

1. Students should be able to do the "do now" without any direction from the teacher.  Many teachers use "daily math" or "daily edits" as part of the entry routine. Read more...

Generally, it is accepted that the sooner a child on the autism spectrum gets services, the better their long term outcomes.  Most of my experience, in a residential program, was with children whose behavior significantly hinders their ability to be in a public school setting.  Now that I am in a public setting, my student's behavior is much more adaptive and appropriate for my setting.

I saw concrete evidence of the value of early intervention this week.  I had an IEP meeting with a one of the parents of a student.  As you can imagine, Las Vegas being in the Southwest, we have a lot of students with Hispanic backgrounds.  We had a translator for this parent, which I found curious, since the student communicates very well in English, understands tenses, understand pronouns and has a good grasp of pragmatics in English.  He also has no accent.  As we were wrapping up meeting, Mom asked how Juan (not his real name) was doing in English.  She was concerned that he was reversing pronouns (you for me) in English, as he was at home in Spanish.  I asked her (through the translator) which language he learned first.  English.  At School when he was three (early intervention.)  I commented that since most of the language he was using Read more...