http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr034.shtml
Inclusion:
Has It Gone Too Far?
Inclusion of all children
with disabilities in regular classrooms seems to be the law of the land. But is
it the right thing for all kids? And how are teachers handling it? Inclusion --
the idea that all children, including those with disabilities, should and can
learn in a regular classroom -- has taken firm root in many school systems, although
it is not specifically required by law
* To oppose inclusion would seem to
advocate exclusion. Yet, some observers maintain that full inclusion isn't always
the best way to meet student needs. Critics of full inclusion ask whether even
students with the most severe disabilities benefit from placement in regular classrooms.
Further, some outgrowths of inclusion involve rethinking the structure of the
regular classroom. Inclusive classes may require more than one teacher. And teachers
and students may need specific technology to help students with disabilities perform
better. While few educators oppose inclusion completely, some express reservations
about how full inclusion works in the classroom. Albert Shanker, writing for the
American Federation of Teachers in 1996 in "Where We Stand," asserted, "What full
inclusionists don't see is that children with disabilities are individuals with
differing needs; some benefit from inclusion and others do not. Full inclusionists
don't see that medically fragile children and children with severe behavioral
disorders are more likely to be harmed than helped when they are placed in regular
classrooms where teachers do not have the highly specialized training to deal
with their needs."
ENDORSING 'FULL INCLUSION'
In contrast, the
National Association for State Boards of Education (NASBE) strongly endorses the
"full inclusion" of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. In 1992,
NASBE released a report titled "Winners All: A Call for Inclusive Schools." The
report called on states to revise teacher-licensure and certification rules so
that new teachers would be prepared to teach children with disabilities as well
as those without disabilities. It also recommended training programs to help special
educators and regular educators adapt to collaborating in the classroom. Another
organization that has approved a resolution supporting inclusion is the Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). Educators are not the only
ones battling over inclusion. Not all parents of students with disabilities support
the approach. Some parents fear losing special-education services they have fought
for and believe their children will be "dumped" into regular classrooms without
appropriate support.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Controversy over full
inclusion spotlights another, larger, issue in education. Some organizations endorse
goals that assume inclusion is a given. One such group, the Consortium on Inclusive
Schooling Practices, states that it focuses on "systemic reform rather than changes
in special education systems only."
The Consortium's three broad goals are:
"To establish a change process in multiple states focused on systemic reform;
To translate research and policy information into implementable educational practices;
To develop the capacity of state and local agencies to provide inclusive
educational services."
"Examine all sides of the debate, and it becomes clear
that inclusion is a microcosm of education reform," maintains an essay, "To the
Best Of Their Abilities" (Teacher magazine, February 22, 1995). "The issues extend
far beyond special education. 'All children can learn at high levels' has become
a rallying cry for improving schools. How can policymakers, practitioners, and
parents work together to ensure that students in every classroom in every school
are achieving that ideal?"
MAKING INCLUSION WORK
Even the staunchest
backers of inclusion recognize that it requires support services and changes in
the traditional classroom.
Here, from the Utah Education Association, is
a listing of provisions that must be met for inclusion to work best:
"adequate
supports and services for the student,
well-designed individualized education
programs,
professional development for all teachers involved,
general
and special educators alike;
time for teachers to plan, meet, create, and
evaluate the students together;
reduced class size based on the severity of
the student needs,
professional skill development in the areas of cooperative
learning, peer tutoring, adaptive curriculum, varied learning styles, etc.,
collaboration between parents, teachers and administrators,
sufficient funding
so that schools will be able to develop programs for students based on student
need instead of the availability of funding, or lack thereof."
If these conditions
are met, the fear of dumping students in regular classrooms becomes moot. Despite
the debate over inclusion, how far it should go, and how much it should cost,
the latest developments in special education, to some observers, offer more cause
to celebrate than to despair.
A November 4, 1996, Time magazine article titled
"The Struggle to Pay for Special Education" summarizes the current state of special
education this way: "The good news is that huge strides have been made to improve
the plight of special-needs students. 'The question now being asked,' says Judith
Heumann, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services,
'is how can we do it, as opposed to should we do it.'"
*Federal law still
requires that a full continuum of placement options be available to each special
education student and that placement decisions be made by the Individual Education
Program (IEP) team, based on the student's needs. Congress and the courts, however,
have affirmed the legal right of children with disabilities to be educated in
the least restrictive environment possible. To many, that means "full inclusion,"
with all students belonging in regular classrooms. To others, it means full inclusion
for some children with disabilities and for other children with disabilities a
different approach.
Article by Sharon Cromwell Education World® Copyright
© 1997 Education World
Related Resources
Language, Literacy
and Children With Special Needs by Sally M. Rogow, Pippin Publishing: Scarborough,
Ontario, Canada (1997). The belief that inclusion benefits everyone informs this
book, in which the author draws on stories of children with special needs learning
to read and write in regular classrooms. Specific strategies are demonstrated
for developing language awareness in a variety of situations. See this week's
Education World BOOKS IN EDUCATION page for more information about this new book.
"The Struggle to Pay for Special Education," by Sam Allis/Boston with reporting
by Julie Grace/Union County and Ann M. Simmons/Washington, Time magazine, November
4, 1996.
Deaf Persons and Experts Speak Out Against Inclusion, computer
software by Oscar Cohen, Netscape (1996). This source speaks out against full
inclusion, citing the potential dangers it would pose to deaf students. It questions
the assumption that an interpreter can make a regular classroom fully accessible
to a deaf student. Among the questions asked are "...does the student feel self-conscious
with an interpreter sitting next to him or her?"
from Education Week on the Web
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/Columns/?Article=teacherpaymain
Are
Teachers Overpaid?
by Tamim Ansary
Some
people think teachers are overpaid--I get e-mail about it all the time. Other
people think teachers are underpaid. I get a lot of that e-mail too. I was going
to weigh in with my own opinion when I realized I couldn't, because I didn't know
how much teachers make--or how much anyone else makes, for that matter, except
for a few well-known CEOs and sports stars. Also on MSN School's out: Summer jobs
for teachersI said to myself, "Get some facts before shooting your mouth off,
Tamim." (I learned that from a teacher.) Lucky for me, the American Federation
of Teachers (AFT) researches salary issues. I found their Web site, and here's
what they report:
The average American public school teacher, kindergarten
through high school, makes $44,367.* Salaries vary from state to state, with South
Dakota coming in last at $31,383 a year, and California leading the way at $54,348.
Is $44,367 a lot, or a little? I couldn't tell, so I dug up salary averages for
a few other professions.
Here's how they stack up: Profession Average annual
salary teacher $44,367 state patrol officer $47,090 assistant professor $47,476
accountant $54,503 architect $56,620 computer systems analyst $74,534 engineer
$76,298 full professor $89,631 attorney $90,290 family practice physician $150,267
Are Teachers Overpaid? Part II:
What teachers deserve
Is any line of work entitled to a particular level of compensation? On what basis?
Are there objective criteria? I can think of three: The amount of training needed
for the job The all-around difficulty of the work The value of the product or
service to society If you use these criteria, doctors deserve tons of money. Their
job requires endless schooling followed by a brutal internship...and they save
lives. What could be more important than that? Carpet installers, by contrast,
don't necessarily need a college degree, although they do need training and practical
experience. If they're good at what they do, their carpets look smooth and stay
put--an important and necessary skill, but it's not saving lives. No wonder doctors
make more.
Want to Learn More? The American Federation of Teachers offers
news and information for members, as well as a special page for parents. Explore
the United States Department of Labor's extensive data on wages for hundreds of
occupations and industries. I think teachers are more like doctors when it comes
to the amount of training needed for the job. Teachers need four years of college
and at least one more for a teaching certificate, or two more for a master's degree.
Even then, in many states, teachers have to keep taking summer courses to hold
onto their jobs. The requirements vary, but in California, for example, teachers
are required to clock 150 hours of course work over five years--which they take
in the summer, usually, and must pay for themselves. In fact, teachers need about
the same amount of training as architects, engineers, and accountants.
Are Teachers Overpaid? Part III:
Hard work or hardly
working?
I think a lot of the "overpaid teachers" talk
comes from the notion that teachers' hours match up with students' hours: Put
in six hours a day, head home around 2 PM, and take summers off. Compared to most
jobs, that's scarcely working, right?
Hello--news flash! Classroom time is
only the tip of the pencil for a teacher. No one just walks into a roomful of
kids without a plan and keeps them fruitfully occupied for six hours at a stretch,
day after day. Lesson plans have to be drawn up. There go your weekends. Then
there's homework. If you have 25 kids in your class, and each one turns in one
page of homework a day, you have 25 pages to read and mark before tomorrow. There
go your evenings. Furthermore, you have meetings to attend--with other teachers,
curriculum experts, administrators, and parents. Plus, when kids bring their life
problems into the classroom--and they're human, so they do--who ends up dealing
with them? That's right, the teacher. It's not in the job description, but a teacher's
obligations inevitably overlap with those of social workers, therapists, and even
parents.
Want to Learn More? What makes a great teacher great?
The National
Education Association offers information about hot educational and legislative
issues related to teaching. In his book Small Victories, journalist Samuel Freedman
followed New York City high school teacher Jessica Siegel around for a year to
see what she actually did, and he found that this teacher put in more than 60
hours per week at her job. It's anecdotal evidence, and maybe Siegal is unusual.
But every teacher I talked to felt his or her work week extended way past 40 hours.
Indeed, a national survey conducted by the Department of Education showed that
teachers spend an average of 45 hours a week doing their jobs... Saving civilization
Which brings us to our third criterion. How valuable is the contribution teachers
make to humanity? Never mind Mr. Holland's Opus. Forget individual cases. Let's
consider the teaching profession as a whole. If doctors save lives, what do teachers
do? Well, let's see. Everything we call civilization has to be passed on to the
next generation. Isn't that what teachers do? Reading, writing, adding 26 plus
13, calculating the boiling point of water and naming the vitamins found in carrots,
explaining the difference between Turkey and turkey--none of this stuff is in
the genes. Without teachers, civilization would have to be developed from scratch
every generation, and man, you can't get too far in one generation. We'd still
be listening to eight-track tapes. We wouldn't even have cars! Well, I guess we'd
have our parents' cars, but we wouldn't know how to drive them! So yeah, I guess
teaching is important work. On a scale from one to ten, let's give it a nine.
(Saving lives has still got to rank higher.) One ballplayer equals 100 teachers?
According to the latest edition of Jobs Rated Almanac, the highest-paid professionals
in America are NBA basketball players. They average $4,637,825 a year. In other
words, an NBA player makes about 100 times as much as a teacher. If service to
humanity counts, why should ballplayers make millions while teachers scrape by
on a few measly tens of thousands? What do basketball players contribute that's
more important than transferring the contents of civilization to the next generation?
Good question, but only because it illustrates an important truth about the compensation
for any job. Clint Eastwood said it best in his movie Unforgiven: "Deserve's got
nothing to do with it."
Are Teachers Overpaid? Part IV:
Why teachers make
less than lawyers
The amount of clout is what it's all
about. In America, teachers started out in a hole dating back to the 19th century.
Back then, most schoolteachers were women, and women who worked professionally
outside the home were mostly teachers (or nurses) because other careers were closed
to them. Those women were offered low wages on the assumption that they were not
breadwinners supporting families. In fact, single teachers were generally assumed
to be clocking time while they waited to get married. Those who kept working after
marriage were thought to be making "extra income," which justified paying them
what amounted to pin money. Since their options were limited, they had to accept
what they were offered. Thus, the prevailing wage for teachers started out low.
Meet and submit In 1948, when the AFT ran its first salary survey, teachers were
making less than $3,000 a year--which is equivalent to maybe $16,000 today. Unlike
plumbers, bus drivers, and truckers, teachers had no right to engage in collective
bargaining. Instead, they went through a process called "meet and converse," which
meant they would meet with their school board and discuss what they needed. Then
they would go away, and the school board would decide what to give them. But in
1961, a math teacher named Albert Shanker kick-started massive changes in educator
compensation. As head of a professional association called the United Federation
of Teachers, he called a controversial teachers' strike in New York City. The
rise of clout That strike gave birth to one of America's major trade union movements.
Over the next 15 years, teachers won the right to collective bargaining state
by state. As unions took over salary negotiations, teachers' incomes began to
rise rapidly. Today, 80 percent of teachers belong to one of two large unions,
the National Educational Association and the American Federation of Teachers,
or their local affiliates. If the two unions were to merge, as has been discussed,
they would form the largest trade union in America.
Want to Learn More? The
secret to success in school: A former teacher tells all. The teacher-student connection:
Can it make kids smarter? Today, teachers' unions swing a heavy stick in national
politics. They rank near the top in political contributions, mostly to Democratic
candidates. Clout is no longer the problem for teachers--as a group, they've got
it. According to Judy Thomas, Director of Research for the California Teachers
Association, teachers go on strike only as a last resort, in part because strikes
are traumatic and tend to divide a faculty for years. Slicing the pie But the
last resort has been reached frequently. The nation has seen hundreds of teacher
strikes in the last 25 years. School boards, the opposing party in a teacher strike,
don't necessarily believe teachers are overpaid. They believe schools are underfunded.
The size of the pie is out of their hands, though: They can only divide up what
they have. About half the budget of a typical school district now goes to teachers.
Other employees get 30 to 35 percent. They include administrators, but also janitors,
secretaries, cafeteria workers, school nurses, teachers aides, and so on. Well,
schools can't run without those folks either. If teachers get more, the others
must get less. Or else the money must come out of the budget for books, supplies,
maintenance, lights, and water. A bigger pie The other alternative would be for
schools to get more money. But where would that come from? Taxes, mostly. Other
sources of public school funding are negligible--always have been, always will
be. In California, about 7 percent of the budget comes from renting out school
property and the like. An even smaller amount comes from the state lottery, an
increasingly common funding device that was pioneered in California. Today, the
lottery provides 2 percent of school costs in California. But it isn't the answer.
The bulk of the money for schools--91 percent, in fact--comes from state, local,
and federal taxes.
Want to Learn More? Get online training for a new career
at Encarta's eLearning Center. Research jobs, salaries, and other work stuff on
MSN Careers. If teachers are to get more money, citizens must pay more taxes.
That's the bottom line. And a powerful current in American political life has
been a demand for lower taxes. If you start with the premise "taxes are too high,"
the conclusion "teachers are overpaid" is virtually automatic. The arguments about
why they're overpaid come after the fact. "You can't fix the schools by throwing
money at them," and its ilk are simply necessary fillers to bolster the premise
that taxes must be lowered.
Want More Tamim? • Browse through his columns.
• Ask him a question. But it's wishful thinking to suppose that we can have good
schools without paying teachers good salaries. Comparisons to the good old days
ignore the fact that times have changed. Back then, low wages could secure top
talent because half the population was restricted to just two or three jobs, one
of which was teaching. The best still had to compete to be teachers, and only
the best of the best got in. Today, potential teachers--men or women--have so
many other options that it's the teaching profession that must compete, against
other lines of work, to reel in the top talents. Otherwise, instead of teaching,
those top talents might choose to be... Well, let's see: police officers, accountants,
department store buyers, architects, computer systems analysts, engineers, attorneys,
professors, or doctors, for example.
Check part one to see what that comes
out to in dollars.
Tamim Ansary writes on culture and society for Encarta.
He is author of the critically acclaimed memoir West of Kabul, East of New York
as well as dozens of nonfiction books for children
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