TEA: SCHOOLS MUST SERVE ALL KIDS WITH DISABILITIES
The Texas Education Agency has told schools they must provide services to all eligible students with disabilities and they won't be penalized for serving too many children.
The TEA's announcement comes after the U.S. Department of Education ordered the state agency to end an 8.5 percent benchmark on special education enrollment.
The Houston Chronicle had previously reported that schools began denying special education services after the state imposed the enrollment benchmark in 2004.
In a five-page letter, Penny Schwinn, the agency's deputy commissioner of academics, told schools that the TEA eventually would end the benchmark.
But Schwinn also defended the policy, saying it was not a "cap" on enrollment and did not seriously punish districts for failing to comply.
The problem is that schools are being forced to “mainstream” some students with severe disabilities while not being given the resources to properly meet the needs of all the other students. To many times, additional burdens being placed solely on the teacher who already is being micromanaged mean that the majority of students get ignored to take care of one or two with special needs. My wife is a teacher who often works past 7:00 p.m. in her classroom and on weekends to stay up with the never ending demands and you want her to figure out how to manage even more stress without providing any more resources? State/Federal orders without the resources to support them takes an already stressed system and makes it worse. Time to re-evaluate this whole process and come up with a better system.
I am appalled and horrified that there would be kids with needs that aren’t receiving special services. How do they decide who will be excluded? How can they go to work knowing what they have done?
Penny Schwinn needs to have to testify under OATH in front of a FEDERAL GRAND JURY. There she would have to tell the truth or be charged with perjury. TEA severely penalized any district with “too many” Special Ed students.
Its a shame that there has to be “special education” even needed. There are the obvious special needs kids out there I get it, BUT the kids that need a good spanking and cant behave in class should not be put in special ed. classes. This day and age everyone is so quick to give medicine and think the kids have ADD or ADHD or whatever. A healthy butt whooping and send them on there way knowing that type of behavior is unacceptable is the best medicine.
a butt whooping and physical forms of discipline aren’t effective. if it takes you twenty whoopings and child is still misbehaving is it really doing any good? you can not beat since into someone. counseling and removal from the class room are just some ways to get to the root of the problem. don’t be so quick to pull out a paddle and hit them with it. as someone who grew up getting a many of spankings and whoopings I can tell you it is an ineffective method. it takes someone listening to the child and figuring out why they are acting out.
A butt whooping isn’t a cure for a handicap, and that shows an extreme lack of understanding of children. Not all kids in SpEd are in special classroom. Indeed, most are not. And you can’t beat kids into getting over their handicap (or, as you would say “whatever”).