Providing Teachers:
This rapid growth in the special education system has created more than 300 positions for student service coordinators. The presence of the student services has reduced the burden on the school teachers and has made learning in the classroom more efficient. However, as there continues to be a shortage of public school teachers there is an even larger shortage of public special education teachers. The demand for special education teachers exceeds the supply of them. This may be due to a variety of reasons such as the extra training necessary to provide these services. Being a special education teacher is a much more challenging job and requires a little more time and individual attention. Also the inadequate salary and compensation that comes with the job of special education teacher does not always make the job enticing and desirable.
Quality of Education:
Some may argue that even though many chances have been made, the system still lacks in providing quality education to each student. While the quality of the special education programs are still being debated, reports do show that many special education students are not scoring as well on the placement/ state tests as the regular students are. This has become a huge area of concern. Reports show that despite all the improvements that have been made over the past years less than 1/5 of special education children are actually scoring as well as regular students. This could be due to a variety of possible reasons. It could be the lack of quality education offered to these students or it could be that due to their disabilities that they are resultantly scoring lower that the average regular public school student. But regardless of the reason, special education students are failing to score as well on tests. (http://starbulletin.com/2007/08/12/editorial/commentary.html)
Parental involvement:
While many of the children receive adequate attention at school, in order for them to learn and excel, the special individual plans created for each student needs to be continued outside the classroom. This is where parental involvement becomes necessary for the special education programs to be effective. This is often a problem for many children with learning disabilities because while they are given adequate help and school, their parents are not as involved. Many times parents do not continue these individual learning plans in their homes and as a result the students are not able to perform at their full potential.
1 comment:
"The presence of the student services has reduced the burden on the school teachers and has made learning in the classroom more efficient. However, as there continues to be a shortage of public school teachers there is an even larger shortage of public special education teachers."
Its good to see that students are volenteering to help teachers but that still isn't enough seing as though there is still a shortage of teachers in both regular and special education fields. I think that a sloution would be teachers being paid more. This could provide so many more people with initiatives to become teachers. It's a really important field that we can't let die out.
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