The
Fly Paper 
A bulletin from the director on those sticky issues in special education
April 4, 2005
Are We Lowering the Bar?: A Director’s Editorial
Are we lowering the bar when it comes to our expectations for students with disabilities? I contend that we may have lowered the bar of expectations and we don’t even realize what we have done. Let me explain. Throughout this year it has come to my attention that some special education classes are encouraged to dismiss their students before everyone else so as to avoid the congestion in the halls at dismissal time. In some instances students in special education classes were/are brought into the building after everyone else, again so as to avoid the congestion in the halls prior to the start of school. While I believe that the reasons these students are receiving an altered school day schedule comes from a genuine concern for safety, this provides an example of how we have “lowered the bar” for the students with IEPs.
Let’s pretend for a moment that we have made a decision to help out the sixth grade units at both middle schools, by dismissing all of the sixth graders ten minutes early each day. We have decided to do this because, after all, the sixth graders are new to the middle school, they are physically smaller than the upper classmen, and they need additional time to get to their busses, and clear the halls. Since the same problem exists at the start of the school day, we’ll bring the sixth graders into the school five to ten minutes after everyone else so as to make the morning entry safer and more orderly. As a result of our concern for their well-being, all sixth graders in both middle schools will start their school day at 9:10 rather than 9:00 a.m., and they will be dismissed at 3:20 rather than 3:30 p.m. I challenge you to think about the reaction the District would receive from the parents of the sixth grade students. I could guess that there would be throngs of parents speaking out at Board meetings about how their children were being deprived of up to 20 minutes per day of instructional time, for a total of 100 minutes per week, for a total of 3,600 minutes, or 60 hours of instructional time for the school year. Clearly this would not be a consideration for students in general education.
My concern is that we tend to think nothing of altering the schedule for students in special education classrooms. Why is it okay to consider altering the schedule for students with IEPs when we would never think of that as an option for students in general education? If the concern is truly for the safety and well-being of students with IEPs, then why is the chosen solution one that gives the clear message we are lowering the bar? If our first option for solving the problem of student safety is simply to shorten the day for the kids in the special education classroom we are missing the point. Why can’t the safety needs of the students be addressed in some alternate way that will not give everyone the message that instructional time is not as important for students with IEPs? I contend that when we think in terms of expediency rather than in terms of equality we are lowering the bar, not only for students with IEPs, but for all students. The message is clear. We don’t need to expect as much from our students in special education classrooms. Students in special education classrooms can miss 10 to 20 minutes of instructional time per day and it’s not a big deal.
If you are working in a building where the instructional time for students in special education classrooms has been shortened, for any reason, I urge you to speak up. I urge you to work with your building principal to make changes that will ensure that students with IEPs will receive an equivalent school day to students without disabilities. I urge you to make sure that we are holding our students with disabilities to the same high expectations that we hold for students in the general education program. Please remember one of my favorite sayings, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got!” Raise the bar for our students with disabilities. Expect the best… you’ll get the best!