Fish Out of Water

Peter C--read Diana's cc2day blog, 'building bridges,' on cc politics and cc public school education. how are the mcas scores comparing in cc public schools with the rest of the state/country? do you agree with reducing special education funding?:

'Turner's response was, 'when I created my regional school caucus, I discovered vo-tech has the largest population of special ed students of any school in the Commonwealth. Some schools, as many as 50% of the student body (is sped vocational tech), the average being 30%.

He stated there is a dedicated group of people in the House focused on special education, partly because their own children are special ed kids.

He feels there needs to be a reduction in funding for special ed.'

Capewide MCAS scores are a mixed bag.

I'd settle for Congress fulfilling its promise to fund 40 percent of the special education spending in this country. Right now the number is closer to 15 percent. That would go a long, long way to closing the gap.

Special education needs run the gamut. Many kids can thrive if they just get some accommodations that don't cost the school a lot of money, like giving them extra time to do tests. Unfortunately, many times, their parents don't know what to advocate for, and in a class of 18 or 22 kids, even their teachers may not recognize the issues for what they are -- few educators are trained to recognize special needs.

Other kids require extensive assistance because of severe disabilities. For them, there's no easy answer that isn't going to cost taxpayers money, but those services are guaranteed to them by state and federal law.