I don’t even know that this post needs a caption, but come on! When you see trends like an increase in over one million public school students needing special education services from 2011 to 2021, this shows that what we are doing is not working.
We reduced play and rest in kindergarten and instead swapped it for testing and homework. We reduced art, music, and physical education for more instructional time and an increased number of tests each year. We have seen an increase in aggression, defiance, behavioral needs, and droves of qualified experienced teachers leaving the field.
We have data which shows how to best support students, how they thrive, how we can support regulation, reduce the impact of trauma, inspire learning, but instead we double down on more testing and now even grade our teachers.
Maybe it is time to look at these trends and realize that most of the accommodations on a 504 or in an IEP are beneficial to all students. Maybe looking at and restructuring a broken system will have a much stronger impact on improving focus, attention, emotion management, regulation, and reducing hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, and behavioral issues.
Source:
National Center for Education Statistics. (2023). Students with Disabilities. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved June 25, 2023, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgg.
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