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Special education in California is in “deep trouble,” exacerbated by outmoded concepts and an extreme shortage of fully-prepared teachers, according to Michael Kirst, president of the California State Board of Education.

Kirst said that the state’s special education system – which serves students with physical, cognitive and learning disabilities – is based on an antiquated model and that it needs “another look.”

“Someone needs to sit up and say, ‘We need to update it,'” he said.

Echoing Kirst’s remarks, Miriam Freedman, an attorney specializing in special education law and author of Special Education 2.0: Breaking Taboos to Build a New Education Law, said: “The IDEA law did a fabulous job to bring educational opportunity to all children, but it needs a redo to see if it is serving our children and our schools now.”

She said the law was written principally with children who had cognitive impairments and physical disabilities in mind, but currently large numbers of children in special education have learning disabilities. A major problem, Freedman said, is that often these children “only get served after they fail.” “This is a ‘way to fail’ model,” she said. “Children don’t get services until they do poorly in school.”

Classrooms are increasingly staffed with teachers who are interns or who have provisional permits, he said. “We are begging teachers to go into the (special ed) classroom,” he said. In fact, according to the Learning Policy Institute, “new, under-prepared special education teachers outnumber those who are fully prepared 2:1,” a higher ratio than any other major teaching field.

Some teachers leave the field because of the bureaucratic burdens on teachers to meet the requirements of special education laws. “You get into it to work with kids with special needs and make a difference in their lives, but now 60 percent of your time is managing their paperwork,” Navo said.

https://edsource.org/2017/californi...al-ed-in-deep-trouble-and-needs-reform/588436

I'm a Special Education teacher in California. If I leave my job tomorrow, I can probably find another job within 2 weeks, there's such a storage of teachers who are willing to come into this field. I would actually argue that California and teaching in general needs to lower the qualification requirements needed to become teachers. Currently, unless you can find a paid internship, you have to take an unpaid internship for an entire year, a full time school schedule of classes, and are basically writing contracts that help determine a student's services that are provided in the school setting.

Mess up that Individual Education Plan? You're open yourself to due process and potentially being personally liable and sued if a parent of student is mad enough.

But I love my job, I love teaching, and I love the fact that I'm helping kids. I just wish the shit that doesn't matter, the paperwork that doesn't mean shit wasn't there. I also wish there was more of us.

If you read though the end of this, thank you for reading.