¶ … utopian school district: An overview
Individualization is the key to effective special education. That is why every child in a special education setting has an individualized education plan (IEP). The needs of, for example, a child with autism who is nonverbal are very different from the needs of a highly verbal child on the autism spectrum with social deficits. Allowing more individualized assessment and delivering more individualized treatment would be a critical component of any 'utopian' school district.
However, as well as creating individualized instruction plans for all students in their supportive environments, the larger environment of the school should also be supportive of learning differences. "Consider children with disabilities as general education children first: Special education and general education are treated as separate systems, but in fact share responsibility for the child with disabilities" and there should be more similarities between the two...
All teachers should be allowed to present material that makes use of a multiple range of intelligences, including applied, kinesthetic intelligence to get students moving and out of their seats. In most schools today, "a cycle of control and challenge is born that reduces dramatically learning about responsibility and
citizenship, increases anger and the need of students to challenge what they see as repressive authority, and sets in place emotions and tensions that reduce learning" (Peterson & Tamor 2003: 6). A utopian school district would not primarily rely upon standardized assessments, applying a narrow and rigid 'cookie cutter' approach to measure student achievement, but would focus on individual student improvement.
Teachers would be given more latitude in creating formative assessments to measure student comprehension on a regular basis and be able to tailor their learning plans as needed. There would be room for the use of student portfolios and team-based learning. Portfolios assess an individual student's learning over a time and highlight personal improvement rather than judge students by a preexisting standard. Team-based learning teaches important interpersonal skills to students and also allows less strong students to learn from their more competent peers. This creates a supportive environment for learning, rather than stigmatizing slower learners like standardized assessment often can.
Teachers must also be supported in a utopian school district. This includes financing professional education and talking to teachers about what works and what does not work in the
classroom, rather than dictating a specific program to them. This may seem…
