Leadership Infrastructure for Special Needs Students

Special Education Diverse Learners Project Guidelines
Section 1: Abstract
This paper provides an overview of Butler College Prep, its demographics, and its programs and services for special needs students. It looks at curriculum and instruction efforts as well as at the role of the principal in the school and how he oversees special education services and promotes the power of collective efficacy to motivate and help teachers and parents collaborate. It concludes with a personal reflection on what I have learned during the course of this project and what challenges the school faces in terms of a leadership structure to close the achievement gap.
Section 2: Demographic Overview
Butler College Prep is in Southside Chicago. Its student body is 95% African American and 4% Hispanic, and it serves as a school for social justice and the arts (School Performance, 2017). The socio-economic background of the vast majority of the families of students is challenged. 98% of students receive free or reduced-rate lunches. 1 in 6 students at the school, approximately 100 students out of 600, has a disability. Data obtained from Illinois Network of Charter Schools (School Performance, 2017) divulged that 94.5% of the students came from low-income families, 16% of the students have learning disabilities, 20.2% of the students were homeless, and 1.5% of the students have limited English proficiency.
70% of staff are people of color and 50% of staff are black male teachers. These percentages help to show what the school is doing to reach out to students in the community by having teachers who they can relate to and who are representative of their own background.
Only 6% of students are taking early college coursework from grades 10 to 12 (Illinois at a Glance Report Card, 2019). Students have 7% ELA proficiency, 11% math proficiency, and 2% science proficiency (Illinois at a Glance Report Card, 2019). The data impacts instructional planning in the sense that the school focuses on boosting its students’ SAT scores. For the last three years, most of the students have been partially meeting or approaching state mandated goals on the PSAT in the areas of Math and English Language Arts. The main problem area for Butler College Prep, however, is math. The school has the instructional goal of improving the school’s students’ math score. 9th grade math students at Butler College have had a growth goal of 60 points from the Pre-PSAT to the Mid-PSAT. For the last 3 years, the 9th grade math students have not met their growth goals. Instruction is currently being retooled to focus on this area.
Section 3: Programs and Services
The full range of programs, related services and resources available in the school for addressing the educational needs of students with disabilities includes placement options, which, ranked from least restrictive to most restrictive, are:
· Honor – no extra support is provided and the student engages in self-directed learning to some extent
· General Education – no extra support and student is guided by the teacher in the classroom
· Co-taught – SPED teacher and general education teacher collaborating to provide assistance for the student
· Instructional Settting/Self-Contain – SPED teacher and para professional collaborating
· Function (most profound) – SPED teacher and two para professionals collaborating.
Related service options include:
· Speech pathologist to help students with speech challenges
· Occupational therapy to help students with movements
· Social worker to help students and their families with challenges
· Nurse to help students with health issues
· School psychologist to help students with mental health issues
Resources for providing special education services include having specialized staff, special classrooms for SPED, special learning and physical exercise equipment to support special needs, and parent education programs that focus on professional activities that parents can pursue.
Section 4: Curriculum and Instruction
Research-based curriculum used for literacy in the school consists of modified regular education materials designed for ELA students with unique learning needs. The connection to language acquisition theories is based on the work of Prabhu (1987) and the Japanese Association for Language Teaching (2005) both of whom focus on providing ELA students with new ways in which to acquire language through activities that promote active learning.
One curriculum unit for example that is research-based rests on the theory that task-based learning is helpful in giving students an opportunity to acquire language skills and exercise certain thinking skills (Prabhu, 1987). It also is compatible with the vision of teaching offered by the Japanese Association for Language Teaching (2005) in which tips on vocabulary are provided.
The unit focuses on vocabulary acquisition by building the vocabulary of the students through a variety of exercises that are task-based: an information gap activity, a reasoning gap activity and an opinion-gap activity. In each activity, the vocabulary of the unit is utilized and the students are obliged to understand the vocabulary and formulate correct responses to the scenarios presented them. The learner outcomes that are expected are that students will develop information retrieving skills, reasoning skills and expression skills. Feedback is at the end of each day, following the activities which are used to help the students acquire the unit vocabulary through task-based activities (Prabhu, 1987). The overall aim is to increase the literacy of the students. An example of a particular lesson is that students will partake in information gap activity. The vocabulary for the Unit is given with definitions and examples of how the words are used correctly. Then the first activity begins w/ students receiving an exercise in which they have to collect information from one another. Each student is given a depiction of a person who embodies a single vocabulary unit word. Each student also receives a single vocabulary unit word. They then have to interview one another to see which goes with which and match them.
The curriculum for numeracy consists of similarly modified regular education materials. For IEP, supplemental materials for both literacy and numeracy consist of computer-assisted instruction (CAI). As Mautone, DuPaul and Jitendra (2005) point out, “students and teachers consider CAI to be an acceptable intervention for some students who are having difficulty with mathematics” (p. 301). Computer assisted instruction allows students to focus on learning in a manner that is engaging for them, that holds their interest and that is uniquely tailored to their needs by way of the interactive nature of the experience. It is an excellent method for developing an IEP that works for the student. CAI facilitates the active learning process which helps the learner to more deeply acquire the knowledge that is being transferred over the course of the instruction in both literacy and numeracy.
Three evidence-based instructional strategies utilized to address the specific needs of students with disabilities include:
· Cognitive strategy instruction, which has been found to be an evidence-based practice for reading comprehension of expository texts for students with LD (Jitendra, Burgess & Garja, 2011).
· Self regulated strategy development (SRSD) for writing has been found to be an evidence-based practice for writing for students with or at-risk of LD (Baker, Chard, Ketterlin-Geller, Apichatabutra & Doabler (2009).
· Time delay has been found to be an evidence-based practice for literacy for students with severe developmental disabilities (Browder, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Spooner, Mims & Baker, 2009).
Section 5: Role of the Principal
The role of the principal of the school in the provision of special education services, supervision of those services, and collaboration with parents of students with disabilities is to delegate rather than to be hands on. The principal focuses on motivating by getting all stakeholders to buy into the idea of the power of collective efficacy, which is based on the notion that when people come together to support one another in a common aim they are more likely to achieve that aim (Donohoo, Hattie & Eells, 2018). The principal at Butler College Prep definitely looks to be the motivator in this sense and finds those who can provide special education, supervise the services, and collaborate with parents of students with disabilities to do those jobs effectively.
The principal essentially delegates these leadership responsibilities by hiring people for these roles. Thus, the LD teachers in the school are hired to work with special education students, and they are tasked with collaborating with parents and supervising their own services. The principal will provide them with whatever support he can, whether it is infrastructural, emotional, intellectual, or social. The principal lets them know that they can count on him to always have their back and he has worked with his teachers in difficult situations before when dealing with parents who feel something is not being done right in the classroom.
The principal always takes ultimate responsibility for the learning of all students in the school as it is well known that whenever there is an issue it will go all the way up to him to be settled if need be. He is like the president and the Supreme Court of the school. There is no getting around the fact that when it comes to who is accountable for what goes on the school, the principal is the one who will shoulder that responsibility every single day.
To make sure students’ educational needs are being met, he looks at the standards of the state and he looks at what the standards of colleges are and where the students’ performance is. He talks with teachers about how they are going to achieve the school’s academic goals for that year and discusses their plans with them. He knows what plans they want to see implemented and he is supportive but also critical when he has to be because he has a good idea of what works and what does not work, since he has been in this role for a while. He is also open to new ideas, however, and will accept innovative strategies to help get students on pace with where they should be. The important thing he notes is that people be trusting of the process and that they support one another and never enter into a new idea with preconceived notions or with negativity. Teachers have a very important role in the school and in the community, he points out, and they should be appreciated more for what they are doing because it is often a thankless job that goes unappreciated. He always wants his teachers to know that they are appreciated and that they can come to him with any issues they might be having. He lets parents know that as well. He wants to take pressure off teachers so that they can focus on getting their jobs done and if that means intercepting parents and dealing with their issues (which are not always student-related) then he has no problem doing that. He recognizes that there are many challenges in this community, from single-parent families to problems with getting support from families to keep students focused on schoolwork throughout the year to poverty and joblessness and so on.
The principal also organizes and supports closing the achievement gap for students with disabilities to their non-disabled peers by implementing projects like spending extra time on math or having tutors volunteer an hour before or after school to do one-on-one reading with students. He has also promoted the idea of teachers making home visits to help bring the worlds of school and community closer and thus close the achievement gap this way. The more supportive, he believes, teachers can show themselves to be of families, the more support they will receive from families, which can help to motivate LD students and get them to focus on closing the gap.
Section 6: Reflection and Recommendations
My own learning throughout the Special Education Diverse Learners Project has been robust enough for me to see that special education for diverse learners is something that has to be taken very seriously by all stakeholders in order for it to work. It is not just a job that a teacher can do on his or her own. It takes the part of teachers collaborating with parents under the guidance and with the support of the principal along with the support of all colleagues. Teachers have to come together to support the initiative because it really is an issue that requires all hands on deck.
The role of the principal in the organization and delivery of special education services in the school is motivational and supportive more than anything else. The principal recognizes the need for a collaborative experience to take place and he promotes the concept of the power of collective efficacy, knowing that it does take the work and support of many different stakeholders for a goal of this nature to be reached consistently and effectively.
What is working at Butler College Prep is the fact that the school has a low turnover rate among teachers. This shows that teachers are investing in the school and the school is investing in the teachers. Few teachers become disillusioned and want to walk away, which indicates the school is doing something right and the teachers feel supported and like they have a real community here.
What might be done to strengthen the leadership structure to close the achievement gap between students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers is to define roles more clearly so that everyone knows what is expected of them when it comes to the task of closing the achievement gap. Some teachers do not realize that they have a part to play, just like some parents do not realize they have to be more involved in the academic lives of the children if they want to see them succeed. Some parents think the school should take care of everything and they do not even realize that the children are only in the school for a short time. Thus, getting teachers and parents aligned and on the same page where they are working together for the same end is the biggest leadership structural challenge the school faces.
References
Baker, S. K., Chard, D. J., Ketterlin-Geller, L. R., Apichatabutra, C., & Doabler, C.(2009). Teaching writing to at-risk students: The quality of evidence for self-regulated strategy development. Exceptional Children, 75, 303–320.
Browder, D., Ahlgrim-Delzell, L., Spooner, F., Mims, P. J., & Baker, J. N. (2009). Using time delay to teach literacy to students with severe developmental disabilities. Exceptional Children, 75, 343–364.
Donohoo, J., Hattie, J., & Eells, R. (2018). The power of collective efficacy. Educational Leadership, 75(6), 40-44.
Illinois at a Glance Report Card. (2019). Noble Butler College Prep. Retrieved from http://www.illinoisreportcard.com/
The Japanese Association for Language Teaching (2005). Vocabulary [Special issue]. The Language Teacher, 29(7) .[PDF]
Jitendra, A. K., Burgess, C., & Gajria, M. (2011). Cognitive strategy instruction for improving expository text comprehension of students with learning disabilities: The quality of evidence. Exceptional Children, 77, 135-159.
Prabhu, N. S. (1987). Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
School Performance. (2017). Illinois Network of Charter Schools. Retrieved from https://www.incschools.org/about-charters/school-performance/