The Wilful Ignorance of Richard Allington

Initials after your name don't make you smart, or worthwhile to society. That's always been the problem with the credentialist society of the past 150 years. People with doctorates, for example, hand out doctorates, and maybe they do so in ways which limit intellectual and career competition.

Anyway, this is largely my case against our colleges and schools of education. Credentials trump knowledge, credentials trump experience, credentials trump value to our children in many of our "hallowed halls" of academe.

This fact appeared again - powerfully - in an EdWeek story about that impending bane of children of America, the Common Core test and its refusal to treat read-aloud - Text-To-Speech - as a fully equal testing regime for students with dyslexia. The key part of the story for me was a stunning ignorant and offensive statement from, yes, a professor of education:

"Richard Allington, a professor of education at the University of Tennessee and one of the country's most recognized experts on early literacy, calls the accommodation "cheating."

'"What special education does best is create illiterates," Mr. Allington said. "I know why they don't want their kids tested on reading activity. It's because they've done a terrible job of providing those kids with high-quality reading instruction."' - EdWeek

So, in a national educational publication, this "Doctor," this "Professor," is willing to call me - and millions like me - an "illiterate cheater," and he thinks that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say about a person, about people, he knows absolutely nothing about. In response, on Twitter, I called him a "moron" in the best slang use of the term - but here's the difference. From these quotes, I know a great deal about Richard Allington, and I know he is dangerous.

Corrected http://t.co/cFHzVwhUmB this moron from U Tennessee is dangerous #a11y
— Ira Socol (@irasocol) November 2, 2013

Dangerous because he is willing to mix his position of credentialed authority, and control over who becomes a teacher (and perhaps PhD) from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, with his desire for fame, with wilful ignorance and a firm disrespect for humanity.

Dr. Richard Allington:
Please take his glasses away,
accommodations are cheating

Whatever Allington's credentials - and he claims an awful lot on his web page and - I'm sure - his office walls...

"Dick Allington is professor of education at the University of Tennessee. Previously he served as the Irving and Rose Fien Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Florida, and as chair of the Department of Reading at the University at Albany – SUNY.
   "Dick has served as the President of the International Reading Association, as President of the National Reading Conference, and as a member of the International Reading Association Board of Directors. He is the co-recipient of the Albert J. Harris Award from IRA in recognition of his work contributing to the understanding of reading and learning disabilities and the William S. Gray Citation of Merit for his contributions to the profession. In addition Dick has been named to the IRA Reading Hall of Fame.
  "Dick currently serves on the editorial boards of Reading Research Quarterly, Remedial and Special Education, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Disability Policy Studies, and the Journal of Educational Psychology. He has previously served terms on the editorial boards of the Review of Educational Research, Elementary School Journal, and the Reading Teacher, and as associate editor of the Journal of Literacy Research."

... he has proved to be an irresponsible person to have within the field of education, because he is willing to hurt children in the pursuit of his career.

In order to make the statements he made, this "Doctor" has to be willing to ignore almost all the actual brain research of the past fifteen years, everything we now know from genetics research around the world and fMRI research. This is probably OK with him because if there is one thing most education graduate programs teach it is to pick and choose research which supports your initial biased guess (called a "hypothesis" in the Alice in Wonderland research paradigm of education). And he probably believes he can get away with slandering a wide group of people because his "credentialed status" labels him as an expert.

Now, "Doctor" Allington, who appears to cheat using accommodations daily (if photos can be believed), also proves himself a hypocrite of the first order, accepting a solution for his inabilities as "normal" - his prescriptive eyeglasses - but seeing solutions for the inabilities of others - the digital reading support and audiobooks I use - as "cheating" and proof of illiteracy.

This "illiterate cheater" will be happy to debate the issues
of contemporary literature with "Doctor" Allington

Now, "Doctor" Allington and I can agree on the shortcomings of much of Special Education - it does, all too often, breed dependence. But the difference is that while my response is respect for, and the attempt to empower those students within the Special Ed-Industrial Complex, his solution is to blame them for their genetically differing brain structures, and to insist that they become just like him.

Now, since "Doctor" Allington has called me a "cheater" and "illiterate" - let me list my credentials - and I will argue that these are contemporary - post-Gutenberg - credentials. Sure "Doctor," I struggle mightily with decoding alphabetical text, and sure, unless I am drawing my letters, copying them in fact, my writing is just about useless, and - well, to go further, I've never learned to "keyboard" with more than one finger. So yes, "Doctor," by your standards I can neither read nor write. And to get around that I do indeed "cheat." I use digital text-to-speech tools, from WYNN to WordTalk to Balabolka to Click-Speak and I use audiobooks all the time, whether from Project Gutenberg or LibriVox or Audible. Yes, I "cheat" by writing with Windows Speech Recognition and Android Speech Recognition and the SpeakIt Chrome extension.

Hey "Doctor," we put these "cheating" tools on computers for every child.

And "Doctor," I not only use them, I encourage students all over the United States, all around the world in fact, to cheat with these tools as well. I've even helped develop a free suite of tools for American students to support that "cheating."

But beyond that, I'll match my scholarship with "Doctor" Allington's anytime, including my "deeply read" knowledge of the history of American education, and my "actual" - Grounded Theory Research - with real children in real schools in real - non-laboratory, non-abusive-control-group - situations.

And beyond that, I tend to think I'm as "well read" as any non-literature major around. So if the "Doctor" wants to debate James Joyce or Seamus Heaney or current Booker Prize shortlist fiction, or argue over why American schools often teach literature and the real part of reading, the understanding - so badly, I think I'll be able to hold my own.

Finally, in terms of recognition and accomplishment, well, for over 15 years I've been making real differences in the lives of people - from creating one of the earliest universally designed university campus computer networks at Grand Valley State University in the last century, to working for over a decade with children and adults through Michigan's Vocational Rehabilitation agency, to supporting the universal design and assistive technology initiatives of many K-12 schools, to research and teaching at Michigan State, to my present work in Virginia, and I have shared this work and knowledge base freely, never putting anything behind paywalls which might limit the access of teachers and students to essential information. And thanks to contemporary forms of social media, people know what I do.

Perhaps I should mention the books this illiterate has written - cheating with Speech Recognition, and oh yeah, spellcheck too, and WYNN for editing help - but, that's just extra...

I list my credentials not to compete, but to suggest that I have a deep kind of knowledge of these issues which is quite different from the knowledge listed on the "Doctor's" CV. It is a kind of "street," on-the-ground knowledge not available to university office researchers. And a prime part of that difference is that I deal with humans, and human brains, and human learning, and not just data points.

And with that knowledge, I would like to challenge "Doctor" Allington to a debate. We can do it in person or we can do it via those contemporary technological affordances, but we should do it in public, with the largest audience we can get.

I will ask the "Doctor" to explain and defend his definitions of "cheating," "illiteracy," "literacy," and "reading." And he can ask me whatever he wants. I will challenge his knowledge of contemporary research, and he is welcome to challenge mine.

I will ask him about his willingness to assault children in public by labelling them as he has done, and he can surely challenge my use of the term "moron" as it relates to him, and my use of "quotation marks." But I think that "Doctor" Allington should answer me before he steps back into any University of Tennessee classroom, or talks to any more future teachers.

Reading and Writing - "Reading is getting information from a recorded source into
your brain in a way which allows you to work with it. Writing is getting information
from your brain into a form which can be accessed asynchronously."

In the end our children deserve not just our respect but every opportunity we can give them. They also deserve respect for their differences, and must not be forced into conformity. Perhaps they need this most from those who claim the right to prepare our future teachers. Perhaps they do not need "credentialist experts" insulting them and attempting to deny them opportunities - especially those "experts" who have actual power over what the user experience of our students will be.

So, "Doctor" Allington, join me on an international stage, and let's let the world understand your argument, and let's let the world decide whether you get to keep using technology to fix that eyesight of yours.

- Ira Socol

Affirmative Action in Education: Game Changers

A few years ago at a Disability Studies in Education Conference at Michigan State University we got into a fascinating discussion over dinner: Should schools/colleges of education use "Affirmative Action" ("Reverse Discrimination") to ensure that at every level - Bachelors/Undergraduate teacher training, Masters, PhD - there was far better representation of students with disabilities?

The argument for? Since most students do not actually do well in school, since most students with disabilities do not do well in school, we need more teachers, administrators, and teacher educators who understand - on a fundamental level - that education must change.

There was little argument against, this was not a group which would think that an effort like this would really be doing anything more than reversing all the existing discrimination against those who have struggled in school, but people were concerned that few, if any, schools/colleges of education - at least in North America - would do anything but terrible things to those incoming "disabled" students.

But despite all the obstacles, I have begun to detect something - a small but significant cohort of young, mostly male, teachers who are changing practice in schools in important ways. They typically had bad experiences as students themselves, often right through university. They struggled with attention issues, reading issues, math issues, writing issues. They were typically born from the late 1970s through the late 1980s and benefited as the first students with disabilities to have real human rights protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (as amended). And they went through the bulk of their education before the No Child Left Behind legislation began to destroy opportunity in American public education.

Today they range from, say, 35 down to their early twenties, and I have been watching them.

Middle School Jazz Camp, Albemarle County, Virginia

Watching them as they change - in dramatic ways - classrooms, schools, and the culture of education. Now, I'm not saying - obviously - that these are the only teachers doing these things. Often, these "boys" are adapting what they saw from the best of their teachers who "came of age" long before NCLB or even the "Reagan-Bush-1 Conservatism," but they are forming a powerful new cohort often in opposition to the "mainstream" teaching staff trained for an era of testing and classroom management.

I see these guys in elementary schools, in middle schools, in high schools, in every content area - a new band of teachers who demonstrate...

1. Instructional Tolerance and a belief that childhood and adolescence are good things.
These guys don't "sweat the small stuff." They know, from years of struggling in school, that no one in any classroom was always paying attention, or was always on task, or was always behaving. So stuff like taking breaks by staring at the window, or looking at Facebook, or walking around, or just spacing out, are fine. So is the use of different tools by different students. So are different time frames for different students. So are flexible deadlines and flexible assignments. Learning matters, the rest really does not.
2. A very different kind of classroom observation skill, perhaps the result of watching from back corners, these teachers are unusually good at spotting who is getting uncomfortable, and who is struggling.
This group of teachers understands how to watch for students becoming uncomfortable. They know it well because - that was them. Uncomfortable students stop learning, surely can't process at higher levels, so solving that is essential. These teachers also seem "much better than average" at recognizing when things aren't working for a student, and are most willing to try different paths.
3. A multi-level practice of teaching with large group, small group, and individual interactions occurring almost simultaneously.
Multitasking is basic to these men. They tend, most of them, toward the ADHD spectrum, and they see all the things in a room, thus they are able to observe and intervene, watch interactions at many different levels, and understand the borderline between the chaos of a great learning space and the chaos of dysfunction. As "Borderliners" themselves, this boundary line is far clearer than it is to those who sat near the front and attended to the teachers' directions.
4. A focus on student comfort and psychological safety is perhaps the most important thing in how this cohort teaches.
Once you've been uncomfortable, this become crucial. So these teachers have the classrooms where kids are "safe," where they go when they need to escape. You'll find kids there even when they don't have class. You'll find kids sitting on the floor, on windowsills, gathered together or being alone. Wearing hats, wearing hoods, playing games, doing nothing. There is an understanding - a native, pure understanding - that no one can do higher level learning - being intellectually uncomfortable - without being physically and psychologically comfortable. The concept is from Maslow, but these guys know it from their own experience.

Choices, opportunities, passions which engage instead of force conformity
are the hallmark of these teachers' spaces.

5. An understanding of the need for the passion which connects students to school is basic to these guys.
Why would a student come to school each day? Don't say, "we made it a law." Why would each student come to school each day? If football, or the play, or music, or the chance to talk about poetry with a certain teacher, or the social scene at lunch or recess is the top emotional reason which gets a child out of bed in the morning and two your door, you cannot let that ever become secondary to anything else, because if that disappears, the reason to attend - or at least in our compulsory system, engage - vanishes. These new teachers know that. You will see them bringing games, music production, new sports, new clubs, and new conversations to the schools as they seek to meet kids at their passions.

I have worked with many great teachers, from all kinds of backgrounds, and I have worked with many great new teachers, from many backgrounds - and yet, what I see in schools suggests that there is incredible value in recruiting - at every level of education - a group of people with diverse school experiences.

As long as schools are primarily taught and run by, and future teachers are prepared by, those for whom school has been "easy," or who have succeeded in school-as-we-know-it, schools will be, primarily, for that one-third of the population. To allow all to succeed, our faculties - all of our faculties - must begin to feel a lot more like our students.

- Ira Socol

The Freedom Stick - be ready for Universal Design next academic year

Special thanks to the Special Education Advisor web site (a fantastic resource) where this post originally appeared, and where you can download the newest version of the MITS Freedom Stick - the freely available, go anywhere, use anywhere Universal Design software suite.

It is time for Universal Design for Learning to be put in the hands of every student. It is time for every student to be given the opportunity to discover and experiment with a range of tools which can support their own individual differing communication needs – not just in school, but throughout their lives. 

Schools, traditionally, have provided students one way to do things. If the class was supposed to read something, everyone had the same technology – paper with alphabetical symbols printed on it which students needed to “decode.” If the class was supposed to write, everyone had the same technology – usually a pencil or a pen used to create alphabetical symbols on paper. If the class was supposed to get “organized,” everyone had the same technology – an “assignment book” or perhaps the infamous “middle school planner.” 

If students could not function well with that “one way” they either failed, or were diagnosed as being “disabled” and were prescribed a different “one way” to work – a way which would set them apart from their peers forever.

Though in schools around the world we still see this pattern, it is now deep into the second decade of the 21st Century and the technologies and realities of the world have changed. All around the planet people carry with them – often in their pockets – highly individualizable devices which can support all the different ways humans learn and communicate. And it is time for schools to catch up with this reality. 

The new and improved “Freedom Stick” (v.2.3.2) offers students and schools the ability to arrive at this ‘technological present’ at essentially zero cost. 

One free downloadable package of software allows students the ability to make almost any computer a fully accessible device. Students can convert text to audio, get their ideas down by speaking, They can draw, manipulate photography, create visual or audio-visual presentations, calculate mathematics a variety of ways, organize themselves, try a different keyboard, support their spelling and writing… and most importantly, learn the power of “Toolbelt Theory” - the power of learning to choose and use tools well. 

The Freedom Stick is a system, it can be downloaded and installed on a 4gb Flash Drive and carried everywhere by the student, plugged into and used on school computers or public library computers, or even employer computers – anywhere any version of Microsoft Windows is installed (including on Apple Macintosh computers which can have Windows installed as a second operating system). Or it can be installed directly onto your own computer. It is safe in all computing environments, tested globally since development began in Scotland with EduApps. This version was developed with US Department of Education and Michigan Department of Education grants through Michigan’s Integrated Technology Supports (MITS) in order to bring Universal Design Technology to American schools. The Freedom Stick is a collection of free, open-source programs which provide the widest range of supports for differing student needs. It is also a system supported by a range of learning tools – including a full set of “how to use” videos and presentations. It is easy to adapt to the students own needs, and it works with the supports included in Windows to create a true Universal Solution Set. 

The Freedom Stick contains:

• A full version of Open Office (equivalent to Microsoft Office and all documents adapt to both software programs), including Writer (Word), Impress (PowerPoint), Calc (Excel), Base (Access), plus Scribus (similar to Microsoft Publisher).
• The Sunbird Calendar and Thunderbird Email systems.
• Fully accessible versions of the Firefox, Opera, and Chrome web browsers including Text-To-Speech options and translations. Firefox and Chrome both include pre-set bookmark folders, offering access to free Digital and Audio Texts, online calculators (including talking calculators), and a wide range of curriculum supports.
• A full scientific graphing calculator, a digital periodic table with physics and chemistry calculators built in, Converber – a remarkable unit converter, and X-mind – similar to Inspiration.
• Balabolka, one of the most sophisticated Text-To-Speech systems available which can convert whole digital books to audio files, read anything with word-by-word highlighting, and which allows students to write and hear their own reading read back to them.
• PowerTalk Portable, which will read any PowerPoint presentation, if PowerPoint is installed on your computer.
• Audacity, a digital recorder and player.
• Software for drawing, painting, photo-editing/manipulation, and computer screen recording.
• Kompozer for writing html code (for building websites) and Notepad++ for coding (and testing code) in almost any computer language.
• Screen magnifiers.
• 7-Zip for creating and unpacking Zip Files.
• Simulation software including Robot Programming and Home Design.
• Games including Chess and Sudoku.
• Complete list in text format with links to software sites.

You can begin learning about the Freedom Stick, how to use it and individualize it, with these Presentations:

• Reading and Writing with the Freedom Stick and Windows Speech Recognition.
• Firefox Accessibility on the Freedom Stick.
• Open Office on the Freedom Stick.

 

How to begin... the basics

40 minutes of me talking about reading and writing... My overview, and on Maths and Sciences

or with these videos which include step-by-step instructions for all the Freedom Stick software. It is important to watch the “Getting Started” video to understand how the Freedom Stick interacts with your computers.

 

We all know that students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities struggle in school and in life because of what I call “Transactional Disability,” a mismatch between the information and communication technologies in use and the technology needs of these students. 

The Freedom Stick begins to solve this by offering choices of how to interact with information and communication to any student. Students not only get access, they begin to learn how to make their world accessible, building skills which will carry them through their lifespan. As they learn to choose and adapt the software on the Freedom Stick they will discover how to evaluate and choose the tools they will use on computers and phones no matter how they, their needs, or the technologies, change in the future. 

- Ira Socol

To download the Freedom Stick software suite click here

Notes:

1. The USB Image Tool is an easily downloadable way to quickly duplicate Freedom Sticks on your home or work computer.
2. For information about Education Scotland’s evaluation of these Portable Apps in schools, see the EduApps site or Education Scotland.
3. The Freedom Stick is a project of Michigan’s Integrated Technology Supports. In Michigan pre-K-12 educators may order Freedom Sticks already formatted at a grant supported price.

Dyslexia and Life

It is probable that struggling to read alphabetic text is "more normal" than reading well. That "struggle," that "difficulty," also might provide some very human advantages... except, of course, in school, or elsewhere among the "print-centric." 

"Dyslexic children use nearly five times the brain area as normal children while performing a simple language task, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of University of Washington researchers. The study shows for the first time that there are chemical differences in the brain function of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children," said a 1999 University of Washington study.

'"People often don't see how hard it is for dyslexic children to do a task that others do so effortlessly," added Berninger, a professor of educational psychology. "There are learning differences in children. We can't blame the schools or hold teachers accountable for teaching dyslexic children unless both teachers and the schools are given specialized training to deal with these children."'

So, when I received this wonderful birthday card last month, I thought about all of this. And I thought about the young Mr. Justin Hamilton, @EDPressSec on Twitter, who called me "a bomb thrower" in a Twitter direct message when I called his Department of Education's "crackdown" on alternative testing for special education students, "child abuse." (I could not respond to Mr. Hamilton privately, since he refuses to follow me on Twitter, as he refuses to follow virtually any other actual educator.)

But we know that if, for example, the United States Department of Education insisted that you could not graduate from high school without running a sub-6 minute mile - and offered no exemptions for those who might use a wheelchair or walking supports - we'd see that as abusive. Imagine that video, the kid who can't walk trying to drag himself around the track. And there is nothing at all different from that image than Arne Duncan and Justin Hamilton insisting that a dyslexic student "read" the way Arne and Justin and Barack prefer to - forcing a student who - genetically cannot do something "that way" - to struggle and find themselves, their teachers, and their school communities punished for their "failings."

This, like much of what happens to dyslexic kids during school reading programs, is abuse. It is an insistence that people be converted from who they are, at any cost. And this is true of Reading Recovery, of Success for All, of all the KIPP Academy reading efforts, even most of what you hear at TEDxED.

'"Dyslexia is a lifelong condition, but dyslexics may learn to compensate for it later in life. We know dyslexia is a genetic and neurological disorder. It is not brain damage. Dyslexics often have enormous talents in other parts of their brain and shine in many fields, e.g. Thomas Edison and financier Charles Schwab."

"In the language tests, the boys heard a series of word pairs that consisted of either two non-rhyming words such as "fly" and "church," two rhyming words such as "fly" and "eye," a non-rhyming real word and non-word such as "crow" and "treel," and a rhyming word and non-word such as "meal" and "treel." The boys were asked if the word pairs rhymed or didn't rhyme and if the pairs contained two real words or one real and one non-word. They responded by raising a hand to indicate yes or no. In the music test, the boys heard pairs of notes and raised one hand if they thought the notes were identical and the other if they believed them to be different.

"While the dyslexic boys exhibited nearly five times more brain lactate activation during a language task that asked them to interpret the sounds of words, there was no difference in the two groups during the musical tone test. This means the difference between the dyslexics and the normal children relates to auditory language and not to nonlinguistic auditory function, according to Richards and Berninger"

That 4.6 times the brain area, why does that matter? Speaking with a colleague's class of sophomore future teachers a few years ago one of the students asked, "If you could read "normally" - they did use their fingers to make the quotation marks, which I appreciated - wouldn't you want to?"

"What would I have to give up in exchange for that?" I asked in return. The class was confused, so I tried to explain that the 'clumsy' 'inefficient' form of reading I do is just part of what I consider a vastly different brain system which just might be far better at processing the complex imagery of multitasking (which "good readers" often claim is impossible) and multi-level perception. I think of all the things I have been "good at" in my life - design, storytelling, visual memory, police work, comprehending differing cultures, and I think all of those successes are due, in part, to the way my brain processes information - that "disorder" called dyslexia. If I could process print efficiently, would all that be lost? It seems likely, which is probably why "poor reading" is far more common among humans than "proficient reading."

Dyslexics do not use the left temporal region (as "good readers" do)
to sound out words. In fact, dyslexics and other poor readers
even avoid using that region when "successfully
compensating." (Shaywitz, 2003)

The world of evolution chooses "winners," and the multitasker, the multi-level comprehender, the visual thinker, remains extraordinarily valuable in many places around the earth.

The fact that, as one example, the United States has never, in over 150 years of trying, gotten two-thirds of Americans beyond the sixth grade reading level (what NAEP calls "proficient) suggests that facts are facts, more struggle with reading than succeed. More brains are wired "abnormally" - by school standards - than are wired "normally."

This was a gigantic problem during the Gutenberg Era, but thankfully, the Gutenberg Era is pretty much over everywhere but in school, and for everybody but the U.S. Department of Education. We don't read manuals anymore, we find the right clip on YouTube to lead us through a process. We don't write checks anymore, we swipe cards or punch numbers into our computers or phones, or we bump phones, or our phones get scanned. We don't use handwriting anymore, because it is slow and difficult to read, although our Windows tablets can convert our handwriting into real text. And if we struggle to read alphabetical text stamped onto paper or displayed on a screen these days, we turn on our reading software, and convert it to audio.

Even "out in the real world," where once menus written in fancy script like the one on the front of the above birthday cards had generations of American boys telling waiters "I'll have what she's having" on our dates, we can now go online, pull down the menu, convert it to normal text or audio, and act like we belong in the world when that waiter arrives.

But in schools, and especially on Duncan-promoted high stakes tests, none of these current century rules apply. Instead, we're back in the 1950s when dyslexia was often called "minimal brain damage" or minimal brain dysfunction," and those who "had that" disease were called - without any code words being used - "retarded." ("Retarded" meaning, since the 1870s in U.S. education, "unable to operate at the "normal" grade level for your age.")

We don't teach kids how to use these solutions, we don't teach them to choose the right solutions, and we don't evaluate them on how they'll actually function when they escape school. Instead "we" - starting with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his flak Justin Hamilton - bully these kids, and torture them on standardized tests, and call them, and all who try to help them, "failures."

And sorry Justin, insult me if you must, but this is child abuse. There is no other way to describe it. And we need to stop it, and realize Gutenberg is dead, and we need to give students the tools they need to access communication and information, and to express themselves.

Because the alternative is awful. I want Justin and Arne to know that. I've even written a book, in part, about that. And if Mr. Hamilton or Mr. Duncan won't order it from Amazon (or the accessible pdf form), if they ask, I'll send them that chapter. Maybe, using their preferred reading method, they can read it, and start to understand. And then maybe they can go down the hall and actually listen to Karen Cator, and read her plan, and start to make education less about force from above, and more about letting the most kids succeed.

- Ira Socol

Teach (Know) Your Children Well

This was the last night of the undergraduate course I co-taught with Sara Beauchamp-Hicks this semester. It was a class in Special Needs Students in Regular Ed - inclusion - and in the technologies which make that easier. But while we used lots of technology, exposed these future teachers to lots of technology, our goals were more personal, and more human...

So we began the last class session with this clip of a Japanese classroom...

There's so much here, about everything from creating a classroom environment which allows dissent and values every child to the way that project-based learning re-orients the learning process, and the students were struck by how different that class - and the student-to-student attitudes therein - were from what they see every day in their "pre-internship" placements. That difference became even more obvious when we watched the next video...

"I've spent a lot of time focusing on autism," one woman said, "on giving them voice, but after watching this I realized how many kids need to be given their voice." We talked about a lot of things after that, and then, just before the end, I showed the beginning of Mickybo and Me. Before I started this I asked the class to focus on the boy they'd "meet," to assess his strengths, to consider what issues he might have in school, to think about how a school might make these strengths work to help him overcome some of the socio-economic issues he might struggle with.

Because I'm very sure that this isn't "rocket science." This isn't about "common cores" or standardized tests or more time in the school day or private school operators or any superman. Helping kids find their path to learning lies in knowing the kids, and in getting the learning environment to meet their needs.

In the end we want these future teachers to know that we really do not want them producing any "product." Humans are not raw materials ready to have "value added." They are individuals who deserve to be treated as such. Individuals who will learn differently, have different interests, and who will grow up to lead different lives.

If we got any of that across this semester, it was a good semester indeed.

- Ira Socol

What a good IEP looks like...

I set out to write a post on "what a good IEP looks like" at the request of the brilliant Larry Ferlazzo when the great KIPP debate (one and two) burst out. But as in any "real" learning, I'm glad I was interrupted, because I learned a great deal during that conversation, and that conversation altered what I am writing now.

The "Individualized Education Program [Plan]," is the central "paperwork" component of American "Special Education" - and, in other forms, not uncommon in other nations. Unfortunately, it is typically (almost always) a deficit-model statement, listing all that is "wrong" with the student - like a medical triage report that forgets to report that, say, your blood pressure is just fine - followed by a prescription list which ignores all side effects.

So I want to begin here with a comment my friend "Homer-The-Brave" wrote regarding KIPP schools:

"Anonymous says: "[Poor children of color are] several years behind their whiter peers and several times more likely to drop out of school. So they need extra work on some stuff that wealthier whiter people take for granted, such as, oh, learning to read."

The very idea of 'behind'-ness is what's under attack here, A. When you standardize what it means to be an educated child, you create a line in the sand that defines some kids as 'ahead' and some kids as 'behind.' As anyone with a learning disability knows, these sorts of lines are increasingly arbitrary the more you examine them. They shut you out for all manner of reason. They create a situation where those who are 'ahead' get a free bonus happy career, and those who are 'behind' get either the short stick or the sanctimony. Or both.

If I had been in a class that demanded I make eye contact at all times, I would have become a discipline problem, because I am autistic. There is no room for me in a 'SLANT' classroom. So the teacher would then be allowed to humiliate me for non-compliance, or send me off to 'special ed.' Either way, it's amply demonstrated that I'm valueless to the class or the school.

Such an application of 'SLANT' philosophy immediately turns me into someone who is 'behind,' even though I come from a wealthy, white, upper middle class background.

Defining some people as 'behind' is what allows the school to abuse them in this way, and really that's what it is."

"Homer" is one of the smartest people I know, and one of the most acute observers of the world. Yet I have no doubt that those facts were not "front and centre" on any IEP written for him. So let me make this the number one idea behind a "good IEP": Start by describing all the things the student is good at. Because, as I said in the "Twitter-portion" of the great KIPP debate - (a) "I have never met a kid who couldn't do a million amazing things," and (b) "Start telling me what kids can do, not what they can't."

This actually becomes easier if you use the WATI Assessment Forms before the meeting. The WATI Student Information Guides (all free downloads) ask you about student abilities in each "area" - the essential first step. But a good IEP goes beyond that. What are the student's interests? What is the best time of the day for the student? What drives this student to succeed? At what?

Without this kind of listing, your IEP will fail because you will not be able to leverage student strengths to overcome the things which cause them trouble. The IEP Guidelines start with, "The child's present levels of academic and functional performance." That should be a major bit of writing, not a list of test scores.

Now, I have read a lot of IEPs from a lot of schools over the years, and to be blunt, most are terrible. Most are so minimally constructed as to be meaningless, filled with what I refer to - ironically - as "universal accommodations" that show quite specifically, that this "plan" is not individualized at all.

Favourite example? An IEP for a high school student born without a right leg offered her "extra time on tests."

So, yes, I see "extra time on tests" a lot. I often ask, "Why would an ADHD kid want to spend more time sitting there with this test?" and similar questions that seem to bother many school administrators.

But let's step back and go to Wikipedia for the basics:

"The IDEA 2004 requires that an IEP must be written according to the needs of each student who meets eligibility guidelines under the IDEA and state regulations, and it must include the following:

* The child's present levels of academic and functional performance
* Measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals
* How the child's progress toward meeting the annual goals are to be measured and reported to the parents
* Special education services, related services, and supplementary aids to be provided to the child
* Schedule of services to be provided, including when the services are to begin, the frequency, duration and location for the provision of services
* Program modifications or supports provided to school personnel on behalf of the child
* Least Restrictive Environment data which includes calculations of the amount of time student will spend in regular education settings verses time spent in special education settings each day
* Explanation of any time the child will not participate along with nondisabled children
* Accommodations to be provided during state and district assessments that are necessary to the measuring child's academic and functional performance

Additionally, when the student is 16 years old, a statement of post-secondary goals and a plan for providing what the student needs to make a successful transition is required. This transition plan can be created at an earlier age if desired, but must be in place by the age of 16."

A good IEP takes both short and long views of each of these issues, and includes a continuous feedback loop to allow the student and the school faculty to see how things are going.

Short and long? Yes. The goal can not be to "get the student through this class" or "get the student through this year." The goal has to be that plus "how are we helping the student with lifespan skills and knowledge." Keeping this in mind prevents the IEP from becoming "easy" for either student or teacher. Yes, it might be "easier" for both right now to have the teacher read tests to the student or scribe papers for the student, but that is just building a culture of dependence which will hurt the student in the long run. So we need better plans.

Feedback loop? If you are not tracking how solutions are working, in every class, at least weekly (create a Google Form, it makes it easy)... "The Issue is - We're trying this - This is what's happening -" you are being completely irresponsible. It's kind of like a doctor prescribing medicine and never checking to see if the patient is getting better (I know, plenty of doctors do just that, but... we're educators, we need to be better...). So collect continuous data, and write into the IEP that you will collect continuous data from staff and student. And write into the IEP that you will change the plan to reflect the experiences and changing needs which you are tracking.

If you do not do this, you end up with what I see a lot. "We tried this last September and it didn't work." "What did you try instead?" "Nothing." That equals - "We just threw away a year of this kid's life."

The Least Restrictive Environment

You can not possible describe "the least restrictive environment" unless you begin by describing "the environment."

And a student's school environment encompasses their entire day, from when they leave their home, until they return, plus, if there is homework, that extends until that homework is complete (you claim homework is "part of school," right?).

Why? Lots of reasons. I have seen "ADHD" and "ASD/Asperger's" kids completely demolished by the process of awakening, getting to school, getting through crowded corridors. I have seen kids with "emotional issues" crushed by the bus ride, the cafeteria, the gym locker room. If your AAC using student cannot communicate on the bus, that's a problem. If your LD student cannot efficiently read or write at home, that's a problem.

So start by analyzing the school environment (WATI free download), but then go further, including: What opportunities are available to non-disabled students - clubs, sports, arts, music, physical education, socializing? You cannot claim "least restrictive environment" if you deny students the right to participate in these things because they are spending mandatory "extra time" on tasks or in resource rooms, or even, doing homework.

"Least restrictive environment" and "Explanation of any time the child will not participate along with nondisabled children" also requires consideration of every technology which might help a student participate alongside "nondisabled" peers. If your IEP does not give the student a computer or mobile device to type with or dictate to, and thus the student can not write alongside their peers, they are "not participating" and I want you to write an explanation of that. If that student's IEP does not give them a computer or mobile device which reads to them and thus they must read a different book, or have fewer choices, or go to a separate room, they are "not participating" and I want you to write an explanation of that. If that student's IEP does not give them an appropriately sophisticated AAC device which allows them to communicate in "real time," they are "not participating" and I want you to write an explanation of that. If that student's IEP does not include technologies and strategies to be in the band or on a team or a member of a club or the ability to sit with friends during lunch, they are "not participating" and I want you to write an explanation of that.

And remember, "technology" is everything. The chair, the desk, the lighting, and the school itself. And technological solutions can not be restricted by other "educational" policies - such as a "cellphone ban" or a prohibition against iPods or mp3 players.

Assessments

I've been in schools where accommodations only happened on "high-stakes assessments" and I've been in schools where accommodations happened everywhere but "high-stakes assessments." Either/both are ridiculous. Students need to learn to use their solutions every day, and they need to use those solutions to demonstrate their capabilities. Don't take a student's Speech Recognition system away from them just "when it counts." And don't expect a student who hasn't gotten very comfortable with Text-To-Speech to use it on an exam. The IEP must specify how assessments will be supported and prepared for. Note: Consider creating an "Exam Profile" on the student's laptop, so that all their TTS and Speech Recognition and other comfort/capability settings remain but access to other information can be limited.

One more thing: Does your IEP include the student's assessment of their own strengths, needs, issues, desires? If it does not, it can not possibly be a "good IEP." The IEP is not a tool for the school's convenience. It is a plan designed to help the student become the best, most successful, most independent human that student can possibly be. And if does not begin with the student speaking for him or herself, it will fail to do that.


- Ira Socol

Imagining new interfaces: the value of necessity

In a conversation with the brilliant Graham Brown-Martin of Handheld Learning on Twitter we found ourselves debating the iPad. Graham loves it, sees it as a tech "game changer," envisions this concept replacing most computing platforms. I, as you may already know, have my doubts.

I said that I imagined a near future dominated by two kind of computing form factors, the phone form - the handheld - for most individual use and all "out-of-the-house" use, and some variation of the desktop, for power and collaboration. The "interface" for that "desktop system" - the interactive display - might look like your living room television, or it might look like Microsoft's Surface (or some variation). But, I suggested, if we're moving about why would we want something as big as the iPad? And if we're at home or work or in the classroom, why would we want something as small as the iPad?

The year 2052 as imagined  on Tales of Tomorrow (1951-1952 ABC) - via Hulu

What both of us were struggling with was the extraordinarily difficult idea of predicting how humans will interact with information in the future. I was up late last night watching weird old stuff on Hulu. A favourite for "about to fall asleep" is Tales of Tomorrow, perhaps American television's first real attempt at a Sci-Fi series. And like most Sci-Fi attempts, the predictions of technology interface look almost exactly like the technology of whatever that moment was. So, in the episode above, an oscilloscope defines mid-21st century scientific readout. In Twilight Zone episodes placed 500 years ahead of 1960, analog gauges and mechanical dials rule. Robby the Robot and his imitators are devices built of the components of their writer's time.

There are exceptions. Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick imagined computer interfaces inconceivable with 1967 technology for 2001. Computers presented graphics. Information flowed to NewsPads (the first iPad). There were no printouts, just on-screen data and synthesized speech and speech recognition. Douglas Adams envisioned the handheld universally-linked computer in A Hitchhiker's Guide, and even Star Trek eschewed any interface but speech and sight. But these are rare.

 

The NewsPad sits on the table on Discovery in 2001 (1968)

They are rare because this is difficult. We can imagine improvements, but it is tough to envision true shifts. Yesterday I worked for hours on my BlackBerry, using it to research, to write, to watch the World Cup, to check the progress of baseball games. I dictated to it, listened to it, emailed, twittered, pulled up maps and directions. In other words I used this palm-sized device in ways most could not have imagined using their computers ten years ago.

Let me put it this way: If you had only seen water crossed in a boat, could you imagine a bridge?  Might you have imagined radio before the telephone was invented? Could Steve Wozniak have envisioned the "mouse" before his trip to Xerox PARC in 1979?

"There are a number of music rooms in the city, perfectly adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. These halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city whose people care to pay the small fee" - Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1887) trying to imagine radio.

The value of necessity

For many, perhaps "most," the world "works" as it is. And if the world works as it is, there is little need to imagine or invent. If you have no real trouble moving about your world in 1880 you are unlikely to build an automobile, but if you were Karl Benz struggling to bicycle about Karlsruhe or Henry Ford struggling with getting off his Michigan farm, altering human transport might have a motivation. And if you struggled with reading, or writing, or just carrying your textbooks in the late 20th Century then you might have spent a great deal of time trying to imagine an alternative.

1999 at Grand Valley State University, we sought to replace your backpack with the "electronic notebook"

So, yes, the iPad and the Kindle seem a "paradigm shift" to those who've never thought about it before. 'Imagine,' a whole bunch of educators are saying these days, 'replacing your book bag with a single electronic device!' But many of us in the field of special education/special needs technology have been doing that for more than a decade. We long ago took clunky early laptop computers and turned them into book readers, dictation machines, magnifiers, internet devices. In 1998 my Dell was loaded with WYNN, ViaVoice, Zoom-Text, Netscape Navigator, IBM's first accessible web browser, and all of my textbooks. It was heavy by iPad standards but weighed about what any one large undergrad textbook weighed, and it did "everything" I could then imagine.

And we've been improving, and lowering the costs, ever since, because we need to. So today my BlackBerry has book reader software on it, I can dictate into mobile Word using VLingo, I can search the web with a choice of two browsers, I can listen to my email and text messages, I can hear music, watch television, listen to audiobooks. My laptop, netbook, and tabletPC, of course, do much, much more, and none weigh five pounds. With those I video call, can input data by voice, keyboard, and even touch, I can video and record, publish and broadcast, and I can do it all, on any of these devices, in almost any way I want.

This isn't to claim superiority. It isn't even to suggest whether the iPad is good or bad. But it is to suggest who the tech leaders should be in your school.

From tech deprived to tech empowered

Last autumn (or last spring, depending on...) I Skyped into Tomaz Lasic's classroom in Perth, Western Australia as his "special needs" students were conducting "catch a teacher day."

"It was pretty simple really. Student-helpers were encouraged to approach a teacher, invite them to the expo, try to work out and ask what the teacher might be interested in to learn…then demonstrate, teach and help them learn (about) a particular Web 2.0 tool and how it could be useful to them (the teacher). We also asked our student-helpers to note down on the central ‘tally’ board what teachers they taught what.

"Students took up the challenge very seriously and we had them literally chasing teachers down the halls to invite, talk to, teach the teachers. With most teachers agreeing to come (even if out of courtesy if not curiosity) it was an incredible sight."

His students were leading their school into the new technology future because they had, through the necessities of difference, become the experts.

 Catch-a-teacher tally board

How different this was from most "special" classrooms I visit - often equipped with only the hand-me-down computers from "regular ed" (I've seen a great many Windows95 and original iMac computers, half of which are not connected to the internet, if they work at all). So in these schools the "good" tech is placed in the hands of those who see no reason for change (and the power in placed in the hands of those most comfortable, administrators and tech staff), and the opportunity for hands-on rethink is denied those with the motivations for change.

So, my goal here is to convince your school to reverse your tech paradigm. The place for the newest toys, the place for the fewest restrictions, is in the hands of the students for whom school is NOT working. They are the ones who will invent your future. And it will be a future that few of us can possibly imagine.

- Ira Socol

Transactional Disability and the Classroom

I've written on this before, but this week I introduced the idea of "Transactional Disability" to my class at Michigan State University as we discussed classroom strategies for ADHD. One major disussion the students had involved the question of whether ADHD was a "socially constructed" disability or a "medical condition." This was driven, in part, by an article we'd read looking at a comparison between Sweden and the US, and the vastly different rates of ADHD diagnosis and the very different ways this "disorder" is accommodated. It seems important, so I wanted to bring it up once more...

The debate between the “social” v. “medical” models of "disability" are endless and ongoing. This is often seen most clearly when international, or intercultural comparative studies are done. In the case of the ADHD study comparing Sweden and the US, the sharp differences in the number of children seen as having “a medical disability” (and thus needing medication for “symptoms”) in the two-nation study demonstrates both sides of the debate. Across cultures we see the “differences” and yet, across cultures, we operate very differently.

One of the things which began troubling the Disability Rights/Disability Studies movement in the mid-1990s was the question of “the body” in the social model of disability. This first emerged as the Queer Studies movement’s thoughts (see Judith Butler) began being heard within Disability Studies, and was amplified by Deaf Community Activists who made their physical/sensory differences the heart of their culture. “Where is the body [in disability theory?” asked both Tom Shakespeare and Michael Oliver.

In this question I think of Michel Foucault, who, according to my favorite Foucault scholar, wanted to investigate not identity, and not causes, but the movements - the acts - we make in the "spaces" between us when we interact. “Don’t look behind the text,” he suggested, look at what people are “doing.”

So, beginning in the mid-1990s Tom Shakespeare joined the social model of disability to the body directly, yet without resorting to the medical model. He wrote about disability occurring at the "intersections" - the "places" where our bodily capabilities meet the world "as it exists."

Last year, a Twitter-pal with a visually impaired child made this very clear to me when she wrote: "Going to get son to walk around lake with me in the dark - he won't need his cane, but I'll need flashlight."

Transactional Disability

Somewhere between "the medical model" - difference described as a medical illness the way North Americans do - "a person with cancer" "a person with a reading disability" - and the "social model" - difference described as only a problem created by societal norms, lies what I have begun calling "the transactional model." Yes, we are all different in various ways, including our set of capabilities. But these differences only become "impairments" when we - the differently capable - find that we cannot negotiate the world, or a specific corner of the world, the way others have set it up.

I may not be disabled when I watch a movie. Nor when I watch television, listen to the radio, listen to a friend or a teacher, listen to music, look at art. In fact, I think my capabilities are at least "average" or better when I meet these tasks. I become disabled when people choose, instead, to present information in alphabetical code. Those former information transfer systems I can navigate with ease. The alphabetical code leaves me tripping over myself. There is nothing "wrong" with me, nor is there anything wrong with the alphabetical code - the problem occurs in the transaction space - where print and I meet.

Similarly, I am fairly short. This is not a problem in most things, but at the grocery store, top shelf items are out of my reach. Thus, my height becomes a disability. At Aldi (no shelving units) this is not a problem. At typical Walmarts (very high top shelves) it is a big problem. Now, how do I deal with this?

One way is for me to climb the shelves to get what I want. I actually have done this many times. It gets you yelled at, as many of the ways kids cope in school gets them “yelled at” or much worse. (One group of university researchers suggested about 10-years-ago that Nicotine and THC were one excellent way to reduce the tensions related to ADHD (here’s one article) which may explain much of the ‘self-medication’ you see in secondary schools.) Another way is to wait and ask for help, but I think this diminishes me as a “whole human,” and over time saps my initiative and any sense of independence. But what if there were step ladders in each aisle, something library stacks often have? That tiny shift in the “transaction space” might eliminate “my height disability.”

The challenges of wheelchair shopping

However, this winter I have been in a wheelchair. This physical reality changes things in important ways. I can’t, for example, get into the MSU police building without help to buy a parking pass (just had to throw that in). But back to the grocery store: So now, Aldi is hard, but Meijer and Walmart become impossible. 90% of items are out of reach, and the cool stuff, “gourmet” cheeses, etc, and many fresh vegetables are completely out of reach, and sometimes out of sight. No step stool will solve this – perhaps an old fashioned “grocery grabber” hung in each aisle might help – but large parts of the store would need to be completely re-conceived to make independent shopping possible for me.

However, where (and when) I grew up, grocery stores were different. The clerks stood or sat behind a counter. You went in, handed them a list or told them what you needed, and they went back to the shelves and got your order. Or you could ring them, and they would get your groceries and deliver them. This was also true of the butcher and the green grocer and the pharmacist. In fact, one of my first jobs was delivering prescriptions, and as part of that I would go into the customer’s kitchen, and if they had arthritis or a broken arm, I would open the childproof cap for them.

In that world, the wheelchair was much less of a disability while shopping. Same physical facts, different transaction space, different result.

So there is no doubt that the mother and son in the Tweet at the top have actual capability differences. Their vision capability difference is not merely a trick of societal construction. Yet there is nothing "wrong" with either. This need not be a "diagnosis." As the mother knows, the description of "disability" changes as the light does - thus it changes as the seasons change - and changes as the location changes. Walking around the lake in the dark she needs Assistive Technology, her flashlight, while he needs none. Moving across a street in the daylight, he may need supports, and she not.

This is important. I really believe it is. Right now we describe both the son above and myself in pathological terms. There is something "wrong" with us. But who decides that? That is society abusing some to raise up the power of others. The person who can't translate a construction document goes through much of their life without problem. But when they end up with a pillar in the middle of their office (I actually saw this almost happen) they are having a "transactional" problem – we need not label them "a person with a construction plan disability." The person who cannot find their way around the NYC subway system is not described as having a “directional disability,” instead we put up maps for everyone to use.

Changing the transaction space in the classroom

Which brings us to the classroom. Consider the child who is "fine" until you ask him to sit in a chair for an hour. Is he disabled? Must he be diagnosed? There's nothing inherently wrong with the chair or the child, just what happens when they meet. Alter the transaction space, or the rules of the transaction space, and the facts of the "disability," the actions of the “disability,” may not exist.

The child who can not decode alphabetic text, Is she disabled? Must she be diagnosed? What if she can understand and work with any information given to her auditorally? There is nothing wrong with alphabetic text, or the child. But the transaction as defined by the "space" - the teacher handing her the book - is failing. Text-To-Speech software and audiobooks might change that space, and that failure may not exist.

I once sat in an IEP for a fourth grader labeled ADHD and EI. “He does really badly on all of our timed math quizzes,” the teacher said, “he gets all nervous and then starts acting out.”

“How does he do if the quiz is untimed?” I asked. “They’re all timed,” she told me, “all the kids like to race.” “Well, not all,” I muttered.

So, a student with, perhaps, a definable brain difference. And a transaction space designed for other types of people. And the result is “disability.” We moved this child to another school with a Montessori type program. I checked in after his first week. The teacher came and met me in the hall. “You said he had IEPs at [x],” she said, “why?”

Change the space, the transactional area is altered, and thus the actions themselves are altered. If we follow Foucault's dictum and, as this new teacher did, and refuse to look "behind the text" - refuse to see anything but how the student is acting/functioning now, the disability has become non-existent. It has not just vanished - it has never existed in this new space.

- Ira Socol