UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑x

IN RE: :

PRESIDENT\'S COMMISSION ON :

EXCELLENCE IN SPECIAL EDUCATION:

‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑x

Hyatt Regency Coral Gables

50 Alhambra Plaza

Coral Gables, Florida 33134

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

9:00 a.m.

APPEARANCES:

TERRY BRANSTAD, CHAIRMAN

STEVE BARTLETT

WILLIAM BERDINE

BETH ANN BRYAN

C. TODD JONES

PAULA BUTTERFIELD

JAY CHAMBERS

ALAN COULTER

THOMAS FLEMING

JACK FLETCHER

DOUGLAS GILL

DAVID GORDON

NANCY GRASMICK

BRYAN HASSEL

DOUGLAS HUNTT

G. REID LYON

BOB PASTERNACK

MICHAEL RIVAS

CHERIE TAKEMOTO

ADELA ACOSTA

APPEARANCES: (Continued):

KATIE WRIGHT

LINDA JOHNSON

SUSAN THOMAS

IRWIN KURZ

BARRY MORRIS

JO ANN SHAW

LAURA WHITESIDE

CRISHA SCOLARO

RABBI EZRA LEVY

MARY ELLEN RUSSELL

PATRICIA HERNANDEZ

BONNIE SCHAEFFER

ROBIN M. WILKINS

MIRIAM BRINLEY

NICHOLAS KING

CAITLIN WHITESIDE

JOSH KEMP

P R O C E E D I N G S

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: May I have your

attention please? Please be seated so we can begin

this morning session of the Presidential Commission

on Excellence in Special Education. Let me introduce

Todd Jones for some housekeeping announcements here

before we get started.

MR. JONES: Hi, folks. As you know, a

number of you have not been reimbursed for your

travels up to this point.

First of all, I will tell you, I share

your pain as I have not been reimbursed either

through another separate bureaucratic snafu.

However, in my hands, I hold a host of ACH vendor

miscellaneous payment enrollment forms. There is a

new payment system going on over at the Department of

Education. And so, for you to get reimbursed, you\'ve

filled out forms and you may get the chance to fill

them again.

What I have in my hands are the forms you

have to fill out or let me put it this way. There

are forms that have not been received or completed or

appropriately filled out for a number of Commission

members and received by Tracy who is sitting up

front. I\'m going to read the names of the Commission

members who don\'t have to fill out these forms. And

if you have it, so as not to point fingers, anyone

who\'s leftover gets to fill out the form.

The following Commission members have

filled out the form and don\'t need to take a copy of

this and throw it out. Berdine, Gordon, Gill,

Coulter, Chambers and Fleming. If your name is not

in the above six, you get to fill out the form. So,

please fill it out today and return it to Tracy who

is sitting, she has the longer hair sitting at the

desk out front and we\'ll get you reimbursed as soon

as we can. Thank you.

MS. WRIGHT: Can I ask a question?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes? Katie Wright has

a question. Go ahead, Katie. Speak into the

microphone.

MS. WRIGHT: ‑‑ we filled out and sent to

Kim Savoy‑Brown. Is this different or is this the

same? What is this?

MR. JONES: Well, yes, there are two, the

problem is there have been two sets of payment

systems, one of which went into effect I believe the

day before yesterday. And so, making sure that, the

forms you filled out before were appropriate for

filling out before, but unfortunately because of

delays, we now, everyone has to get paid under the

new systems. And unless you filled out the new form,

you can\'t get paid.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: This is the

government. We\'re here to help.

MR. JONES: I\'ll pass these along the row.

If everyone can take them as they come around, and

leave one for Doug Huntt. No need to leave one for

Bob as he\'s being strangled as a government employee

in his own particular way like I am. But the rest of

you get to fill out a copy of that.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Any other questions on

this? If your name wasn\'t called, you need to fill

out the form. That\'s basically the bottom line so

you do get reimbursed.

Let me try to clarify some things from

yesterday in terms the upcoming schedule. First of

all, I want to personally thank all of the

Commissioners for your attentive involvement and for

staying overtime last night. So, we were able to

give everybody that had signed up an opportunity to

make a presentation.

I think that was very important and this

is a subject that people have very strong and deep

feelings about. And I am very pleased with the way

things went yesterday and I appreciate everybody, you

know, giving each of the presentors an opportunity to

be heard.

As we look ahead and we, I think there is

a little trepidation about the very significant task

that the President has given us. But I feel very

confident with the experience and the quality of the

people we have involved and their personal commitment

to this that we can meet our mission of completing

our work and making our report and recommendation to

the President before the first of July.

This is based on 26 years of experience

having served in the legislature, presided over one

house of the legislature and been governor for 16

years. I\'ve been through a lot of legislative

sessions and I know that if the effort is put and the

deadline is placed, deliberative bodies can

accomplish significant things when they have

deadlines that they have to meet.

As you know, the Commission, we the

members of the Commission are responsible for the

report. And I appreciate the hands‑on involvement of

each of you in your task forces and helping us

redevelop this. But we are the ones that are

responsible for the report.

The staff will assist us and work with us

in terms of the drafting and, you know, making sure

that it all fits together in a cohesive way. And we

will be working on this in our upcoming meetings in

Washington, DC, May 30th and 31st, and then again on

June 13th and 14th. And at those meetings, we intend

to develop and approve the report and

recommendations.

The task forces will release a copy of

their draft report to the public. First, it will be

released to you, the members of the Commission, and

to the public about a week before the May meeting.

So, at that time, we will have those recommendations

available. We will then meet May 30th and 31st. And

then, we intend to meet again on the 13th and 14th of

June.

The task forces will meet again during the

May meeting prior to the public meeting of the

Commission to debate and debate in the task forces,

and the Commission itself will have an opportunity.

So, at that time, there will be an opportunity for

those task forces to get together and refine or

adjust their recommendations. And then, the

Commission itself will have that opportunity.

We expect to approve the report during the

June 13th and 14th meeting, completing our action at

that time so it can be printed out. There was some

discussion about the possibility of having a meeting

at the end of June due to the fact that a number of

the Commissioners cannot, that schedule doesn\'t work

for a number of you.

It\'s our intention, and I guess my feeling

is we have to go long hours or late into the night or

whatever we have to do. We, I believe, can get done.

We know we\'ve got this deadline, and so that 13th and

14th should be long days, but we do intend to

complete our work at that time.

Anybody have any questions about that?

The time frame or the way this is approached? I

wanted to lay that out. Yes, Jack?

MR. FLETCHER: I don\'t quite understand

the schedule for releasing the report to the public.

Are you saying that the report will be released, that

the report will be written and then released

simultaneously? I presume ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: The task forces, the

first thing we will have that will be released to you

and to the public will be the task force reports.

MR. FLETCHER: Which we prepare, we the

task forces prepare?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s correct.

MR. FLETCHER: And I just think it\'s very

important to be clear that we\'re writing the report

which will be ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: You, the members of

the task forces, the people that are, in fact, one of

the task force on accountability met this morning and

I think we made significant progress. We\'re going to

meet again at lunchtime working on our report and

recommendation. Now, the actual words may, but I

mean it\'s, I\'m really pleased with the progress that

particular, and that task force met in the morning,

so I was there for that meeting. And I met with them

again this morning.

That task force is making a really good

progress. And we expect the other task forces are

similarly moving forward, and those task forces are

responsible for making their reports. And then,

their reports will be made public and go out to all

the members of the Commission prior to our May

meeting.

MR. FLETCHER: So, when should the task

force have their report to the staff for compilation?

MR. JONES: Well, the development of that

is depending upon the nature of the task force. Some

task forces want to develop it as a bullet form.

Here are the principles we want to do, staff please

draft us the sentences which reflect these. There

are others who want to draft particular pieces of

them and say, here is exactly how we\'d like to say

this particular section.

One of the issues is that the task forces,

first of all, overlap in some of their missions or in

issues which might be taken up. For example, we

heard discussions about charter schools yesterday and

how any recommendations on charter schools might

affect how the finance task force thinks about

finance and also about how accountability systems

task force thinks about its work. And more than

that, with the report being organized in a thematic

manner instead of the bright lines of the task

forces, pieces are going to be integrated together.

As those are developed by the task forces,

they\'re woven together as pieces of the report. And

those go through multiple cycles within each task

force until the task force is satisfied with the

content of its work.

MR. FLETCHER: Is there an expectation

from staff in terms of when we get the material to

you so that you can accomplish these tasks?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Probably the sooner

the better.

MR. JONES: The sooner the better.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think the task force

on accountability by the end of this meeting is going

to be pretty well along on putting its material

together for the staff to work on. Now, I don\'t

expect every task force would be that far along. But

I think that\'s attributed to Steve and Steve Bartlett

is out of the room right now, but I think he did a

good job of synthesizing the concepts. And then,

they were refined somewhat this morning and I think

will be fully refined at lunchtime. And so, that

task force I think is well along.

MR. JONES: Some of these issues are also

practical. With the two new ad hoc task forces who

will themselves also make recommendations, not

meeting until the end of the month, the synthesis

process will be acting even faster with them. But

then again, those meetings are having built into them

the ability for the task force to meet and pool

together that kind of thinking.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: But for the public, I

think it\'s also important to know that the task force

preliminary recommendations will be available, will

be distributed and will be available on the website

and will be available to the public about a week

before our May meeting.

MR. FLETCHER: I just thought it was

important, Mr. Chairman, to indicate the report has

not been written.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: That\'s right.

MR. FLETCHER: Some of us are quite

anxious about it.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, you\'re

absolutely right. It has not been written and a lot

of work is ahead of us. And I think that\'s a point

well taken.

Well, with that, are there any other

questions? Yes, Katie. Katie Wright.

MS. WRIGHT: This is the same form like

what I\'ve already filled out. That information is at

home. I don\'t have the information on my financial

or whatever here with me. Now, you said to give this

to someone here today? We can\'t do it today. I

can\'t because I don\'t have my routing number and all

that today.

MR. JONES: You don\'t have to give it to

me. And by the way, can I remind all the Commission

members, please pull the microphones a little bit

closer.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay.

MR. JONES: You don\'t have to do it today.

If you do it today, it will speed the course of

payment. But if you can\'t do it today, you can

simply return it to the staff offices when you return

home.

MS. WRIGHT: May we fax it to the staff

office?

MR. JONES: You absolutely can.

MR. FLETCHER: I believe original

signatures are required.

MR. JONES: Original is required? It will

have to be mailed. If that is the case, I\'ll have

staff look at the form and figure out if we need ‑‑

MR. FLETCHER: The bank says that it has

to be an original signature. Mine does anyway.

MR. JONES: I\'ll get you a firm answer,

Katie, Commissioner Wright.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay. Any other

questions? We will proceed with our first panel of

the day. The topic this morning is In the Classroom:

Perspectives of Parents and Educators serving

Children with Disabilities. This panel consists of

classroom regular and special educators that serve

children with disabilities. The Commission will hear

from their perspective on what works and what does

not work in today\'s current educational service

delivery model.

Our two members are Susan Thomas, a high

school teacher of students with learning

disabilities, and Linda Johnson, from the Cushman,

who is the director of the Cushman School. We\'ve

heard from some of her colleagues from the Cushman

School yesterday. So, we\'ll start with Susan Thomas

who I understand teaches in Virginia, but she\'s a

resident of Wyoming. And that just shows you what an

interesting world we live in these days.

MS. THOMAS: That\'s right. Can everybody

hear me? Well, first of all, good morning, and thank

you for inviting me to share with you my thoughts

concerning special education at the secondary level

in the public high school setting.

I\'m not here because I am the wife of a

United States Senator. Rather, I\'m here because I

have spent 31 years, I\'m finishing my 31st year in

the classroom with children with special needs. 22

of those years have been at the secondary level, and

I believe that this is a real opportunity for all of

us to make some changes in this field.

I have seven recommendations that address

the needs of identified special ed students at the

secondary level. And then, I do look forward to the

question and comment period following the

presentations.

My first recommendation, I really believe

that we need to set well‑developed and realistic

goals for where we want special ed services to be and

what we want them to look like in five to ten years.

Number two, I believe we need to provide

accountability for special ed students and special ed

services by using goal‑based programs and models that

demonstrate measurable but realistic goals for each

child according to his ability, whether it involves

integration or self‑contained classes.

Number three, we need to provide reality‑

based life‑skills programs and vocational education

for those students who are not at the lowest level of

the special ed continuum or at the college‑bound

level of the special ed continuum. Number four, it\'s

very important to provide alternative diploma choices

for those students who are not able to pass literacy

or state‑mandated tests in required core areas.

Number five, we need to provide

appropriate guidance counseling or a transitional

coordinator/ counselor from school to work for

guiding selection of post‑secondary training with the

same expertise and depth that is provided to college‑

bound students in a regular setting. Number six, I

believe we need to require teacher training for life‑

skills programs for the students in the middle.

Also, we need to provide teaching training

incentives for certification which is dual. There

needs to be a way to encourage and support general ed

teachers to go back to school to earn special ed

endorsement. Also, special ed teachers, I really

believe, need to be encouraged to obtain an

endorsement in the core academic area as well as in

special education. And remember, I\'m speaking

secondary level here. And number seven, my favorite,

we need to consolidate and provide time to do the

reams of paperwork required by the law.

I would just like to briefly comment on

these recommendations, if I may. Vision. Vision is

needed in our field to develop a plan of where we

want to be in five to ten years. What would special

ed services look like? How do we want it all to work

and how do we get there from here. A Vision 20‑20,

if you will, with goals and a mission for the future.

If we do not know where we\'re going, it\'s not going

to matter much where we\'ve been.

Accountability. We hear that word a lot.

I believe it\'s just as important, if not more so, in

the special ed as it is in regular education. I

often hear myself telling folks that regular students

are going to make it with or without our help. But I

think we need to be realistic when we think about

special needs children. What kind of accountability?

How is it to be measured and at what level? I think

we\'re on a very sharp learning curve here and I\'m

anxious to make strides forward with that concern.

Over the years, we have done and we are

currently doing some things very well in special ed.

We are providing more services to more children than

ever before. For many, we have raised the bar and we

have seen them meet the challenge. And this has

resulted in achievement at higher levels. But at the

same time, the gap between the lowest and the highest

functioning special ed students has widened and we

have left many children behind.

I believe that it should be our goal to

help every young person who is using special ed

services to leave high school armed with a plan ready

to implement. He or she should be able to begin

working toward being an active, contributing, self‑

sustaining member in our society. And I wonder if

we\'re not missing the boat here.

I want to tell you about one of my

students, Sam. Of course, the name is made up but I

can tell you, Sam is a very real person. He\'s 19

years old and he\'s set to graduate in June. He\'s not

able to write a coherent, complete sentence. He

cannot read beyond second grade level. In English

class, he\'s faking his way through Romeo and Juliet

when he should be learning how to read survival skill

words, how to fill out a job application form and how

to read a pay stub.

Sam does not fit into the lowest level of

the special ed continuum. Nor does he fit into the

college‑bound group of special ed students. His

social skills are good and he has a well‑developed

sense of humor. He\'s very organized and he cares a

great deal about his work. But he does not know how

to work a checkbook, open a savings account, or make

a budget for himself.

He\'s never worked for pay, so application

forms are absolutely foreign to him. Yet he chooses

not to stay in school until he turns 22. Here is

where we need transitional life‑skills classes and

transitional counseling. Because Sam has not passed

the reading literacy, or writing literacy test, he

does not qualify for a standard diploma. He will get

a certificate of attendance.

His parents, his mother is very upset

because she says he\'s worked just as hard as the

other students who have the ability. So, why

shouldn\'t he be rewarded as they are? His mother

also believes he\'s college material. Somewhere along

the line, Sam\'s family was told that Sam could do

anything he wanted to do.

This is not realistic and it\'s very unfair

to Sam and his family. High school to work or post‑

secondary training transitional counseling again is

needed here. If we ever look to the future to have a

Vision 20‑20 of what special education will be, I

believe we need to do a better job of teacher

training now. For my friend Sam, we need to be

prepared to offer strong life‑skills, an appropriate

support system, and outcomes‑based testing that will

measure Sam\'s readiness for graduation.

Now, of course, I\'m sure you have all

heard about the incredible amount of paperwork that

we do for all of our students. In fact, I\'m on an

airplane at 1:00, I have child studies and IEP\'s

tomorrow morning at 7:00 o\'clock. At times, I do

feel like I do not have time to teach my kids because

I\'m too busy staying caught with mounting reams of

paperwork that we fill out. And I believe we do a

lot of this paperwork so that parents and advocacy

groups will not sue us. We are covering ourselves

constantly.

I also believe that if we are doing our

jobs correctly, filling out all the forms, following

the laws, the rules and the steps, that we should not

have this huge fear of being taken to court. I guess

maybe I\'m in the time of my life where I think I am

doing all I can do. And if someone wants to sue me,

I say come on, take me to court.

If teachers are not following the process

nor using the appropriate procedures, then the

administrators need to take the corrective steps.

But I cannot see why all of us must fill out three

more pieces of paper per student because one case

manager failed to do what he or she was supposed to

do. And I believe that accountability is required

here as well as with the student learning process.

Mr. Chairman, I have covered only a few

items of importance here. I was asked for

recommendations and I have given them to you. I hope

we all realize the many good things that we are doing

for special education. This is a process, and I

congratulate each of you for your leadership, for

being involved and for caring about the future. My

friend Sam and all of his buddies out there are

looking to us and their futures depend on it. I

thank you for your time.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much,

Susan.

MS. JOHNSON: I am Linda Johnson, and it

is a great privilege to be here today to speak to

you. I am the director of the Laura Cushman Academy

which is a division of the Cushman School. And I\'d

like to report to you today about the model that we

use to educate children with specific learning

disabilities.

This is a picture of our courtyard. We

are a historic school in Miami which is a new city.

And we began in 1924 and we were started by our

founder, Laura Cushman, who believed very, very

strongly in character development which is something

I will talk about later. We are an independent

school which means we are a private school. But we

have no religious affiliation. We are a non‑profit

school and fall into 50133 classifications.

We serve the needs of students ‑‑

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Ms. Johnson?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Could you speak a

little more closely in your microphone?

MS. JOHNSON: I will, yes.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you.

MS. JOHNSON: We serve the needs of

students age 3 through the 8th grade. We have 465

students in the entire school with 65 faculty

members. Our students are from diverse communities

and represent over 30 countries. Our enrollment is

currently capped.

The Laura Cushman Academy was established

in 1998 to meet the needs of students with learning

disabilities. In past years, we have had students

with us who, for a variety of reasons, weren\'t able

to be successful at the Cushman School and needed

more attention to their individualized needs. We\'re

very, very family oriented and have the situation of

multi‑sibling families having one child who needed

specialized services not available. So, we

established the Laura Cushman Academy.

We have 40 students, grades kindergarten

through 5, and this represents about ten percent of

our total school population. And that enrollment is

capped. It is capped for a lot of reasons. It\'s

been capped so that our children who have specific

learning disabilities can be easily included into the

Cushman School and well‑integrated. It\'s also capped

so that we are not asking teachers to over‑extend

their time, their expertise and their ability to meet

individual needs.

In the Laura Cushman Academy, we have 17

master\'s level teachers and specially trained

faculty, and eight to ten adjunct occupational

therapists and speech and language therapists. The

mission of the Laura Cushman Academy is the same as

that of the Cushman School which is to develop

students as responsible citizens and future leaders

who maintain a positive approach to life. In the

Laura Cushman Academy, we add providing a clinical

program within the context of the Cushman School

philosophy and atmosphere.

Research by Rathkin & Associates in 1999

out of the Prostig Institute which was a longitudinal

study of adults currently with learning disabilities

found out that many of the things that we are trying

to teach our children at the Laura Cushman Academy

and the Cushman School are effective for these

learning disabled adults later. These include skills

such as self‑awareness pro‑activity, perseverance,

goal‑setting and the effective use of support

systems.

In the Laura Cushman Academy and the

Cushman School, our motto is that of collaboration

where general educators and special educators

collaborate to provide special education for all of

the students. Our special ed educators help not only

with our special education students but also with the

general education students, and vice versa. In the

Laura Cushman Academy, students\' clinical needs are

met in very small classes. We have ten students and

two specially trained teachers; yet these students\'

social, emotional, artistic and athletic needs are

met in larger classes which include their non‑

disabled peers. This is an example of a Laura

Cushman Academy classroom and this is Mrs. Finney

teaching four students reading.

The Laura Cushman Academy is effective in

my opinion due to six main reasons, and I will

outline those reasons for you today. They include

the fact that we have an inclusionary philosophy and

setting. We directly address the individual learning

needs of each student. We spend a tremendous time

working on character development all day and every

day. We collaboratively teach and meet student

needs.

Our teachers are experts in the field and

there is a wonderful sense of community that pervades

our campus. This is an example of our inclusionary

philosphy and setting. Dr. Heinz is leading his

fourth‑grades playing the reporter on Veteran\'s Day.

These are students who are in the Laura Cushman

Academy as well as students who are in the Cushman

School.

The definition of inclusion used at the

Cushman School is from Giangreco in 2000. It

includes heterogeneous grouping, the sense of

belonging to a group, shared activities, but more

importantly, individualized outcomes. And I\'ll talk

about individualization as we continue today, the

use of environments frequented by others without

disabilities, and most importantly, a balanced

educational experience. We\'re teaching a whole

child, not just a child with a learning disability.

The Laura Cushman Academy is a microcosm

of learning within the Cushman School where students

feel a part of the whole school while still receiving

specialized services. In the actual Laura Cushman

Academy classes, we spend a bulk of our time engaged

in diagnostic prescriptive instruction. Teachers are

taught to assess and teach, assess and teach, thereby

meeting actual student needs, not wasting time

teaching things students already know and presenting

material in a fashion that best meets students\'

learning needs and learning styles. All remediation

is multi‑sensory, yet this is all encapsulated within

a fun, fulfilling, interesting curriculum that

emphasizes literature, the arts and most importantly,

character development.

The students in the Laura Cushman Academy

spend time in the larger arena of the Cushman School

in their teamed class activities. Each student in

the Laura Cushman Academy is assigned to a Cushman

School class that is their teamed class and they feel

like they\'re a significant part of that class. They

also participate in art, music, physical education,

science lab, lunch recess and other fun activities.

Factors for success of inclusion that come

from the literature include visionary leadership.

And we are, the visionary leadership began with Laura

Cushman in 1924 who taught us that all children are

gifted and it is the teacher\'s job to find the

child\'s gift. And this is something that we practice

everyday at Cushman School. Her visionary leadership

has been taken over by Jim Lutton who has been with

us for 22 years.

We spend a lot of time collaborating

together. We also find one of the most effective

pieces in what we do at Cushman School is assessment

and prevention. We assess all of our kindergarten

and first‑graders throughout the Cushman School every

year for reading issues. Research by Hurford in 1994

showed that students who have reading issues at the

kindergarten and first‑grade level, regardless of the

basis for their reading issues, if those students in

fact receive assistance in reading, very often they

can be completely remediated and avoid clinical

settings.

And that has been the case at the Cushman

School for the past eight to ten years where the

students have been assessed. They\'re given extra

help at the Cushman School at no extra charge to the

families. And we found that we\'ve had much fewer

students needing clinical assistance later in

academic careers.

We support our teachers and students and

we have a tremendous effective staff development

program which I will tell you about. Again, Hunt in

2000 talked about sense of community being so

important, shared responsibility, collaboration, and

also, social curriculum and conflict resolution

procedures. That is something that we build into

every single day and I will discuss in detail.

Our goal at the Laura Cushman Academy is

to eventually reintegrate students into general

education classrooms. And what we\'ve found is that

it\'s most effective done during the academic year and

students begin by being integrated into their team

classes in an area of academic strength. Gradually,

we increase the time, the content area of learning

and individual work load responsibility that\'s

assumed by the students.

During this process, all the supports for

the student remain in place. They still meet

individually with their remediation specialist. They

receive speech and language, occupational therapy

services.

Full integration is dependent on the age

and grade level of the student. Hall & McGregor in

2000 noted that the older a student is and the higher

the grade level the student is in, the more

intervention that is necessary for the student to

effectively fully integrated into a general education

classroom. McConnell & Odom emphasized the necessary

social intervention strategies that must be

implemented. Just physically placing a student with

disabilities in a general education classroom is not

sufficient to meet their needs.

Here, you see Caroline Weber, one of our

teachers, working individually with two of our

students. Cushman serves the needs of children with

learning differences in many ways. And I\'d like to

clarify my use of the words learning differences.

Throughout our entire school population, we do have

learning disabled children as determined by the DSM4

definition. But we also have many, many students who

have learning differences.

They do well most of the time, but they

have an unusual way of taking in information. So, we

have a variety of ways of meeting student needs.

Early identification, which I have spoken to you

about previously. We also have learning resource

program where any student at the Cushman School who

needs assistance academically for any reason can meet

with a learning specialist in a small group and

receive that assistance as part of their tuition.

We spend a tremendous amount of time

supporting our general education teachers and

providing resources for them. The resources include

staff members as well as information. We have the

Laura Cushman Academy which I\'ve discussed for our

children who have clinical needs. We also truly

recognize and celebrate and teach to the many varied

learning styles of all of the students. We also have

an outreach program. Our school is placed in a very

depressed area of Miami, and our remediation

specialist and learning specialist stay after school

twice a week to provide snacks and teach children in

our neighborhood how to read.

The literature shows that inclusive

classrooms in the general often lack

individualization and individualized teaching

strategies and that general education teachers really

have a hard time meeting the needs of special

learners. And the most significant point with regard

to successful inclusion of children with learning

disabilities is the type of remediation intervention

incorporated into the students\' intervention plan.

That is why we designed our program to

have clinical needs met by specialists in education,

speech and language, occupational therapy. This

allows our general educators to collaborate with our

special educators and provide for the non‑clinical

needs of our students which in effect is the

specialty of the general educator and also removes a

great degree of stress from the general educator.

And they\'re much more willing to help in the process

of educating children with learning disabilities.

In the Laura Cushman Academy, we have many

integrated therapies, and I won\'t spend a lot of time

talking about what actually we do in the therapies.

But one of the things that is really important is

that this is multi‑disciplinary. We have speech and

language, occupational therapy, remediation, social

skills. And these are actually integrated into the

classroom.

As we all know, those therapies are very,

very expensive. But we really feel that we\'re

getting a lot of bang for our buck because we are

able to have this happen in the classroom where the

special educators are able to carry out what\'s being

taught as opposed to having children who are

receiving these special services leave the classroom.

In this way, we\'re all working together. Speech and

language occurs in the classroom for three 45‑minute

sessions each week and our goal is oral and written

language expression.

This is an example of the speech and

language classroom. And you see Marla Angel who is a

speech and language pathologist, working with fourth

and fifth‑graders. One important thing to note is

that Ms. Angel is wearing an FM system. This is a

system that helps students who have auditory

processing and attentional disorders. It doesn\'t

amplify her voice but it makes it much clearer. This

is a relatively inexpensive item that\'s very, very

helpful and is in place in every single classroom at

the Cushman School.

Occupational therapy occurs in two 45‑

minute sessions in the classroom, and our goal is

effective use of visual mode or inattentional

strategies for students to best achieve academically.

Each student works individually with a remediation

specialist for 90 minutes each week, again, using

diagnostic prescriptive methods and our goal is to

strengthen weak areas utilizing areas of learning

strength. Here you can see Susan Zapano working my

friend Max in a one‑on‑one setting.

Social skills are taught directly in 30‑

minute sessions each week in the classroom. We teach

very specific social skills, but we also use social

autopsies. And many of you know that that means

stopping what\'s happening in the classroom when

someone else falls over somebody else\'s foot and

causes a problem and dissecting it. What could you

have said? What would have been a better choice?

Why do you think so and so is sad? In helping the

children with this.

Our goal of course is to assist the

children in developing and maintaining lasting

relationships with peers and adults. Here you can

see Heather Kravitz working with a group of

kindergarten and first‑graders. Computer class, we

spend a lot of time augmenting processing skills

instruction with a variety of activities. Additional

therapies are available to any child at the Cushman

School and we\'re happy to and do integrate those

therapies into the academic day for those students.

IEP\'s are very, very important. I have

provided a copy of a Laura Cushman Academy IEP. You

should find it at your place. IEP\'s at the Laura

Cushman Academy are truly used as instructional and

social emotional road maps for teachers, for parents

and for therapists. I brought the IEP after

listening to some of the testimony yesterday thinking

it might be helpful.

At the Laura Cushman Academy, we consider

these IEP\'s living documents. And if you look at

them, you\'ll see these are actual goals for each

individual child. There\'s a social and emotional

section. There\'s an academic section. There\'s an

occupational therapy section. There\'s a speech and

language section. And these are true and real goals.

These are prepared twice yearly by our

specialists and we meet with parents twice a year in

a round table discussion. And we encourage the

parents to bring their thoughts, their opinions to

the table. And we truly do change IEP\'s based on

parental input. This also provides a tremendous

degree of accountability for us as professionals.

In the fall, we set out that we are going

to achieve these goals. And in the spring, we sit

down again with the same family and list truly in

fact which goals has this child achieved and why have

they not achieved those. So, that helps tremendously

with the accountability process.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Linda, can you begin

to wrap it up here?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes, I will. As I mentioned

to you, we spend a tremendous time working on

character development. We collaboratively meet and

teach to student needs. And our teachers are experts

in the field. We have a wonderful sense of

community. And I think one of the things that helps

our students to feel integrated into the whole

community of the Cushman School is that most students

receive services from or have a friend or a family

member who receive services from the Academy. And

that\'s very important.

Financial information. Tuition and fees

are \$17,200 a year. We do have partial scholarships

available. About 17 percent of our students do

receive scholarship money which is actually a line

item in the budget. And several of you asked

questions yesterday about the McKay Scholarships in

the Florida.

Personally, as an administrator, I found

these very effective and obtainable for families. I

can follow the standard admission procedures,

therefore, making sure that we\'re not accepting a

student into our school whose needs we cannot meet.

And we truly do follow the DSM4 definition for

specific learning disabilities. The scholarship as

opposed to earlier scholarship programs in Florida

can be supplemented by the family or by other

scholarships. It\'s very easy to go apply for it.

It\'s very simple for me to deal with

administratively.

The scholarship covers partial tuition.

In Florida as in many other states, there\'s a matrix

of service. And my experience has been it covers

about \$5,000 or \$6,000 dollars of tuition. Again, my

six main points, and at that point, I\'ll close.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you very much.

Reid Lyon has the first question. Reid?

MR. LYON: I thank both of you very much

for your outstanding testimony, very informative

testimony.

Ms. Thomas, you have an extraordinarily

difficult job. You are charged with bringing clarity

and instruction to kids who have failed to learn for

many, many years. What area of their academic

development is most seriously impeded when they come

to you that makes achievement in learning difficult?

MS. THOMAS: Reading and writing are the

two areas that we deal with the most.

MR. LYON: And how, what effect does that

have on their understanding of content information

and the ‑‑

MS. THOMAS: Incredible, it\'s everything.

It\'s everything. If you can\'t read an 11th‑grade

biology book, then you\'re not going to understand it

very well.

MR. LYON: In your professional opinion,

do you think that these children who come to you

bereft of reading capability could have been helped

earlier? That is, with early intervention or

specialized instruction that was ‑‑

MS. THOMAS: Yes. I think that if teacher

training were buffed up a bit, that we could do a

better job with that.

MR. LYON: And why, as you look at the

secondary level, we know that secondary teachers

frequently specialize in their content areas and

you\'ve asked for that type of specialization with

special education teachers as well.

MS. THOMAS: Yes. For example, I teach

government to my special kids and then I go into a

classroom, integrated classroom where I team with a

regular teacher. Now, I\'m fortunate because I know a

little bit about government, but if I had to go into

a biology classroom, I\'d be in big trouble. And that

happens, I\'m sure it doesn\'t just happen at my high

school.

MR. LYON: Ms. Johnson, if I could ask you

this? Your IEP goals are used within the

accountability system.

MS. JOHNSON: Yes.

MR. LYON: Do you also participate in the

State of Florida accountability system?

MS. JOHNSON: No, we do not. Most

independent schools do not.

MR. LYON: How do we then relate what the

IEP progress is to external means of accountability?

MS. JOHNSON: We test our students in‑

house which of course is internal accountability.

But we also encourage and we truly require our

families to have their students tested outside of the

school every two years. And that can be done, as you

know, through the public school system or through a

private psychologist. And that provides not only

accountability but also provides us more

opportunities for meeting needs because it\'s another

opinion, another way of looking at a child.

MR. LYON: But we still don\'t have

concurrent information about how those data relate to

the state‑wide data?

MS. JOHNSON: No. And although I do feel

personally and it\'s my personal opinion that

sometimes I think having state standards is very

important. But I think that they can be very easily

misused.

MR. LYON: I was interested in the FM

system that\'s used in your speech and language class.

MS. JOHNSON: Yes.

MR. LYON: Do we have effectiveness data

on that particular modality?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes, we do and I\'d be happy

to provide that for you.

MR. LYON: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: David Gordon.

MR. GORDON: I, too, thank you for the

excellent presentations. Mrs. Thomas, you spoke of

the difficulty with the IEP and the paperwork

associated with it. Could you share with us, number

one, how has the paperwork mushroomed overtime? And

number two, what would be your suggestions for some

things we could prune out of the system?

MS. THOMPSON: Yes, I can. 31 years ago

when I started doing this, the paperwork was very

small and understandably so. It is out of control,

it is absolutely out of control. Each student that I

deal with as a case manager, as a monitor, and I have

20 students assigned to me as does every other

special ed teacher, and special ed is the biggest

department in this public high school.

Each student, I would say has a minimum of

60 pieces of paper that need to be dealt with at

least twice a year. And that doesn\'t deal with the

upkeep. It all goes back to our we doing our job for

each student? I don\'t have any magic bones. I don\'t

know the answer.

I think there needs to be some

consolidation and I think that we need to quit being

afraid we\'re going to be sued. Somehow that all ties

in with it because we are constantly, every time a

child does something that is a behavior problem, you

go through ten pieces of paper so that we track what

we did, so that we can prove that we did the right

thing at the right time. Now, there\'s something

wrong with that. There just is.

I don\'t have any magic answers but I know

it is a problem.

MR. GORDON: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Cherrie Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you both for your

testimony. And Mrs. Johnson, also thank you for

bringing an example of an IEP. Other than, that IEP

looks very much like my child\'s IEP with the

exception of the fact that it doesn\'t say where he\'s

going to be for what period of the day and it doesn\'t

list the types of accommodations and modifications

that he will receive.

Now, the things that are important on my

child\'s IEP that I want to monitor are modifications

and adaptations. But when it comes to the specific

goals of objective, when I look at, my child is in a

public school, so this is not public‑private issue.

When I look at the accountability, did my son make

progress, when I look at all those things that, you

know, the parts of a story and you know, will be able

to recite whatever, I don\'t really have a good sense

with the internal 20 pages of my child\'s IEP.

Did he meet outcomes? The other thing I

don\'t really have a good sense and confidence of, and

you don\'t have to speak for yourselves as educators

but just in general in the field is that I also don\'t

have a high degree of confidence that the teacher is

treating my individual child\'s IEP like a bible and

saying I\'m going to do everything on this IEP. In

fact, I have the suspicion that on that performance

report card, they see it every time there\'s a report

card, but they\'re not necessarily working from that

and it\'s not necessarily something that teachers feel

are helpful in their instructions for a good teacher.

And yet, how would we find outcomes, I

guess a little bit on what Reid\'s saying, how would

we look at overall outcomes and decrease some of that

internal 20 pages that\'s there? Because again,

you\'re talking about process accountability of the 57

objectives he made to. That\'s not really showing me

that he made academic or as you\'re saying, Mrs.

Thomas, social life‑skill progress.

So, can you both speak to how much of a

bible is this? Not necessarily in your exceptional

practices but in the field of education, how much are

people really playing by that with their 20 kids?

MS. JOHNSON: At the Cushman School in the

Laura Cushman Academy, the teachers, as I\'ve

mentioned to you, the teachers and the specialists

who are actually working with the children write the

IEP\'s. And it is a tedious process. They do it

twice a year. They write report cards four times a

year and there is no more paperwork that they are

responsible for other than filling out rating forms

that come from psychologists.

So, we don\'t have all the paperwork, it

just isn\'t there. The accommodations that you

mentioned are built into the program and we do

discuss them at IEP meetings such as the FM systems

or children who need sensory integration throughout

the day and spend some time outside on the

playground.

But because the teachers actually write

the goals themselves and the goals are different for

each of the ten children in their classroom, they

feel married to these goals. And they revisit these

goals and because they have written them and they

know that they\'re going to sit at that round table

again in five months and have to report he did this,

he did this, he did this, and we\'re very pleased

about that. But he did not meet this goal and this

is the reason we feel why that happened and this is

what needs to be done.

It\'s an actual true and real process and

there is very little attention, if any, given to the

legal point of what we\'re doing. We\'re very clear

and up‑front and honest about this is what we\'re

providing and this is what we want to do and this is

how we want to teach your child. So, there\'s not a

sense of the legality that Ms. Thomas mentioned.

MS. THOMAS: Hello, I remember you. We

met at a reception. Nice to see you.

MS. TAKEMOTO: In the interest of

disclosure, I would like to disclose that my daughter

goes to the high school that Mrs. Thomas teaches at.

MS. THOMAS: But I\'ve never met your

daughter. There is ‑‑ problem, I believe, with the

IEP. I think the idea is admirable. I think the

goals and objectives are admirable. In my

experience, the goals and objectives which I write

for my students which everybody else writes for their

students, this isn\'t an Enron hearing, end up

sometimes to be a little bit of gobbledegook.

I think that modifications and adaptations

are the most important part of an IEP because that

tells how the student is functioning. And if he is

not functioning properly, then obviously he\'s not

going to meet the goals and objectives. These are a

way to measure the child\'s progress. We send them

home four times a year to the parents. I\'m not sure

the parents understand them.

This is an example of the paperwork that

just boggles my mind. I think, I go back to

outcomes‑based testing. Somehow we have to get it so

that we don\'t have 42 objectives for a student that

include everything from, and I\'m not criticizing this

because I do this, too, because the law requires it.

Now, there\'s something wrong with that.

We have to figure out where we want to be

in order to know how to get there. And this is a

perfect example of what we\'re talking about.

MS. TAKEMOTO: And those are good

instructional practices. I don\'t want to say what

you\'re doing is wrong, but they\'re sequenced, they

are good instructional practice, they\'re based on

research. But in terms of measuring outcomes or in

terms of something that I understand, when I look at

that and you\'re asking me to evaluate my own child\'s

progress, I cannot make, you know, so he hasn\'t

mastered his long division yet. Well, tell me then

overall how has he progressed in Math and where are

his weaknesses? Help me understand that and I\'ll

help him at home, but I think that that might be

getting a little bit at the paperwork aspect of that

paperwork is not necessarily accountability for

outcomes unless we\'re talking about how do all kids

do long division, for instance.

Okay. And then, one of the things that we

heard in Des Moines was a longer term IEP that\'s

looking at longer term goals with parent ability to

call an IEP meeting any time at all, that we\'re going

to be looking at longer term goals between now and

say three or four years from now.

Can you give me your feedback as

practitioners as to how that plays in real life?

MS. JOHNSON: At the Cushman School, we,

and I can speak only to the Cushman School, we in IEP

meetings talk about we\'re very pleased, your child

appears to have improved X number of years in

reading. We still find difficulty with higher level

thinking skills and comprehension skills. And based

on that, we would like to think as things continue to

move on that we would transition your child in the

next year or so.

So, we sit down and we talk about. But

there is also not a legal obligation. In other

words, we feel like we\'re all sitting around the

table working for the best of the child. And if it

takes three months longer than what we predict, we\'re

not called on the carpet for it either. So, we\'re

able to work cooperatively with parents and we do try

to explain clearly what the detailed goals amount to

and why they\'re important.

MS. THOMAS: I am not sure how long the

longer term goals are that you\'re talking about. But

I think if we\'re going to do longer term goals, they

can\'t be very detailed.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Long division.

MS. THOMAS: Yes, like long division or

will know the parts of a frog or whatever it is. I

think they have to be overall and I think they have

to be testable. They are dealing, we have

accountability and I understand exactly what you\'re

saying. You don\'t need the detail, you want the end

result, and help getting there if that\'s helpful to

you at home at night.

MS. TAKEMOTO: And I don\'t want to hold

you back because my child\'s IEP is a lot different

than other kids\' IEP\'s. I want to look at outcomes,

not necessarily each little piece because it\'s just

too hard for me to track all of that. Thanks.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Adela Acosta.

MS. ACOSTA: Good morning, ladies. Thank

you. Ms. Thomas, I\'ve been at the high school level,

I know how frustrating, I hear it, years of hearing

it in my ear. And you talk a lot about teacher

training and we\'ve heard that testimony ‑‑ now. What

kind of support mechanisms do you get from the

administration, for example, to do your work?

MS. THOMAS: I have been very fortunate in

that I have 100 percent support. We all cry together

about the amount of work that we have to do but then

we just get right in there and we do it. And I don\'t

want to leave you all with the impression that it\'s

all frustration. It\'s not. I wouldn\'t have been in

it for 31 years. I mean, those kids are my life.

The administration is excellent. It has

been again a process. They were fairly resistant, as

were general ed teachers when all of these kids

started going back into their classes. They were

saying, oh my God, we can\'t work with these kids.

But it\'s coming along and I\'m very pleased with the

support.

MS. ACOSTA: How much training has your

administrator had in special education, do you know?

MS. THOMAS: I can\'t give you the number

of hours, but they have all been, they have all had

classes.

MS. ACOSTA: Classes?

MS. THOMAS: Classes for special ed.

MS. ACOSTA: My experience has been that

we talk about teacher training in special ed and many

times the principals and the administrators, they

don\'t have any training. And I\'m, you know, just

wondering if you can give me some indication if

that\'s been your experience as well.

MS. THOMAS: Well, I\'ve been fortunate

because these administrators have had training, and I

can tell you if they haven\'t, we in a hurry train

them ourselves. They get it on the ground and

running.

MS. ACOSTA: Okay. Thank you. I need to

know, at the Cushman School, I know it\'s a private

institution, et cetera. And I keep going back to the

measure, you know, I am the parent, I have a, you

know, a child. How do I know, other than feeling

good or feeling that we have a community‑family

collaboration at the Cushman School that my child is

actually meeting goals? Do you have internal

testing?

MS. JOHNSON: Yes, we do.

MS. ACOSTA: And what kind of tests are

they?

MS. JOHNSON: We have testing that\'s done

by our diagnostic clinicians in‑house. It\'s one‑on‑

one, very typical to psycho‑educational evaluations.

That\'s done in‑house twice a year.

We also have standardized tests, the SAT,

it\'s used with the children. And as I mentioned, we

also have our children have psycho‑educational

evaluations at least twice a year outside the school.

MS. ACOSTA: Tell me, what is the ratio

and composition of your school?

MS. JOHNSON: We are very, very diverse in

the sense that we have 465 students. We have quite a

few white families, a variety of different religions.

Very large contingent of Hispanic families. We have

Afro‑American families. We have families from the

Middle East.

MS. ACOSTA: And do you have anyone on

board to have with language, ESL for example? Is

that addressed at your school?

MS. JOHNSON: It is, through our speech

and language department, and they are very helpful

with that. We also have access in an adjunct fashion

to a bilingual speech and language group, and

actually bilingual speech and language groups are

very prevalent in South Florida as you would expect.

MS. ACOSTA: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Nancy Grasmick.

MS. GRASMICK: Yes. Thank you both very

much. Mrs. Thomas, I thought your seven

recommendations were extremely helpful and I\'d just

like to probe two of them. One has already been

raised in discussion and that\'s the discussion of the

end point for the IEP.

My question would extend on the

information you share, to know whether or not the

specificity of what\'s reflected on the IEP will be

realized in terms of the application and integration

of that information on a state‑wide assessment. Do

your students participate in the state‑wide

assessments?

MS. THOMAS: You hit a big problem. Our

students do participate in the state‑wide assessment.

They don\'t pass, not too many of them pass the state‑

wide assessments. It\'s a very tough problem at this

point.

MS. GRASMICK: And so, because they don\'t

pass the assessments, they don\'t receive a high

school diploma, a standard high school diploma?

MS. THOMAS: Correct. They, currently in

Virginia and it\'s going to change I understand, they

get a certificate of attendance.

MS. GRASMICK: And one of your

recommendations was the consideration of an

alternative diploma. How would you envision that

alternative diploma?

MS. THOMAS: Something like a modified

standard diploma than a standard diploma. And then,

it goes to IB, AP and IB. I think they have, a

certificate of attendance is the lowest and they know

that. They know that.

MS. GRASMICK: Do you agree that the

certificate of attendance is almost insulting? It

really doesn\'t reflect any academic achievement at

all even if that achievement is not commensurate with

a standard diploma, the attendance is you just came

to school, you didn\'t do anything.

MS. THOMAS: Exactly. In fact, I find

myself telling my students, and I\'m in the process of

doing that right now because I have seniors, this

isn\'t the way it should be. And I say to them,

nobody is going to look at your diploma. They are

going to ask if you have graduated from high school.

Nobody is going to see certificate of attendance. I

don\'t want to have to say that.

MS. GRASMICK: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Katie Wright.

MS. WRIGHT: Good morning, fellow

teachers. I have been where you are. My comment,

first comment is that I was trained as an elitist

under Sam, Kirk and Gallagher and Goldstein and all

of those people. Of course, now we know better. We

know that regular teachers, many of them can do a

better job with our kids as I call them as special

teachers can do.

My question is this. I want to ask you,

Mrs. Thomas, is your caseload cross‑categorical?

MS. THOMAS: Yes.

MS. WRIGHT: So, what is your

recommendation? Should we go self‑contained? Is it

better for kids to do self‑contained? I know the

money from the feds comes categorical most of the

time. Is it better for the money for the kids to

have it cross‑categorical or just strictly in

categories?

MS. THOMAS: Now, are you talking about my

caseload which is different than my teaching load?

MS. WRIGHT: Your teaching load and your

caseload. Yes.

MS. THOMAS: My caseload or the students

that I monitor throughout the year and then I\'m

responsible for their IEP\'s, their child studies,

their ‑‑, their lives.

MS. WRIGHT: Yes, now, this is cross‑

categorical?

MS. THOMAS: Cross‑categorical.

MS. WRIGHT: Now, your teaching load, is

that cross‑categorical?

MS. THOMAS: Yes. Yes.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay. Instead of just self‑

contained?

MS. THOMAS: Yes. I have everything from

soup to nuts.

MS. WRIGHT: And how many are in your

caseload?

MS. THOMAS: Right now, I have 19.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay. And how many are in

your teaching load?

MS. THOMAS: I work probably with 55

students a day.

MS. WRIGHT: As a young special ed

teacher, we didn\'t have all this paperwork, that

stuff that you have. And I feel for the special

teachers now. In fact, I feel for all teachers. My

daughter is one. It\'s too much paperwork. How on

earth can you get rid of this paperwork? I\'m just

throwing that question out. It\'s just too much.

Teachers spend so much time doing

paperwork rather than teaching, and a lot of testing

rather than teaching. I think sometimes, too, that

we do too much testing. I really do. We ought to do

a lot of teaching and to test on what we actually

teach. And that\'s what you do, isn\'t it? You test

on what you actually teach.

One other question. What about the work

study program for the children in your caseload? Do

you have a work study program in getting ready for

transition?

MS. THOMAS: We are working very hard to

buff up transition. We have a career center in the

county I\'m in and it does a fine job. But I truly

believe that we need to do some life‑skills work for

the students that are in the middle. And then, I

also believe as I have stated, that we need to be

very realistic in what abilities are and what

abilities aren\'t and what\'s available out there. And

then, they need some counseling on what special

school to go to to get trained in how to take the car

apart, that kind of thing. And we are working on

that. I think that\'s a weakness.

MS. WRIGHT: I thank you so much. And let

me say to you that I love your schoolteacher voice.

MS. THOMAS: Oh, thank you.

MS. WRIGHT: The children will be able to

hear you because when we teach, the children have to

be able to see us and to hear us. Most of the

children, you know, we have auditory, we have to

hear, we need to see and I love your schoolteacher

voice.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: With that, I think

we\'re going to cut it off. We\'re running behind so

I\'m going to cut it off so we can get on to the next

panel. I want to thank Susan Thomas and Linda

Johnson for your presentations and for your excellent

responses to the questions. Thank you very much.

MS. THOMAS: Thank you.

MR. CHAMBERS: That\'s two days in a row,

Chairman.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ll put you on the

list for chair.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Mr. Chair?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I just want to apologize to

my fellow Commissioners for taking up quite a bit of

time with my question, but at the same time, respect

the Commissioners who have not asked questions that

perhaps instead of whoever gets to raise their hand

first, if we can look at members of the Commission

who have not asked questions in the previous round

have first access to asking questions.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ll try to do that.

Like Doug got cut off and we did, he came first last

time. We\'ll put Jay on the list, at the head of the

list for, to try to make up for some of that.

MR. JONES: That\'s actually what we did

yesterday.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes, it is what we did

yesterday. And Todd is trying to help me be totally

fair in recognizing you all.

Our next presentation, Case Study: The

Importance of Leadership at the School‑Level in

serving children‑at‑risk of academic failure. Crown

Heights Elementary School in New York is a success

story about serving children in a large urban school

where 97 percent of the children are below the

poverty line, yet the school consistently scores at

the highest levels for reading in New York State.

This is a success story of intervening early for

young children to identify reading difficulties and

provide direct instruction as a model for reducing

referrals to special education programs for those

children who do not have disabilities.

Former Crown Heights principal, Erwin

Kurz, will discuss the school\'s success and his 13‑

year leadership as principal. Erwin Kurz is the

deputy superintendent at the Office of Leadership

Development, New York City Board of Education.

Mr. Kurz, welcome. Thank you for coming

to Miami.

MR. KURZ: Thank you. I\'d like to thank

all the members of the Commission for inviting me to

testify this morning.

I have been a teacher and supervisor in

the New York City Public School System for 34 years.

I am presently the deputy superintendent in the

Office of Leadership Development for the New York

City Board of Education. Prior to taking on this

position in August 2001, I served as the

instructional superintendent for the Brooklyn Region

of the Chancellor\'s district. And from 1986 through

1999, I was the principal of PS161.

Public School 161 is a kindergarten

through grade eight school, located in Crown Heights

Brooklyn, New York. We had a student population of

1,342 students. 90 percent of our students were

African American, eight percent were Hispanic. 97

percent of our students were eligible for free lunch.

In my final year as principal of PS161, 84

percent of our students scored at or above grade

level on the city‑wide reading test compared to 36

percent of students who attended similar schools.

Similar schools are defined as schools with similar

percent of students, eligible for free lunch and a

similar percent of English language learners. On the

city‑wide mathematics test, 81 percent of our

students scored at or above grade level compared to

35 percent in similar schools.

Our scores on state‑wide tests were even

higher. 91 percent of our fourth and eighth‑graders

met the state standards on English language arts and

91 percent met the state standards in mathematics.

Our school is one of the highest ranked schools in

both reading and mathematics in grade 6 and 8 in the

State of New York.

The key ingredients to the accomplishments

realized at PS161 were the emphasis placed on student

success and the monitoring and support provided to

students and teachers. Very rarely did we have a

student leave our general population to be placed

into a special education class. We had a referral

rate of 2.3 percent.

The vast majority of these students were

referred for additional support services that would

enable them to remain in the general education

population. These students received academic, speech

and guidance intervention services. Out of a student

population of nearly 1,350, I don\'t believe we ever

had more than three to five students in a year placed

in special education classes. I believe this was so

because of the quality of instruction and the early

intervention services that we provided.

The importance of a good teacher in

elementary school cannot be overstated. In

elementary schools, students much of their day with

one teacher. Research has indicated that teacher

quality has a significant impact on student

achievement. Some researchers even suggest that

teacher quality may have more to do with student

performance than home or school environment or class

size.

At PS161, we were able to attract, develop

and retain quality teachers. Most of our teachers

had more than 12 years teaching experience. Many of

our teachers remain in PS161 for their entire

teaching careers. Although we had a staff of veteran

teachers, it was still very important to provide

ongoing professional development. We created a peer

observation program in which teachers observed other

teachers on their grades and became critical friends.

Experts from the literacy and mathematics

programs that we were using conducted workshops on a

regular basis. Through the interaction with veteran

teachers, the new teachers quickly became immersed in

the hard work and no excuses culture of the school.

Monthly faculty and grade conferences were devoted to

comparing student work, making certain that there was

uniformity of instruction.

We used the open core reading program

throughout the school for the 13 years that I was

principal of the school. This reading series

combined a strong phonics component with real

literature. By staying with one reading program

rather than changing with each new fad, the teachers

were able to become proficient in the teaching

strategies needed to make this program work.

We monitored the progress of students by

means of classroom observations, teacher‑made tests

and mock tests in both reading and mathematics. We

administered three mock tests in reading and three

mock tests in mathematics. These tests were

administered in December, January and February.

Students were tutored by our para‑professionals based

on the results of these tests.

In my last year at the school, we

identified a hundred students in grade 3 to 5 who

needed additional support. 50 students received help

in reading, 50 students received help in mathematics.

But the students who received the tutoring services,

all the students scored at or above grade level on

the reading test and 48 students scored at or above

grade level on the mathematics.

All of our students knew that we expected

them to achieve academic success. They knew that

their academic growth would be constantly monitored

and extra support would be given if needed. It

became part of the fabric of the school.

One day, a team of visitors came to our

school to see some of our classes. They were

extremely impressed with the reading readiness of our

kindergarten students. One of the visitors asked a

kindergarten child to give an example of a word that

began with the M sound. Without hesitation, the

kindergartener responded mock test.

The emphasis on instruction, monitoring

and success was clearly evident even to our

kindergarten students. The expectations for success

and hard work were shared among the parents, too.

Parents got this message as soon as they registered

their children at PS161. In New York City, parents

register their five‑year‑old children in April to

begin school in September.

When parents registered their children at

PS161 in April, they were given a copy of a test that

I constructed with my kindergarten teachers. They

were told that we were going to administer this test

to the children during the first week of school in

September. The test consisted of 30 questions that

ranged from recognition of colors, shapes, letters

and numbers to the reading of words and sentences.

The parents had several months to prepare

their children to take this test. Of course, we did

not expect every kindergarten student to know how to

read when he or she entered kindergarten in

September. But it was amazing to see how hard the

parents worked with their children to prepare them to

take this test. I believe the parents appreciated

that they were told in advance what we expected of

their children.

Just as it is important for teachers to

prepare lessons with clear expectations and to share

those expectations with their students, it is equally

as important for parents to know what is expected

from them. Although I am not a research, I was able

to predict based on the results of this test which

students would have difficulty succeeding in school

without additional support.

Parent of students who scored low in the

test were called into my office. We spoke about

their children\'s test scores and had the parents meet

with an early childhood reading specialist to develop

a plan to address the academic needs of their

children. We offered additional academic and

counseling services to the parents and students

throughout the year.

We had a rigorous academic program for our

kindergarten students. We began by teaching letter

and sound recognition, blending and decoding skills.

Our goal was to have every kindergarten student able

to read a book by the end of the first year in

school. In addition to this academically focused

curriculum, I created a principal\'s reading club to

motivate and monitor student and teacher progress.

Students in kindergarten who were able to

read a book were sent to my office to read to me. If

they were able to read the entire book, they became

members of the principal\'s reading club. I monitored

this very closely. Para‑professionals were assigned

to assist those children who needed additional

support. Parents were taught how they could help

their children at home.

Children who became members of the club

had their names posted on the bulletin board outside

the main office. Students were also given a

principal\'s reading club button that they proudly

wore on their school uniforms. All of our students

wore school uniforms.

The students were also given certificates

to bring home to their parents as well as

certificates to be given to their teachers to be

displayed in their classrooms. In my last year at

PS161, we had 180 kindergarten students in six

classes. 170 students became members of the

principal\'s reading club. Not every child read on

the same level but it was clear to the teachers,

students and parents that we expected every child to

read and that we were going to monitor each child\'s

progress.

We were hopeful that the early sense of

accomplishment and the reading readiness skills that

were attained in kindergarten would propel our

students to academic success throughout their school

years. It was important to foster a love for reading

in our students. In addition to the principal\'s

reading club, we had several other programs that were

designed to increase the children\'s desire to own and

read books.

One such program was the supplementary

reading program. We provided hundreds of ‑‑ sets of

different novels. Teachers and students selected the

novel that they wanted to read. Students read the

book for homework and answered several comprehension

questions. After the class completed the novel,

usually in two or three weeks, they would select

another book.

To make certain that all students had

books at home, we established a bookstore. Every

Wednesday before school, 7:45 to 8:15, students or

parents purchased books at a reduced price of one

dollar. We bought these books for a dollar from a

company that dealt with overstock books. These books

were selling for three to twelve dollars in local

bookstores.

The bookstore, our bookstore was a huge

success. One day a parent came to my office and

asked me if she could purchase a gift certificate. I

wasn\'t sure what she was talking about. I told her

that we didn\'t sell gift certificates. She said that

her son who was in first grade was having a birthday

party in school and she wanted to give everyone in

the class a one‑dollar gift certificate to purchase a

book at our bookstore.

I quickly wrote out 35 gift certificates

and gave it to her. When I visited the bookstore on

Wednesday morning after the birthday party, I saw the

entire class in the bookstore selecting books. We

used to sell between 200 and 300 books every

Wednesday morning before school began.

During my years as a teacher and

principal, it became obvious that it was much more

difficult to impact on emotional or learning problems

once a child reached grade four. It would be useful

for this Commission to consider recommending that

funding be provided to help prepare students to enter

kindergarten with the skills necessary to do well in

school. Many parents work and their children need

all the access to programs that will help them to

enrich their lives both socially and educationally.

When children are three years of age,

their parents should have the opportunity to enroll

them in quality educational programs. Federal

dollars should be spent to assist local communities

in hiring reading specialists to help prepare

youngsters to have the reading readiness skills

necessary for the beginning of their school careers.

Although good schools can compensate some of the

deficiencies which students may have at the age of

five, it would be better if students arrive at

schools with the basic skills necessary to ensure for

their academic success.

Once students arrive in kindergarten, they

would be better served by having no more than 15

students in their classes. This would allow teachers

more time to teach to the specific needs of their

students individually and in groups. Considerable

federal and local funding would be needed to make

reduced class size a reality. Funds would be needed

for the building and staffing of new schools. The

reduction of class size, however, has to be

implemented with care.

Merely reducing class size without

providing good teachers and changing teaching

methodology will do little to improve student

performance. In fact, reducing class size and

placing an unqualified teacher in that classroom will

do more harm than good. It would be better to have

30 students in a class with a good teacher than have

15 students in a class with a bad teacher.

All of the federal and local money that

will be spent on intervention services will be wasted

unless students have excellent classroom teachers and

administrators. Schools do not work well without

competent and well‑prepared teachers and principals.

Funds should be allocated for professional

development activities for teachers and supervisors.

There are many factors that impact on the

disproportionate number of minority students being

placed in special education classes. Researchers

have studied this problem and have arrived at

different conclusions. Some researchers found that

the quality of the teachers or the amount of the

students in a class were the key factors, while

others found that the home environment was the most

important predictor of student achievement.

Common sense tells us that it is all of

the above. There is no single reason, no single cure

for this problem. We must provide quality, early

intervention services before children enter school

and continue to provide intervention services for

students experiencing difficulty in school. It is

crucial to reach these children before they complete

grade three. It is equally as important to have

skillful teachers and administrators in every school.

I respectfully ask the Commission to

consider recommending that resources be provided for

quality early intervention programs as well as

ongoing professional development. Again, thank you

for inviting me to testify today.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Mr. Kurz, thank you

for your very outstanding presentation. Jay

Chambers.

MR. CHAMBERS: Thank you. I greatly

appreciate your presentation. It was excellent and

very interesting. I\'d like to ask two questions.

I\'d still like to know about the 60 pieces of paper

in the last presentation but I\'ll follow up later.

Two questions, one on accountability. Put

yourself in our position, and I\'m trying to think

about measuring accountability. How do we approach,

when we talk about public accountability in schools,

are we satisfied that achievement test scores,

multiple choice tests are sufficient to do the job?

What else do schools do? What other things should be

we be thinking about when we talk about

accountability?

MR. KURZ: Well, accountability has to be

tied in with student success and student achievement

because school\'s ability ‑‑ for students to do well.

There is a big debate whether you can accept multiple

choice tests as the only barometer or you should have

other kind of tests. There\'s problems in both.

Multiple choice doesn\'t test higher over the thinking

skills. Some of the test higher over the thinking

skills, when you mark those tests, there\'s a

subjective element in that and that creates certain

problems.

So, there\'s a debate raging now whether we

should just use multiple choice or whether we should

use the longer test which is now in vogue. But we

need some kind of test throughout the school years to

determine whether there is accountability. And I

think that, quite frankly I know this committee is

dealing with special education, but one of the big

things that I found in New York and I imagine

throughout the country, once we decided that students

in special education, their scores will be counted in

the statistics, I think the referral rate went down

because people weren\'t so quick to take all the kids

they felt were going to fail the test and put them in

special ed and label them that way.

And it also raised the bar for children in

special education. They now had to achieve standards

similar to those of the regulated population. Of

course, there are students who are not going to make

it as we discussed here earlier. But when I\'m

talking about the disproportionate number of African‑

American students, their scores have gone up

dramatically in my school and other schools as well,

I think partly because of the accountability. And I

think accountability has to stay there.

Which method, the only one that I really

can think of that makes any sense is some kind of

test that we have to administer to the children to

see if the schools are doing their job.

MR. CHAMBERS: So, multiple choice test is

‑‑

MR. KURZ: Multiple choice, I have no

problem with multiple choice but I have no problem

with the tests that require a longer response.

There\'s a lot, to be perfectly honest, it costs a lot

of money to mark those tests and a lot of time. And

that has to be factored in as well. And that takes

away, I think that Ms. Wright mentioned that, too,

also that sometimes it takes a lot of time out of the

teaching and we worry so much about the testing and

then the scoring of the test.

And then if I gave a mock test with, as a

matter of fact, to answer a question before you ask

it, the mock test, I mark myself with a Scantron

machine. The kids took the test, we had maybe 700‑

800 kids take the test. I used to mark the test

myself with two other administrators. We marked it

that afternoon and gave back the results the next

morning so teachers didn\'t have to labor over it. We

got the instantaneous results.

Not only that, I mentioned it briefly in

my presentation but if I can expand a little bit on

that, what happened, we knew where the kids were that

afternoon. And that afternoon, we met with the

teachers and the reading specialist and we decided

this kid needs help in this skill, this kid needs

help in that skill, so let\'s train the para‑

professional to work with this child, let\'s train the

para‑professional to work with that child. And

that\'s why we use the test.

Giving a test in itself and the mock test

is a complete waste of time unless you monitor it and

then support the children who demonstrated a need.

So, that\'s really why I think we really did an

outstanding job with that.

MR. CHAMBERS: Is it the level of the

score or gain scores that we\'re really, when we think

about accountability and a school is successful or

not successful, what measure should we actually use?

MR. KURZ: I think there\'s at least two

measures. One is the rate of growth, because some

schools start here and they really have to work very

hard to get to here. Same thing with students, some

students start here and get here. And they really,

you know, even they\'re below grade level or below

standard, they may have worked awfully hard and I

think some recognition should go to that.

And then, you have to have a bench line, I

guess, I don\'t want to put it on the national level,

but you have to have a bench line. What are we

looking at? What exactly do we want our children to

know at the end of grade 2, grade 3, grade 4. And I

think by administering my test at the beginning, you

know, to the parents, it gave them expectations.

Look, we want your kid to know this color

is green, this is red, this is a triangle, this is

the letter A or this is the sound of the letter M.

And we wanted them to know that. I think by setting

standards, all the states, all the school systems get

to know what is expected of them.

MR. CHAMBERS: Are there any other

dimensions of student performance that you would

include in accountability? Any other measures of any

kind besides the test scores?

MR. KURZ: Well, there are also other

things such as the suspension rate, the referral

rate. Those are indicators also of problems. When

you have a high suspension rate in a school, there\'s

usually a problem of discipline in the school. I

hate to going back to the school but I know best of

where I come from and I think we had a one percent

suspension rate and we have 1340 kids in our school.

And I\'ll give you an anecdote what happened, and I

don\'t know if you can measure it but I guess that

would be an indicator.

We used to have a lot of visitors come to

our school. Guys coming around or a team of visitors

coming around and there was one woman on a team who

worked in another district. And she saw one of our

students in third grade sitting in the class doing

the work. And she walked over to me after she came

out of the class and said, my God, I don\'t want to

give a name, I\'ll use Sam, that fictitious name.

So, Sam, how come Sam is sitting in the

classroom doing his work? So, I said, I don\'t know,

see, he\'s in class doing the work, I knew he had a

great teacher but he was in the class doing the work.

So, we called Sam outside and I said, Sam, she\'s

telling me that, you know, you didn\'t always work and

behave like that. What\'s the difference in this

school?

He said, in this school you have to do it.

And expectations were real. They were real. And it

became part of the fabric of the schools, the

parents, the teachers and everyone felt it. And when

you have a high referral rate, I remember when I

first started, and I know it feels funny to me, 34

years ago I started, there were teachers that

couldn\'t control the class.

So, what did they do? They blamed the

kids and put them in special ed. Well, it\'s not my

fault. It\'s the kids, we\'ll put them in special ed.

I think that subsided to some account but still,

you\'re going to find teachers that cannot handle

kids, would rather label the kids than label

themselves. So, that\'s an issue that has to be

addressed.

Another issue, well, going back to

accountability would be the referral rate and the

suspension rate. I think those are other indicators

as well.

MR. CHAMBERS: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Douglas Gill.

MR. GILL: Actually, I think I got on the

list as a carryover from the last set of speakers.

So, you know, I really don\'t have a question for you

but I guess I do want to make a comment. And the

comment is sometimes I don\'t think there\'s much

substitute for common sense so I appreciate what

you\'ve done.

I congratulate you and I don\'t think it\'s

rocket science either but I think it\'s understanding

the problem as you have done to be able to influence

and see referral rates as symptoms, disciplinary

issues as symptoms of a larger problem and it isn\'t

always the student who is at fault. So, thank you

very much for sharing your comments with us today.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: One of the other

common sense things that you said that I\'ve never

heard before anywhere is telling the parents in April

of kids that are coming to kindergarten, this is what

is expected that they should know when they come to

school so that the parents are given a clear

expectation of what is expected from them to help

prepare the kids to start school. I think that\'s

tremendous.

I mean, it\'s so simple but it, I think,

can make a real difference and for some parents that

may not have a clue, it certainly gives them a clear

indication of what\'s expected of them.

MR. KURZ: You know, I think expectations

are extremely important. And I\'ll give you a little

background on the test. What happened, you know, a

lot of times in schools and the people who work in

the school systems know that, you know, as soon as

the kid doesn\'t do well, they blame the school, the

school is no good, no good. And at some point, you

get tired and oh my God, so you know what? I\'m going

to test the kids before the second day of school.

The parents can blame me for messing up their kids

yet.

So, I gave them the test. But the, you

know, what happens with this research and

expectations, we made up this test in about 20

minutes with a group of kindergarten teachers. What

would you like the kids to know when they enter your

class? And what I say about expectations, I\'m

talking about teacher expectations, too.

When a child walks into class, especially

a kindergarten kid, reading the New York Times

doesn\'t happen often, there\'s an expectation all of a

sudden. If a kid walks into the class and doesn\'t

know his name, doesn\'t know his colors, there\'s a

certain expectation. If we can get rid of those,

when a kid comes into school, you know, everyone\'s

expectations are going to go up.

And even how sophisticated, all the

doctors and psychologists and everything, oh how

sophisticated they are, going back to the common

sense, we made up this test and then I showed it to a

group of psychologists. And they\'re looking at it

and they\'re pondering it and they\'re looking and

reading and kindergarten children don\'t have to know

this. They don\'t have to know, dah‑dah‑dah, no one

has to know anything.

And then, I asked them, when your child

entered school, did he know that? Oh, yes, my kid

knew it but the other kids don\'t have to know it.

And this is what I\'m talking about, expectations and

common sense, that we want all our kids to know all

these things when they come on board. So, the

expectation level will start in kindergarten or

before.

And I think the early childhood programs

that headstart and all that, they should have clear

expectations. What do we want our children to know

so when they start kindergarten, they\'re ready to do

well and they have the reading readiness skills and

other skills necessary for success in school.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thomas Fleming.

MR. FLEMING: I, too, want to add my voice

to just, I read the paper early this morning and this

was underlining so many of the areas that I could say

my amen to them. But as I listen now to your

presentation and I, too, have been an educator for

many years and you\'re talking about teachers that

came to the school with the training and everything

behind them, my thought was still where did you find

these? You get professionals that just do not walk

into a school like yours already developed to follow

the kind of directions.

And if you had to get rid of some of the

teachers that you found out did not meet that

criteria, I\'d like also to hear what was your

experience with that.

MR. KURZ: Well, I was sort of fortunate.

Well, you know, we started out with a group of

teachers. You know, when I worked in the school, we

had a lot of teachers there and the school was ranked

13th out of 16th in a rather disappointing district.

And we took those teachers and we told them what we

expected and we monitored what they did.

Occasionally, there were some teachers

that we had, not many, there were some teachers we

had to remove. But just as I remarked about that

story about that child who behaved in the school, I

had a teacher in my school who was doing an excellent

job in second grade. And I found out, she came in

before I got there, so I found out she was thrown out

of another school, you know, that bounced around.

But she was doing an excellent job.

And I think the environment and the

support and the fact that we didn\'t change reading

programs every two years, you know, during these

years when we\'re talking about whole language phonics

or whatever and everybody changed every three weeks.

And they had to start the program all over again.

Our teachers knew what we expected. They knew the

program.

So, when a new teacher came in, we had a

veteran teacher go into the class, work with them,

they also observe them. I didn\'t have to observe

much at the end because I had teachers going and

observing one another. And they knew that my

observation, many times, observations from an

administrator can be looked on almost as punitive,

got you, or this or that.

When a teacher does it for another

teacher, they know it\'s just for instruction. And

that\'s all I wanted. All I cared about was how they

taught in class. If I wanted to fire a teacher, then

I\'d have to go and do something. But I wanted my

teachers to become better and better.

So, we offered the support by having other

teachers work with them. We had experts in the field

in reading and math work with the teachers sitting in

the classrooms. The administrator, I had assistant

principals, myself, we used to go in and monitor and

help. And I think that\'s why we were able to keep

the teachers.

And another thing that I think was

important in retaining teachers, my first words when

a teacher asked me for anything was yes. Whatever

the answer, I don\'t care how ridiculous it was, I

said yes. They want 50,000 pencils, I\'ll try to get

it. They want this, whatever they wanted, I said yes

because whenever I said yes, they gave back three

times over.

And we were able to get those books, for

example, the supplementary readers. We had candy

sales. I have no idea why we were so successful but

we raised a lot of money and every cent of it went

back into purchasing those books. I think because we

expected it, the parents bought into it. These were

not wealthy parents but they spent money to purchase

the books and have the kids read at home. And that

helped our reading program.

It also cemented some kind of relationship

between the parents and teachers, so the teachers

felt comfortable in the school. Some schools,

teachers don\'t feel comfortable. They feel

threatened by the administration or whatever and they

don\'t stay. I had some teachers come to my school

who I worked with as an AP or who I worked with when

I was a teacher who I knew were great. But for some

reason, whatever reason, they wanted out of their old

school and I was able to get those in.

And by hook or by crook, I tried not to

let, I don\'t think I should testify to, am I under

oath?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: No. No, but we sure

like what you\'ve got to say.

MR. FLEMING: We\'re all learning a lot.

MR. KURZ: By hook or by crook, I tried to

keep out those teachers who we felt were unqualified

and we were very successful in that. And by

maintaining the teachers, teachers from, you know,

people wanted to work in the school. It was doing

well, they got the support. They got the help. The

parents were great, the kids were great. Why

shouldn\'t they want to work in the school? So, we

kept them.

MR. FLEMING: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Paula Butterfield.

MS. BUTTERFIELD: I\'d like to add my

congratulations in your testimony and your common

sense, and in particular your time at Institute for

Learning at the University of Pittsburgh since I\'m

from Pittsburgh and a fellow, yes, I\'m a fellow at

the institute.

I have a couple of questions. One is

what, has there been any study, longitudinal study on

the students that left your school, how they do in

middle school and high school? Has the district

followed that at all?

MR. KURZ: Well, we haven\'t had any

longitudinal studies but the students who left my

eighth grade went, almost all of them went to schools

in New York like Sturgis and Brooklyn Tech, all the

schools that you had to take a test to get into. So,

very few of them went to their locally zoned high

school. They took tests and got into these other

schools, the large majority. Almost all of them.

MS. BUTTERFIELD: I guess the other

question I have is now in your current position, you

obviously have some real opportunities. What are you

doing in your professional development program to

kind of clone yourself as a principal leader in other

schools?

MR. KURZ: Well, what we\'re doing in New

York now, we have in the Office of Leadership

Development, we\'re working, in New York we have close

to 400 principals who have less than two years

experience as a principal at 1100 schools. And we

predict another 150 and 200 more new principals next

year. So, we have a different, we\'re attacking it in

a different way.

What we\'re doing, we have something called

distinguished faculty where we selected about 50 of

the best principals that we have in the city. And

they work as coachers and mentors for the new

principals coming in. Then, we offer courses that

deal with the things that they have to know to be a

leader in New York. And also, what I\'m more directly

involved with now is an assessment piece where we

assess the principals. So, right now it\'s on a

voluntary thing and we just started this year.

We use an assessment and we assess them in

four major areas: educational leadership, resolving

complex issues, communication skills, and developing

self and others. And there\'s ten skill dimensions

that we find their areas of strength or areas of

weakness. Then we write a report and then I go over

this with them to develop a fresh new development

plan where they can improve.

And what I mentioned about recommending

funding for professional development, we always

spend, you know, money for teachers. I think the

supervisors need as much professional development and

I think that was alluded to earlier. They need as

much professional development as possible also and

we\'ll be looking for funds for that. And as you

know, New York City, the budget is very, very tight

and we are looking to expand on that kind of

initiative.

MS. BUTTERFIELD: Do you have any

documentation on your professional development ‑‑

MR. KURZ: Yes.

MS. BUTTERFIELD: Is that something you

could share with us?

MR. KURZ: Absolutely.

MS. BUTTERFIELD: I\'m chair of the task

force on professional development. I know that we

would be very interested in seeing what you have.

MR. KURZ: Absolutely. I\'ll make the

arrangements and I\'ll send you the literature and

what we\'re doing with that. And we have a proposal

and we\'re looking for funders.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Jack Fletcher.

Incidentally, we\'re going right through the break. I

think this is important enough that I kind of made

the decision we\'re just going to go right through the

break. So, go ahead.

MR. FLETCHER: I\'ll be quick. I just have

a couple of questions. One is that one of the

characteristics of successful schools that I\'m aware

of is that they test more not less and all can test

beyond, for example, city and state requirements.

And in light of a lot of the concerns that\'s been

expressed on the effects of testing programs on

students in terms of anxiety, problems of self‑esteem

and so on, I was wondering, in your years of

experience, if that was ever an issue at your school?

MR. KURZ: It was an issue but it has been

addressed. We used to have the children take, when I

was there, we took third and sixth‑grade tests in

both city and state. Now, in New York, we do not

have ‑‑ the state test in fourth and eighth grade, we

do not give city tests in those grades in reading and

math. We accept the state test. So, those issues

were addressed and that helped a little bit.

MR. FLETCHER: But is it a problem in

terms of the effects of the testing program on

children in terms of children developing anxiety

disorders or being unable to perform and so on?

MR. KURZ: I think any test, if I had to

take a test, I\'d be anxious myself and I think any

student who has to take tests is anxious. And now

with the high‑stakes testing and every, you know, you

can\'t be promoted until you get to a certain level.

There is a lot of anxiety and I guess that we have to

address that issue. I\'m not sure of how without

watering down the standards and watering down

everything else.

But certainly, there\'s an issue that there

are some students who don\'t do well in tests, who

might be very, very bright, should be able to be

promoted but do not do well in tests. I don\'t have

an answer for that. I really don\'t know. But I can

say that if we do away with testing, we\'re going to

do away with a lot of the accountability and

standards that have helped to promote better

education in these schools.

MR. FLETCHER: But has it been a big

problem? I mean, I\'m not hearing you say it\'s a big

problem. So, I\'m just ‑‑

MR. KURZ: In my school, there is a bigger

problem with the teachers because every time I did a

test and I went to the teacher, I had a meeting with

them and said, you know, this student here didn\'t do

well or didn\'t go up and they felt anxious about

that. And I could tell you that all of the years

that I was in the school, I never appreciated the

scores, because as soon as I got the scores back, and

I remember it, the last year, the scores were out of

sight. They were terrific.

And instead of rejoicing and celebrating,

I said, oh God, what do I do next year? And you

know, and it just pushes you further and further.

Maybe it pushes over to somewhere else but that is an

issue. I mean, some students in some school spend so

much time on testing, they absolutely do not teach.

All they do is teach to the test. And that you have

to be cautious of. But if you have high‑stakes

testing, that\'s not an issue that\'s easily going to

be addressed or answered.

MR. FLETCHER: But is it your experience

that teaching to the test is a terribly effective

practice?

MR. KURZ: If the test is meaningful, yes.

If the test is just a bunch of short answers that you

have to know X, Y, Z, then it\'s a waste of time.

MR. FLETCHER: Thank you. One other quick

question. Of the 2.3 percent of kids that were in

special education in your school, what sorts of

disabilities did they have? What I\'m trying to

understand is sort of what happened to children with

low‑incidence disabilities like, you know, vision

problems, multiple disabilities, other health

impairments, things that aren\'t, for example, a

learning disability?

MR. KURZ: Yes, well, we didn\'t have any

students coming to our school with, you know,

disabilities like in a wheelchair or those kind. But

I know it was mentioned, I believe Mr. Lyon asked

about the FM. We had some students in our school who

couldn\'t hear, so the teachers had a microphone and

the students had their, whatever that is, speakers

plugged into their ears. And it was very effective.

It didn\'t impact on us.

But most of the students that we had in

special ed in our school, remained in general ed

population. We pull them out for one or two or three

periods a day depending on the IEP and their needs.

Basically, they needed extra help in reading, extra

help in math and we pulled those students out.

The speech and hearing, we had people

coming in and we tried to do it before school when we

could get away with it. But other than that,

sometimes we had to pull them out of class for their

hearing and speech services.

MR. FLETCHER: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Adela Acosta.

MS. ACOSTA: Thank you. As one principal

to another, I commend you. And a fellow New Yorker,

I hear that accent, it makes me miss home. Most of

my questions have been asked by other Commissioners.

However, how often do you do staff

development?

MR. KURZ: Well, we did staff development

a minimum of twice a month, a minimum. But that was

with grade conferences and faculty conferences which

was devoted to staff development. But then, in

addition to that, we had the teachers going in at

least three times a year to visit other teachers and

to observe. That\'s like six times, so they were

doing that.

In addition to that, we had specialists

coming in working, I very rarely send teachers to

workshops but I had the specialists come into school

working the classes with the teachers. And in the

reading and math programs, if the teachers were

having difficulty with certain topics, I would have

someone from the company, the reading program or the

math program, come into the classroom, work with the

students and the teachers. So, it was ongoing.

There was no, I could say a minimum of

twice a month but it could have been three or four or

five times a month, depending on the needs of the

teachers.

MS. ACOSTA: I heard, just a point of

curiosity, did you say your students wear uniforms?

MR. KURZ: Yes, they did.

MS. ACOSTA: That\'s a topic that\'s being

bantered around. I don\'t, I have no ‑‑ any research

that supports uniforms making for better academic

performance or for better discipline; however, I know

that\'s the popular thinking. Would you just comment

for me on what you think the effects are of wearing a

uniform or not?

MR. KURZ: I\'m also reluctant with a lot

of research. For everything, you find one thing, you

find someone else to say something else. But what

happened, and I don\'t know, I guess I was really

blessed, but all I did in 1987 I think it was, I sent

a letter home to the parents, beginning in September,

our students are going to be wearing uniforms. And

the reason I did that, I spoke to the parents, you

know, and they felt it was a good idea. And I don\'t

think it was to raise the academic standards or the

behavior. It\'s just that I wanted the students to

look a certain way.

I wanted them to come in, you know, some

of the kids wore T‑shirts that were not really

presentable and some of the teachers looked the same.

And when I had uniforms, the teachers came dressed as

professionals. They had to come in, the men wore

ties or jackets and the women wore skirts. And

everyone looked good.

And it just sent the feeling, it was just

another thing. It wasn\'t the end‑all and be‑all. If

you have uniforms, it\'s not going to make a bit of

difference unless you have other things in the

school. But the uniforms did have a significant

impact on the students.

In our sixth, seventh and eighth grades,

we had students wearing gray slacks, girls wore gray

skirts and a blue blazer with the insignia called the

Crown School for ‑‑. That\'s what we called the

sixth, seventh and eighth grade. It was completely

pretentious but that\'s how I wanted it because, you

know, when I saw these grade schools, in private

schools people are paying \$20,000‑30,000 and they

walk to school like this. So, fine, our kids are

going to come to school like this also.

And they wore it. The parents loved it.

The kids, I guess, hated it, but they went, it was a

hundred percent. Everyone wore it and I couldn\'t do

anything.

The bottom line is when I first started

it, if a kid came without a uniform, I couldn\'t do

anything. I would put my arm in their shoulder and

say, Joe, Sam, Sam, why don\'t you wear a uniform

tomorrow? And they\'d do it, or I called the parent.

By the end, we had it for 10‑12 years, by the end, we

had tons of uniforms in the school.

If a kid didn\'t have one, we could give

him one. But I have to call the parent at home

because sometimes parents resented the fact that they

wore someone else\'s uniform. Those are little

issues. But it was 99.9 percent effective everyday

and it just helped the tone and the expectation in

school. And there is this image.

And also, when the kids went on trips,

everyone thought they were private schools. But they

didn\'t think they were private schools just because

of the uniforms, because of how smart they were and

how they behaved. And that\'s what made the

difference, because if they went to the Met and they

were asking questions when they, you know, they went

to the Metropolitan Opera and they were asking

questions of the people there, they were very bright

because we went over the libretto with them before

they went. So, they knew what the opera was about.

There is no one answer for anything. And

I\'m reluctant to say everyone has to wear school

uniforms. Everyone has to have this or that. But if

you put all of those together, I think that\'s where

we had the high level of success that we did.

MS. ACOSTA: Thank you.

MR. LYON: Mr. Chairman, can I just, this

is one of those unique moments.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Yes.

MR. LYON: Yesterday, Beth and Bryan

showed me a study from the University of Texas that

indicated that in fact uniforms had a pretty good

effect on social and behavioral outcomes. But only

if it had the crest of the school name on there. So,

I just, well, it\'s what we call an interactive ‑‑

MR. KURZ: Gee, I wish I would have known

that before I did it. Would have made it much

better.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Nancy Grasmick.

MS. GRASMICK: Yes. I think you\'re a

perfect example that leadership matters, and your

interpretation of the principal as the instructional

leader is simply wonderful. My question to you is,

and I don\'t know if you said it, I don\'t think I

heard it, what do you think about full‑day

kindergarten in terms of this effort that you were

making early on with your students?

MR. KURZ: We had full‑day kindergarten,

absolutely crucial. And our kindergarten was not,

you know, I walk around in some circles, in some

early childhood centers and they\'re playing in the

clay and they\'re drawing pictures and they\'re having

all these social skills and everybody is hugging each

other and all that. That\'s wonderful. But in my

kindergarten, we spend most of the time on academic

pursuits and it was reading and math skills that we

really structure the day around.

And the kids did fine. They were treated

with respect and they acted with respect. And I

think it\'s crucial to have full‑day kindergartens.

MS. GRASMICK: Thank you. That was

wonderfully helpful. And my second question is what

if in this country we could have a seamless system of

early childhood opportunities? That is, a real

sequence between headstart and pre‑kindergarten and

kindergarten so that educational goals were sequenced

properly? Could you comment on that?

MR. KURZ: Yes, I think I touched on that

in that we should have benchmarks at every grade

level so that we know and if we start when they\'re

three years old and by the time they\'re five, we know

what we want them to know when they get into

kindergarten. And it should be seamless because if

you have a separate system, they might be teaching

something in early childhood that really serves no

function. Or it might be more than that, who knows?

But the fact is that it should be

seamless, that we start when they\'re three years old,

it should continue until they finish high school and

beyond. But it absolutely should be seamless and

there should be clear objectives for each level.

When they\'re third grade or fourth grade, I\'m not

talking about core knowledge or that kind of stuff,

but I am talking about clearer standards of

achievement in reading and math and other skill

areas.

And even in math, I mean, with the math

skills, there should be certain achievement levels

children should have. They should be able to count

to five, to ten, whatever, by the end of this. And

that should be able to be measured.

MS. GRASMICK: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Mr. Kurz, I think

Nancy Grasmick said it very well, it\'s a lot about

leadership. And I can tell you, just about everybody

around this table would love to be a teacher in your

school. I can see why you were able to attract great

teachers and made such a big difference in the lives

of the children. So, thank you very much for your

presentation. Truly outstanding. Keep up the good

work.

MR. KURZ: Thank you very much. Thank

you.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'re going to

continue to proceed without a break. If people do

need to go to the bathroom or whatever, you\'re

excused. But we\'d like to ask you to come right

back.

The next presentation is Options for

Parental Involvement in Special Education Part V.

Parental choice is an increasing option for parents

of children with disabilities. Parents of children

with disabilities should be entitled to the same

options of public, charter, parochial, and other

educational options. The growing trend in charter

school options for children with disabilities is the

focus of this panel.

The members of the panel are ‑‑

MS. SCOLARO: Crisha Scolaro.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Crisha.

Crisha is a parent and founder of the Pepin Academy

located in Tampa, Florida. Jo Ann Shaw is the

principal of the Pepin Academy. We have Dr. Barry

Morris, curriculum specialist at the Pepin Academy,

and Laura Whiteside who is a parent. Thank you all

for coming. And Crisha, I\'ll turn it over to you.

MS. SCOLARO: Thank you very much for

having us. We\'re very honored to be here. We are

speaking about a public charter high school that now

has a middle school. We are just now in our third

year. We are very much out of the box so we are very

excited about speaking to you today about the school.

I ask anybody to correct me if I\'m wrong

but we have done research and we find that we are the

only public high school in the country at this time

that is a non‑tuition based high school that serves

only students with learning disabilities. So, I

think we can bring quite a bit of very important

information to you today.

I as a parent, I was going to give you a

brief description of my son but I can just tell you

right now, I am the mother of Sam. So, if you were

here earlier and you had the description that the

teacher was giving to you of Sam, except for a year\'s

difference in age, that\'s my son.

You can understand that in our outline we

started with fear, fear that created the mission for

this school. And as a parent, to go into classrooms

and sit, preparing to move our son into a high school

setting, was absolutely traumatic as parents to go in

and find that there was no setting that he would

succeed in. And that was basically bottom line.

Fear did set in, so several of us got

together. It took us five years to get to today.

So, we have an academy, we are in our third year. It

has been a very long struggle. A lot of slammed

doors in our faces, but we have learned a lot.

We will talk to you about some very

exciting things in high school, things that these

kids do need a transition from school to the rest of

the world. But I can tell you that learning

disabilities as the school system tells you, that

learning disabilities are not cured. They do not go

away and these kids do not grow out of learning

disabilities, which is what\'s told to you in the

public school system.

We went through public school through

fifth grade, it\'s a wonderful pure SLD environment.

Wonderful education. There is no life after fifth

grade, so we had to create our own. We have a lot of

very interesting things to tell you. I\'m going to

turn you over to Jo Ann Shaw and Dr. Barry Morris who

are really the two curriculum and school creators of

this wonderful model and let them tell you a little

bit about why we\'re so out of the box.

MS. SHAW: To describe our students at our

school would have to be a diversity as far reaching

as Albert Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Thomas Schwab,

Tom Cruise, General Patton and Thomas Edison. These

are all people with learning disabilities. Our

students span of disabilities reaches the breadth of

those people.

We are a school and we declare it for our

kids that we are a gifted school. We teach to the

gifted model. We serve secondary students who have

parents who chose a different setting for their

children. In some cases, the student self‑referred.

They found out about our school, went and told their

parents, this is where I need to go to school.

Some of our kids gave up phenomenal

opportunities for a social life and a large high

school. Our learning disabilities encompass specific

learning disabilities, language impaired students and

some Asberger\'s autistic kids. Our population is

approximately 25 percent free and reduced lunch, 9

percent black, 12 percent Hispanic and 79 percent

white and other.

Our charter required us to do certain

things. As a charter public school, we aren\'t just

given a blank check and say go out and do what you

want to do. As a charter school, we were required to

maintain and ascertain safety for our kids to the

same level of every other state public high school or

school, period. We are required to follow all that

paperwork as is required for special education from

our district, the district that sponsoring group is

Hillsborough County and we have to follow their exact

model.

We have the same graduation requirements

as all other high schools in the State of Florida.

And we have to follow the same course descriptions

and requirements for our classes to count toward

credits for our children. However, we did get to

choose a lot of things. We chose to structure our

school by SACS accreditation, Southern Association

Schools and Colleges. We chose to keep our

communication line directly from our board of

directors to the principal to the teachers to the

students to the families.

We chose to make that very, very close.

We chose to have a contract which our parents and

students and the school signed that we would

guarantee certain things between the two parties.

Included in that was the responsibility for the

students who came to our school to participate in

their own education. And those of you that have

special ed kids or have worked with them, you know

how crucial that step is for a child to guarantee,

I\'m going to get in there and I\'m going to do my

part.

We chose to involve business and

community, and the community reaches at this point to

those job opportunities, to the transition teams. We

have associated our self with the associations that

have federal grants and whatever for all the testing

and all of the evaluation and things of that nature

so that our kids get those opportunities. We have

chosen to make Pepin a community of learners. All of

us learning together where you talk about teacher

expertise and whatever, we use our school as a Petrie

dish.

We have certified teachers in regular

subject areas and special education. We have a full‑

time nurse, a full‑time guidance counselor for 135

kids. We have a behavioral specialist on a part‑time

basis. We have speech therapists, we have everything

that is required by these students to have their

education. We have chosen to do a technology model.

At this time, Dr. Barry Morris, who is an

integral part, in fact, he is the person who actually

wrote and structured the curriculum for our school,

is going to explain exactly what we do there. Once

we\'ve got the kids then, once the parents have made

the choice, he can explain what goes on at our

school.

DR. MORRIS: 34 years ago, I went into my

internship. First, I knew nothing about it but I was

in National Teacher Corps and that was a teacher

crisis time. And here we were, a bunch of people,

knew only that elementary kids were short. And

that\'s all I knew and I was soon to have my own

class, so I was a little terrified.

And here I went to my intern teacher to

find out what to do with fourth‑graders. And she

looked at me and said, just understand this. It\'s a

snake pit. Don\'t turn your back on them. They will

eat you alive. So, I wrote that down on my little

Palm Pilot. I\'m not quite as technologically

advanced as the rest of you and wrote it down.

And then, she said, now, sit down for my

good morning and motivational speech. Good morning,

babies, so glad to see so many of you back from last

year. And she said, this year, with you able to pass

the test, and of course the tests were there, you

might be able to pass this grade. She said, most of

you have good brains and since she named two people

she considered to be most of them, and those were the

two that had the good brains.

Most of them had lazy brains, and by lazy

brains, she meant a moral implication that lazy

people somehow had a weakness in their character. I

picked that up right away that if you\'re not working

up to your entire ability, complete ability, somehow

there\'s some kind of weakness in your character,

weakness in your moral fiber. And then, she said,

and some of you are worse than lazy, and you know who

you are. And if we didn\'t, she had grouped them in

the back and she said, and she walked back, put her

hand on one of the children\'s shoulders and said some

of you are retarded.

And that was my introduction to special

education in the fourth grade. I found out later on

that that lady was what I later called a disease

model teacher. Basically, she modeled the diseases

all the time. She felt she had a triage unit, a

trauma unit where she didn\'t have enough resources

and she had to figure out which children she could

help, and those that she had to be able to set aside

and keep them comfortable until they died.

And so, I\'ve watched that type of triage

unit going on across the United States. I visit in

schools all over the country and one of the things I

have picked up is that there are gifted model

teachers and there are disease model teachers. And

those disease model teachers follow a medical model

and that medical model is that we are to diagnose,

prescribe and remediate.

And that medical model has seeped through

which deals with every child in special education as

operating from a disability. And that\'s the disease

model teaching stuff and out of it we have developed

a disease that is more difficult and more painful

than ADD or ADHD could ever be or SLD. The disease

that the schools are dying under, and it\'s a disease

that\'s infectious, is learned helplessness.

And this learned helplessness is killing

our schools and is causing our teachers to drown.

It\'s causing parents to give up and to lay down and

just assume that their children are being kept

comfortable until they die. And that learned

helplessness is a thing we must fight in our schools.

I\'ve met those same kind of teachers

turned around by remarkable understanding that if

they were to see the gifts and the strengths of these

same children instead of looking at them from a

diagnostic perspective of just something that is

wrong with them, something that needs to be fixed, if

we could see it from that point of view, we would see

the gifted model of teaching. And that\'s the kind of

teaching that is so powerfully described in the

powerful schools that you saw, the one that was

described today in New York, that gifted model

teaching, the seeing and celebrating the gifts of

those children.

So, when five years ago I was asked, and

I\'m an elementary instructor by the way at the

University of South Florida, when I was asked to

design a school for high school, I said, well, I

guess I know they\'re taller because that\'s all the

background I had. And I said, what would we do?

Well, first we have to defeat this learning

disintegration cycle that takes a child and infects

him with this learned helplessness, makes them

understand their disease only as a label, their

difference is only as a label, and then groups and

targets them for remediation and fixing. And out of

that, we get a learning disintegration cycle that

actually reduces their ability to build intelligence

inside of their own minds.

And so, just like Mel Lavine and William

Glasser and some of these others in cognitive

psychology, I said, we must discover the strengths of

these children. So, we built called Pepin Academy.

And out of it came together to say, let us teach

these kids multiple intelligences. So, we start with

a three‑day seminar, that first three days, we work

on building into these kids what it means to be

intelligent. What are the gifts? And we trained

them in the eight gifts and trained them to

understand what they meant.

Then, we took those gifts and we said,

now, each of you may have areas that are weaknesses

but they\'re possibilities for growth, possibilities

for training. And out of it, we developed a school

that looked at the gifts and powerfully interacted

with the gifts. Then, we took everything from gifted

education and we put it right into that special

education facility.

We are a high school fully accredited by

SACS. We are not a special education facility. We

are after bringing in powerful partnerships from

other institutions. So, Saint Leo University has

come in and is now going to place interns in our

school. University of Tampa is coming in to work

with us on a business incubator business model and

actually being able to reproduce the curriculum,

reproduce the philosophy of the school and be able to

put it into other school settings.

We believe that we needed to find a way to

break the learned helplessness by building a little

one‑room schoolhouse. So, we built something we

don\'t think is anywhere else in the United States.

We partnered with another charter school and brought

a kindergarten through fifth grade facility inside of

our school. Two charters working on the same plant,

now we\'ve got a kindergarten through 12th grade

little one‑room schoolhouse.

Now, those children, 125 of them, are

children from the inner city right around in that

area. 98 percent of them are African American, 85

percent are free and reduced lunch. And guess what?

They have a new set of teachers. We are taking our

children who have severe learning disabilities and

they are teaching those younger kids.

We decided to powerfully break the learned

helplessness cycle by bringing these kids into a

powerful one‑on‑one bonding with these younger

children to allow them to become role models in a way

that they had never been before. To break through

the invisibility that is a part of the nature of

special education, our students have discovered if

they can just become invisible, people will leave

them alone. And they are quietly suffering in the

corners of classrooms all over the place.

I was with a fourth‑grader and I sat down

beside him in a classroom in another school and I

said, what are you doing? He had these beautiful

drawings all out in front of him and he said it\'s a

story. And I said, tell me about it. And he began

to tell this magnificent story. He was obviously a

genius in word‑crafting. He was word smart and he

could craft the language.

And suddenly I felt and angry fingernail

into your shoulder. Now, if you\'ve never looked up

into the flaring nostrils of an angry fourth‑grade

teacher, it\'s a scary event. And there she was and I

was looking up at her and I checked my trousers to

see if I\'d wet my pants, he was checking his

trousers. And she said, I\'d like you to step over

here please.

We both started to get up, she said, I

mean you. And I walked over, I was a visiting

professor from the university and I felt like I had

made a mess. And she said, I don\'t want you to upset

him anymore. And I said but you don\'t understand,

stupid me, ivy tower, all of this problem with

professor types that can\'t understand about the

schools.

I said, don\'t you know, if you brought a

fifth‑grader in here to take story dictation, this

child would read magnificent stories because the

stories were all inside of his heart. They\'re all

there. And she says, you better understand

something, and she was quivering and her hand was

shaking and it saddened me because here was a lady

who was a good teacher, a good lady frightened.

Frightened of a little boy in a corner. And she

said, he will never learn to read, now leave him

alone and don\'t upset him.

And as I looked over her shoulder, he had

taken a black pen and was striking through his

pictures. And as I came back to him to say goodbye,

I asked him, you got all these beautiful paints and

magic markers and all of this stuff, where did you

get it? And he pointed at her with such sadness and

an old wisdom in his eyes, an oldness he didn\'t need

to have. He said she gave them to me.

A deal had been struck. If he would sit

in the corner, she would supply all the materials he

needed. These folks are called compassionate

cripplers. What are we after? They use this term,

they say to the child, bless his child, he can\'t do

much. And that compassionate crippler says we can

let the child off the hook because they\'re broken

anyway. But we let the teacher off the hook, and out

of that we let the school off the hook. But out of

that understanding, these children begin to collapse.

We have decided at Pepin Academy to become

brain detectives, that every child is a unique mind,

that every child is an unexplored territory, that if

we fail in the learning process, it\'s our planning

that\'s at risk and we must go back to the drawing

boards and we as teachers and administrators and

curriculum people have to come back and build a

powerful new story for that child because we believe

that the brain is plastic, that we can create and

engineer intelligence and we tell the teachers

everyday, you can engineer intelligence.

You can powerfully build and take out the

learning blocks and powerfully build roadways that

map the powerful understandings these children need

not only to survive, and I\'m against these survival

skills, folks. I believe they ought to be there to

create, that we ought to see them in the powerful

understanding of who they are as individuals and out

of that, let them say there is no glass ceiling, out

of this, there is no possibility that should be

shutoff, that these children are ready to take on the

world.

And so, out of that, we built our

curriculum. We celebrate the gifts. We bring

together role models. We allow the older and the

younger kids to work together. And we bring a high

school curriculum with high technology to the school

setting.

MS. WHITESIDE: I am Laura Whiteside and I

can\'t tell you how delighted I am to be before such

an esteemed panel and I wish you great guidance in

your project.

I would be somewhat unfair to not tell you

I am also an attorney, and in 1993 began representing

families of children with disabilities and began to

specialize in that at approximately 96 or 95. And

that\'s all the work that I did. So, a lot of my

experience does come from representing families.

There was a hesitancy, I have a daughter

Caitlin who you will meet later today. She\'s 17.

She was severely premature which apparently sets her

up for a high risk of learning disabilities but they

don\'t know the direct connection. There was a

hesitancy to test her when she was young, when she

was in kindergarten and first grade.

The teachers really felt that they knew

there was something there. They weren\'t sure what.

A pre‑K teacher thought she might be having seizures,

and then it was this and it was that. And we really

didn\'t know what it was. Kindergarten, first grade,

the teachers just felt they would be able to pull her

through. But she wasn\'t learning to read and so they

started saying, okay, we\'ll go ahead and test her

even though we feel like she should not be put into,

they were equating if she got the NSLD label with the

placement in a resource room and they didn\'t think

that would be good for her.

By second grade, when she wasn\'t reading,

we\'d had her tested. She went into a resource room

one hour a day with a really wonderful and loving

teacher. She also was getting tutoring a couple of

times a week that I paid for. And this tutor would

watch this event that happened when she was trying to

read, that she would look up and he would see just

that there was blankness in her stare. And this is

what had been described to me as maybe seizures.

And he finally, after observing in a

while, he asked her what it was that she was seeing.

And she said it was just all scrambled, that she was

looking up to try to get things working again to

where when she looked down at it, it wasn\'t moving

around. And it turns out, he checked into something

that was very controversial in the professional

community.

We got her vision therapy, it\'s a

behavioral optometry, and she learned to read. And I

could tell by the testing that it in fact helped her.

I did not ask the school to pay for any of those

extra things partly because I already was

representing families and I didn\'t want to bring my

profession into it.

By third grade, she was reading, and in

elementary school, things went pretty well. She was

in a resource room about one hour a day and they

helped keep her organized and they helped focus on

the things she wasn\'t doing well in. Sixth and

seventh grade in middle school, she did pretty well.

She was successful in what was called a fused

classroom where they had co‑teaching. They had a

regular teacher, mostly regular students, a few kids

with learning disabilities and a learning

disabilities teacher in there. That was a wonderful

model for Caitlin.

Unfortunately, not very many of the other

children were having success as I understood it. So,

they pulled it back, they pulled the SLD teacher out

of the class and they allowed my daughter to leave

her classes whenever she needed it and go to the

resource room. And because she had a good work

ethic, she was able to have that much freedom on

campus.

But by eighth grade, things were starting

to get messed up and she could tell you about that if

she feels it\'s important. But she was starting to be

invisible. Invisible was an issue. Even in my

family, she was finding that she didn\'t fit in quite

like the other kids.

She couldn\'t abide by the rules of group

games and things and it was easier for her to just

sort of slip away and watch television and not deal

with the fact that people, she has auditory

processing delay. When you ask her a question, it

might take a second for her to respond longer than it

would others, and people don\'t know how to deal with

that. I\'m impatient with it frequently because

otherwise she\'s so normal.

Going on high school, I was very worried

about the size of the school. She did go to a magnet

school because she played harp. That, I didn\'t feel

that they tapped into the fact that she had this

amazing musical ability that was based on that,

something related to this auditory issue. She\'s also

just an amazing musical talent but she couldn\'t read

music.

And this performing art school had in mind

that they would be training orchestra players. And

that didn\'t work for her. So, I didn\'t know what I

was going to do. I really felt like she needed to be

in a school that was smaller where they knew her. If

you know her, it\'s amazing the things you can pull

out of her. But she won\'t be the pursuer of things.

I had the fortune to know Crisha Scolaro

and I knew she had been involved in setting up a

school and happened to see her and ask her about it.

And they had some slots available and I went to the

school and it looked like it would be wonderful for

my daughter. And she bloomed. And I think that it

did get her past the invisibility. All the teachers

know her, they know, you know, and they\'re

encouraging to her all the time.

I think it\'s very useful to her to have

access to a guidance counselor who she knows because

if there is anything on her mind, you know, sometimes

you have to talk to her for a while to realize what

is in the way of her learning. I want to tell you

though, it\'s not a choice. The charter school option

is not a choice that IEP teams bring up and mention

to you. Nor is the McKay Scholarship.

Parents at IEP meetings are not informed

about these options and I consider the small school

to have been something that should be on the

continuum of alternative placements. It\'s a regular

school for Caitlin, it\'s just smaller. I have

represented a number of children who had similar

disabilities, particularly in SLD and ADD kind of

joint disability where they simply cannot survive in

the large school.

You\'ll have a child who does, they have a

learned, what do they call it, a defensive

aggressiveness, some of them, where because they feel

so bad for having had so much failure, when other

kids pick on them, they have this artifice of being

aggressive. So, several of the children I\'ve

represented could not make their way through the

halls without having problems. But they did need the

freedom of an environment where they could go to a

lunchroom and to all the activities, but not the

numbers. And we\'ve been successful in proving that a

regular size school, and they\'re huge in Florida, was

not an appropriate placement.

I\'ll say more later.

MS. SHAW: I want to sum up and say that

this is our first year that we will have a graduating

class. We have six students who started this year

with enough credits to graduate by State of Florida

standards. At this point, five of the six have

passed all their state tests, the high school

competency tests that are required in Florida.

These students got one‑on‑one tutoring and

all the other helps that they needed in order to

prepare for that test. And we have that opportunity

because we are small. Next year, we already know

that we will have a bigger challenge because we have

26 students that are juniors that will be moving up

to the senior class. The one student has one section

of the test, we\'re waiting for the results to come

back in the math section.

This student is 20 years old. He failed

ninth grade four times before he came to our school.

It has been a struggle to change this child\'s

perception of himself and his thoughts about what he

was able to do. This student is a gifted artist. We

are hoping in working with schools of art to have him

be able to finish his education after high school

there. We have all beliefs that he is going to be a

successful graduate.

It is not easy when you get kids at the

high school level as their entry level to convince

them that they can learn when they have decided

themselves, and if you know high school kids, you

know that many of them decide for themselves that

it\'s over, I can\'t do this. And so, for some of our

kids, it takes a period of time. We have seen kids

take a full year before that wall is broken down

where they actually start believing in themselves and

learning.

We see other kids that recover faster.

Because of that, this past year, we started a middle

school in conjunction with the high school because we

knew that a lot of the problems in looking at their

case histories had started when they left elementary

school. A large population of our school are

language‑impaired students who are in very self‑

contained units with a teacher and aid, small groups

through fifth grade.

At the end of fifth grade, they receive

almost no support. And so, those kids were

definitely just falling through the cracks. And if

you know language‑impaired kids, you know these are

kids that language doesn\'t come that easy to. If

there\'s two meanings to a word and they\'ve learned

one meaning, that\'s what it means. And when they get

into a more adult world or around other kids, a great

deal of cruelty comes into play, too.

The primary functioning principle of that,

we go in our school and we tell them from the first

day they arrive there and we tell our staff members,

respect is the number one thing. You will be

respected and you will not make fun of other students

and you will not hurt them.

I retired after 30 years in Hillsborough

County Schools as a school principal in middle and

elementary schools. I brought to this school an

elementary mind set of student‑centered versus

subject‑centered. And that\'s a big difference in our

school.

The other thing that I brought to the

school is I have two sons that were also in SLD

classes. They are both grown but I know the parent

part of that. I know what happens at night with

these kids. My sons had two educators for parents

and I read a lot of textbooks to my children aloud so

they would get the content.

I knew they were smart enough to learn but

they had to get the information given to them. For

that reason, we have software that actually will read

the text that you can scan in from a book or a test

or something of that nature. So, kids that can\'t

read, and whether we want to realize it or not, there

are adults in our society because of the way they

process information, they cannot read.

That does not mean they\'re not intelligent

and does not mean that they cannot be contributing

members of our society and be on the roles of earning

money versus being on the roles of having to be

supported by the state whether that be in

incarceration or by being on the welfare roles. And

I think those are role realities that we have to look

at if we don\'t get these kids, especially the very

bright ones.

My older child, we always pushed our

children to go to college. We never thought for a

minute our kids would not go to college. After a

year in college, we thought with our older child that

maybe we pushed too far. Maybe this is not the thing

we should do. So, we had him retested at that point.

The psychologist\'s answer to us was he has

too many areas. His analytical skills on the test

were 99th percentile. He knew how smart he was and

he was above average intelligence. He knew that he

was smart. He knew things a lot of other people

didn\'t know. But as far as functioning in some of

the areas, he did have difficulty there.

Today, he is a college graduate. He is a

PE teacher because he was a steady kind of learner

and he loves his job. He is an excellent teacher.

He is a contributing member of society. I\'m not

going to raise my grandchildren. My son is going to

provide for them.

My second son is a minister and he is

working on his master\'s degree. He will have a

degree in December. These are kids, they were lucky.

They had teachers for parents. But they also had

parents that would not say that just because you

can\'t do this, you can\'t go on. Both of them, I had

one expected grandchild from the one that\'s going for

his master\'s degree and the best solace, and I tell

the parents and I\'ve told them all along whether

their kids are in regular ed or special ed, the best

reason to get your kids in education, best reason as

parents to do everything you can do for your

children, is so that you can enjoy your years when

you get older.

And I believe that. And so, for all these

kids and for all these parents that come to Pepin, we

are going to provide everything we can to reach every

crevice of their minds so that we can put them on the

income roles in America and not on the disability or

the incarceration roles. Our kids come to us in many

cases with long discipline records.

We do not have disciplinary problems at

our school. We\'ve been in operation for three years

and we\'ve never had a fight even though those things

were on their records before. We\'ve had kids that

went to school 40 days out of a year that are coming

everyday. So, for lots of reasons, high school is a

time you cannot quit on these kids.

We know because as Crisha said earlier, we

have researched around the country. And I will tell

you, I did have an elementary perspective. If I had

known what the state and everybody required of these

kids to graduate to the extent I know today, and knew

how hard it was just to get courses and credits and

everything in the computers, I probably would have

said no when they called me and asked me to sit on

this board initially. Because it would have been, as

an administrator, I would have known it was too big a

job.

I\'m glad I didn\'t know all that because

we\'ve been able to learn that and cracked it along

the way to meet the needs of these kids. But it is

an extreme need not to say that kids because they

have learning disabilities and maybe even as extreme

as they can\'t read, can\'t do other things.

The other resource we are able through a

grant to click into next year is we are going to

click into the services for the blind and have all

our textbooks put on disk so that when the teacher

says turn to page 127, our kids can listen or can

listen to the text of that textbook. And so, they

will get the same content the other kids are getting.

Our kids who cannot read when given the content in

another area can make a hundred on a content test.

Just because they can\'t read to get the information

does not mean that they should not be able to learn.

So, we expect learning however we have to

deliver it and whatever we have to do to get there.

And in closing, I will say that we have mentioned

technology. We go after anything and everything. We

have the people come to our school show us what it

does, then we look to see whether or not there is a

child that can benefit from it.

We hope to graduate and right now we are

on track to graduate our kids as they go off to

college, every one of them knowing how to design a

web page because we figure, for most of them, if they

can do that and it\'s using all those higher level

thinking skills, that they can make money while

they\'re in college or while they\'re in trade school

or while they\'re doing something else. And the kids

at this age, they\'re high school kids, eat this up.

They also are learning to do their

presentations because they\'re nervous about getting

in front of groups on PowerPoint. Our kids are

developing PowerPoint presentations. They will go to

college with some deficits, no doubt about it, but

they will go with strengths and skills that other

kids in their classes do not have.

Are all of our kids in the category that

they will go to college? No. We have some that we

are putting into a jobs trend. But we take as long,

and the parents understand that that may be a

possibility down the line, but we don\'t make that

decision until all other things have been explored.

And then we click into those community resources to

get people in to help us evaluate them and place

them. Thank you.

MS. SCOLARO: And I would like to add,

too, that we did not mention the Excel program that

we have which is the only school in the State of

Florida, I believe, that has a partnership program

with the Workforce Development Board. We truly

believe in that transition from school to work. It

is funded by the Hillsborough County Workforce

Development Board.

We receive dollars. We have a teacher

that\'s assigned to it. The students receive credit.

They have a dress code. They learn life skills.

They learn how to write resumes. They learn how to

do interview techniques.

It is extremely important that these life

skills be taught to these kids. They have wonderful

outgoing personalities but their language processing

difficulties make it almost impossible for them to go

out and do this by themselves. It\'s a very important

key to this education.

We also have, with Hillsborough Community

College, a transition program where the students will

be able to receive, take and receive up to nine hours

of college freshman courses at our location. That is

extremely important to be able to accommodate these

students with learning disabilities, with the tools

that we have in our school for them to be that

successful before going on to the junior college or

the college campus that they need.

I ask you also to look at this. This is

high school. There is not, this answer is not

available in other areas. You have to address this.

I don\'t have the figures for you but the

incarceration of teens, the very, very high

percentage of them in the 70 percentile in this

country are teens that are learning disabled. So,

you must address it one way or the other because it\'s

either funding for the prison system or it\'s funding

in high school.

These are smart people. They learn

differently. Please help us get them to stay in high

school. It\'s very important. And let\'s also do

something, if I can recommend about this special

diploma which there is nothing special about a

special diploma when you can\'t even join the

military, you can\'t go to junior college, you can\'t

go to college and you can\'t even go to a trade

school. There\'s nothing special about that diploma.

If these kids can listen to a book and

still know the content, there\'s no reason why they

have to write those answers on a piece of paper. Let

us give them the same accommodations that our IEP

teams agree that they need on an everyday basis for

every other test, but yet you do not allow them to

take a state or a federal test, mandated test with

those same accommodations. You take a student that\'s

extremely dis‑graphic who is, as I call it, allergic

to paper and pencil, who can score a perfect score on

a test that\'s given on the computer but fail a test

because it\'s on a piece of paper.

That is discrimination. Please address

these issues. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Steve Bartlett has got

the first question.

MS. WHITESIDE: I wanted to pick up on the

accountability issue.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay.

MS. WHITESIDE: If I could, before you ask

questions, this may get through some of it.

Assessments of course is a very big issue in

accountability in Florida. We have in Florida now a

program called A Plus that gets to the

accountability. It\'s intended to be our

accountability.

IDEA as you know requires that children

with disabilities participate in assessments of

state‑wide, district‑wide assessments that the state

is giving to anyone else. The IEP team is supposed

to decide what accommodations are made for those

testing. They should get appropriate guidance to

ensure the statistical validity of the test for the

State.

Florida, in fact, has not followed federal

law on that point yet. The IEP teams are not allowed

to make those decisions for kids with disabilities.

The IDEA, of course, is trying to measure the

outcomes of kids with disabilities in their

educational programs. If the IEP team feels that

they are not able to participate in the state‑wide,

district‑wide assessments with appropriate

accommodations, there is supposed to be an alternate

assessment so that you follow outcomes of these kids.

Alternative assessments, I submit, is

pretty sorely ignored in Florida and is not fully

reported. The IEP team is supposed to make those

decisions with respect to the individual child. And

what more local control can you have than deciding

what this child needs to do. And as you know,

anything that\'s not on the IEP, anything that\'s not

addressed in the IEP should be regular curriculum.

If it\'s not on the IEP, it\'s regular

behavior. If it\'s not on the IEP, it\'s regular

English. You know, whenever you deviate from what

you\'re giving to other kids, you need to make sure

it\'s individualized based on that child\'s needs and

not that child\'s label as a child with a disability.

The state, of course, has developed

accountability across the whole system. It also,

what Florida does and I\'m sure many other states, it

ties the diploma to that. And that\'s where you get

to what does this actually do to kids with

disabilities. Schools are graded through it and kids

have this hurdle on it.

The lack of implementation of the

accommodation sets these kids up to not get a

diploma, not have their true abilities tested. And

also, even if they\'re accommodated, in Florida, the

tests are thrown out. Kids with disabilities don\'t

count on our only accountability piece in Florida.

The tests are thrown out.

I have spoken to teachers who have been

very concerned about McKay because of the fact that

kids on the McKay scholarship, they go out, they\'re

not using IEP\'s necessarily, they\'re not entitled to

free appropriate public education during that time.

They might age out of whatever school they left to go

to. They come back into the system and SLD criteria

is higher. So, they may not, maybe they qualify and

maybe they don\'t.

If they don\'t qualify to get back into

special education, the teacher\'s concern is their

tests are going to count. Their FCAT is going to

count and bring the teacher\'s score down. Okay, now,

that\'s a problem for teachers, yes. But what you\'re

talking about is if we ever get a system in Florida

where kids, their tests are counted, then those kids

are not going to be included in regular classrooms.

The teachers who have the ability to say

I\'m going to get good scores because I\'m in the A

Plus, you know, I know my money is actually attached

to it as well as accolades are attached to it. The

kids with disabilities, and we count their scores,

it\'s going to bring us down. We have been, really it

was in being invited to this, I had been aware that

these scores were not considered. But I hadn\'t

really put it together until I sat down to do this

presentation for you.

At this point, it is under study and

we\'ve, okay, all right. We are trying to address

that and I believe just this past week, the governor

is trying to look at that. But accountability of

kids, of the outcomes of kids with disabilities is a

true issue.

And the other side I want to bring to your

attention on McKay, when kids take a McKay in

Florida, the decision has been made that it\'s the

equivalent of a unilateral placement. And that means

they don\'t get due process, they don\'t get faith,

they don\'t get an annual IEP. Florida is coming to

the point of using it as a de facto placement. And

in doing that, they really need to be sticking with

the federal standards so that you\'re not just getting

the best parents to take their kids out of the

system, the parents who are paying more attention to

what the kids are doing.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Steve Bartlett has the

first question and we\'re running behind. Thank you.

Steve?

MR. BARTLETT: I\'m not sure where to

start. You\'ve given us so much content. One is it\'s

pretty clear from our other witnesses and you\'ve

reinforced it that, I believe anyway, the Commission

will be recommending, at least we\'ll be discussing a

unified assessment on accountability systems. So,

the assessment will be unified. All students will be

tested.

I will say it\'s disappointing, and I was

going to ask this question but you\'ve really answered

the question. It\'s disappointing to learn that in

2002 with all the federal laws that require

reasonable accommodation, that reasonable

accommodation does not yet apply to standardized

testing for diplomas. And that\'s disappointing but I

think that\'s something that can and will be altered.

My question then, any of you that choose

to answer this, tell us about the outcomes. You\'ve

been in business now for three years. You\'ve told us

some exciting things about the inputs. Tell us about

the outcomes. What\'s your graduation rate? What\'s

your grade level? What\'s your average annual

improvement?

MS. SHAW: Our students are accomplishing

the Sunshine State Standards across the board with

about a 90 percent rate. And I\'m going back to this

last report period on their grades of kids that made

all A\'s, B\'s and C\'s. We still have some students

that are struggling because they, depending on how

they came, the amount of time it takes them to do it.

MR. BARTLETT: In the interest of time,

are you testing all of your students?

MS. SHAW: We test all our students.

MR. BARTLETT: On standard testing?

MS. SHAW: There are, out of the 135,

there are three students at this point in the school

we are not testing on state test. We are also

applying the Sunshine State Standards to all our

curriculum whether for those three it\'s a special ed

curriculum but the other it\'s the regular. We gave

the PSAT to all our students this year because we

wanted them to see what it was like so we could start

working with them on that.

We do SAT preparation. We know these are

tests. We know the kids are going to be expected to

do them. We work at that. We have had ourselves

designated as a testing site for SAT so our kids will

not have to go out into a huge environment to take

the test.

MR. BARTLETT: And the outcome is?

MS. SHAW: And the outcome this far, we

have, many of our kids are retaking it at this point

but we are encouraged that most of our kids that are

going to be juniors next year have taken it very

seriously. Their parents are. They\'re coming for

tutorials. In three years time, this is the first

time we\'ve had seniors. So, our outcome will be

determined in a couple more years.

But as far as attitudes, we had three,

four students last summer that were dual enrolled at

the community college. All four of them made A\'s in

two classes that they took. We have 15 students next

year that meet the criteria for dual enrollment in

community college for next year. Okay.

MR. BARTLETT: The only other question is

if we could build the same sense of high expectations

in neighborhood schools that you build at Pepin,

would we have similar results?

MS. SHAW: I think because of the nature

of our students in many cases, the largeness of a

regular school with as many concerns as they have, I

think that would be difficult in a typical high

school. We are advantaged by being, our ultimate

goal is to be at 200. That would be the top because

we want that small school. We want the ratio with

our counselors. We want the ratio with the tutorials

we could give the kids.

I do not, with my respect to, and the

school I retired from had 1100 elementary kids, I

don\'t believe that the same environment and climate

could be accomplished in a traditional huge school

because their concerns, and administratively, the

concerns are so diverse. And so, kids get to be a

number, they get to be a test score. They get to be

other things as they\'re placed in the classes. And

that\'s one of the things we have the advantage of.

MS. SCOLARO: These disabilities are

tremendously affected by anxiety. And putting

students, putting anybody in that number of people, I

don\'t even know why any schools have over a thousand

kids at one location. It\'s a very high anxiety

situation on an everyday basis. And especially if

you have learning disabilities, feel that you don\'t

fit in, become a target as far as peer pressure.

I\'ve seen these kids just absolutely

thrive because it is their own environment. They\'re

taking ownership in it. They need to be in a

different area.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Cherrie Takemoto.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you for reiterating

and amplifying much of what we\'ve heard from not only

the expert testimony but also the testimony of the

public and families who have come to speak to us and

individuals families who have come up to individuals

on the Commission to talk about the importance of the

information for families that include options like we

heard about McKay Scholarships. The families say I

never heard about that. We\'ve heard about charter

schools. Families say I never heard about that.

Opportunities and possibilities. And I

think that the possibilities there are a very

important aspect that we need to make sure we have.

You\'re also dealing with a very difficult population

in that when kids are little and we see them in the

pre‑school, they\'re so cute and the life are still on

in their eyes. And we\'re seeing those lights flick

out one by one, not only through juvenile justice but

also to dropout.

So, thank you for helping us look at that,

look at possibilities and reinforce that, yes, that

thing that you have in your heart, that hope that you

have in your heart for your child is something to pay

attention to.

I\'m wondering about the application of

applying this to children with more serious

disabilities because too many times when we as

parents have these ideas about possibilities, they

say, we\'ll your child is, and then you fill in the

blank whether it\'s learning disability or speech

language or severe profound deaf blind. You fill in

the blank and that means that your child cannot

learn.

Can you tell me a little bit about

applying what you\'re talking about to children with

more, I shouldn\'t say serious because learning

disability is a serious disability but other

disabilities that some folks would deem as more

significant or severe?

DR. MORRIS: I would sum it up in the

philosophy of Annie Sullivan with Helen Keller. The

Helen Keller syndrome is, oh, well, she\'s in that

special category and of course she can\'t do. Bless

her heart, she just can\'t do much. But here comes

Annie Sullivan who says no, this is a very different

kind of thing. And through the perseverance and the

battle that she battles with this child in her mind,

she comes through and shows this child the gifts that

she has.

So, that\'s the philosophy. It\'s not about

a specific curriculum. It\'s about a powerful

different understanding of neuroscience, about how

the brain works and the powerful, the issues of the

gifted side of every human being, and in looking for

that and struggling with that rather than the medical

model.

MS. TAKEMOTO: What kind of

recommendations could we make that would reinforce

that aspect of special education?

DR. MORRIS: I believe at a national

level, the universities have been left out of the

loop. Somehow the word has gotten out that the

universities are just lost in a fog and they have no

clue. There are magnificent programs and the

national agenda ought to be to search out these

programs that are going on through the universities

and find out where they\'re developing schools all

across the nation and put these back into the loop,

put this information database back in.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay. Because as I tell

families who are calling me, they are hearing that

from teachers, I ask them to reframe it, that let\'s

change that from you can\'t because you are, you can\'t

because you have, to the teacher saying I don\'t know

how to, let\'s find out. And I think that you\'re

tying it to professional development really is a key

there.

MS. SHAW: A quick reference. Georgia

Tech has a team that actually, if a parent calls or a

school calls and says we have a student with this

disability and we have been able to tap into this

service, this is what they do. They research all the

possibilities out there and come back with

recommendations.

An example is we have calculators that

show the whole problem on the screen. Many times our

kids will put it in but the answer comes up wrong and

we don\'t know what they\'d done. And that was the

source that we went to to find that. But there are

places out there and resources, but they are hard to

find.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Nancy.

MS. GRASMICK: I don\'t think I heard this.

What is the cost per year per student?

MS. SHAW: Between what we get from

community contributors and from the state, about

\$17,000 dollars is what we\'re currently, with the

value of our assets and things that we were able to

put into this further per student. We collect the

same FTE they would collect if they were in the

regular program.

MS. GRASMICK: So, there\'s nothing

additional that\'s charged to the parents?

MS. SHAW: No. No, we are bound by our

charter not to charge any fees other than what the

county charges to students.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Cherrie, you had one

more follow up question?

MS. TAKEMOTO: In our Houston hearings, we

heard some recommendations about getting rid of IQ

tests is one piece. The other is looking at failure

to respond to research‑based interventions as being a

criteria for entering special education. And as LD

specialist, I\'ve heard that possibly folks who say,

Jo Ann you said something about, I\'m sorry, Mrs. Shaw

you said something about special gifted high, you

know, and I did hear that from Dr. Morris that we see

all of our kids as gifted.

But can you speak to that, number one, the

IQ test as a determinant or as necessary. And number

two, allowing a child with say an 80 IQ who has the

characteristics of a learning disability to get into,

as child with learning disability.

MS. SHAW: Part of our charter was that we

would accept some students that did not meet

criteria. So, we in fact do have some students that

are close but don\'t make it. So, that was part of

our charter that we were required to accept some

students that we do not get the basic funding from

the state.

So, we are required to use the IQ, the

qualifying data that all other students in

Hillsborough County have to meet, so we have to do

that. However, we do find though many cases with our

students is we had extremely depressed IQ\'s on an IQ

test. Many of our kids, especially the language

impaired students are going to score extremely low on

the verbal part of an IQ test because they don\'t have

the language to put it there. But they have a lot

more.

When I say gifted, we do have five

students that test in the gifted range by test scores

but when we say gifted, we do Gardner Armstrong\'s

gifted model. And so therefore, we find the area

that that child has a strength, and we use that

strength or that gift that child has to open up the

critical thinking and all the other areas because

they have it. They can develop it. But we have to

find a way that they can be reached to develop those

skills. So, that\'s where the gifted model comes into

play.

MS. TAKEMOTO: But those are tests to

determine intervention or instructional practices as

opposed to an IQ test that determines eligibility.

Are IQ tests in and of themselves helpful in

determining eligibility?

MS. SHAW: Again, we have to go by those

because that\'s the standard.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Well, no, I\'m ‑‑

MS. SHAW: Are they helpful? Many of them

with our kids because there are cognitive problems

and processing problems, they do not define really

what their IQ is. And so, I don\'t know exactly how

to answer your question.

MS. TAKEMOTO: I just need a yes or no.

Do you need an IQ test to determine LD eligibility in

your opinion?

MS. SHAW: In general as opposed to in

Florida under Florida\'s criteria ‑‑

MS. TAKEMOTO: No, no. I\'m not talking

about the law.

MS. SHAW: Okay. Right. You mean ‑‑

MS. TAKEMOTO: I\'m talking about practice

‑‑

MS. SHAW: Discrepancy modeling, I think,

I\'m sure you\'ve been hearing this, it\'s gone under

quite a bit of attack concern because of the fact

that you, in order to qualify, the child has to show

that they are not achieving to their abilities. So,

I would imagine that you would have a lot of children

who ended up not qualifying for SLD if they were

getting interventions without qualifying, that kept

them from failing or from achieving to their

abilities.

That doesn\'t necessarily mean that you

address all their needs because you\'re still, if

you\'re basing that on the discrepancy model, then you

still may be looking at that the child\'s got

something interfering with their full ability. But

you would potentially keep them from ever meeting

that criteria.

I have a student that\'s under evaluation

now for next year. And she did not qualify. She was

one of those that slipped through the cracks. She

had educators for parents, a grandmother that was a

specialist. And through second grade, that carried

her with her discrepancy between the achievement and

whatever.

So, she didn\'t qualify. She\'s at fifth

grade now and she is bombing big time because she

could only carry those initial skills so far. And

now that the body of knowledge has gotten so broad,

there is a huge discrepancy now in her learning and

her achievement because she\'s not able to keep up.

But she was unidentified child who at this point, you

know, we\'re evaluating to see if she qualifies.

But it is an issue. And all those things

that parents do to help their kids sometimes as far

as qualifying data does hurt them because they

intervene and they help them. And then, when the

test is given and then to get that re‑given when the

determination was made at one point is very

difficult.

MS. WHITESIDE: If you don\'t have

questions, I have one more comment to make after the

questions.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We have one more

question from Mr. Thomas Fleming. Yes, speak into

the microphone please.

MR. FLEMING: As I heard you talking, are

you talking about a diverse group of students? You

have diversity in your school?

MS. SHAW: It\'s extremely diverse.

MR. FLEMING: Okay. Then, one of the

things that I was interested in as I kind of heard

back and forth about the language model that you were

using, then you must have then kids that come from

the home with Ebonics as their major language.

MS. SHAW: Yes, sir.

MR. FLEMING: And so, what has been your

success in helping them to still respect their home

language but also how to include standard English

both to interpret reading, both to write

respectively, all of those things?

MS. SHAW: We pair our speech language

therapist with our reading teacher, and they do a lot

to make sure that the child is understood and that

language is understood. Then, she also goes into

classrooms. And when a term is used that that

teacher may not be accustomed to, then she also is

there to help that teacher understand.

A student that comes to mind is one that

gets some of his test given orally because he\'s

extremely bright but he is reading at a low level.

And then, his way of defining terms as he answers the

question, unless you take that in to consideration,

it may not appear that he knows what he\'s talking

about. But he\'s on target 99 percent of the time.

So, we utilize specialists who can also, because we

have 47 employees for our 135 kids, and so, we have a

tremendous resource of people to help.

MR. FLEMING: What role do parents have in

that?

MS. SHAW: Well, number one, parents have

to be involved for their kids to come to our school.

And many times, these are parents that have never

been involved, but they have to. Because it\'s a

charter school and it\'s a choice school, we\'re really

blessed because our parents have their kids there and

they are on board. We don\'t fuss with our parents.

We don\'t fight with our parents. Frustration

sometimes, sometimes we disagree but we have an

environment where we know these parents and their

children intimately.

And because we\'re small, all of us know

all of the kids. And so, the parents, it\'s not

unusual for us to pick up the phone once or twice a

day and talk to a parent if need be or for the parent

to be told this is something this child needs to do

at home. We have some young children, some of our

teenagers that are reading at a low level and part of

their homework assignment is, and because we\'re

paired with an elementary school, we have an

elementary library in our school, too.

So, their homework assignment is to go

checkout elementary library books and read them to

their younger siblings at home that night. So, the

parents have to be part of that plan. They have to

know that that child is going to sit and read aloud

to their younger brothers and sisters. So, they have

to be part and parcel to it.

Planners, because these kids are totally

disorganized human beings. They can\'t find anything

any time and they don\'t turn things in. I mean,

that\'s just part of, their disorganization is a big

trait for us. The parents have to sign planners.

You talk about high school kids, they have to sign

planners.

Wearing the uniform, the parents have to

make sure the kids come and that in and of itself, it

takes away a lot of the distractions that a high

school has. So, the parents are expected to

partnership in many ways. We have affairs, they\'re

expected to come help us.

Volunteerism, whatever we need them to do.

Some of them can\'t come, they\'re a part of the phone

chain that communicates to parents. So, whatever the

parents can do, that\'s what we ask them to do.

Next year we\'re implementing a plan where

we\'re actually going to have workshops for parents

and they can earn time by coming to the workshops

because we feel that if we educate the parents, then

we\'re going to reach the kids better. So, parents

are a necessity.

MR. FLEMING: I think I was kind of trying

to hear if you\'ve actually had any success stories.

When we\'re really talking about an issue like this

between home and school, have you had any

breakthroughs that are exceptional?

MS. SHAW: I\'ll go back to the 20‑year‑old

that\'s graduating this year. This young man has a

lot of fear. I mean, he\'s extremely afraid of

everything. And part of the reason I think he stayed

in school after four years in ninth grade was his

fear to do anything but go to school.

That father is a single parent. And we\'d

had, you know, we had almost a year with this child

where he sat and did nothing but draw. And that\'s

very frustrating for educators especially when you

got all these standards. But he came to school

everyday. I mean, he was there every single day. 40

days the year before this child was in school.

He has a lot of ability but he had given

up on himself. It was crucial that this father

become very involved and be available on the

telephone or whatever. There came a point at which I

even told this child you can\'t come back here if

you\'re going to sit and do nothing. And so, the

father had to be part of that, too, and had to agree

that if we had to go tough love, we had to go it.

After a few days, he called me up at 6:30

in the morning and said I want to come back to

school. I said, well, if you do, there will be a

contract and it will be stricter than everybody

else\'s. Okay, he\'s honored that from that day forth

and that was almost a year and a half ago. If that

father were not, typically and I have no doubts

because of this child being this child, this child

would be on the street or worse.

But because this father intervened,

because if he were in a regular high school when he

turned 18 and he had no achievement and he had failed

ninth grade four times, a dropout is assured. There

is no other option probably for this child. But

because this father said, and he found the school, he

said I\'ve got to find something. He found the

school, he brought his son here and then he worked to

do the steps that we needed to have done to make sure

that child came to school.

And you know, we\'ve got our fingers

crossed. He\'ll have one more chance to take the test

if he didn\'t pass it this time, but we hope to have

this young man walking down the aisle and graduating.

MR. FLEMING: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'re 15 minutes over

so I think we\'re going to have to cut it off. I want

to thank all of our panelists. You know, we have

lunch planned for the members of the Commission here

coming up and the room is going to be closed and

locked. This room will be closed and locked during

that period of time, so you can leave your stuff and

not have to worry about it.

But we will reconvene at 1:30. We are

going to reconvene at 1:30. So, we\'re going to

recess at this time. And again, I want to thank our

panelists. Thank you very much.

MS. WHITESIDE: Thank you for having us.

(Lunch recess.)

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: We\'ll reconvene the

President\'s Commission on Excellence in Special

Education.

We have a panel, another panel this

afternoon that will be focusing on Options for

Parental Involvement in Special Education Part VI.

Parochial schools play an important role in the

history of education in our nation. Many parents of

children with disabilities send their children to

religious‑affiliated private schools. These schools

face unique challenges in financing and providing

special education services for those students with

disabilities.

This panel consists of experienced private

school educators and administrators who will discuss

the current status of special education services and

make policy recommendations to better serve students

with disabilities in this setting. Our panelists

include Mary Ellen Russell, assistant secretary for

Catholic Schools Parental Rights Advocacy, United

States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Rabbi Ezra

Levy, administrator of the middle school of the

Kesher School.

I\'ll start with you, Mary Ellen.

MS. RUSSELL: Thank you. Thank you,

Governor Branstad and members of the Commission. We

are really very, very grateful to be here today for

this opportunity to speak to you about parentally

placed private school students under IDEA. I just

what to give you a little bit of context for our

comments to begin just by talking about the tradition

of the church in serving individuals with

disabilities of all ages. And especially to point

out that I think that the faith‑based community like

the Catholic Church often does do this in conjunction

with government agencies, whether it be health

services or housing services or many other services

in addition to education.

It\'s common to do that with government

agencies, and most especially in the area of

education since 1965, we\'ve worked with local

educational agencies in states to receive services

through the elementary and secondary education acts.

So, just to be conscious, I think, that this is a

very common partnership between us and government

agencies.

I think what organizations like the church

bring to this and I think what\'s been coming through

here is the fact that often we\'re doing this not

because of a legal requirement to do this but because

of what we consider it to be a moral obligation to

serve, in this instance, students with disabilities.

And I think we really share that commitment with

everybody here in the room today. And I think that\'s

what we\'re hoping to better facilitate through the

re‑authorization of IDEA.

I\'d like to just give you a little bit of

background about what Catholic schools specifically

are doing for students with special needs and we\'ve

provided you with some material in addition to our

remarks in your binder. There is an orange directory

of resources for special needs children in Catholic

schools. And essentially, we\'ve put that together to

try to help, for one point just to get at the mis‑

perception that Catholic schools don\'t provide

services to students with special needs.

By no means are we here to claim that

every single Catholic school can take every single

child that comes to them with a special need but

there really is a lot going on around the country

that we want to make sure that you\'re aware of it.

And we\'re actually trying to make our own school

community aware of and we\'re using this resource

directory as a resource for our own schools for

people to get in touch with each other and see what\'s

going on in our schools.

I would, for instance, bring your

attention to one program based in Virginia called the

Options Program at a Catholic high school in Northern

Virginia that accommodates about 12 students. I

think it\'s on page 121 in your directory. And for an

additional fee of only \$1800 dollars on top of the

regular tuition of \$6000 dollars, takes in students

with Down syndrome and has a peer mentoring program

with the students, provides some resources to the

students in the classroom, but really works very hard

to include those students in the regular school

program. And that kind of program is a really fine

example of things that are available.

You have a couple of brochures about

programs here in Florida as well, just to give you

some idea of the things that are going on here. One

of the things I also want to point out to you

especially about the programs in Florida is that two

of the programs, the Pax Christi High School program

and the St. Joseph program at St. Peter and Paul

School are new programs that had been developed

because of the existence of the McKay Scholarship

here in the State of Florida. And I think one of the

points we really want to drive home is that with

additional resources available to students in our

schools, we would be able to do so much more and it\'s

so quickly happening here in the State of Florida.

I\'d like to really address our issues

today, although not so much to the programs that

we\'re operating to, but to make some very specific

recommendations about the law itself and how it

serves or actually does not really serve to

parentally place students in private schools. And

you have some very specific recommendations that we

made in our, that we gave to you in our remarks.

Let me just lay out first of all to be

crystal clear here, we\'re talking about not students

that are placed by the local education agency in a

private school, not students that are placed in the

private school because the parents have an issue with

faith and they\'ve had a determination to be able to

place the child in private school. We\'re talking

about parents who on their own decide to forgo their

child\'s individual entitlement to special ed services

because they really want to have that child in a

private school. And that\'s the category under the

law called parentally placed private school students.

What IDEA will provide for these students

is a free evaluation. The student can go to the LEA

if there\'s a suspicion of a disability. And if

there\'s a determination of a disability, that child

will be eligible just for the federal portion of the

dollars. But there\'s no mandate that they would

receive services through state or local funding. The

state and local district can provide services with

their own funds, but essentially the child has

available to them about the 16.5‑17 percent of the

total cost of services.

Needless to say, that\'s a difficulty for a

parent who really cares, especially for a parent who

wants to have their child in a religious school

environment or whose other children are already

enrolled in a private school. Basically, if they go

to the LEA and the LEA says, yes, your child has a

disability, the LEA will then inform them, if you

want services, you can place your child in the public

school. Otherwise, we can provide you minimal

services with the federal portion of the dollars and

you\'ll have to assume the cost of services for your

child on your own otherwise.

I just want to outline where the situation

is for parentally placed private school students. A

couple of things about this. I think we\'re clear and

I think you will probably all agree with us that

politically it would be a very difficult thing to

say, we think that IDEA should mandate that every

single child should have services available to them

with state and local funds. We\'d love to see that

happen.

I think that the kinds of options that

we\'ve been hearing about would be wonderful to

encourage states to do. And if there\'s any way that

the law can make these things more possible, I think

that would be great. But we\'d like to just talk

about some of the interim suggestions we have for how

the parents and the families of children in private

schools could have better access to services through

IDEA.

One of the first issues that we\'re going

to talk about is funding and I promise you I\'m not

going to talk about amount of funding. Obviously,

the amount of funding, because that\'s all that\'s

available to private school students, is really

critical to us. But we have a concern with the

formula for the funding and how the funds are

generated to serve students in private schools who

are parentally placed.

What our suggestion is the funding is tied

to the number of students identified through the

child find process. We\'re suggesting that if there

was a disaggregation between that, if there was a

set‑aside amount of money of the federal funds put

aside for private school students based on assumed

percentage of students with disabilities in private

schools, that that would remove what we consider to

be a disincentive for the LEA to identify private

school students.

The problem is that if the LEA finds that

a private school child has a disability through the

child find process, they\'re going to lose money to

that child. And we have a couple of issues with the

whole child find process and how that works. So, our

suggestion is that the money be set aside and that

would make that whole process not as problematic to

ensure that there are at least those federal funds

definitely reserved for private school students.

The child find process itself as a part of

the reason we\'re suggesting this is that very often

our parents will tell us that there is, first of all,

enormous delay in even convincing the LEA to evaluate

a private school child. And then, very often once ‑‑

if you can get to the evaluation and have that

performed, that they\'ll come back and say there\'s no

disability often when the parents will then choose to

pay for a private evaluator and have the child

determined most definitely to have a disability. And

these are stories we hear quite frequently.

And I think essentially the problem with

that is that the whole child find process is oriented

toward the child in the public school system, whereas

if that process could be performed in the environment

of a private school child, I think there would be a

lot less difficulty in ensuring that the evaluation

was done with people who are familiar with that

child.

So, our other suggestion is that the law

allow for the evaluation of private school children

to be done by personnel in the private school;

certainly, obviously not at a greater cost than it

would be available to the private school child than

the public sector. But that the environment for the

private school child be part of the process for

determining, let me just give you a quick example for

instance.

One teacher who was in a county teaching

at a Catholic school in one county and switched to

public school in the county described the difference

between what happened if they referred a child for an

evaluation in the Catholic school and then what

happened when she was in the public school with her

children. She said that in the Catholic school, she

could refer the student. The parent would initiate

the process with the LEA.

Prior to even testing the child, the LEA

would suggest interventions for the child which may

have already been performed in the Catholic school.

She\'d never had a child tested before May, and the

next year, the whole process would begin all over

again for the child if the testing hadn\'t been done.

In the public school, she would report to a resource

teacher. On the premises of the public school, she

could refer the child right there.

Within a week, they would come in and

evaluate the child. Within two weeks, they\'d have

completed an evaluation and the school would initiate

interventions for the child immediately, just to give

you an example of the difference and how that would

work.

One last issue about funding just to point

out to you is that because the federal funds are so

important to serve private school students, we would

suggest that there be an explicit mandate in the law

that if a state does on their own provide funding to

private school students that they can\'t use the state

funding, to basically supplement and not supplant

state funding for private school students. And

actually the State of New Jersey has passed a law

which we attached to our testimony so that the IDEA

funds stay with the private school children

regardless of whether or not there\'s additional state

and local funding available to that child.

Finally, I just want to make a few points

about accountability in terms of reporting to be very

specific about that. We provided you with a chart of

the numbers that are reported through IDEA on the

private school children that are served through IDEA.

You can see how incredibly low that percentage is

very often.

What we\'re suggesting is, I\'ve referred

earlier to it, assume percentage of students with

disabilities in private school. That number is very,

very difficult to get at. And if there were a

requirement to report the number of students

referred, identified and served, since private school

children generally are not going to be served through

IDEA, we\'d have a much better reflection of what\'s

going on when, at least in terms of the experience of

private school children in the child find process. I

just wanted to point those figures out to you.

We seriously, looking at these numbers,

for instance, I know in the State of Pennsylvania

that there\'s probably a much higher number of

students being served. So, there\'s a real difficulty

in the reporting requirements for the participation

of private school students in IDEA. And also, I

think it would be important that during federal

monitoring, when the federal government comes to

monitor the state compliance with IDEA, that it be a

requirement that private school representatives be

included in that reporting so that we also would have

access to information in that way.

I think finally to conclude, I just want

to make a final point about what we\'ve been talking

about over and over again here in terms of parental

choice. To say, just to report to you one of the

stories that we hear so often when it is finally

successful that a parent, especially a parent with a

child say with Down syndrome or a fairly severe

disability is included in a Catholic school. One of

the things we haven\'t heard a lot about today is what

that does to the rest of the children in the families

in that school. And so often they report to us that

the presence of that child in the school transforms

the whole school community.

Many parents will come up and thank the

child with disability for the fact that their child

is there. And I think that that is because or that

happens most often when there\'s a real match between

the school saying yes, we want your child and the

parent saying this is where I want my child. I think

that\'s so important to parents and I don\'t think

that\'s, you know, we have the corner on that market

in private schools. I think it\'s the very same thing

for a parent who could choose a public school.

I think they\'re looking for people like

Mr. Kurz. They want to know that the person in

charge cares that their child is there and welcomes

their child in the school. And that\'s where

successful things start to happen. And I think

that\'s what we\'re really trying to accomplish by

providing greater flexibility through IDEA for all

students no matter where they\'re going to school.

So, thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Rabbi, it\'s your turn.

RABBI LEVY: Thank you. Hi, my name is

Ezra Levy. I\'d like to thank the Commission for

allowing me to testify before them today.

I\'ll share just a little bit about myself.

I am an educator. I have been with the program since

its inception seven years ago. My master\'s is in

special ed. I am working toward my doctorate in Nova

Southeastern University in education. And I run two

Sunday programs for the Orloff Central Agency of

Jewish Education in Broward County that also work

with special needs children.

Kesher was found seven years ago. It\'s a

private non‑profit organization and the Jewish

community in South Florida had gone together to come

up with a program that will help and work with Jewish

special needs children so that they wouldn\'t have to

go to a public school if they weren\'t making it in

the current day school setting.

The original group had educators,

administrators, parents and psychologists. After

observing models throughout the country, they came up

with the model that we now use in Kesher. I\'ll speak

about it a little bit later.

My idea that I was coming here was to talk

a little bit about the program, and one of the

reasons is that we accept McKay Scholarship and it

has been beneficial for many of our families. Our

first class began in 1995. We had only five

students. We were housed in Hebrew Academy, Miami

Beach. And currently, seven years later, we are

housed in the Samuel Shekel Community Day School.

We have 77 students. From pre‑school

through grade 10, we have 11 classrooms. The Hilo

School is our host. We do not pay them rent. This

is by their graces. We are allowed to include our

higher level students into their classes with our

special ed support.

We are happy with the relationship. We

are going to try to build with them as they build

their next set of buildings. We will try to build

with them so that we will eventually have 16

classrooms plus therapy rooms because we are finding

that Hilo is allowing us to actually have our special

ed grades in the same area of the school where their

grades are. So, our children are not relegated to a

side of the campus or a back of the campus. We are

totally integrated.

Our families have chosen to send our

students to us because we are a Jewish program and

because of the Jewish environment of the school. Our

students pray with the Hilo School students, many of

them. They attend the assemblies and lunch and field

trips. And this would be true for our higher

functioning students as well as our lower functioning

students. These are abilities that we have because

of the whole school.

In addition to teaching about the Jewish

holidays, we teach the full gamut of secular studies,

language, arts, math, science, history, all taught

individually, all taught on different levels based on

academic needs. And we also teach our children

organizational skills, study skills and life skills.

We do firmly believe in the least restrictive

environment and our philosophy is also that every

Jewish child deserves a Jewish education.

Being hosted by this mainstream school

allows our students to go to school with their

friends, families and their neighbors. They don\'t

have to go to a separate school as was the case

before the Kesher Program was started. They would

have to go to public school while all their friends

and families were still going to day schools.

Our middle and high school does have an

inclusion program, and our special ed teachers and

assistants go with our students into the mainstream

class to help the students. They modify the

curriculum when needed and they also act as co‑

teachers. We have a co‑teaching model with the

special educator which is our teacher and the regular

educator from the Hilo School in the classroom. And

we do training when necessary together and we do try

to plan together.

We do have a wide range of

exceptionalities in the program. All the students

are special needs and the disabilities include Down

syndrome, learning and development disabilities,

autism, pervasive developmental disorders and other

related disabilities such as Asberger\'s.

Part of the reason that we are successful

is because of our staff. We have a very small

teacher/adult‑student ratio. We have a three to one

student to staff person ratio.

All our teachers are certified whether by

the State of Florida for the secular teachers or by

the local Central Agency for Jewish Education for our

Judeo studies teachers. They either all hold

master\'s degrees or are in the process of getting

their master\'s degrees. In addition, most of our

assistants have their bachelor\'s degrees in

educational or related field. We also have part‑time

on‑staff guidance counselors and different therapists

such as speech language and occupational therapy.

For our lower functioning students, we do

have a life skills track. We are in the midst of

creating a life skills lab where they\'ll be taught

daily living skills. We\'re also trying to work out

something where they can have community based

instruction. As they get older, lower functioning

students can go out to the workplace and actually get

job skills.

The families as we are in host school pay

tuition to us. As our higher level students are able

to be mainstreamed with the regular classes, we

recommend to the host school to take them on as half‑

day students and we have had cases where we\'ve been

successful because of our model that our higher level

students have actually been able to be fully

mainstreamed back into the regular host school with

whatever academic support the host school can

provide.

The McKay Scholarship, ‑‑ offer seven

years way before the scholarship is handed out. We

currently have ten students who participate in the

scholarship. These students, the parents have told

us, would not be in our program without the

scholarship.

Just one short story, it really touched my

heart. We have a student who I\'ve known for years

now even when he was in the public school. He came

to visit our school, he is with us with a McKay

Scholarship. He is a little bit lower functioning,

he\'s 14 years old. But he decided on his own he only

wanted to eat Kosher food. Even the parents told him

that it would be difficult in the public school.

He decided he would only eat food he

brought from home. Parties, special things, he

didn\'t want. And he would only eat things he brought

from home, nothing ever brought into class would he

eat. When he came around our program, and at that

point, the parents didn\'t even know that they were

eligible for a McKay Scholarship which they found

that they were and they are receiving, he was in awe,

shocked that he could eat food on the school campus,

that he could partake in parties with his friends in

school. And that was a big thing for him and I was

touched that, I mean, even the snack machine, he was

saying, because the kids are allowed the snack

machine twice a day, he was just amazed that this was

allowed. And the parents are thrilled what he\'s been

able to do in our program.

We do write yearly IEP\'s for our students.

We do take a look at their goals that come from the

public school setting. We do add to them and we do

mark off whether or not they\'ve been mastered. Our

children do get report cards, the report cards are

through the host school system and we do mark the

modifications that we give to the students such as

oral test taking or the longer test time on the

report card.

Just a couple of recommendations if

possible, not necessarily for the McKay Scholarship

though, for programs possibly similar to it. We

would like to see if possible, because we see the

success with the students that we have who have been

able to come from a public school setting, I would

personally actually like to see a similar program

like this throughout the country that students with

these needs can get and can make their choice and

come to the school that their parents deem fit for

them.

We are fortunate, and I would be proud to

say this, that over the two years, all of our

students that we\'ve had come into the program on the

McKay Scholarship, none of them have left. They are

still with us. As far as we know, they are still

registering for next year.

We\'d like to see the scholarship age

expanded though. We find the early childhood and

early intervention is a big plus. We find that when

you catch a disability at a young age, you tend to

get much farther with them as you work with them as

time goes on. And if possible, we\'ve seen students

be ‑‑ at earlier ages out of the special ed system

with the skills that they need to go into regular ed.

So, if possible, I would like to see our students\'

ability coming in to the program at a much younger

age. I believe the current age is first grade.

To close, the McKay Scholarship really

does give the parents the choice of a religious

school setting for their children. Our parents are

all with us because of the scholarship. And they

wouldn\'t be with us today with the tuition that the

scholarship provides. Now, as the scholarship really

doesn\'t come close to covering the actual cost, it

still gives the parents the ability to make that

choice even if there are actually financial means

coming from their own pocket.

They choose our school because of the

Jewish environment. And we do actually have doctors

and psychologists coming to us and visiting our

program and recommending us to their patients, that

we are the program that can help their patients and

fulfill their academic needs.

I\'d like to end with the sentiment that I

would personally love it if there were programs such

as the McKay Scholarship available to students in

schools, private and religious, throughout the

country. We are able to help many more students

because of the scholarship.

And something that really hit me

yesterday, and this is a really private note, I was

listening yesterday to the amount of students

currently on the McKay Scholarship and I heard there

are about 5,000. We only have ten in our school. I

also understand that they have to be in the school

setting for a year before the parents are given the

ability to make the choice. And just from my own

understanding of the way the scholarship works, the

student needs to be in the setting and I believe a

certain amount of goals have not been met on the IEP

to prove that certain needs of the students weren\'t

met. That\'s my understanding and I called this

morning to make sure that I was accurate.

There are a couple of goals that haven\'t

been met during that year and that is when the parent

gets to make that choice. I would only hope that, I

mean, I think that 5,000 students times a year of

lost education for a special needs student is a lot

of time in the student\'s life. If the parent is

going to get that choice anyway, I would love to see

that ability happen from when the student is

diagnosed with the disability and not having to make

the parent and the student wait a year and possibly a

year of goals not being met.

I want to thank you very much for inviting

me and allowing me to testify before you. The truth

is it is an honor for me. And thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Are there questions?

Yes. Adela Acosta is first. Adela.

MS. ACOSTA: Thank you for your testimony.

I just wanted to ask the representative from the

Catholic school. I just want some clarity. And I

haven\'t had time to read your brochure yet, but

having been a principal of a Catholic school, I, too,

struggled with not only maintaining the Catholicity

of the school but also with the issue of

accessibility. We have, today we\'re talking about

parental choice and I just wanted just to be clear if

you accept children, are you suggesting that you

take, the child\'s money go with the child to the

Catholic school, is that correct? Is that what

you\'re saying?

MS. RUSSELL: I think I said actually two

things. I think we\'re asking that there be more

flexibility with the way parents are allowed to use

their federal funds, the proportionate amount of

federal funds. Whether or not we can ask the

Commission to recommend or Congress to mandate that

states and local governments provide the same amount

of funding to children in private schools that they

would if the child were in a public school I think is

a separate question.

And I think that the McKay Scholarship, I

mean, in other words, if there were a way for the law

to allow states to do that, I mean, it allows states

to do it now, but to encourage states to do that

especially if it\'s not going to be more expensive

than to place the child in a public school that, and

actually, it\'s not so much that the funds would go to

the school but that the services would be provided at

the expense of the local school district in the

private school.

MS. ACOSTA: You mean, the private school

then would have the responsibility of more providing

data for accountability?

MS. RUSSELL: The same, I mean, I think

we\'ve talked about the issue of accountability. I

think the private school would follow the same

procedures they do already for being accountable to

their parents or whatever state regulations are in

place as well.

MS. ACOSTA: And how about low matrix

children, how are they processed into the Catholic

school system? I guess having been in the system, at

least in my small view, in order to come into the

private school system, you have to pass the reading

test, you have to pass the math test, you have to be

accepted as a student. What happens to, how do I

recommend a private school setting to parents when,

you know, the criteria for entrance is so stringent

to begin with?

MS. RUSSELL: Not all Catholic schools

have entrance requirements. You know, they try to

accommodate as many students as they can regardless

of the, you know, academic requirements. And I think

what we\'re trying to point out is that more and more

Catholic schools are doing everything they can to

accommodate the students.

I want to apologize for not introducing

Patricia Hernandez who\'s a teacher here in a Catholic

school and she may be able to specifically talk, if

you would like her to answer that question about how

that\'s ‑‑

MS. HERNANDEZ: Good afternoon. I\'m a

special education coordinator for the Archdiocese in

Miami. I work at St. Agatha Catholic School

presently and also the Pax Christi High School.

In reference to the children being, the

criteria to be entered into the program, the

archdiocese, each of the schools that have decided to

serve these students and design the program according

to how what they would like to do at their school.

It begins there. And then, once that school decides

that program, they set the criteria. So, in essence,

when that child from the public school comes to that

private Catholic school, they have to meet the

criteria of that school.

In essence, I think the Catholic school

perspective is that we want to make sure that we can

serve that student. And so, we have our criteria

that they must meet first to enter into the program.

And that criteria obviously is not the one of the

school. It\'s individualized for the type of program.

It\'s designed around the type of program that that

school wants to incorporate in that school.

MS. ACOSTA: How much training, what kind

of training do your teachers have to provide special

education services?

MS. HERNANDEZ: What we would require is

that the teacher have a special education background,

like myself. My bachelor\'s is in special education

and I\'m certified by the State of Florida to teach

children from K to 12 with different disabilities.

So, we require that the teacher is certified by the

State of Florida and has completed either a

bachelor\'s or a master\'s and/or higher in that field.

MS. ACOSTA: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Jack Fletcher.

MR. FLETCHER: I have two questions. The

first one is for Rabbi Levy. And I was very

interested in your comment about the possibility of a

program like the McKay Scholarship for every child at

the time of diagnosis, correct? Did I understand you

correctly?

RABBI LEVY: Yes.

MR. FLETCHER: I wonder if you\'d thought

about how much that would actually cost.

RABBI LEVY: Well, my understanding is

that currently, the children have a one year in the

school system before they are allowed to make that

choice. The diagnoses are already made at this point

through the school system or through a private

psychologist. So, I don\'t know the number, I would

assume it would just be one, it would be the same

amount of money. My assumption on the McKay

Scholarship ‑‑ yesterday was that it\'s the amount of

money following the child.

MR. FLETCHER: Right. It\'s about \$5800

dollars per student, correct?

RABBI LEVY: Well, I think for the lower

matrix, yes. So, I don\'t know that it would cost any

more money. The child would just get to make that

choice earlier.

MR. FLETCHER: But your recommendation

essentially would make it available to any child

served through IDEA, correct?

RABBI LEVY: Correct.

MR. FLETCHER: Okay. So, how much money

would that be?

RABBI LEVY: \$5800 dollars per year per

student.

MR. FLETCHER: Times 6.2 million. The

math is \$3.4 trillion dollars.

RABBI LEVY: Okay. Let\'s ‑‑

MR. FLETCHER: 6.2 million times \$5800, ‑‑

one of our finance people.

RABBI LEVY: You know, that would also

hold true, I guess, then for the recommendation to

make it available for students throughout the

country. That would be, yes, it would be quite

costly but I don\'t think it would be extra money. I

believe the money, from what I understand, it\'s

already being spent on these students in the public

school system. It is not extra money from my

understanding. It\'s just moving it from the public

school back to follow the student to where the parent

chooses, my understanding.

MR. FLETCHER: My second question is for

any of you, and it\'s something that I just don\'t

understand, maybe you can help me understand. And

that is that if you take what is essentially public

money, why wouldn\'t you participate in the same

accountability system that public school children

would be required to participate in?

RABBI LEVY: Can I try? Can I? I\'m

sorry.

MR. FLETCHER: Sure.

RABBI LEVY: I think with regard to the

Kesher Program, at least I think we are, we have been

approved to participate in the regional accreditation

process through SACS.

MR. FLETCHER: No, I\'m talking about FCAT.

RABBI LEVY: Our students take the SAT\'s

or the FCAT\'s ‑‑

MR. FLETCHER: FCAT, they take the FCAT.

RABBI LEVY: Right. And our students

currently are taking the SAT\'s which are our similar

measurements. There are some of our students

actually who went to the, a couple of weeks ago when

they took the testing went to the public school to

take the FCAT\'s.

MR. FLETCHER: All of your students take

the FCAT?

RABBI LEVY: No. No, all of our included

students take the SAT though.

MR. FLETCHER: But not the FCAT?

RABBI LEVY: Not the FCAT, no.

MS. HERNANDEZ: Excuse me, may I? I know

that in the children that we have registered, the

state of course sends them the mailing that they can

participate in the FCAT ‑‑ and the students haven\'t

chosen to participate. And I\'ve actually encouraged

it. As far as the Catholic schools, we require the

children to have standardized testing and our special

education students are included in that.

So, we choose, for example, the Iowa Test

of Basic Skills and they do receive that. And also,

we have additional testing, Woodcock‑Johnson Test of

Achievement that we also document their progress in.

And obviously, those are known reference tests.

MR. FLETCHER: Do they take these tests

with accommodations?

MS. HERNANDEZ: Yes, they do, time. In

other words, accommodations according to IDEA have to

be based on need. And at least the students that I

have in this program, what they have needed is just

more time to complete that exam.

MS. RUSSELL: The only thing I would, I

mean, that\'s typical nationally, all students in

Catholic schools take national standardized tests.

But I think another issue for students in private

schools taking state tests which does occur in many

states around the country is the cost of the testing.

That would be an additional cost to the public school

system to test all of those other students as well.

So, that would have to be addressed.

MR. FLETCHER: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Bryan Hassel.

MR. HASSEL: Just to continue on that

issue, you described the situation in your schools

but why would you say your students should not be

required to participate in state assessments if they

are in fact the beneficiaries of public funds? What

argument would you make aside from the cost? Let\'s

say we could solve that problem, what substantive

argument would you make that they should not be

required to participate?

MS. RUSSELL: I think probably the same

answer that probably several other people have made

is that I think we\'re trying to apply an

accountability system for a system rather than for an

individual school that\'s accountable to the people

and the school that it serves. I mean, when we look

at accountability, period, I think what we\'re asking

is why do we, who do we ultimately want to be

accountable to and who is the end user of the

program. And that would be the parents and the

children.

And I think that it\'s pretty clear from

what we can say about our own schools anyway that

parents know very much about their, you know, what

the benchmarks are and how their child is doing in

order to reach those benchmarks. And I think that\'s

even something that\'s been added to the No Child Left

Behind Act is that there\'s the requirement that

parents have individual information about their

children. So, I think that\'s really what our

response would be to where the accountability lies.

RABBI LEVY: I don\'t know that there\'s a

problem or that I\'d be against a student taking an

FCAT. If the student of this level of disability

would be taking it in the public school, I would have

no problem taking it in the private school. We

simply give the SAT\'s because that\'s what\'s given.

The tests are very similar for the higher level

students.

But if this level of assessment was given

to this level of special needs students in the public

school, I\'d have no problem giving the same level of

test to the child in the private school.

MR. HASSEL: I\'ve also got a couple of

questions about the funding that you receive or that

you benefit from. The allocation that\'s generated

for students in your schools, federal allocation, do

you receive those funds or do you receive services

that are funded with that money?

MS. RUSSELL: We receive services.

Generally, there would never be direct money going to

the school.

MR. HASSEL: Is that, do you find that to

be a satisfactory arrangement? Do you think that the

services provided match what the students need? Is

that a satisfactory way to do it?

MS. RUSSELL: Currently, there are, I

would say, very minimal services being provided to

private school children through IDEA. It\'s

completely inadequate to what the need of the child

is. And that\'s because there\'s only the

proportionate amount of the federal funds available.

Generally, there will be a decision at the

county level to say, okay, we have X number of

students that have been identified through a process

that we\'re saying I don\'t really does get to the real

number of students in private schools with

disabilities. And then, they\'ll have to decide,

well, there\'s one child here who could actually, if

they were to get the full amount of services they

need, use up all that money or will only provide

speech or will only provide, you know. And that\'s

the optimal situation generally, unless the local or

state government decides to provide services in

addition with their own funds.

MR. HASSEL: And how do you propose that

the presumed percentage be calculated?

MS. RUSSELL: I think that that\'s a very

good question. I mean, one simply could, I mean we

can do, we are trying to survey right now in Catholic

schools the number of students with disabilities.

The problem is that there are a lot of students in

the schools that aren\'t diagnosed. So, we have to

first, I think, say who do we mean by a child with

disabilities? Is it a child with an IEP? Students

in private schools don\'t have IEP\'s necessarily.

I would suggest that we could simply begin

by saying it\'s less than the total percentage in

public schools. It would be higher where there are

services available to the children in private

schools. So, I mean, let\'s start with that as the

top benchmark, the percentage of students with

disabilities in public schools and work down to a

reasonable number from there based on what data we

can collect that we can rely on about that number of

students.

The assumed proportionality way of doing

that is also something that\'s included in the No

Child Left Behind Act right now for the Title I

program. You can assume a proportionate number of

poor children in private schools based on the

percentage of children in the public schools. So,

it\'s something that\'s been used before in federal

law.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Katie Wright. Or

Rabbi, did you want to respond?

RABBI LEVY: If I can?

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Go ahead, you respond,

I\'m sorry.

RABBI LEVY: Just regarding the funds,

through the McKay Scholarship, we do receive the

actual funds that are sent to the parents and then

sent back to the school. And many of our students do

participate in the MedicAid Waiver Program where

those are actually not funds but services that are

given from the government to the children directly in

the MedicAid Waiver.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Okay, Katie, your

turn.

MS. WRIGHT: Mr. Chair, most of my

questions have been answered. But I think I\'m

missing something. I didn\'t find in the literature

in my briefing book, I guess maybe the others have

it, I don\'t know. I don\'t have literature. I don\'t

know where your school is located. Where is it

located?

RABBI LEVY: It\'s located here in North

Miami Beach, Florida.

MS. WRIGHT: Okay.

RABBI LEVY: The reason, from my

understanding is that our offices were asked to send

in our recommendations and not the actual

presentation, but I do have a copy.

MS. WRIGHT: No, I don\'t mean the

presentation so much but something about the school.

And I think maybe you said it but I forgot, how many

kids there are and how many teachers.

RABBI LEVY: I would be happy ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: And well, I found that

somebody asked your accredits to school and what

else? Tuition, you have tuition and is it just for

Jewish kids or just what?

RABBI LEVY: Okay. First, we are here in

North Miami Beach, Florida. We are a local program.

We have currently 77 students. We have been approved

to go through the ‑‑

MS. WRIGHT: How many children?

RABBI LEVY: 77 students.

MS. WRIGHT: 7‑7?

RABBI LEVY: 7‑7. We have been approved

to go through the accreditation process through SACS

which is a big plus for us. The tuition ‑‑ if I\'m

not mistaken is a little over \$16,000 dollars. What

was your other question?

MS. WRIGHT: You have scholarship

programs, that was the McKay?

RABBI LEVY: Yes. Yes, well, we have

obviously a large budget because of our low ratio and

we have a very aggressive fund‑raising program

actually run by our president in the audience today.

MS. WRIGHT: And this school is just for

Jewish kids? Because it\'s a religious school, is

that true?

RABBI LEVY: No, children who are non‑

Jewish are willing to apply and come to the school.

We have had children who aren\'t Jewish come and look

through the program. Generally, the parents of

special needs children who aren\'t Jewish aren\'t

interested in the program because we do a lot of

Jewish education and Hebrew and Hebrew reading and

prayers. And they find that this might be too much

academically for their student to handle.

They are definitely welcome to apply.

They are definitely welcome to come in. And it\'s the

parent\'s choice.

MS. WRIGHT: Have you ever had any black

kids to apply to come to the school? I just wonder.

RABBI LEVY: I don\'t know. I don\'t know.

MS. WRIGHT: You haven\'t seen any there,

have you?

RABBI LEVY: No. I haven\'t seen any.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Thank you, Katie. Bob

Pasternack.

MR. PASTERNACK: I\'ve been quietly

listening for the last couple of days, so I\'m just

going to ask a couple of quick questions I think just

to see if I can get a perspective on a couple of

things.

Apart from the choice issue, what\'s the

fundamental difference between what you provide to

kids with disabilities and what a public school would

provide to a kid with disabilities?

MS. HERNANDEZ: Can you repeat that?

MR. PASTERNACK: Apart from the choice

issue, what is the fundamental difference in what you

provide to children with disabilities and what a

public school would provide to a student with a

disability?

MS. HERNANDEZ: A very good question.

Most of the parents, I think that from the parent\'s

perspective I can answer that. What we offer is

first and foremost the religious, the Catholic

environment which the parents so much yearn for.

Also, they receive low teacher to student ratio. I

know a lot of parents have had difficulty in the

public school system simply because there\'s one

special education teacher serving many more children

than she should at one time. That\'s the second

thing, so, a low teacher to student ratio.

And finally, the third thing is that by

our nature, we\'re designing the programs to have a

strict criteria. So, in essence, in this classroom,

let\'s say, there\'s children with similar disabilities

as opposed to varying exceptionalities class which is

very popular in the public sector where it\'s

difficult for that teacher to meet the needs of so

many diverse children with so many diverse

disabilities.

So, I think, at least in this program at

St. Agatha and in the Pax Christi High School, those

are the three factors that the parents will receive

there that they are not receiving in the public

schools.

MR. PASTERNACK: Given the last issue that

you raised, tell us a little bit about the

categorical nature of the programs that you provide

so that I can understand the specialization that you

were just referring to.

MS. HERNANDEZ: Well, special education is

basically based on serving the child\'s needs. And

from the teacher\'s perspective, you have to make the

environment so that you can do that. And I stress

that to the parents that come to the school, if we

promise something, we have to deliver it. And the

service to that student ‑‑

MR. PASTERNACK: I\'m sorry, just in the

interest of time, I think you may have misunderstood

my question. The third reason, if I understood you

correctly, was the difference between what you

provide and what we provide to students with

disabilities in public schools across the country and

we\'re responsible for about six and a half million

kids that we\'re talking about now in terms of the

system view that we\'re trying to take.

If I heard you correctly, I believe you

told us that the kind of program that you have is

specialized and serves one type of student with

disability as opposed to what we would describe as a

cross‑categorical program, right, program that serves

a number of kids with disabilities. So, tell us

about the kinds of kids with disabilities that you

are uniquely serving or especially serving as opposed

to the cross‑categorical kind of program you think

goes on in most public schools.

MS. HERNANDEZ: It depends on the school,

the Catholic school, the program they\'ve designed.

But this one is learning disabled. So, those are the

children that we\'re serving and we\'re not serving

children that maybe have emotional needs and

disorders, physical, severely physical handicaps and

so forth. And in ‑‑ classroom in the public schools,

you would find that mix.

MR. PASTERNACK: So, the parents that come

to you who have, the kids with those types of

disabilities, you would not serve them?

MS. HERNANDEZ: The criteria is that the

child would be two years behind in their achievement

based on a learning processing difficulty.

MR. PASTERNACK: And do the teachers that

work in your settings have special training?

MS. HERNANDEZ: Yes. They are certified

to teach, the State of Florida certifies you in

special education and then you have to pick your area

of emphasis. So, it would be learning disabilities,

they have that, and certified from K to 12.

MR. PASTERNACK: And if I understood the

discussion that we were having earlier, if kids in

parochial schools don\'t take the FCAT and kids in

public schools do take the FCAT, isn\'t it

fundamentally unfair to compare the kids who get

diplomas from the public schools with the kids who go

to your schools?

MS. HERNANDEZ: We meet state standards,

actually we met with the county public schools and we

make sure that we are meeting the state standards to

fulfill those requirements for graduation.

MR. PASTERNACK: Okay. And I guess, thank

you very much and I have lots more questions but I

won\'t go much further.

I\'m curious, Rabbi, I read Hebrew and I\'m

curious about the incidence of kids with dyslexia who

come to your school and whether you notice that some

kids may not be able to read English, yet are they

able to read Hebrew?

RABBI LEVY: The reason, we find that

there are children that do have, believe it or not,

an easier time reading Hebrew than English. I don\'t

know that it has to do with their dyslexia. I do

believe the reason is because the Hebrew language is

fully phonetic and there are no tricky rules and

there are no instances where this is not exactly what

it appears to be. It is a phonetic language, the

letters always make the same sound even when they are

blended. The vowels make the same sounds when they

are together with the letters.

And that\'s really what, this is really the

difficulty that many, many students have with reading

and you start with whole language because the

phonetic rules are very difficult for students and

whole language is the way that students could begin

to learn. Hebrew doesn\'t have so many phonetic

rules. This is what it is, you put it together. So,

yes, I would think there are ‑‑ some of the students

who have difficulty reading English and not having

such a difficulty reading Hebrew.

MR. PASTERNACK: And finally, Mr.

Chairman, just one last question to all of you.

What\'s the lesson learned from your schools that you

think would help improve the results for students

with disabilities that are being served in public

schools?

MS. RUSSELL: I think I would go back to

my concluding remarks about that. I don\'t think that

what we\'re offering necessarily is better than what

public school is offering all the time. I think

whether it\'s a public school or a private school, the

program for the child seems to be most successful

when the parent and child feel convinced that that\'s

the place that they want to be, that the program

hasn\'t been imposed on them and that their child

hasn\'t been imposed on the program.

And I think that can happen anywhere, but

parents knowing that they have that choice to make, I

think, really is a contributing factor to a

successful program.

MS. HERNANDEZ: I would re‑emphasize the

teacher to student ratio. Also, the category like

you expressed, controlling the criteria of the

children being served at one time by that teacher.

And very close parental involvement.

MR. PASTERNACK: And Rabbi?

RABBI LEVY: I promise to be short but can

I answer in two parts? I\'d like to answer the

academic first. I believe we are a better program

academically. Maybe I\'m biased but our teachers are

all certified. We do have very small ratios and we

give all the academic subjects that the mainstream

students get on our students\' level.

I believe one of the bigger benefits that

we have as a school is the religious aspect though.

Our students choose our school because they want the

other students to identify with the religious

background, with their friends and neighbors that

they grew up with and the religion that the parent

has chosen for the child. So, from both points, I\'d

like to ‑‑

MR. PASTERNACK: Well, I guess, I\'m just

troubled by the fact that Utah has the largest pupil‑

teacher ratio in general education and the largest

pupil‑teacher ratio in special education, yet some of

the best results. And the California Class Reduction

Initiative that they just conducted did not yield the

kinds of results that you guys think might be

attributable to a small class size.

So, I think this is not the forum to have

the discussion about the role of class size or the

impact of class size, but as people who are

considering policy issues, I\'m just curious about the

differences and the lessons learned and how they

would apply to the larger numbers of students. I

understand the choice issue and I respect what you\'re

telling us about that and I just wondered if there

might be anything above and beyond that.

And I\'m hearing, if I could just

paraphrase and I want to make sure I\'m being accurate

here, the selectivity of your admission criteria is

one issue. And parental involvement, is that

something that you mandate? Do parents have to be

involved or you kick their kids out?

MS. HERNANDEZ: No, at least in the

program we\'re at. I think that just by the nature of

it, when we constantly have quarterly meetings, when

we are constantly communicating about the child\'s

progress, the parent is always up to date on what\'s

going on with that child, just that constant report

on the child\'s progress, I think.

But going back to the teacher to student

ratio of Utah, you made a very good point. Again, I

think that category is a big issue. I have

colleagues in the public school system and one of the

biggest differences that we find between my

experience and theirs is that we\'ve set it up so that

it\'s almost achievable when you can serve that child

and what they feel with the paperwork and also with

these VE classrooms is that it\'s so difficult just to

meet the needs of each of those children when you

have a child that consumes you because they have much

more severe needs that need to be addressed at that

moment. Or there\'s a child with a learning

processing difficulty which is not being addressed at

that time.

MR. PASTERNACK: So, we\'re talking about

the quality of the teacher that you have in your

program contrasted with the quality of teachers that

work in public schools?

MS. HERNANDEZ: No, not at all. The

quality of the teacher is the same. It\'s the

circumstance the teacher has to deal with is

different. My students, their needs are similar.

MR. PASTERNACK: So, this homogeneity in

the groupings that you have in your school as opposed

to the heterogeneity in the groupings that we are

faced with in public school?

MS. HERNANDEZ: Exactly, and the self‑

contained classes. Now, when you refer to the

pullout classes, there the difference would be that,

we find, and again my colleagues in the public school

system where the pullout classes where they just see

them for maybe an hour or two, that serves a very,

you know, it\'s documented and researched that that

serves very few of those children. They don\'t make

the gains. They\'re in that classroom for maybe two

hours of the day, then they return to the regular

classroom for the rest of the time.

So, I know that those two different

settings have, you know, two sets of problems. The

self‑contained class, because of the multi‑

categories, and then the pullout, because they\'re

served only for maybe one or two hours a day.

MR. PASTERNACK: I\'ll stop there, Mr.

Chairman. Thank you all very much.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: I think we\'re going to

have to cut it off because we\'ve ‑‑

MR. FLEMING: Was it Jay\'s turn again?

MR. BARTLETT: No, I think it was my turn

this time.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: No, it\'s not this

time. Well, you take care of that, Steve. I\'m going

to have to go. I\'m going to have to catch a plane

back to Iowa.

MR. FLETCHER: May I correct the record

please, Mr. Chair? The math figure that I gave out

should not have been three and a half trillion

dollars. It\'s about 36 billion dollars. In doing

so, I\'d like to note that I\'m a product of the Gascon

County School System up in North Florida and a

graduate of the University of Florida.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: Well, you know, it\'s

all about true confessions, I guess.

MR. FLETCHER: And I\'m a member of the

finance task force. If only we\'d had the FCAT when

I\'d gone to school.

CHAIRMAN BRANSTAD: This whole thing can

be a very humbling experience. Again, I want to

thank our panelists and thank all of you. And I want

to ask Steve Bartlett to assume the chair as I\'m

going to have to catch a plane. But thank you all

very much. And we\'re going to have just a five‑

minute break, and then the next panel will take over.

(Off the record.)

MR. BARTLETT: Commissioners, please take

your seats. We\'re going to reconvene in one minute.

Would staff please step outside the door to ask

Commissioners to come in the room? Without

objection, the Chair would ask that one additional

question be posed to the representatives of the

Catholic schools here who were here at the previous

panel. Mary Jane Russell is still in the room. And

we\'ll pose this in writing and keep the record open.

The question is how many mentally retarded

students and/or Down syndrome students are enrolled

in Catholic schools either nationally or here in

Florida. There seems to be some misunderstanding or

some lack of knowledge on the part of the Commission

and we\'d like to keep that in the record if we could.

Ms. Russell, for the record, if you could

just follow up on it in written communication. Some

members of the Commission would like to know how many

mentally retarded and/or Down syndrome students are

enrolled in Catholic schools either nationally or in

the State of Florida.

MS. RUSSELL: I mentioned we are

conducting a survey right now about that. As soon as

those results are available, we\'ll have that ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: How long would that take?

MS. RUSSELL: Well, before your report.

It should be done by the beginning of June, we\'re

hoping to have those numbers. And it\'s on a sampling

of Catholic schools in the country.

MR. BARTLETT: Could we have it before May

15?

MS. RUSSELL: Before, I\'ll try, I\'ll check

with the, we\'re having someone conduct the survey.

By May 15?

MR. BARTLETT: If we could just get an

estimate by May 15 it would be very important to us.

MS. RUSSELL: Sure, we\'ll get you that.

MR. BARTLETT: We\'ll hold the record open

until May 15.

MS. RUSSELL: Okay, great. Thanks very

much.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you very much. The

next panel is entitled Options for Parental

Involvement in Special Education. We have a 20‑

minute section for the panel which is led by Robin

Wilkins, the special education director for the

Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School assisted by

Bonnie Schaeffer, the mother of a child with a

disability who attends that school. And I see that

we may have the student here also. So, Robin

Wilkins.

MS. WILKINS: Good afternoon. Thank you

for inviting me along with Bonnie and her son, Andrew

Schaeffer, as representatives of the Pennsylvania

Virtual Charter School.

MR. JONES: Ms. Wilkins, if you could

speak much, much closer to the mike. Thank you.

MS. WILKINS: Okay. To come here today to

share how we are meeting the needs of identified

learners. For the past 20 years, I have directed my

energies towards focusing on best practices for

exceptional children. My work has included classroom

management, staff implemental professional

development as well as special education

administration.

Benjamin Bloom said, It\'s easier to sort

children than support children. I could not agree

more. Offering new choices like charter schools, the

McKay Scholarship program and the virtual charter

schools is a critical step in the process of moving

away from sorting to supporting our nation\'s

school children.

First, allow me to quote Pennsylvania\'s

current Secretary of Education, Charles Zogby.

According to Secretary Zogby, virtual charter schools

\...have the power to combine the customized

curriculum of charter schools with the easy access

and flexibility of the Internet making these schools

uniquely adaptable to student\'s individual learning

needs. Virtual schools like the Pennsylvania

Virtual Charter School combine the best traditional

materials (books and manipulatives for instance) with

new technology (like the Internet, assistive

technology and web‑based programs) and committed,

active parents and great teachers. This is a recipe

for success, especially for the special needs

children.

As you probably know, the traditional

school model doesn\'t always fit all children. As

we\'ve learned in so many other walks of life, the

one size fits all approach just doesn\'t work very

well. A majority of special education children

require unique education plans with requirements

above and beyond the confines of the structured

curricular periods offered in conventional brick and

mortar schools. At the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter

School, we provide unique, adaptable, customized

education courses of study for each and every child.

How do we do this? By the smart use of

new technology, by highly trained and competent

teachers, by parental involvement, and by a home‑

based learning environment that is specific to that

child\'s educational, emotional and social needs.

Research shows that students with

disabilities are being under‑served in conventional

classrooms for most of the school day. The presence

of these students usually adds considerable variance

to the overall composition of classes and increases

already heavy demands on teachers. In the

traditional school model with a ratio of one teacher

to 30 students with the possibility of having up to

half the class identified, the challenges are

enormous. This ratio is reduced to one child to

three adults at the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter

School (PAVCS). These adult role models include the

regular and special education teacher along with the

parent or responsible adult. The three utilize a

collaborative co‑teaching model for instructional

delivery.

How does this all fit together? PAVCS

uses an Online School (OLS) curriculum created by K12

which is led by William J. Bennett, the former

Secretary of Education. K12 believes in using

technology as a means, not an end in itself so that

children develop the necessary skills and knowledge

that all children need regardless of their academic

background, regardless of special needs or

disabilities, and regardless of their geographic

location.

A typical day at my school, the

Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School includes the

following:

Frequent breaks for the child who displays

hyperactivity and/or social and emotional concerns,

as well as those whose educational program includes

related services without a break in sequence of the

curricular lesson. When a child is back on task and

focused on the activities contained within the

curriculum, she resumes instruction. At PAVCS, we

know exactly how fast or slow a child is moving

forward, and we know where she\'s having difficulty

and where she\'s having success. With this

information, we are able to deliver a customized

course of study and make sure that students don\'t

fall behind.

Concepts presented in various modalities

that afford the child, for example, in need of

sensory integrated curriculum the ability to learn

and generalize new concepts.

Immediate feedback to the student,

teacher, and adult care‑giver, which establishes a

sense of student educational ownership, pride and

accountability. This data plays a vital role for

future planning and monitoring movement within the

curriculum.

I. A rigorous multi‑media curriculum that

builds and supports new learning while remediating

prior gaps in knowledge and skills. For example, a

child using the first grade curriculum but

chronologically in second grade can have her lessons

tailored to meet specific skill needs at both levels.

This extinguishes the false sense of accomplishment

children often develop when they are required to

repeat prior learned knowledge.

II\. The support of an assigned regular and

special education teacher to ensure that the

specialized design instruction is implemented and

that the child is moving forward and never falling

back through the general education curriculum. At

this juncture, I\'d like to share with you a quick

lesson so that you get an idea of what our Online

School consists of. The parent is served up this

lesson, the deep ocean, this is a continuation from a

previous learned skill. When the parent accesses

this lesson, they are given information so that they

can gather the material.

You can see these areas right here, for

the sake of time, I won\'t drop down these windows,

but these would familiarize the parent with

vocabulary. Not vocabulary to drill but vocabulary

that becomes meaningful in the child\'s life. Lesson

notes, just a prompt to tell the parent preview

website prior to introducing. Pronunciation keys for

new words and resources.

First part of the lesson, the objective is

to ascertain a generalization with old to new

knowledge. In this lesson, the child has been

learning about different parts of the ocean and about

some of the plants and animals that live in the

ocean. Can you name some of them? So, they\'re

making some associations here.

By the way, the K, 1 and 2 level which our

school presently has this year, the children are

about 20 percent of the time online. Most of the

time it\'s offline instruction. The lesson continues

with this instrument showing a child this is the

entrance you use to go down and to explore the ocean.

Once the child has made some associations, they go

into the reading room where this is an assimilation

of the same frame they just saw.

I\'m going to fast forward this so that we

go pretty quickly. Here the child actually gets into

this little sub‑vessel and go down. And at different

prompts, they\'re asked different questions. For

example, there is a lot of different areas here and a

child that might have some sensory integration needs

may not understand the concept of pressure. So what

we might do is take that child and say, hello, may I

borrow your hand? We could exchange hands and

squeeze hands so that the children understand what

it\'s like, what that pressure is outside the vessel.

And we continue going down. Here the

child notices that it\'s getting dark and the

association made here is sunlight does not enter this

part of the ocean. There\'s other things falling

down. I don\'t know if you can notice them going down

but when we ask the child what this is, they may

associate to say that it\'s snow but then we\'ll draw

them back to you\'re below the ocean and go on to tell

them that it\'s the fuzzy stuff that\'s called marine

snow which is the remains of animals that have died.

And so on.

And then, the child continues to go down

until they are the bottom of the ocean floor. We\'re

almost there. Notice as they go down, they can make

that association here, the pressure is moving, we do

things like this so that they know what pressure is

outside the vessel. Notice that the temperature has

dropped so that they know that it\'s cold also.

We draw their attention to the different

types of land form that they have learned that are on

the surface of the earth, that there are also at the

bottom of the ocean such as this, such as the valley

here and the sea mount here.

At PAVCS, parental choice and involvement

take on significant meaning. Choice allows the

parent to enroll their child in an educational

setting that will best serve her needs. Involvement

signifies active participation in their child\'s

educational program and setting. Research has shown

that parental support is critical to the success and

progress in any school model. IDEA 97 strengthens

the role of the parents in the educational planning

and decision making of their children by encouraging

them to become more active participants in choice

options.

I submit to the Commission the following

recommendations that based on my experience determine

the success of the virtual school and the special

education students it serves:

III\. Encourage local school districts to work

cooperatively with virtual schools so that the union

collaboratively offers genuine educational

opportunities for the identified child.

IV\. Appropriate funding to sources such as

research in the area of best practices for

teachers, administrators, and parents involved in

virtual schools.

V. Establish consortiums at the state and

local levels in which their sole charge is to provide

technical assistance to virtual charter schools in

all phases of special education and compliance. The

way the least restrictive environment continuum

stands with the new virtual charter school does not

take into an account our learning environment which

is home‑based, which essentially takes the child,

once the child is enrolled in our school, they are

leaving a least restrictive environment and coming to

our environment. They\'re automatically, according to

the least restrictive environment continuum, placed

in a more restrictive environment.

VI\. Encourage legislators and others involved

in funding decisions for virtual schools to establish

fair and equitable funding base that takes into

consideration the ongoing expense of technology so

the virtual charter school can continue to deliver

high quality special education services.

We have spent decades since the enactment

of Public Law 94‑142, Education for All Handicapped

Children Act, assuring that all special needs

children have available to them a free and

appropriate public education. However, our task

today is not to ensure access to schools, but rather

access to programs that truly deliver a specialized

design course of study, a program that enables the

identified child access to the general curriculum by

providing the necessary resources and support

systems.

I urge this Commission to explore further

the virtual school model as a viable education

alternative for the special needs child. Thank you.

MR. BARTLETT: Use the microphone please.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Yes, thank you. Sorry

about that. Can you hear me okay? Anyway, my name

is Bonnie Schaeffer, and I\'m going to spend a few

minutes talking about the subject of parental options

in the context of PAVCS and then to introduce you to

my son Noel. He looks like a fairly typical nine‑

year‑old, wouldn\'t you say?

You know, often we think of special needs

children as having very obvious impairments and we

label them quickly like this, the deaf child, the

girl with braces on her legs, or even the child with

autism. You know, he\'s the kid that is non‑verbal,

who rocks continually, who won\'t make eye contact.

We try to mainstream them as much as possible but

it\'s pretty clear what their issue is.

But what about the Noel Schaeffers of this

world? I\'ll tell you a little about our experience.

In pre‑school which happened to be the only private

pre‑school around, I was told nearly everyday about

how my son belligerently hid under the chairs, about

how he talked back to the teacher. And the teacher

would give me her sage advice and her warnings, Mrs.

Schaeffer, he\'s going to be stigmatized. You\'re

child is going to become a delinquent, and a lot of

this is your fault because you need to be punishing

him more at home.

I\'ll tell you then what happened when we

went into the public school. And I\'ll just read the

highlight here from this report from one of the

teachers there which was the Phys Ed teacher, that\'s

not atypical. Noel Schaeffer, he said, his behavior

has been very abnormal. He will display loud

disrupting outbursts. He will become very loud and

emotional. He has said things like I\'m bad, nobody

likes me, I\'m going to be put in jail. He won\'t

follow procedures. His behavior in my opinion is

attention‑getting, paranoid, erratic, and

unpredictable. Behavior problem, right?

Yes, it\'s a behavior problem. But the

real question is why and what needs to happen in

order for someone like Noel to learn. I mean, do you

think he liked having that experience?

From a parent\'s perspective, I was losing

my child. Noel was anxious, self‑deprecating,

fearful, he was withdrawing more and more. He

wouldn\'t get up in the morning. He was always in

trouble at school for not paying attention, for not

cooperating, for doing the wrong thing at the wrong

time, for being rude. And why was this? Because

almost everything in his learning environment was

wrong.

Let\'s let Noel tell you a little bit about

how he sees it.

MR. SCHAEFFER: I could never understand

the teachers. They would start out being nice but

they\'d get meaner and meaner. Before going to

school, I wanted to learn but no one came to

understand. I was always in trouble and the

principal would come. I couldn\'t get anyone to

understand I am a nice person.

So, often I just wanted to be in my ball

pit or on the swing. I just needed a break. But a

lot of times after waiting all day for recess, I was

in trouble because I didn\'t write as fast as the

other kids did. So, they made me miss recess. It

wasn\'t fair.

I have Asberger\'s syndrome which is a form

of autism and ADD. ADD makes the thoughts come into

my mind very fast and all at once and it\'s really

hard to grab the right one. Autism means that I

experience the world differently than you do. My

senses work differently than yours.

For example, loud voices and noises like

clapping are really hard for me. I don\'t like the

taste of ‑‑ most foods. I work ‑‑ and I like ‑‑ when

my mom rubs me. Rocking and swinging help me feel

calm. Some of the saying I do that get me in trouble

are because of my senses being different.

Transitions are hard. Time is a strange

concept to me. If I\'m in the middle of doing

something important and it doesn\'t make any sense ‑‑

I should ask you to stop. Being with other people

can be very hard. Sometimes what you do, when you

say something, it doesn\'t make sense, so I just block

it out.

You can read faces but I\'ve had to learn

how to do that. It often seems silly to me that I

have to do what my mom calls social convention. I

practice looking at my mom\'s eyes. It\'s hard but she

loves it when I do it, so I do that for her.

People ‑‑ also special interest or

passion. ‑‑ because it\'s much easier than people or

feelings. I like science, especially robotics and

astrophysics and medical science. And do you know

that Albert Einstein had Asberger\'s? He and I have

the ability to see things in different ways. Some

day I hope I can use that to invent something ‑‑ to

you.

I used to hate school, it looked like a

prison. But now it\'s okay. My mom makes me work

hard a lot of times but I like learning the cool

stuff about science and history especially. My dad

teaches me history. I hope you ‑‑ kids go to a

school go to a school like PAVCS.

MS. SCHAEFFER: I found out about PAVCS

through friends in late August of last year. It was

sort of like two weeks before regular school started.

MS. WRIGHT: Excuse me.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Yes, ma\'am?

MS. WRIGHT: Could we give some applause

to Noel because ‑‑

(Applause.)

MS. WRIGHT: I just had to do that.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Thank you. Thank you so

much. Anyway, we found out about PAVCS last summer.

And it took my husband and me about, I would say, 48

hours or less to decide. It was kind of scary. It

was a big thing for me but there was no question in

my mind. And you might wonder, what is it that made

you do this, Bonnie?

Well, the answer is easy. I talked to my

mother and my brother. You see, my older brother

Dennis who is 47 years old also has high functioning

autism. And his life, most especially school, has

been very, very difficult. You\'ll see a little bit

of him here in just a minute on a video.

But I told them about PAVCS. And I told

them about how I\'d have a very strong curriculum that

would be given to me, about how we\'d use tools such

as the computer and the Internet and email in ways

that make the most sense for Noel. He loves the

computer, by the way. He and I would have the chance

to develop his abilities in technology, something he

loves and which I know is going to be an important

part of his career future.

And very importantly, I told them that I\'d

be able to adopt the environment to his specific

sensory needs. We\'d be able to separate the

socialization component from the academic element

which is exactly what someone like Dennis, my

brother, and Noel need. All of these things are so

critical for Noel but he couldn\'t get them in the

traditional classroom.

The other important element that I\'d be

able to have is to tailor the teaching around Noel\'s

passion. I would have a special ed teacher and a

regular ed teacher to help. I wasn\'t quite sure how

I was going to do this, but the important thing was

that I get to do it. I get to try.

I don\'t know how much you all know about

Asberger\'s and high functioning autism, but the key

to their learning is to use their passion as a

crosswalk into all other learning. So, for Noel, as

he told you, his passion is science and robotics.

So, we do that, we use that all the time and he has

learned enormously.

I\'ll never forget the words of my mother

who at that point had lived with her own autistic son

for over 47 years. She said in a minute, she said,

Bonnie, do it. She said, if I had had that chance 40

years ago, I would have done it, absolutely. She

said there just was nothing, no choices back then for

someone like Dennis. But for Noel, life could be

very, very different.

Options, I just can\'t tell you enough how

important it is to give parents like me the option.

I know it might not be for everyone but this way we

have a real option. And as you know, Noel\'s

diagnoses are not uncommon. You\'ve probably heard of

the number 1 and 20 for ADD. For autism spectrum

disorder, the statistics are changing all the time

but you\'ll hear anything from 1 and 500 down to 1 and

100\.

My wraparound and I were counting up the

number of students at the ‑‑ City School where he is,

and it ends up to be about 1 and 200. There\'s four

for 700 students in grades 3 through 6. And that\'s

not counting Noel. There\'s a growth rate of about 10

to 17 percent of ‑‑ of his diagnosis on the high end

of the autism spectrum.

Now, Noel and I would like to show you a

little video clip, if you are willing to watch,

about what his days are like, a typical day in PAVCS.

I\'m just showing you a couple of subjects. Remember

that Noel told you that transitions are difficult for

him. So, rather than cover all the subjects every

day, we do about three subjects and we spend a longer

time.

MR. BARTLETT: We have time for about one

more minute.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Okay. Let\'s show you the

first couple of minutes of it, a minute and then you

can ‑‑

MR. BARTLETT: Two minutes.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Two minutes, you can tell

them when to cut the video. Okay.

(Video presentation)

Q Tell us your name.

A Dennis McClay.

Q Tell me a little bit about you.

A Okay. I have ‑‑ functioning autism

which I didn\'t find out about until last year. But

my nephew Noel has Asberger\'s. And that\'s all I

really know, that he has it and he\'s having home‑

schooling.

Q Was school hard for you?

A Yes, it was hard for me to learn the

subjects except for math.

Q What made it hard?

A Because it took mere memorizing in

the other subjects than it did in math and other

subjects did not involve numbers.

MS. SCHAEFFER: There\'s about 30 seconds

left here. Do you want to advance it so you can see

‑‑. I don\'t know if you can do that back there.

(Continuation of video

presentation.)

Q What was it like being around the

people that ‑‑

A It was stressful.

(Fast forwarding video.)

MS. SCHAEFFER: If you go a little

farther, you\'ll get into the, you notice how he

doesn\'t make eye contact. His body movements.

Right.

(Continuation of video presentation.)

Q Would you like to see a little bit of

Noel\'s school now? Would you like to see that?

A Yes. Yes.

Q Okay. Let\'s do that.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Now, we start our morning

‑‑

(Video presentation with music.)

MS. SCHAEFFER: And the next thing is he

eats breakfast. I\'m ‑‑ food so he has to have a

vanilla milkshake. ‑‑ high calories. Then we do an

‑‑. And this all takes about an hour. Then we start

the academic component of his school day.

Right now he\'s doing a spelling test.

Noel\'s handwriting is very poor, very, very difficult

‑‑ motor skills. So, we taught him how to type. We

substituted the penmanship aspect of the curriculum

with typing. And he types a whole lot, he spells a

whole lot better now because he can type his lessons.

In fact, he really misses ‑‑. So, that is

one of the examples of the things he likes. This

might be a little dark but it\'s ‑‑ language arts.

(Continuation of video presentation.)

MS. SCHAEFFER: In here, Noel like most

children with autism had an incredibly difficult time

learning directions. And they had lessons that he

did map work. It\'s very hard for them to put

themselves in another person\'s shoes. So, I put him

inside the map.

We made a map of our street and here we\'re

doing directions like left and right and pointing to

the street sign. And he\'s having to tell me, you

turn left on to Garden Avenue and then turn right.

When I did that he got it and then he went back and

was able to do a different map and then he knew it.

It was so exciting.

You can see the maps are too abstract for

‑‑. We\'re doing math here ‑‑. Noel is so visual that

I have to find ways always to make it visual.

(Continuation of video presentation.)

MS. SCHAEFFER: We do tea breaks every

hour.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you. That was great.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Here we go. Okay. Just a

little taste of what he does.

(Applause.)

MR. BARTLETT: Ms. Wilkins and Ms.

Schaeffer and Noel, Mr. Schaeffer, we sure appreciate

your presentation. First question, Doug Huntt.

MR. HUNTT: This is unusual for me going

first. Normally, I get out of the loop, I don\'t get

to ask questions like my cohort down the end of the

table.

I missed the first part of your discussion

but I wanted to know the choice on home‑schooling.

If you had a choice of a private school that would

give you the same outcomes, would that be a choice

for you or would you still do the home‑school?

MS. SCHAEFFER: I tried that and it didn\'t

work at all because Noel\'s needs couldn\'t be

addressed in a traditional classroom.

MR. HUNTT: But what about a private, if

you had a private school that would offer ‑‑

MS. SCHAEFFER: With very low student

child ratio? Yes, except it\'s hard for me to see

that they could tailor it, they could customize the

environment to the degree I do. So, I\'d have to say

I\'d still do virtual charter school.

MR. HUNTT: Okay. Thank you. Thank you,

Mr. Chairman.

MR. BARTLETT: Doug Gill.

MR. GILL: Thanks, folks. You actually

answered one of my questions which was going to be

what does a typical day look like and I appreciate

the video.

Is it fair to describe the Pennsylvania

Virtual Charter School as essentially an Internet‑

based curriculum for home‑school kids or if that\'s

not fair, how would you characterize it?

MS. WILKINS: No, I don\'t think it\'s fair.

MR. GILL: Okay. How would you

characterize it?

MS. WILKINS: Part of our curriculum,

well, I should say most of our curriculum is offline.

This year, we have grades K, 1 and 2. Next year,

we\'ll have K to 5. Now, we\'ve reached over a five‑

year span up to grades 12.

The most that a child will spend online

will be about 65 percent of the time. And at that

point, we\'re talking about 10th, 11th graders, 12th

graders. Right now, our children spend about 20

percent online. So, most of the instruction is

offline.

MS. SCHAEFFER: And let me add to that.

You noticed in the video, the only lesson I think I

was doing with him online was his spelling. And

that\'s only because he wasn\'t handwriting it. The

online part is, in my opinion anyway, for the parent,

for the teacher, and I log the time there.

MR. GILL: So, is it fair to say it\'s a

home‑school curriculum?

MS. WILKINS: There\'s a difference between

a home‑school curriculum, I\'m a person recently out

of the public school system and have very little

knowledge of home‑school other than the few children

who trickled into the public school. Our system is

home‑based, yes, and I think that\'s where the

misconception is. The other misconception is we\'re

totally Internet‑based where you have the server out

there in the cyberspace and a child connected at the

other end to a computer. That\'s not it at all.

We have teachers that are actively

involved in this. Not teachers in which a parent

just calls and happens to get a teacher but assigned

teachers. Our kids get together every month through

outings. The teachers supplement what\'s done online.

Our curriculum is rich so that we can tailor it to

meet individual needs. We follow all the guidelines

of Chapter 22. The parents are required to follow

the guidelines that we pass on to them.

And we have found that, most of our

attrition has been contributed through previous home‑

schoolers who have enrolled in our program and didn\'t

want to stay because of the requirements that we

asked of them.

MR. GILL: Okay. So, what specific

recommendations would you have regarding IDEA?

MS. WILKINS: IDEA, off the top of my

head, the continuum. Right now it\'s structured where

the home‑based, where the home environment is the

most restrictive environment, one of the more

restrictive environments. If we take a child, not

Noel for example but a child that may just need

accommodations and strategies for reading or math,

they\'re using the online school curriculum for all of

their other subjects and the specialized design

instruction is just in one core subject. That child

should not or would not be in need of a more

restrictive environment because the parent opt to use

a home‑based environment to educate them.

So, when we look at that continuum, the

question is where is the least restrictive

environment for that child? It\'s not that it\'s a

flaw in the continuum, I\'m not questioning that.

It\'s just that now a new learning environment has

come into the game.

MR. GILL: So, you don\'t think IDEA

recognizes that different kind of a learning

environment?

MS. WILKINS: Oh, absolutely, because one

of the more restrictive environments is home. But

since we\'re now here, new kids in the block, our

school is the home. So, if I have a child, for

example, I have children enrolled in my program that

are quite exceptional. They\'re gifted and they have

a learning disability. ‑‑ in need of a restrictive

environment.

MR. GILL: But isn\'t the least restrictive

environment, at least as I understand it, in the full

continuum of options individually determined?

MS. WILKINS: Yes.

MR. GILL: Okay. So, help me understand

what the issue here is.

MS. WILKINS: The issue here is initially,

when we look at a child\'s need for level of

intervention, we start with in the classroom and we

move accordingly. But if the classroom now is in the

child\'s home, where do we start? Because the

continuum states that their home is a more

restrictive environment. The school districts look

at us and say that this is a more restrictive

environment. It\'s just ‑‑

MR. GILL: So, would you ask the IDEA

folks or the Commission to redefine LRE with respect

to virtual school home‑based programs? Is that what

you\'re asking?

MS. WILKINS: Just that environment, to

take that environment into consideration. I don\'t

know how it would be worded or how it fits into the

game play. But I know that I would not want my child

listed, and not that we\'ve done this because we\'ve

had to be very creative in consult with PDE charter

school representative on how we level ‑‑

MR. GILL: PDE means Pennsylvania

Department of Education?

MS. WILKINS: Department of Ed, yes.

Sorry. How we list that least restrictive

environment or the level of intervention.

MR. GILL: So, how you\'d report ‑‑

MS. WILKINS: Well, right now, we\'re using

an inclusionary model because all of our children

have access to the Online School. So, our model is

inclusionary. And the way that it\'s written now, we

have up to 21 percent, and then over 21 to 60 percent

and then 61 to all of that child\'s time. That\'s

what\'s, ‑‑ charter school format, IEP form. So, the

majority of our children are at the 0 to 20 percent

and the 21 to 60 percent.

MR. GILL: I understand that. We call

them 1077 form in our state, it\'s LRE, it\'s

percentage of time in regular class ‑‑. So, does

that drive funding in some way in Pennsylvania? Or

I\'m just really not clear on this.

MS. WILKINS: Well, I\'m not really

familiar with funding so I don\'t want to speak on

that part. But I\'m looking at the child and the

level of service that that child needs. Like someone

like Noel, for example, whose service is that 21 to

60 percent because he spends a lot of his time

offline away from the general curriculum as Bonnie

explained to you.

But by the same token, he should not be

penalized according to the continuum that his home

environment in which he learns is now a more

restrictive environment because that\'s one of the

reasons why Bonnie pulled him out of conventional

school, because it was restricting. It wasn\'t able

to meet his individual needs. But it doesn\'t mean

that he needs to be in a more restrictive environment

according to the continuum.

And that\'s what I\'m proposing a suggestion

to the Commission about IDEA. Just the way that

continuum is.

MR. BARTLETT: Move to the next question.

Bryan Hassel.

MR. HASSEL: So, as a practical matter,

you\'re talking about Noel potentially being

penalized, is the problem that the state is

threatening you with some kind of compliance action

because your kids are not the least restrictive

environment? What is the practical impact of the

problem that you\'re describing on your school or your

students?

MS. WILKINS: Well, the problem, we\'re not

having a problem with the state. As a matter of

fact, the state is working with us. They\'re working

through these issues because they are aware that now

that we have a new learning environment, that there

are issues that need to be addressed. It\'s just

something that has to be done in terms of placing

levels of intervention for children.

MS. SCHAEFFER: I was just going to add

that I think part of the issue that we get into with

the funding, as you probably all know is the

allocations that is given for a child. Like I had to

withdraw him from the public school, they were not

happy about that because those moneys go to PAVCS.

In my opinion as a parent, I should be able to do

that because I\'m actually solving a problem for them.

MR. HASSEL: How many students are

enrolled in the school?

MS. WILKINS: The entire school, we have

over 600 students. About 650 right about now.

MR. HASSEL: And how many children with

special needs?

MS. WILKINS: Less than five percent.

MR. HASSEL: Less than five percent. And

how many school districts do you draw from?

MS. WILKINS: About 300.

MR. HASSEL: 300. And do you, are you

your own LEA for the purposes of special education?

MS. WILKINS: Correct.

MR. HASSEL: So, you receive the funds

from various districts and the states, but then

you\'re responsible for providing all of the special

needs services?

MS. WILKINS: Exactly.

MR. HASSEL: Do you work at all with those

districts? Is there any interaction?

MS. WILKINS: Yes, that was one of my

other recommendations. Presently, the school

districts, many of them in Pennsylvania are in

litigation with the virtual charter schools for

various reasons. It seems like at the differing

levels, the virtual charter schools have been

winning. So, the school districts are backing off a

little bit.

Right now, many of them are very

uncooperative in terms of sharing services that all,

that children like Noel are entitled to. For

example, in Pennsylvania, there are 501 school

districts that you are aware of. And of those school

districts, 29 IU\'s service them for related services.

Out of the 29 IU\'s, since we draw children from

across the state, two have been willing to contract

services with us even though it\'s stated that the IU

is supposed to supply services within that\'s child

resident district, for that child\'s resident

district. But many of them have taken the backseat,

sitting back waiting for the results of legislation.

MR. HASSEL: Are the IU\'s not willing to

provide services to you at all or is it you\'re not

willing to pay enough to cover their cost?

MS. WILKINS: No. We paid more because

we\'ve gone actually to the source that the IU\'s use.

Actually, they would serve as the middlemen but we\'ve

gone directly to the providers in many cases. No,

they are just waiting because many school districts

refuse to see us as a public school.

MR. BARTLETT: I might suggest, we have

three more Commissioners. I might suggest that we

want to ask staff to probably work with the school

offline and the Pennsylvania Education Authority to

determine kind of what statutory implications there

may be here. Michael Rivas.

MR. RIVAS: I want to thank you for your

testimony. A couple of my questions have already

been asked. I was a little confused there on, I

guess, the structure of this virtual school. And one

of my questions is do you cater or do you target

specific children with learning disabilities? Or are

you open to just, you know, all learning

disabilities? I mean, I\'m just confused about the

structure of the whole ‑‑

MS. WILKINS: Well, our school is a public

charter school and we do not deny access to any

child. So, if a parent enrolls with a child with

multi‑handicap skills, we would take that child and

that parent would have to go through the same process

as that of a parent that had a non‑handicap child who

were listed in our school for services.

MR. RIVAS: And once you accept a child

with learning disabilities, do you sit down with the

parents and, I guess, construct, customize some sort

of specific curriculum for them? And I guess, those

needs would be that he has to be more home‑schooled

as opposed to being in a general school setting that

you have set up already?

MS. WILKINS: The home‑school doesn\'t

enter the equation. We follow the same process that

any traditional school would follow. A parent would

enroll their child in our school, fill out the

application. If that child meets special services,

that\'s check on the application, I as the director of

special will contact that child‑parent, ask for

additional information. And because again, we\'re a

new school, it\'s new to a lot of school districts, I

have to deal with a lot of necessary issues, and even

getting previous IEP\'s from former school districts

because they refuse to send them. And although they

are aware that a child should not have lapsing

services, they have done this.

So, I follow the same thing that a

traditional school will follow if a parent enrolled

their child in that school with special needs.

Bonnie can tell you a little bit about how we run our

IEP meeting.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Let me, yes, speak to that

point in a quick second here. ‑‑ had an IEP in first

grade and second grade and the IEP was handed to me

and I signed off. We discussed it. They did a

pretty good job. We had my first IEP meeting with

PAVCS in December and for once I didn\'t leave the IEP

meeting depressed and it was because enough legwork

had happened ahead of time. They were very

interested in having input.

My wraparound was there, my wraparound

boss was there. Usually the school doesn\'t want to

talk to these people. We actually wrote the IEP in

the meeting. So, I came with my input about the

accommodations that I need to have to know. And then

I was able to draw on the expertise of these

teachers, Mrs. Wilkins and his homeroom teacher. So,

we had a really excellent IEP put together that\'s

very workable. Best one we\'ve ever had.

MR. RIVAS: One last question. Did I hear

you correctly? Your students with special needs only

makes up five percent of your student population?

MS. WILKINS: And that\'s because, yes, and

that\'s a good ratio because our population this

school year is K, 1 and 2. So, we really shouldn\'t

be looking to identify these young children. We

should be giving them the supports that they need to

keep them in the general education curriculum. And

that\'s what our ‑‑ school does. It monitors, it

assesses, that\'s why it works so well with children

who need a specialized design course of study.

So, that\'s, and many of our children, I

think this year, we\'ve identified two children, and

they were older. All the other children enrolled in

our school or they transitioned from early

intervention services to school aid services.

MR. BARTLETT: Katie Wright and then Tom

Fleming.

MS. WRIGHT: I am so excited and it\'s just

lovely to see a child. You know, we go around and we

hear grown people talk and everything and to see an

actual child in action is just wonderful.

Let me say this. Years ago, I used, as

director of special education in East St. Louis,

Illinois, I used 94142 money to establish a program

that we call School‑Home Intervention for

preschoolers. We actually sent, and this is not that

new, we actually sent staff members, special

educators and speech therapists into the homes, Mrs.

Schaeffer, to show parents how to do, the children

were enrolled with IEP\'s, to show parents how to do

the very thing that you\'re doing.

And of course, I know that ‑‑ your

approach is rather ‑‑ enough, some ‑‑ and some

stimulating the child\'s central nervous system and

that kind of thing. But so, this is really not that

new, and that\'s why to me, I mean, it\'s very familiar

to me and very wonderful that you\'re able to do this.

And to have parents, this is not a home‑school

program; home‑schooling is when the kid is not even

enrolled in the schoolhouse. Your kid is enrolled in

the schoolhouse and is working with the school to do

the things that you\'re teaching the parents. You

taught the parents. Your school, your staff taught

the parents to do all of this, right? You didn\'t

make all this up. So, what we did in East St. Louis,

we sent staff people into the home to show the

parents to do this kind of thing. I used, I had

about, that program was about \$300,000 dollars or

something and I used 94142, and that was back in the

1970\'s to do this. And I can\'t think of some of the

other things that we used.

But this is wonderful, and Noel is just

wonderful. He\'s responsive and he\'s ‑‑ smart and all

like this. And I\'ve enjoyed seeing him and hearing

him. And good luck to you.

MS. SCHAEFFER: Thank you. Can I just

say, too, that for my family, home‑schooling was not

an option. And the reason is there\'s just no way I

could do it. I mean, I can\'t put a curriculum

together. I know you can buy stuff but what I have

are my special ed teacher and my homeroom teacher to

give me all the teaching expertise.

My expertise is in my child and I couldn\'t

do it without the support of the curriculum, I got

nine boxes of it, and the teachers.

MR. BARTLETT: Tom Fleming.

MR. FLEMING: Mrs. Wilkins, now, I suppose

maybe I just really need, I was trying to put some

notes down here. You are the one and only teacher

for ‑‑

MS. WILKINS: Oh, no. No, I\'m the

director of special ed.

MR. FLEMING: Okay. So, you\'re the

director.

MS. WILKINS: Yes.

MR. FLEMING: And if I understood it, at

one point you said there are 600 students within this

school.

MS. WILKINS: Correct.

MR. FLEMING: And it\'s an online school?

MS. WILKINS: 20 percent of the day. 20

percent of the time, yes, we\'re online.

MR. FLEMING: Okay, that piece I didn\'t

hear. And then, when Noel was being described and

they asked about the funding, I\'m acquainted with

amount of money per child per school going into the

school district and then being distributed in such a

way that it will take care of the entire class or the

entire school in what their needs are. How did you

say this is funded?

MS. WILKINS: Our school?

MR. FLEMING: Yes.

MS. WILKINS: Our school is funded like

all the other charter schools.

MR. FLEMING: So, these 600 students, the

head count money for each student goes where?

MS. WILKINS: To our school. It comes

from the resident school district. The resident

school district is billed for the child and then the

money is sent to our school.

MR. FLEMING: Okay. Then, maybe that\'s

where I\'m lost. The resident school is located for

the 600 where?

MS. WILKINS: Across the State of

Pennsylvania.

MR. FLEMING: 300 different school

districts?

MS. WILKINS: Yes, they\'re coming from.

Our school is open to every resident within the State

of Pennsylvania. And so, from the residents, there\'s

501 school districts, these children can potentially

come from any one of them. Right now, we\'re drawing

from a little over 300 of the school districts. So,

the school districts are paying us, and I should

correct myself because they\'re not.

Secretary Zogby had to withdraw funding

from the schools because they\'re all, most of them

are involved in a litigation with the virtual charter

schools. So, their money that would normally be sent

to them, he\'s taken it from them and sending it to us

because they are not willing to pay. They\'re

waiting. The Pennsylvania School Board Association

in conjunction with many of the school districts in

the state of Pennsylvania is suing the virtual

charter schools.

MR. FLEMING: Well, you can kind of see

them probably because that\'s where my head is kind of

also dealing with, how that a school district

literally distributes the money and how it pays all

of the bills including lights, janitorial services,

et cetera as part of that. And that comes out of

head count money for per child per school per subject

per classroom per supplies. And so, I was just kind

of confused on how all of this then really is

operational in the kind of program that you\'re

describing here.

MS. WILKINS: Well, we have also a

management company that we work with. PAVCS doesn\'t

work by itself. We have a management company that

manages the services, K‑12 and the online school.

So, we have responsibilities to them as well.

MR. FLEMING: That helps a little bit.

Thank you.

MR. BARTLETT: That\'s your last question.

We very much appreciate what you do for the students

as well as your being here to present testimony. And

I think staff will probably in touch with you to work

on the specifics. Thank you.

MS. WILKINS: Thank you.

MR. BARTLETT: Our next panel is going to

be a fascinating hour. We have four students, and

I\'ll call them up. You all come on up and take your

seats. This session is entitled, What\'s it all

about? , hearing from the students.

I\'m sorry, we need a five‑minute break in

order to set up the room. So, five minutes and then

we\'ll be back.

(Off the record.)

MR. BARTLETT: Let me introduce you first,

although I don\'t have a long bio or resume, but at

least let me get your name and where you\'re from. We

are delighted in this section of the hearing to hear

what\'s entitled What It\'s All About: Hearing from the

Students themselves.

We have with us, and I\'m going to read

according to the list on the sheet, Miriam Brinley

who is a freshman at St. Mary\'s College in Maryland,

Nicholas King, a 16‑year‑old student from Temple

Terrace in Florida, Caitlin Whiteside, we\'ve already

heard from mom, Caitlin says she\'s going to do better

than mom, who is an 11th‑grader from Pepin Academy,

and Josh Kemp, a 19‑year‑old student in transition as

we say from Oregon who has transitioned all the way

from Oregon to Miami and presumably back.

So, Ms. Brinley, are you going to start?

MS. BRINLEY: Yes. My name is Miriam

Brinley. I am currently a freshman at St. Mary\'s

College in Southern Maryland. I\'ve been asked to

talk about my experience as a student with a

disability in both public and private schools, and

particularly my experience in a Catholic high school.

My choice of Georgetown Visitation where I

went for four years was based on three basic things

that were important to my parents and me: a Catholic

education, a rigorous and fulfilling curriculum and

an all‑girls environment. Freshman year, my mother

tried to give me a headstart on the challenges of a

new school by arranging for a counselor to take me on

a tour of where my classes would be held.

The administration had pre‑arranged for my

classes to be in the same building before and after

lunch so that I could have a better chance at being

on time. I also had a meeting with teachers to

explain my condition because of previous events in

sixth grade, my teacher didn\'t know what kind of

disability I had and was sort of left in the dark

about what kind of help he was supposed to give me or

even if I could understand what he was teaching me.

So, that was just sort of to avoid that.

My Visitation teachers turned out to be

gracious in letting me have time to get to class and

provided accommodations such as extra textbooks so

that I wouldn\'t have to carry heavy books back and

fourth to the school. Sophomore year, the same

arrangements were made but I also had a rolling

backpack. And this a compromise between my parents

and me because at a Catholic private school, we carry

a lot of books, we carry a lot of heavy books. About

25 pounds was the amount when I was in school that

students were carrying around on their backs.

And Visitation was an old campus. It was

a very large campus. It was about 30 acres. So, for

me, with cerebral palsy, that was very difficult, and

so I decided to have a backpack on wheels. And this

sort of worked, it sort of didn\'t work but it was one

of the accommodations that helped me with my

disability in high school.

It could also be a problem though because

Visitation was a very old campus. It\'s a 200‑year‑

old institution. I would have to bring the rolling

backpack with me to classes that were up flights, two

flights of stairs. So, that was difficult to drag it

up the stairs. And then, also the backpack would

threaten my balance going down the stairs again.

So, that was sort of typical of the kind

of accommodations that could be made for me at a

school like Visitation. But what I got at Visitation

was a very good education and emotional support from

the teachers even though I couldn\'t have such

accommodations like I had PT outside of school which

could only be reached through public transportation

because both of my parents were busy at work at the

time.

And that was hard because of the amount of

homework that I had because of just like the effort

of being on public transportation was hard for me to

get from physical therapy to school and back and

forth and stuff like that. So, that was hard. And

then, of course, my disability also played a factor

in where I decided to go to college or where I

thought about going to college.

I visited several schools along with

everybody else who decides to go to college. And

often, my disability was the deciding factor in

whether I seriously thought about going to a school.

I visited the University of Chicago in January one

time with my father and we had to walk over 15 blocks

of snow and ice and water. And that was very

difficult and that\'s why I decided not to go to the

university because if I had to climb over snow banks

to get to class, it would be very difficult for me to

last even a semester there.

Another thing with applying to college was

that I was eligible for the vocational rehabilitation

program run by the DC government. This would help me

with tuition money for college. But as it turned

out, getting information from this program and

maintaining contact was very difficult. My parents

and I found out after I had decided what college to

go to, a public college, St. Mary\'s is a public

college, that if I decided to go to a private

college, I would be receiving much less money from

voc rehab than I am right now going to a public

college. And we only found this out after I decided

to go to a public college, so that was a little bit

disconcerting.

So, because of this and other problems,

we\'re in touch with an advocacy group and with Mr.

Coony who is an attorney as part of the advocacy

group for parents who use vocational rehabilitation.

And even though that has helped somewhat and

vocational rehabilitation has promised to pay a large

part of my tuition at St. Mary\'s, they were billed

last fall and still have not paid. So, that\'s a

problem.

Also, St. Mary\'s is a larger campus than

Visitation was. It\'s not as large as like large

universities, like University of Maryland, but it is

large. It\'s about, it\'s been taking some getting

used to but there are less books than in high school,

so it\'s a better adjustment that way.

One problem that I didn\'t consider when

deciding to go to somewhere like St. Mary\'s which is

in rural Southern Maryland was that we had found out

that there was a physical therapist in the area but I

don\'t have a car. And the physical therapist is only

20 minutes away from my campus but not having a car

is a big problem. And there isn\'t much public

transportation or the taxi service is not that great

down there either. And I don\'t want to regularly

impose on my friends who do have cars.

So, that has been a problem. There is

someone at St. Mary\'s who has also been helpful like

the people of Visitation to help me make some minimal

accommodations and he is specifically in charge of

people with disabilities. But when I arrived at St.

Mary\'s he was new on the job and so he did not know

very much about what things were around St. Mary\'s

that could help me connect with such things as my

physical therapy.

So, although I haven\'t decided what I want

to major in or really what I want to be when I grow

up, I don\'t want my disability to be a hindrance in

furthering my education and in getting a good job.

And I\'m hoping that changes can be made to places

like Visitation and St. Mary\'s so that students with

disabilities who come after me will have easier and

happier experiences to get the same opportunity and a

good education. Thank you.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you very much. Mr.

King.

MR. KING: Since I was young, I have been

fighting with dysgraphia. I can hear something, read

something, think about something in writing, I\'m

fine. But if I try and read something and then write

it, it wouldn\'t process. The letters get all

scrambled up and jumbled up, can\'t see anything.

I kind of slipped through the cracks

basically until about fourth grade. Copied out

people, it\'s really hard but at least I got the work

done. I couldn\'t think and get the work done, I

didn\'t have enough time and I was roller‑coastering

around with this medicine and that. Sometimes, they

bring out ‑‑ my hands or feet constantly or I\'d fall

asleep, couldn\'t wake up. So, it was pretty much an

uphill struggle the whole way.

I got to Pepin Academy in my first year of

high school and they made lots of accommodations to

help me. Like with my reading, so I wouldn\'t get so

‑‑ they\'d take a piece of paper, cut out just enough

where you could see one sentence, then I could read

it and do my problems from there. And they didn\'t

start everyone off like just saying, here, 300‑word

essay, boom, do it.

They started off small and worked their

way up. Small groups in ten to one student‑teacher

ratios, so it\'s really kind of cool. We could learn

a lot better, a lot more one‑on‑one attention. And

this year, finally I think I\'ve gotten it. I\'ve come

over the hill and now I don\'t have anymore problems

anymore.

MR. BARTLETT: Pretty good. We\'re going

to have some questions.

MR. KING: All right.

MR. BARTLETT: And now, Caitlin Whiteside.

MS. WHITESIDE: Hello. I like to make

sure everybody is awake, you know. So, you know,

responding. My name is Caitlin Whiteside. I am 17

years old. I\'m going to be 18, 19 this month. Very

happy about that. Kind of scary.

I have an auditory processing disability.

You say something to me and it will take me a couple

of seconds to realize that you have even said

something or that those things that you have said are

words that mean something. But at the same time, my

life did not begin with being diagnosed with a

disability.

I had a life before that. I was a child

before that. I was diagnosed very young. I was very

lucky but before I was diagnosed, I could tell that I

was a bit different. I didn\'t understand what the

teacher said and everyone else around me seemed to

understand it.

And not knowing why was one of the hardest

things that I\'ve ever been through. I thought that I

had some sort of disease or something. I mean, I

didn\'t know anything about special education,

disabilities. I mean, when you\'re little, you don\'t

think anyone is different. You think everyone is the

same, you know. You look at a kid next to you and

they\'re just like you, and if you\'re different, you

feel very, very weird.

When I was diagnosed, it was a mixed

blessing. It was kind of like being hit with a brick

and then when you got up, it didn\'t really hurt as

much as you thought it would. When I first learned

that I had a disability, at first I felt like, this

is awful. No one is ever going to speak to me ever

again. I\'m never going to have any friends.

But then, I realized that it was a tool, a

tool to help me get services that are out there. A

tool to help me learn and to explore the school

system a lot more effectively. Let\'s see, in

elementary school, elementary school was fun, wasn\'t

it? You didn\'t really have to do very much but you

learned a lot more than you thought you did.

Let\'s see, in fifth grade, I had the most

wonderful teacher. And she was an SLD teacher and

she would pull me out of regular class and she would

teach me the times tables using little pictures and

that was the best thing for me that I have, I mean

it\'s wonderful. I would never have learned my times

tables. You can tell me a time table and I know it.

But let\'s see, sometimes I get mixed

reactions. If someone asked me, you know, what kind

of school do you go to, you know, where do you, you

know, that kind of thing. I don\'t lead up to, you

know, I have a disability. I don\'t define myself by

my disability. I introduce myself, I say hi, I\'m

Caitlin Whiteside, I have a disability. No, that

doesn\'t work that way.

I am person just like everyone else, not

despite my disability, not because of my disability,

but in addition to my disability. My disability

makes me a better person because I understand and

have compassion for those who have another

disability. It makes me a better person, I think.

And let\'s see, my disability gives me the

most wonderful gift. I am wonderful at music. I

hear tones beautifully. And I\'m bragging because I

have the right to brag. I can tell you that I have

never been able to read music, but I\'ve played the

harp for 12 years. And if I hear a song, I can play

it automatically. I know exactly how to play it and

that\'s just the way that my brain works. And it\'s

wonderful. But if someone tells me something in a

mean way, I\'ll think they\'ve said something mean.

My accommodations and my IEP have been a

savior to me. Ever since I\'ve known what an IEP

means, I have been to every single IEP meeting I have

ever had. Every single one, because it is what gives

me the opportunity to learn and to become a person

who can be productive in America.

This work that my mother does, she\'s a

lawyer for children with disabilities. I know a lot

of children with disabilities who are a lot lower

functioning than I am. And they are not stupid

people. They are not stupid people at all. They

just can\'t communicate how smart they are to the rest

of us.

They\'re not disabled, they\'re different.

We\'re all just different. And if you leave here with

nothing else today, I really do wish that you would

understand that children with disabilities are not

disabled, they are different. They learn

differently. And that\'s what they need. They need a

different system. They need something different.

It\'s kind of funny, I\'ve been in SLD

classes. And in SLD classes, they put everyone who

has some specific learning disability together. They

don\'t really categorize what disability they have.

Just as long as they have a disability, they\'ll put

them in the same class. And they put one teacher in

there and they expect, okay, you can teach all these

kids, they all have the same disability, you know.

Well, it doesn\'t really work that way

either because everyone functions differently just

like I just said. Everyone is different. You cannot

teach two people with different disabilities the same

way. Some people might be kinesthetic where they

learn by touching things. Another person might be

auditory where they learn by listening to the teacher

lecture them.

Other people might be visual where they

learn by watching, by looking at pictures. And it\'s

not a wrong way. There is no wrong way to teach a

child. Every way is a right way as long as they

understand it. And they, I mean, I teach middle

school sometimes. No, I don\'t teach middle school,

but I tutor. I tutor some of the middle school kids

that we have in the school that I go to.

And I\'m teaching a child right now who has

very short‑term memory problem. I learned that she

had a short‑term memory problem because when I taught

her some math problem, the next day, she didn\'t

remember it. And it was kind of funny, you know, I

just taught you this yesterday. But if by repeating

it and repeating it and repeating it and repeating

it, last week, I taught her the same thing again

thinking she wouldn\'t remember it, she was, oh, but

you taught me this. You know, I understand it. And

she knows how to do it now.

And that is the experience that I have

had. Every teacher that I have had who has been

understanding to me and loyal to me and cared about

me not as a disabled child but as a child who wants

to learn, I have loved because they opened up an

entirely new world to me. When I learned to read, it

was the most wonderful experience of my whole life.

I can read every name in this room. That is a great

accomplishment, especially for someone like me whose

brain doesn\'t necessarily think that it can.

By putting disabled children in a

classroom with a teacher who thinks that they\'re

stupid, the child will start to believe that they are

stupid. It\'s kind of they learn that they cannot

learn. And I really do hope that there is, I mean,

if I can do one thing in this world, it would be that

no child would ever have to experience that, the

feeling that they will never be able to accomplish

what they set out to do.

Every child who has a disability, I

believe that there is some way that they can be

taught. That\'s what I believe because I have seen

it. I have seen miraculous things, I have seen

children who cannot walk, cannot speak, cannot do

anything, cannot breathe on their own, go to college,

get a scholarship, take photography and make

beautiful pictures. And I mean, I just, I wish that

you could go out there and see it, see it happen

because it\'s wonderful.

Every single person here has the

opportunity to change the world. You have been put

in a situation where you can change this country for

the better. Please, please, please use it. I mean,

I have been too much, okay, I got to stop. But this

is so cool, so, okay, I\'m passing on. There you go.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you, Ms. Whiteside.

Mr. Kemp, you\'re next.

MR. KEMP: Hello, I\'m Josh Kemp. And

about a year ago, I was a senior at Marshall High

School in Portland, Oregon. And I was pretty well on

my way to graduation. I had received a note saying

that my grades were average but if I didn\'t watch out

I\'d probably fail. And I figured, oh, it isn\'t going

to happen but, you know, just to be on the safe side,

I\'m going to work my hardest.

And then, I had ‑‑ any notices of that

again pretty much until one month before my senior

year, before my graduation, I mean, of my senior

year. But okay, every one is awake here, right?

Okay, good, good. Because you just begin the story

and you have a little ‑‑ and then you go on.

But one month like I said, one month and

then I found out I couldn\'t graduate with a regular

diploma. And it was kind of a downer. Fortunately,

there were ways around it. I mean, there was the

modified diploma. Now, modified is basically like

regular without the, basically just means that you

can\'t, well, it\'s kind of hard but you can\'t do the

things that you can do for regular diploma, it has

some more limitations to it than ‑‑ there\'s not

really a better way to explain that.

But you know, I figure there was a couple

of flaws in this and that this wasn\'t the only avenue

I could take. Everything else, now, they gave me

those options but I either had to take them or go

with the worst. And the worst was pretty much going

to night school and taking another year and becoming

a super senior and stuff like that.

And I had my options. I had a voice but

nobody would back me up on that. Basically, because

I had a great teacher who couldn\'t really do the

options she wanted to because of the requirements and

what had to be done. And so, it was pretty hard.

In the end, on June 11th, 2000 when I did

get that modified diploma, I have had plans to go to

college and those got a little drowned by that. I

kind of that depressed and I just, it was kind of

like, everything kind of darkened on me. And that

fall, I didn\'t find myself in college like I had

planned.

I\'d been telling people, you know, I might

be going to college this fall. I\'m thinking of

taking radio broadcast and their feeder. And I have.

I have been doing some radio work with a country

station in Portland, Oregon. Did a great job with

them. Did a few skits, walked around this famous

summer festival thing and asked people funny jokes

and questions and stuff. And it was pretty good. I

mean, it was a pretty good feeling inside.

And that summer, I pretty much just lost

my hopes there. And I mean, my high school years

were, it was a combination of there were some good

things. I mean, I had some good friends and I did

have some great classes like drama. I love drama.

It was just a great chance and go on and far beyond

words for what it did for me but it was great.

And there was this bonus class which was

run by my caseworker and we did all kinds of things

like we played tennis and basketball. And we went to

community centers around our community and went

swimming and went in the weight room and stuff.

Pretty much the big thing of the year was that we

took the train up to Seattle. That was like two

hours from Portland, actually three. Took the train,

walked around for a while and then came back to

Portland. It was a whole day trip and it was pretty

fun.

But the rest of it, the rest of my classes

were not, I mean, I did the best that I could but the

teachers were just, the teachers, some of them

weren\'t very understanding to the kids. Like a

couple of classes that I would have had to take, the

teachers didn\'t seem to understand like what Ms.

Whiteside here said that people think differently and

that, you know, there will be some problems with

other kids.

Other kids was, the reason basically why I

stopped going to US History class back in my junior

year there, a big group of kids who were teasing and

intimidating me, the teacher wouldn\'t do anything.

He just snapped jokes back at the kids about

something and basically one of them became the

teacher\'s pet. I don\'t know how but it all happens

to you, don\'t you hate it?

But I have Asberger\'s syndrome which is a

social disorder which makes it kind of hard for me to

function sometimes on socially related issues. And

so, sometimes it\'s hard to ask people for help or

even talk to a person or talk in front of strangers I

don\'t know. I\'m doing a really good job here because

I\'ve been doing a lot of speaking at conferences

about other things. But I do get the initial

nervousness, pretty much went on.

But hey, I\'m here and I\'m overcoming my

disability pretty much. I was diagnosed with it in

the sixth grade. Before that, they thought I just

had hyperactivity and put me on Ritelin which was

pretty fun. And no, I didn\'t sell it to any middle‑

schoolers, I\'m innocent. I mean, the medicine put me

on good behavior, made me feel like going home and

cleaning my room but by that time it had worn off.

Mom would walk in an hour later and she\'d

still ‑‑ the hotwheel cars on the carpet. So, you

know, but by the time they had actually diagnosed my

Asberger\'s disorders, things changed and it was kind

of a wake‑up call but it didn\'t really hit me until

high school. High school came and there was so much

more that had to be done. And at the end of my

freshman year, the caseworker I had started out with

got promoted to be a vice principal on another high

school, and by that time, I wasn\'t pretty sure where

my transition was going to go.

But then, one of the other great

transition teachers took me under her wing and made

sure that I was doing okay. But by junior year, I

had almost wanted to drop out of school. It was just

so nauseating. And the IEP meetings were, I went to

every one of my IEP meetings but it had just gotten a

burden on me to attend school and I wanted to drop

out because it was tough. I was in a public school

and my mom had thought that I was going to have a

hard time with it.

She was kind of right but I was a

workhorse. I put my best work into it. No matter

what, I asked about whatever accommodations I could

get done from teachers, redoing questions with me in

the books to, even modifying the assignments to get

the key points of the assignment that I was supposed

to learn because there would be all these words and

I\'m a great reader. I taught myself to read when I

was three. I read road signs and stuff.

But you know, it would be all these words

and it would just be kind of confusing and I would

often miss the key points. And if it wasn\'t for

that, I did pretty great after that. I was also a

great writer. Great writer, still am, still intend

to take that in college.

But the IEP meetings were, first of all, I

have a dad, a step dad who has English as a second

language and there weren\'t any interpreters

available. So, he would just go up in the meetings

and sit in the back and keep an eye on my little

sister. And he wanted to listen in but he couldn\'t

really understand what was going on and he kind of

has like a social disability himself. And I mean, he

could get the gist of what was going but it was kind

of tough.

And pretty much, my mom supported in

working through high school, and I figured I might as

well finish school and graduate and do my good stuff.

And then in one month, the graduation roadblock

occurred and pretty much, they offered me all kinds

of different things. They offered me Job Corps

basically.

Job Corps is a good program. I mean, you

go off to like a real college, you stay there and you

learn all kinds of stuff, but I have no interest in

it. They wanted to push me into that. They also

wanted to push me into a life skills class which was

basically a class for kids with learning disabilities

and some mental disorders.

And what they would do is that they would

do things on teaching how to cook, but stuff like ‑‑

and macaroni, stuff I already knew how to do. Or

finding jobs like learning to become a janitor or

something like that. And I was like, I wanted to go

to college. I wanted to pick up some skills there.

And even though I said they were glad to

help me with that, I found that pretty soon enough, I

was not getting enough help with the college

interest. And so, eventually, I just stopped going.

I only go there about once every two weeks to check

in and let them know I\'m okay. I mean, they do have

a nice teacher there.

But I also, but I don\'t think that things

are really being accounted for in the school systems.

And when I was invited to speak here, I was very

excited and I know I\'ve probably talked a little bit

past my time, I\'m sorry about that. But I was very

excited to speak out and get my voice heard. And I

think, you know, I should have gotten more earlier

notification that my grades were dwindling a little

bit. I don\'t really think that they were really

keeping an eye out on me in that way.

And I also think there needs to be more

follow up on what happens to students after two years

after they graduate, that\'s the right term. I don\'t

really think that anybody is really keeping an eye on

what happens to these people, like are they just, are

they going to college or are they just sitting around

home all day or are they working, doing some work

somewhere or are they just doing nothing on the

streets or something. I don\'t really think anyone

follows up to what happens to these kids and to these

young adults.

And so, and also, I\'m going to stress one

more thing. There needs to be some more social

groups available for not only people with

disabilities but all kinds of kids. Like I was in a

group called Teen Solutions. It\'s a great leadership

group. If it wasn\'t for them, I don\'t think I would

be here and I don\'t think I would have gotten through

high school.

But they were great. They involved us in

a lot of volunteer activities. And at first I had

thought, oh, this is going to be really boring, but

at the end, I realized I had made a big impact. I

spoke in front of medical students teaching them,

offering my recommendations on how to better talk to

teens with disabilities and doing the same thing with

student teachers, you know, hopefully so they would

recognize how to, that we are normal people. We can

do the same things. We just talk a little weirder

and we seem to ramble on about things and we have

hotwheels on our carpet floors.

But Teen Solutions sadly folded about last

year because of lack of grant money. I really think

that more social programs like that should be

established and stuff like that because I really

think that they would have given me some moral

support. It was kind of hard because all the people

who did that got moved on to different things. And I

still get to speak at conferences every so often

which is pretty great. But anyway, that\'s kind of my

story. I\'m sorry if it went in different places and

bounced all over the room.

MR. BARTLETT: You\'re right on time, Mr.

Kemp. Thank you very much.

MR. KEMP: Yes, thanks.

MR. BARTLETT: And thank all of you. You

were great. Thanks.

(Applause.)

MR. BARTLETT: Cherrie Takemoto followed

by Jay Chambers if we have time.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you so much.

MR. BARTLETT: Go ahead, Commissioner.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Thank you so much for

coming. And this is quite a fitting end and probably

a beginning for much of what we\'re going to be doing

on the transition task force of which I am a member

of. So, I have taken some notes and I will bring

many of your thoughts and recommendations to that

task force.

My question is I am, you are walking

evidence about the importance of students having real

say in their education. And I want to hear from you

what would you recommend that would encourage, in the

law or whatever, what would help students have even

more of a say in their special education services?

MR. BARTLETT: Anyone.

MR. KEMP: Can you repeat that?

MS. TAKEMOTO: Okay. With your situation,

I\'m saddened by the fact that you find out about a

month before school is out that you don\'t have all

the credits it\'s going to take to get a graduation.

So, number one, students should know, I mean, there

should be someone telling students where they are on

their track to graduation. And if they\'re saying

they\'re going to go to college, that someone is

walking them through and how are they going to get

from here to college. It should not be a surprise a

month before.

So, you\'ve told me one thing about what

didn\'t happen. But what else could help students

have more control or more of a say in what you\'re

getting in school and how you\'re learning and being

taught?

MR. BARTLETT: Go ahead.

MS. WHITESIDE: I think that self‑

advocation is very, very important for students with

disabilities. I think that if there is any change in

like the status of their IEP or anything like that,

that students should be informed of it immediately.

I think that\'s very important. And other than that,

I think that students with disabilities should take

it upon themselves to know what they need, to be able

to tell the teachers exactly what is on their IEP,

what services they are required to get. And unless

something changes in their education plan, I think

that the student should already know about it.

Students who need assistance in knowing

those kind of things, I think there should be

someone, like give it to somebody to help them keep

some kind of planner or something to know what rights

and services they have.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Others of you?

MR. KEMP: Yes, self‑advocation is

definitely important. And I gave out my

recommendations and no, it didn\'t involve rocket

cars. I joked to someone about that earlier. But I

think that I had a voice but nobody would back me up.

I asked why this had happened and I don\'t really

think that there was anything that could let people

loosen up, if the student got all weird and pretty

tightened up and from then on it was kind of like go

their way or fall off the track.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Mr. King, and this is

really, I don\'t know whether you were hesitating to

be polite to your colleagues here or whether you

wanted to tell us something.

MR. KING: I\'m sorry. Usually I\'m like

really articulate. I\'m just, so I use this one on

one, this is a huge group so you\'ve got me lost for

words.

MR. BARTLETT: What could the school do

different ‑‑

MS. TAKEMOTO: Or for you to tell the

school, how would it be easier for you to tell the

school what it is that you want?

MS. BRINLEY: Well, I\'m not sure how much

you can be involved in this, but one problem that

I\'ve found is difficulty in communication between

parts of the school, like that situation that I

talked about, about how my sixth grade school teacher

didn\'t know that I didn\'t have a learning disability

and didn\'t know anything about my disability. That

was because my mother had gone to see the

administration and said, okay, this is what she

needs, this is what\'s going to happen, you know, I

need these accommodations. And the administration

didn\'t talk to the teacher and that became a problem.

And at college, I\'ve had problems with,

for several months, I didn\'t even know the ‑‑ hadn\'t

paid my tuition to the college because there was mis‑

communication between the financial aid office and

the business office. So, that isn\'t very much

involved in the outside sources but that\'s been a

problem for me.

Also, self‑advocation is very important

like the student has to be willing to speak up. I\'ve

learned this through high school a bit, the student

has to be willing to speak up and say, excuse me, I

need such and such. And sometimes it can\'t always

happen and I realize that like ‑‑ couldn\'t install

elevators in all the buildings but just that they

know that you have the need is very important.

MS. TAKEMOTO: And I just want to let you

know that, oh, I\'m sorry, Mr. King? Okay. I just

want to let you know that you folks are so

knowledgeable and articulate about your disability

from a position of strength as opposed to a position

of weakness. And I just want to commend you for that

and speak to my respective colleagues in academia as

we\'re looking at academic outcomes. I think that

this panel is an excellent example of outcomes in

those life skills that are going to carry you to

success on the other side of high school asking for

accommodations. And knowing enough about your

disability to do that is such a strength and a

difficult skill for all of us to learn. So, thank

you very much.

MR. BARTLETT: Jay Chambers.

MR. CHAMBERS: I want to thank the panel

for reminding us why we\'re here. All of your

presentations were wonderful and I enjoyed them very,

very much, thank you. I guess, I hope my wife is in

the room because if she knows the impact that Ritelin

would have, she\'d give it to me to clean the garage

at home.

MS. TAKEMOTO: Timing is everything.

MR. CHAMBERS: At any rate, I heard a

couple of you mention, in fact, almost all of you at

one point during the discussion mentioned

participating in your IEP meetings. And I guess I\'m

just wondering, I\'d never even thought about that

before. What role, I mean, you talked a little bit

about it in response to Cherrie\'s question, what role

does the student play? I mean, you\'re being an

advocate, you\'ve already said that, but at what

point, at what age level should children be involved

in the IEP process? At what point can you be

involved in the IEP process? How old?

MR. KEMP: I\'ll take that. I remember

going to my IEP meetings in like seventh grade and

eighth grade but most of the time, I was just kind of

sitting around being bored and stuff. And one time I

even left there early because it was like lunch time

and stuff. But I think a good thing, well, at least

according to what I went through as freshman or

sophomore year, for me, once I got in tenth grade, I

started becoming more aware of my disability and my

needs and then the IEP stuff just, I became more

understanding of it and was able to say more of what

I thought I needed.

And I was pretty much able to tell

teachers, okay, this is what I need compared to this

is what they thought I would need. And so, I think

that\'s, at least in my opinion, a good place to

start.

MS. WHITESIDE: I was ‑‑ to IEP meetings

the first, I think the first year that I was

diagnosed. I think that if a child is old enough to

be diagnosed with disability that they\'re old enough

to be dragged to an IEP meeting even if they don\'t

understand it.

(Applause.)

MS. WHITESIDE: I mean, if it is an annual

thing and the child knows every year I have to go to

the stupid meeting and then they start to understand

it, they will know, they will understand and it won\'t

have to be a new thing. And I think that, in my

opinion, it should be required that the child attend

IEP meetings. That\'s what I believe because it\'s not

an educational plan for the parent. I mean, while

the parent should be the advocate for the child when

the child can\'t be an advocate, the child should

always be there. It\'s about the child, the child\'s

education.

So, I don\'t know why anyone would not want

their child to be there ever. From elementary on,

pre‑school, you know, whatever, I think that they

should always be there.

MR. BARTLETT: Mr. King?

MR. KING: As far as being there from an

early age, I agree with you there. But as far as

having a say in it, a lot of times we don\'t know, you

know, what we\'re going through and a lot of times

we\'re the only ones who can truly say what it is.

So, as soon as the child can understand and can

converse enough with a respective authority to see

whether, to finally figure out what they\'re going

through, then they should have a very big say in

their IEP, just right at that instant from then on

because they are the ones who know, okay, maybe if

you do this, that will work. So, I\'m going through

this, and that\'s the solution for that. Because ‑‑

also, you know, if they\'re somewhere in here, the kid

knows I\'m right there.

MS. BRINLEY: Something that I did not

mention was that when I was four, three years after I

was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, I did have an IEP

and I did attend pre‑K at a public school across the

street from my house. But after that, my parents

decided to put me in a private school because the

school had, what I was doing in the pre‑K was, they

were doing ABC\'s which I already knew. But they were

asking the students to write out the ABC\'s which was

more of a motor skill than I could do at that point.

That was just one of the issues but that was a large

one was that they were expecting very little of me in

one sense and very much of me in the other sense.

So, my parents sent me to a Montessori

school which if any of you are familiar with that

system, it\'s much more fluid in terms of the children

being, the child being hands‑on and being able to

construct what they want to work on and stuff like

that. So, but I\'ve heard from all these speakers and

from other speakers about the IEP\'s and I think that

if I had stayed in the public system, that it would

have been very helpful for me just to be informed

about my visibility, serve as a guideline for what

options I had.

MR. BARTLETT: Thank you very much. Bill

Berdine.

MR. BERDINE: I have a question for

Miriam, and you answered part of the question. I was

just going to ask you have you ever had an IEP and

you\'ve answered that you did while you were in public

school. When you went to St. Mary\'s, did you self‑

declare to the office of students with disabilities?

MS. BRINLEY: Yes.

MR. BERDINE: There is an office there for

students with disabilities, correct?

MS. BRINLEY: Yes, yes.

MR. BERDINE: So, you did self‑identify?

MS. BRINLEY: I did and this man, Mr.

Amberger has been trying to help me this year with

getting me to physical therapy and things like that.

But because he is not very experienced, it has been

sort of a challenge. We\'ve been working together but

it\'s ‑‑

MR. BERDINE: Yes, that was very unusual

with your financial situation. That quite often

happens in universities when there isn\'t that

communication with that office. That office is

typically charged around the country with the

responsibility to see that it doesn\'t occur. But you

did self‑identify so there is no reason for it to

occur.

MR. BARTLETT: Doug Gill.

MR. GILL: Thanks, Chairman Bartlett. I

want to ask each of you the same question, okay. And

that is, what was the best thing about your education

experience so far and what was the worst thing? So,

I\'ll start with you, Josh. What was the best and

what was the worst of your education?

MR. KEMP: I would say the best part of my

education was all the things I learned socially when

I got out into the world, things that would help

teach me more about transition and how to get out

into the world and be more assertive for myself and

speak for myself and become friends with other and do

stuff that would help me vocationally like learning

to write better or maybe learning my way around

science or crosses that would prepare me for college

or even personal finances and stuff like that.

And I really enjoyed my friends and of

course the extra‑curricular classes like the arts

classes. And I know this is ‑‑ thing to say but I

don\'t think those really should be cut out because it

will go downhill with the student\'s self morale. But

anyway, the worst things were basically when, it was

basically when something really bad would happen, and

like with the program or something and I would get so

frustrated, I wouldn\'t know my way out of it. And

then, a teacher would want to do something to help me

out but she couldn\'t do

that.

And well, it\'s kind of hard to describe

but the hardest thing was being in my IEP and like

having someone recommend something to me and they

would think that, oh, I couldn\'t handle the other

thing and I would just laugh in their face for their

recommendation. I knew it was like, I didn\'t know it

was rude but and I didn\'t really care in the end

either because they had said something to me that

seemed like it was a pretty mature habit for me and I

was far more skilled than what they had recommended.

And that was like a while ago. I don\'t

remember the exact thing about it but I know that I

was like way above what they thought I could amount

to and it was pretty great just to blow them out of

the wind like that.

MR. GILL: Thank you. Caitlin, best and

worst so far?

MS. WHITESIDE: The worst thing I think I

have ever experienced in my education was when I was

diagnosed with disability because it was like, oh my

gosh, I am different. Is there something wrong with

me? And my self‑esteem really plummeted. Then,

again, the best day that I\'ve ever had and the best

thing that\'s ever happened to me in my education was

when I was diagnosed with disability because

afterwards, I realized that, hey, you know, these

teachers are giving me things that it\'s the same

thing that they gave the other kids but I can do it.

I can learn, and it opened up a whole new world to

me. So, that was the best and worst experience.

MR. GILL: I\'ve had times when I thought

the best and worst were in fact the same thing

myself.

MS. WHITESIDE: Yes.

MR. GILL: So, thanks. Nicholas, best and

worst so far about ‑‑

MR. KING: Speaking of best and worst

being the same thing, I\'d have to say the same for

me. The best thing would probably be when I figured

out really what my gift was. I can take knowledge, I

can take a subject, if someone gave me a subject and

say do a report research on this. Okay. Take,

research all the knowledge I can find on it and then

I can put all that together and see it from every

different angle. Whereas other people might miss

some of that stuff. I can rework problems until

there are no flaws anymore.

The problem with that is that I\'m also

very hyper‑verbal, so with all these millions of

thoughts going through my head like every second and

trying to spit all those out at once and everyone

would be, in school would be like, yes, that\'s cool,

you go over and we\'re going to go that way. So,

major plummet in self‑esteem there. But actually,

the truth of it is that was one of the worst things,

best and worst.

The best thing actually with my mom,

through everything I\'ve been through, she\'s been

right there doing, you know, staying up late nights,

working late hours, trying to do research and figure

out, you know, what this is, what that is, what I

need to do to help my son through that. And so, you

know, that was definitely the best thing.

MR. GILL: Thank you. Miriam?

MR. CHAMBERS: I think we need to have him

help us in our deliberations.

MR. GILL: Miriam, best and worst?

MS. BRINLEY: I have a lot of things to

say about the best.

MR. GILL: Okay.

MS. BRINLEY: One with my parents who\'ve

always been very, very supportive of me and that\'s

been very wonderful to have them there and ‑‑

especially when I was little. Knowing, going to

visitation and getting a good education there, one

that I knew would support me later when I try to find

a job has been very wonderful. But also, I beg to

agree with Josh that social integration and

adjustment is very wonderful. And this year,

especially going to college, I\'m figuring out that I

can do my laundry and I can go to class and I can do

all these things all at once. It\'s so wonderful to

know that I can actually be independent. So, that

would probably be the best thing.

The worst thing at the same time is the

social aspect of having a disability. Grade school

for me was very hard because little children can be

very cruel and don\'t really have the social veneer of

knowing when to stop with their cruelty. So, yes,

that would be the worst thing, just like being

uncertain of where I fit in.

MR. GILL: Thank you all very much for

your insights.

MR. BARTLETT: And to wrap it up, Katie

Wright.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

President Bush, when he appointed us to the

Commission, they looked into our backgrounds. And

each of us brings certain things here. I\'ve been a

special ed director, but I\'ve also been a learning

specialist at a college at St. Louis University to

work with students like yourselves. And to hear you

be so articulate and to answer the questions and to

put yourself forward to me is just wonderful. And it

makes me know that special educators like myself and

learning specialists like myself have done a good job

and can do a good job.

I want to say to you, student advocacy, as

you brought out, Caitlin, is so important, to

advocate for yourself, learn to be assertive and to

speak up for yourself. And the word assertive

doesn\'t mean ‑‑ or anything like that. There are

different ways in which you can be assertive. And

also, you need adult advocacy, too. You\'re going to

need grown people, other people to speak, even now at

my age, I need people who will help me, mentors. And

so, you need to seek that out.

But at college, you\'re going to need a

learning specialist perhaps, someone, a professor who

will be your advocate. For example, at St. Louis

University, I advocated for my student with the

professor. I would go to, and this is a Catholic

university, Fr. Bacon, my student needs to take the

exam orally. My student is smart, my student can do

this, my student has, you have to give, I want you to

give it to my student in your office orally. Or give

my student a little more time.

These are kinds of things that an adult,

that an advocate at the college, you understand, can

do for you. Another thing, to accommodate your

particular learning style, for example, Caitlin said

that some people have, they need to have it visible

and auditory and like that, so you will need at the

college level, and those of you who go to college,

you\'re going to need someone to advocate for your

learning style, to take your exams orally and like

that.

You\'re going to need encouragement.

You\'re going to need someone who will teach you to

speak up for yourself. You guys are very articulate,

you really are. And you\'re good speakers and you

answered all the questions that they asked you. But

the main thing is, and also, you\'re going to need

some social skills. You know, like I think it was

Mr. King who mentioned something about socialization.

I had to teach my students how to have

fun. You know, that\'s part of being in school.

Maybe you\'ll need someone to work you through the

driver\'s ed manual, and those kinds of things. But

the main thing is to learn to speak, there was, who

was this, John Aldon and Priscilla, speak up for

yourself. You need to learn to do that. And I

noticed that you guys are very, very articulate.

One of my students, because I had to

counsel students and tutor them, too, in the

humanities and sociology courses and psychology

courses. One of my boys, and I call them boys, six

feet tall, he was six feet seven really, when he went

to NBA, and I had brought him to St. Louis

University. Had brought him up to a 2.7 average.

And that\'s tough at St. Louis University because it\'s

tough there. Those ‑‑ so tough, brought him up to

2.7.

He went to the NBA, signed a million‑

dollar contract and gave me a diamond bracelet. I

still have that. But it\'s just so good to see you be

able to answer these questions and to smile and to

relate and to make eye contact. These are the things

that I discovered. I\'m glad that the other

Commissioners asked you some questions so that I can

see how articulate you would be. And you\'ve got it

going on, just keep it going on.

MR. BARTLETT: Hear, hear.

MS. WRIGHT: Thank you.

MR. BARTLETT: That was the final panel.

We very much appreciate your insights and your unique

knowledge which you\'ve shared with the Commission.

You\'ve made a huge difference in our thinking and I

think you\'ll make a big difference in the final

report. We wish you well in your continuing

education and in your life. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

MR. BARTLETT: As you can see, you\'ve made

some fans out here. Hit them up for a job or

something. Todd, you have a final comment?

MR. JONES: Yes. Actually, I want to say

this is the end of our seventh day of testimony we\'ve

taken. We have actually five days of hearings to go.

And every hearing and every panel we\'ve developed,

the selection of witnesses has been almost

exclusively a collaborative process. Commission

members, even members of the public have recommended

people to testify, the shape of panels, what themes

should be.

There\'s been one major exception to that

and I want to pay credit where it\'s due. The idea

for this panel, the development of this panel

occurred as the stroke of genius of one man. That is

my deputy, your deputy executive director Troy

Justison. And I want to pay him credit for this idea

because when he told me about this, I said, yes, this

defines it. You\'ve hit it exactly right. And he not

only came through with the idea but he has produced,

helped us find the four great people here today and I

want to offer him my thanks and hopefully your thanks

as well.

(Applause.)

MR. BARTLETT: Amazingly enough, we are

right on time. Closing time for today, there\'s, we

have time for, if any Commissioner has any other

thing that you want to say, ask about, comment on?

MS. BUTTERFIELD: Just a reminder, there

are professional development task forces staying

here.

MR. JONES: 5:30.

MS. BUTTERFIELD: Oh, 5:30.

MR. BARTLETT: Anything else?

MS. WRIGHT: I want to say this.

MR. BARTLETT: Commissioner?

MS. WRIGHT: It\'s a joy to serve on this

Commission. It really, really is. And I just want

to say that and to serve with the other

Commissioners. I think I know quite a bit but I\'m

learning a lot myself in serving on this Commission

and meeting the panelists and meeting the students

and like that. So, it\'s a joy for me.

MR. BARTLETT: You\'re a joy to have with

us. And with that, we\'re adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 5:00 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)