Special Education Referral Process

            This week, I interviewed five different teachers to try to understand the special education referral process and what it takes for a student to actually receive special services. As I assumed, the process is complicated and often takes quite some time. For the purposes of this particular project, I spoke with three English teachers (A (who asked to remain anonymous), Ellen Mucha, and Lisa Rearick), a school counselor (Kathy Wiertsema-Miller), and a special education teacher (Nancy McLaughlin). Each of these individuals told me about their personal experience with special education, and most of them even included what they think the next step is to creating a system that helps special education students.

 A is an English teacher at a high school in Atlanta, Georgia. A and I connected via a mutual friend almost a year ago when she was looking for someone to volunteer to help with classroom prep and lesson planning. Since we met, A and I have become good friends, and I have learned a lot about the public school system in Atlanta. Sadly, it is one of disparity. The school where she works in currently out of compliance and is a Title 1 school. Their resources are very limited, and there was a recent embezzling ring somewhere in the administration of the school. Needless to say, A’s experience is not one that most teachers have had, so I loved hearing her take.

Ellen Mucha is also a high school English teacher. In fact, she was my 11^th grade British Literature teacher at Northfield Senior High School in Northfield, Minnesota. Ellen has been teaching for 26 years and has taught grades 7-12.  Northfield Senior High School is one of the best schools in Minnesota, no matter what kind of student you are. Since I was a student there, they have expanded their support services for students who are struggling by quite a lot.

Lisa Rearick is teaches in Charlotte, North Carolina and is my soon-to-be mother-in-law. She has taught for 17 years for a large variety of grades ranging from kindergarten to seventh grade. Currently, she teaches English at a charter school in the city. Her students come from very diverse backgrounds.

Kathy Wiertsema-Miller began her 22 year career as a high school English teacher, but now she is a school counselor, also at the high school level. I know Kathy because she was one of the counselors at my high school. Oddly enough, she was not my assigned counselor, but she and I really just clicked. Kathy gave me some great insight into the differences between the role of a counselor and a teacher in the special education process, and she pointed out that for next time, another good person to talk to would be a school psychologist because they are often heavily involved in the process.

Finally, Nancy McLaughlin, my aunt, has been a special education teacher for the last 32 years. For the last 18 years, she has worked as a resource room teacher in a public school just outside of New York City. Nancy brought the perspective of someone who has actually worked with students who had severe or multiple disabilities.

Each of these five educators mentioned similar things to be on the lookout for when assessing students for special education. Some of the things that came up time and time again were “[difficulty] reading grade level passages, poor decoding skills, unable [sic] to answer basic reading comprehension questions, weak writing skills, letter & number reversals, unable [sic] to solve basic computation problems, difficulty retaining information, difficulty following multiple step directions, [and] frequently asking questions to be repeated” (Nancy McLaughlin, personal communication, February 8, 2016). I imagine that the fact that most of these educators were English teachers changed some of what they looked for, but it sounds like these are pretty universal signs of a struggling student.

The referral process seemed for vary greatly between different schools, largely based on economic prosperity. At both Northfield High School and the school in New York, the process seemed like it was relatively streamlined and straightforward. Ellen Mucha explained that “At [Northfield High School], we refer students to the MTSS team (Multi Tiered System of Service).  From there [sic] the team will send the student to meet with the school psychologist” (personal communication, February 9, 2016). Kathy Wiertsema-Miller further elaborated by explaining that “[once] a student has qualified for special education services, the [sic] they have a teacher who serves as their case manager, and that teacher coordinates the planning of the entire IEP team (student, parents, teachers, counselor, administrator, school psychologist). Individual goals are identified that are specific to that student’s unique needs, and the IEP team meets annually to review and update the individual goals” (personal communication, February 9, 2016). In New York, the process is quite similar. They call their referral team something different, but it is the same idea. At the high school in Atlanta I mentioned before, the referral process is almost non-existent. The process is purposely made difficult to discourage referrals because if a student if found to need services and the school cannot provide them, there is a good chance they will get shut down because they are already so far out of compliance. As it currently stands at this school, “[the] amount of paperwork in the process is ridiculous. Most of the time, referrals do not get seen for weeks or even months. There is one psychologist for our entire area of the district. The referral process is a complete nightmare at this school” (A, personal communication, February 10, 2016). This all struck me as incredibly unfair. Most of the students at the school come in behind the eight ball. They are largely African American, from low socioeconomic background, and already performing under the standards for their grade level. If help is not available to these students who are perhaps the one who need it most, something in our system is definitely broken.

The most interesting and fruitful question that I asked was a very open ended one. I wanted to know what each of the educators thought I should know about special education. Some gave short and sweet answers. Lisa Rearick told me that she has an Exceptional Children (EC) teacher that actually works in her classroom with her. She said that having the EC teacher makes meeting students needs much easier and that she recommends it for every teacher (personal communication, Februrary 9, 2016). Kathy Wiertsema-Miller told me that “[a} good school psychologist and a good case manager will be very helpful to [me] as a classroom teacher” (personal communication, February 9, 2016). Nancy McLaughlin and A by far had the most to tell me. Nancy told me about how Common Core Standards and testing are, in her opinion, completely unfair to special education students because they are tested at grade level even if they are far below. This leads to them getting extremely frustrated with the exams. She also told me that “[the] federal government in it’s [sic] infinite wisdom has determined that only 11% of the population should qualify for special education services. Districts who have more than11% of their population classified are severely penalized” (personal communication, February 8,2016). I was incredibly surprised when I heard this. I had no idea that the government had placed a limit on how many students can receive these services. Nancy and I have already planned to talk more in the future so I can learn more about her experiences. A told a similar story of students not getting the help that they need and deserve. She took it a different way and told me about the difference between teaching in Washington and teaching in Georgia. She said that in Washington, there are teacher unions that keep teachers safe from getting fired if they say something that their principal does not like. This safety allows teachers to have their voices heard and make big changes at their schools. However, in Georgia, teacher unions are illegal. This makes it very difficult for teachers to go against their administration on any issue because they are always under threat of being fired. This relates to special education because if the administration does not want you to refer kids, teachers cannot go against that if they are not backed by a strong teacher union (A, personal communication, February 10, 2016). This information was also new to me. I grew up in Minnesota, a state with teacher unions and high performing schools. Spending time in Georgia has really shown me the disparity between state education systems. The more I learn about all of this, the more the system seems to need an over hall.
          That’s why the beginning of this unit was so refreshing. Seeing that the entire country of Finland seems to have figured out how to make special education work on a countrywide scale was so promising. Although they are a much smaller country than the United States, they have also found a way to help a proportionally larger amount of students that we do here. I think that if we could find a way to approach special education with the same mindset of the Finns, we could really get somewhere. These interviews also got me thinking about School of One in New York. It sounds like that school is in complete opposition to a lot of what I heard from educators this week. Their philosophy that every child learns differently is a great one, and I hope that more schools can adopt that way of thinking. I do worry that all schools becoming like School of One is too lofty of a goal, largely because schools cannot afford all of the technology that is needed to pull off that kind of school. I think that, more than anything, we need to see a societal shift in the way we approach special education. We need to start seeing every child as an individual learner, and we need to learn to differentiate our instruction accordingly. This is not something that is going to happen overnight and it is not going to be easier, but I think it is a very worthy goal.