Bad IDEA

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is ruining my day. Not that I have a problem with giving people a chance, mind you. I'm just very concerned about the upcoming school year. Allow me to 'splain.

I teach AP English, meaning Advanced Placement English. Back in my day (the mid-80s), AP classes were for smart folks. If your GPA slacked, you didn't take AP. Tough class, smart kids, college-bound, story's over.

Today, I teach in an inner-city school where the minority are the majority. In an effort to be inclusive, we have mainstreamed a lot of special education students, which means we've taken them out of the special room with the helmets and beanbag chairs and put them in normal classrooms with normal kids. By and large this is a good thing. It reduces the stigma of the special ed label, makes teachers teach up to the gifted (which is a form of special education), helps level the playing field for the short bus set, yadda yadda yadda, and long story short it gives kids a chance to excel within their limits. I italicize this for a reason to be revealed in a moment.

Let me go back to the 80s for a moment: I had the opportunity at my high school to take advanced calculus. Only two guys were in the class, so there was plenty of room for me to be included, but the problem was I didn't know jack shit about calculus. Hell, I had more trouble than I was willing to endure in college algebra, and I had already dropped regular calculus. You see, I did not possess the necessary skills to succeed in advanced calculus. There was no way I could have passed the class unless the teacher modified the curriculum for me. (Modification is a Special Education term for altering the requirements of a class to fit an exceptional child's need. Exceptional is another term meaning 'exception to the rule,' not necessarily 'really smart.') In other words, the teacher would have had to ask only questions within my capabilities, which was on the college algebra level. College Algebra is not Advanced Calculus.

Meanwhile, back at the present, I have a student who for the sake of argument I'm going to call Timmy (not his or her real name). Timmy reads on the eighth grade level because he has a learning disability, thus making him eligible for modification. Timmy is a nice person, I'm certain. I have not met Timmy as of the moment, but I have it on good authority that he is dilligent, sweet, tries hard, etc. The simple situation exists, however, that Timmy does not read on grade level, does not write on grade level, does not have a grade level vocabulary, and takes, literally, more than five times the same amount of time to complete a task. No, really; a three minute reading exercise for a normal AP student will take him no less than 15 minutes. This student is a junior, but reads on the 8th grade level. Not that any of that is his fault. Stuff happens to the nicest people.

I've had dyslexic kids in my classes before. They take longer to read, but they read on the appropriate grade level. Were Timmy's modifications anything so simple as extra time to complete projects, that would be the end of the story. But it's not. He is able to have a test that only asks him questions on the 8th grade level, and I am required by law to give him that 8th grade level test in an Advanced Placement class. It's as if he were taking a calculus test, but being graded on a pre-Algebra scale.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act says that I, as a teacher, have to provide "appropriate special education and related services and aids and supports in the regular classroom to such children, whenever appropriate."

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/Policy/IDEA/index.html

The administration at my school considers AP a "regular class." Why in God's name would anyone want to put a kid through that kind of hell when he has less than a snowball's chance to pass?