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| Jane Woznick, a resource specialist program teacher at Lodi High School, explains a problem to student Carla Valdez. |
Jane Woznick felt it was just plain wrong for Lodi special education students to be stuck in college prep classes they couldn’t pass just to boost the district’s API and AYP scores. So the RSP (resource specialist program) teacher at Lodi High School wrote an article describing what she considered to be unfair treatment of students in her local paper, the Lodi News-Sentinel.
According to Woznick, the district didn’t care whether special education students learned the material and passed the college prep classes, or even if the curriculum was appropriate for their ability level.
In most cases, Woznick found the curriculum not to be appropriate. And she observed this firsthand, as an “inclusion teacher” for two periods of college-prep algebra where special day class and RSP students sit side by side with general education students.
Woznick has been co-teaching these classes with general education teacher Lynette Lewis for five years. And the teaching partners, both members of the Lodi Education Association, say that too many special education students placed in college prep classes were failing miserably.
“They would lose 10 credits by being put in an impossible position,” says Woznick. She comments that these students could have instead taken an easier algebra class that’s not college prep — and have it count toward a diploma.
Lodi Unified, however, was setting impossibly high goals for some students, asserts Woznick, because the district would get “extra points.” And she has done the math when it comes to figuring this out.
“According to the California Department of Education, a student is worth a free 200 points on the state test without being enrolled in an [A-G or college prep] algebra class. If a student is enrolled in an algebra class that meets the state’s A-G requirement, and the student earns a failing 27 percent on the state test, our school earns 500 points. That is a growth of 300 points, and all the student had to do was to take the test and fail.”
Woznick says that from an administrator’s viewpoint, enrolling all students into higher-level math classes is a simple way to show educational growth according to state guidelines. This practice is sold to educators as the district’s attempt to provide equal access to college prep curriculum.
Woznick says she doesn’t blame administrators, who are under tremendous pressure. She blames No Child Left Behind, which holds schools to impossible standards and then imposes sanctions on those failing to meet them.
Not all special education students failed the college prep classes. Special day class student Carla Valdez, 15, did well last year thanks to instruction from her special education and general education co-teachers, passing with a C. However, math is her favorite subject, and her learning disabilities have to do with reading.
“Having two teachers helps me a lot,” she says. “While one was doing work on the board, I got help from another.”
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| General education teacher Lynette Lewis discusses issues that special education students face. |
But Valdez is the exception rather than the rule. Sixteen-year-old RSP student Kiley Tuttle felt “totally lost” in a college prep algebra class last year, and said she felt like quitting school on a daily basis. Under the district’s policy, she had to fail college-prep algebra twice before being allowed into a non-college-prep algebra class. The class was her second attempt.
“This year should be easier,” says Tuttle.
Lewis says she has lost many nights of sleep over seeing special education students floundering in her college prep class, despite her attempts to break down the curriculum in a way that is understandable to them.
“I had a student who had a grade of 20 percent, and every day he participated in class, wrote everything down and still didn’t get it. Why should he be punished for that?”
“It was making these students miserable and making them hate math,” says Woznick, because they often experienced humiliation and embarrassment in college prep classes. After they failed, they were pushed into intervention classes and summer school to regain lost credits. Only after failing twice could they enroll in regular algebra.
“We need to place them in classes where curriculum is taught in a way that’s understandable and where they can actually master skills rather than just having exposure to curriculum,” she says, adding that even the California State Framework states that students should not enroll in higher level courses until “mastery” of prerequisite skills has been obtained.
At the end of the last school year, Woznick’s newspaper article generated so much attention that the district decided to change its requirement that special education students seeking a high school diploma be forced to take college prep algebra. Now, finally, the district will allow them to take regular algebra.
Woznick hails this decision, but has concerns that the district still requires that special education students take college prep English to earn a diploma.
“Simple solutions are available that will allow special education students to master skills and have a future, simultaneously enabling our schools to raise scores,” says Woznick. “Let’s examine the problems and motives, and discuss reasonable, doable solutions.”
