My View: Politics Hurt Special-Education Students

By GAYLE RAFFETY

Recently, I left a small, affluent charter school in the Albuquerque school district to accept a position at an economically challenged small charter school in the Santa Fe Public Schools District. It was probably one of the best career decisions I have ever made. But aside from my own decision, the implications of what occurred should be of interest to all stakeholders in public education.

I taught and was responsible for 30 special-education high- school students. These students were afflicted with a variety of challenges, ranging from sexual and emotional abuse to students who possessed significant academic deficits. A very challenging, yet rewarding, job.

Probably for me the most prominent challenge was addressing the needs and concerns of my four constituents and the standards that were utilized to evaluate my performance. My constituents were administrators, faculty, parents and students. To say the least it was quite challenging to satisfy all constituents who had, many times, mutually exclusive interests at the same time.

My failure was in the way that I prioritized which of the four constituents came first. I believed that the students were my No. 1 concern and next the parents of those students. Faculty came next and finally administration. Looking back now, I realize to be a success I had my prioritization strategy backwards.

During my three-year tenure, I worked two of the years as a special-education teacher under a director of special education, and my final year as the coordinator of the learning-disabled special- education student under supervision of the principal (the school eliminated the director position). While under the supervision of a director, my first two years we had a dropout rate of 25 percent to 30 percent in the learning-disabled category. During my third year we had a retention rate for learning disabled, special-education students of 100 percent.

You could ask why the difference? My strategy for eliminating the dropout rate was simple. Intensive communication with parents, students and support personnel in regard to student issues eliminated the 25 percent dropout rate. Also, when the interests of students collided with the teachers’ interests, students came first. Not a good strategy for career advancement because teachers then complain to administrators.

For example, you have a hyperactive kid who suffers not only from attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder, but also from fetal alcohol syndrome being raised by an uncle and aunt. The kid has difficulty focusing for any meaningful period of time. Because the kid is a disruption and extra work for the teacher, the teacher wants to put the kid on a behavior-intervention plan, or to have the kid leave school. Along with advice from the social worker, you put into the kids’ individualized-education plan a five-minute break every

30 minutes, allowing the kid to leave the room. The kid makes it through the semester, yet the teacher — because of extra work keeping track of the kid — reports negative comments about you to the administration. The kid stays in school, but your career suffers.

When it came time for my evaluation, the 100 percent retention rate was not considered an important enough component to warrant anything beyond an offer for a new contract at a lower pay scale, and a cutback in computer equipment, along with a demotion, which resulted in placing another staff member as my supervisor.

Luckily, I am going to a small charter school whose mission is more in line with the needs of the resource-challenged. What I have learned is that although our college-based teaching curriculum states that learning — and not the compliant student — is the overriding goal, when you get into the real world of teaching, compliant students become the paramount goal. This is because compliant students cause teachers less stress and work and happy teachers do not complain to administrators who then have more stress and work.

Gayle Raffety lives in Santa Fe.

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