NJ Special Education Under Attack
Last week, I reported on proposed changes to the NJ administrative code that would shift the responsibility for special education case management away from full-time Child Study Teams. These changes would allow districts to fire case managers and either dump their caseloads on to teachers and other staff, or allow the privatization of special education case management.
This is a horrendous idea. Under the guise of "flexibility," special education students would no longer have a full-time, in-district case managers advocating for their needs. Parents of general education students should be as concerned about this as parents of special education students: the burdens of case management will undoubtedly take even more of a teacher's time away from actual instruction.
A coalition of teachers unions and special education advocates are calling for parents and teachers to make their voices heard to the NJ State Board of Education, which must approve these changes. Below is their take on one of the proposals, which comes from a white paper authored by the coalition that I received a few days ago.
Let's start with the code as it's currently written. The change,. proposed by Governor Christie's
This is a horrendous idea. Under the guise of "flexibility," special education students would no longer have a full-time, in-district case managers advocating for their needs. Parents of general education students should be as concerned about this as parents of special education students: the burdens of case management will undoubtedly take even more of a teacher's time away from actual instruction.
A coalition of teachers unions and special education advocates are calling for parents and teachers to make their voices heard to the NJ State Board of Education, which must approve these changes. Below is their take on one of the proposals, which comes from a white paper authored by the coalition that I received a few days ago.
Let's start with the code as it's currently written. The change,. proposed by Governor Christie's