IEPs for All—Or Something Else?
Some of us imagined a public school system that would drop special education labels and look at all children individually and collectively for their strengths and what they need to learn. We thought of it as Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) for everyone.
You will likely hear about “IEPs for All” in the future, if you haven’t already, but it is a far cry from what we dreamed.
IEPs and words like “individualize,” “personalize” and “differentiated learning” are terms that have been hijacked from special education. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and “aligned” are words that get thrown about too.
Instead of professionals—teachers, school psychologists, guidance counselors and other relevant school staff—sitting down with parents to outline an educational plan for individual children, the plan is to plug children, all children, into academic programs where they can supposedly move at their own rate of speed—on the computer.
Here are three of many articles you can find by looking up IEPs for All:
- IEPs for All: Ten Tips for Creating Individualized Instruction with Moodle and Joule
- An IEP for Every Student? Using Technology to Provide Truly Differentiated Instruction
- The Power of Personalized Learning for School Improvement
I believe the goal is to have children learn at home with software and computers and with their mother’s assistance…or no help from anyone. There is also much discussion about “self-directed learning.”
This transformation will take a while to achieve, so online charter schools will be an intermediary step. Instead of teachers, children will get behavioral monitors–supervisors who make sure they stay put in their seats as they work and don’t talk.
Of course, this isn’t what we think of when we visualize the old concept of an IEP for a child.
If you read the recent hype by online gurus about online learning they call it disruptive. Disruptive is an unpleasant word, but it is a revered word in the world of entrepreneurialism and high tech. In referring to online instruction for schools it means it will drastically change schools, I think, by abolishing them. They eventually won’t need teachers anymore either. I don’t think most people will be surprised at what I just said.
If you look hard enough you can observe signs showing the conversion to this model. If you think of something I’ve missed let me know.
- Flipped classrooms are where students get the bulk of their information at home online then attend school like school is the review…homework. This IEPs for All—Or Something Else?: