Education: A Special Need

In their efforts to educate special needs children, public schools often miss one key facet of the school experience—education.

Leanna Carolla, a public elementary school teacher in the Sacramento area, saw this trend first hand when she got an entry-level job in the schools there. “Each classroom has one certified special education teacher and multiple instructional assistants (IAs) who work with two students each on lessons from their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs),” she writes in the Spring 2015 issue of Rethinking Schools, a journal.  “Working as an IA in Room 9, I was constantly amazed and inspired by my colleagues’ passion and dedication toward these students.”

“I was troubled, though, by the school’s almost complete reliance on behavior plans instead of curriculum and pedagogy.”  What most special ed teachers use is something called Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) which entails giving students an endless series of rewards for behavior that is either good or merely not too disruptive.

Thus, special ed teachers absorb many kicks, scratches and punches while operating under ABA. Yet and still, Carolla notes that “A meta-analysis conducted by researchers led by Edward Deci of the University of Rochester indicates that external rewards often lead to poorer performance on activities and cognitive tasks.”

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