recording from my living room in beautiful Marietta, Georgia, you are listening to the thinking cluesive podcast episode 11 brought to you by Brooks publishing company. I'm your host in Vegas. Today I will be speaking with Debbie taobh. An expert in the field of special education alternate assessment. For those of you don't know alternate assessment is the state test or portfolio that is administered or collected for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, around one to 2% of all students in a typical school district. I had the pleasure of visiting with her one evening in February of this year, Debbie and I discuss what exactly is alternate assessment and what it's supposed to measure. And in addition, we talked about how alternate assessment might be a gateway to more inclusive schools. At the end of the podcast, Debbie listen resources that may be helpful for any educator wants to know more about modifying grade level curriculum for students with significant disabilities. All in all, we had a great conversation. So without further ado, let's get to the thing conclusive podcast. Thanks for listening. Joining me on the think conclusive podcast today is Debbie taobh. She is the director of research at Keystone alternate assessment. Dr. Todd has designed implemented and evaluated alternate assessments for students with significant cognitive disabilities develop standard based standards based curriculum and instruction and conducted validity and alignment evaluations. This work is informed by her experience as a classroom teacher, and school forms specialist. She has contributed journal articles book chapters, in numerous professional development trainings to the field of educating children with complex needs, and is presented internationally on working with students who have autism. She is an advisory member of the council to promote self determination, Education and Workforce Committee, and an active member of the TASH Inclusive Education Committee. In addition, she is a member of the Council for Exceptional children's CCSS advisory group and is a representative for TASH, on the National Center on universal design for learning task force. So, welcome to the podcast. Debbie, thank you very much for taking time to speak with us.
Thank you so much for having me. As I said, I really love your work. So I'm excited to be here. Well,
thanks. Good, good. Well, guess what? I just completed I am a teacher and I just completed my alternative assessment for my kiddos. So so that is a big, you know, relief off of my shoulders. And I know that for the for the educators that know what alternate assessment is, and do administer in whatever way in whatever state they're in. It can be it can be a challenge, depending on, you know, where you are and what you do. So for the, you know, for the people that don't really know what alternate assessment is, I know that there's a lot of people that know what assessment is, you know, they have state testing and, and, you know, there's benchmark testing and everything like that, that seems to be familiar to everybody. How would you as someone who works in the field describe alternate assessment and what it is and what it's supposed to do?
Wow, that's a lot of things. Okay. So
let's tackle one thing, I guess. So.
So often, when, when we talk about ultimate assessments, we're talking about your large scale assessments and not the things that happen in your classroom, not the ones in depth classroom instruction, not the one to use to look at your IEP goals, not the one to use as a formative assessment, but the ones that are used for annual yearly progress under the USDA, federal regulations. Otherwise, there's no child left behind. And there are a couple different ways that students can participate in for AYP. One, they can take the SATs and everything that most kids are taking a general assessment without accommodations to they can take the general assessment, it was a combination. Some states have a 2% modified assessment that the federal regs does, that they're trying to kind of phase out. So I won't really talk about that. The other way is that they can take what's known as an alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards. And that's for as you said, because it's the most significant cognitive disabilities Right now, every state has a different assessment. Some people are using portfolios, some people are using performance path, some people are using a combination of observations and checklists. So there's a lot of different ways that they have built their alternate assessments. There are two consortia right now that are building alternate assessments based on the Common Core State Standards. They're called Dynamic Learning Maps, or DLM. And the national centers and State Collaborative, or Niksic. So that's kind of your basic introduction, culture, man. I'm trying to think that the rest of that costumers. What are they supposed to do?
Well, yeah, I guess, I guess, you know, let's back up and say, you know, why should we test students with the most significant disabilities? You know, that? That's a question actually, I hear a lot.
And I hear it a ton. So let me start with that. I think that there are problems right now with with our accountability system. And there are things that we need to do differently as a country around education. That being said, I have become a firm believer in the importance of assessing all kids. And I want to say I used to teach at the college level, I was one of those professors who stood up in front of my students and said, I can't believe this No Child Left Behind thing, they're gonna make a test these kids, what are they thinking they're ridiculous, that are serious. And I started, I started really looking into it. And what changed my mind because I was into school reform work in a school that was really not doing well, but students. And the principal said to me, you know, I have all these special education teachers have my school special education, but I knew nothing about special education. So I kind of just let them do what they want to do. But I need to change that, because I'm not seeing well, as it's called, we're not doing well at all. And that's what AYP is showing us now that we have to stop all these kids. It's showing me that I'm not doing well. And we need to fix that, come help me do that. And I made this one classroom, it was a fifth grade classroom. And their math costs, the color triangles green. And that's what they did for two weeks, was just colored triangles green. And this was a very good teacher in many ways. But that's what she needed to do for math for the students was focused on identifying triangles over and over and over again. So I worked with her and we talked about how to make a standards based lesson that would actually this state had a portfolio system. So how could you make a standards based lesson that met the student's needs, but was connected to the grade level standards. And within three months, and not even that long, within six weeks, she came back to me and she said, I never would have believed that this kid can do multiplication. This kid is doing like great things. And he just needed different support. And they need me to think about the content differently. And that's what had me start thinking about what, okay, maybe these assessments are not the evil thing I thought they were. And I'm hearing those kinds of stories all over the country of students who once challenged and provided with the accommodations and support that they needed, they started getting more and more academics and men, and this is the part I really love about it. And teachers are saying to me, well, so if my kid can work on the same kinds of things, with modifications and with support with accommodation, why do I have them in a segregated classroom, basically, with their peers. So ultimately, supplements for me became a really powerful way to help promote inclusive practices. And I love that aspect of it. Like I never thought I would say anything about an assessment system, but like I love that aspect of the alternate assessment system was that it can help provide better education for some of the students. Hi, higher expectations, a higher level of presumed competence, and, and then some teachers who never would have thought of inclusion for these particular students, even if they thought inclusion thought of students. They might not have thought of it these kids. They started thinking, wow, well, yeah, if I had the support and accommodation, sure we could do that. So it became less about why my student can't, but rather, what can I do to get my kid back? All
right, right. And you know that, that that way of thinking was actually what turned me around on the concept of alternate assessment? I don't want to talk, I don't want to talk too much about the way the GA does it, because I might, I might just rent the the entire evening. Problem. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, like, I've told my colleagues who who do like to rant to me, that I say, look, I, it's not that I have anything against alternate assessment, I like alternate assessment. It's just the way that we, it's just the way that we do it. And also, the systems that are set up to support it, it makes complete sense to me that giving access to the general curriculum, to students with significant disabilities should be done in a general education classroom, or in an inclusive setting, it does not make that much sense to me to do it in a segregated classroom, or a self contained classroom, which you know, which I am, which I am a teacher of, so it's, you know, and one way that I've, I've kind of worked around it, when when I've been able to is to do some, like a hybrid type of co teaching model, where I would bring in, like a fifth grade classroom, along with the teacher, and we would do like a co taught lesson, based based on standards, you know, for fifth grade, like physical change, and chemical change, or something like that. And we would do this science lesson, where we would, we would, using the principles of universal design have have a meaningful activity for my students, as well as the typical fifth grade students, and then be be able to use that for the ultimate assessment. And that, to me, is the best way I have found to kind of get that done in a way that I think is meaningful, where, where I'm not just teaching in a vacuum. And that's what I've been trying to tell my my colleagues is that when we do this, in our, our room, when it's just us. If you feel like it's we're teaching in a vacuum.
And that was one of the things about the state I was working in with that particular teacher, one of the one of the performance dimensions of their assessment system was into like, different settings, was the student able to generalize their skills and do these things in different settings and peer interactions? Did they have interactions with peers who didn't have disabilities, and those things counted towards the students score. Now, that's, unfortunately, not included in most assessment systems for AYP anymore. Some states may still include those dimensions to their state information, but it's not reported to the federal government. This is a theme, I think, because I think just like you're saying those, those are some of the most, we know research nets help students to take alternate assessments need help generalizing, they do do better when they are in with the same age peers and peers without disabilities. So by taking out the dimensions, I think I understand why we did it in terms of reliability and validity. But I think for our population of students, it may not have been the best decision. Because we do what we're tested on sometimes. And so for some teachers, it took out that requirements of saying, oh, you know, I could do this in a dental science class, let's go do that.
Right. Exactly. Yeah, I think, you know, you know, it's definitely hard when you have, you know, multi age or multi grade, self contained classrooms, and you're trying to generalize with, you know, in general education, you know, with that kind of varied age group. So, it and like I said, I don't know, I don't know how other states do it. But I think that's like the the mechanics of it, the pragmatics of it, is what most people are, have have a problem with it's not necessarily the the theory Find it. So the couple questions kind of mine. One is how much does how students do on alternate assessment? How much does that affect AYP? Because I've heard a number of different things.
It depends on the school and it descends on the state. So for instance, the school I was working in, or one of the schools I was working in, didn't have their kids were in alternate assessments. It made a big difference if their kids scored well, in alternate assessments. The schools that only have a couple of kids who take the alternate, which if you're in a neighborhood school, that's what the natural proportions should be, usually are, because you just have a few kids. Right, then the ultimate assessments about school doesn't, doesn't do too much for the team. Overall AYP scores may change, you know, because they also report out by subgroups. So it may affect the subgroups for, you know. And for the state as a whole. We'll see what happens with these new assessments. But certainly, there was there was a trend for a long time of students on the alternate assessment doing better than students on the whole system. More students were scoring proficient advanced than the students in the general. So it's hard to say. And I think it's an interesting question. I think that the myth that students on the ultimate pull down the scores is just that it's a myth. We don't really have any evidence to show that on a large scale. Right. But that's what happens.
Yeah, I know that that's a concern. That's something that you know, administrators definitely, you know, at least worry about, you know, whether, like you said, if it is a myth, but it's something that at least gets talked about. So, what I would also like to know, is, what kinds of alternate assessments are there currently? So I've mentioned before that Georgia, and I believe Alabama, right next door is portfolio assessment, how many other states that you're aware of, are doing portfolio and invite, you know, and other other kinds? If you know,
well, here's the problem with that question for me, is that was one state called the portfolio another state calls a performance task or a checklist. So there's not necessarily a straight answer to that, okay. I can tell you that many, many states are doing some form of portfolio meaning that the teacher teaches a lesson collects the work, and then uses scores at work. And that work is used to help inform what the what the ultimate assessment scores are. Some people have a portfolio where they videotape of students. And then and outside, not the teacher and outside score scores it. So there's a lot of different ways that people have kind of taken that term portfolio and made it their own. So it's hard to say. But in general, there's portfolios, where you have teacher collected, teacher created and teacher collected work. There's performance tasks, where it's like an item on a task, that the student has to do different steps. different skills and concepts perform different skills and concepts. But all the students are kind of given the same task. How they access the tasks may differ based on their communication system or their their needs, but they're all given the same task. And then teachers can take that information. And usually they'll include some evidence to support their score of how the student did on that path. There's also performance checklists, which just have a list of all the different things that kids in the ultimate may be doing or students may ultimately be doing or should be doing at that grade level or grade band, and the teacher just checks it off. And then maybe they turn on a piece of evidence or Two or three, or one or two of those checklist pieces? There's very few kind of item based alternative assessments. At the moment, there, you have a multiple choice question and the answer A, B, and C, that may be part of somebody's performance task. It may be part of somebody's portfolio, but it's not generally the sole measure of how a student's doing. Sorry, I can't answer
on that one, though. No, that's fine. That's fine. Because as an educator, I, you know, I only know, you know, what's either around me or what I've experienced. So I know that other people were curious, you know, as to that. Here's another question and more a kind of a history based question about alternate assessment. How long have we had alternate assessment in the United States?
The passage of No Child Left Behind, which was what 1997? I
think that sounds right to me.
So since then, that's when we've had kind of federally mandated ultimate assessments. Now Kentucky are now putting that ultimate assessment system before that. Because if you look at Ida, one of the things that Ida says is that all students need to be included in instruction and accountability systems. And so Kentucky said, well, all means all. We're gonna create a form of alternate assessments. So Kentucky was actually one of the first states to build an alternate assessment. Wow. Yeah. And so they did it before it was required under No Child Left Behind. But we've had for quite a while and one of the things that I think is really important about alternative assessments. And one of the reasons that it worries me when people talk about getting rid of alternative assessments and not not the federal government, not state, but when when people are grumpy, and if they wish to just get rid of all these things, right. One of the things that worries me, we have learned so much about this population of students in the past, what 1015 years that we never knew before, because it just wasn't what we focused on. So far instance, when the alternate assessment started, we used to talk about how the students who make up the 1% of the population who can who can achieve proficiency on the alternate assessments actually make up not the 9% of the diversity within schools, meaning that they are the most diverse group of kids they'll ever get together. And yeah, if you look at the research, Kleiner and Kern, and Paul's reads, did some research on learner characteristics of students to take alternate assessments. And they've now done that research across 26 states, and the averages across those states have been pretty much the same. In every state. About 80% of those students who take the ultra assessment are using some form of symbolic communication, whether it be an AAC device or sign language, or braille or word. They're using some form communication system, symbolic communication, excuse me. Approximately, let me see if I can pull up the numbers really quickly that approximately 70 to 80% of the kids are needing some level, whether it be basic sight words, or being able to read and answer questions. Some of the kids in the alternate are actually able to answer pretty high level questions, not just basic recall, but the more instancing specific questions, which is interesting. Yeah. So what we're finding is, is all this information about these students, and also learning about how do they best learn and what can we do to help them learn better and how do we present information to these students in a way that's meaningful to them and useful to them? But also, that helps push our expectations as population students. One of the things think it's really powerful to think about is a lot of teachers really struggle with that I want to teach my kids just functional skills. As you know, why should I keep anything out there just need to learn functional skills. And I have two two big answers to that. One is, first of all, what's more functional than reading now? What is more functional than reading a map and problem solving? And figuring out? If I don't know the answer? What do I do? Where do I go? Like, those are all things I taught my students and I worked as a job coach for a while. And I can't tell you how many times I've been kind of training on alternate assessments and very, very concerned teachers came to me and said, Well, I just don't understand why I've ever teach my kids an idiom, that's not what I need to work on in their life, they need to get a job, they need to do this, they need to do that. That's not what they should be working on. And I said, Well, I understand what you're saying. But as a job coach, when I when my clients, boss said to them, Hey, you need to shake a leg, I needed my clients to work faster, not stand there and shake a leg. That's why it's important to teach my clients videos, like that's why this is vital. And also just our inclusive practices in the community. I want my students to grow up, and I taught elementary school. So you know, I, I didn't have transition age students when I was teaching, but I wanted them to grow up and, and have friends and do things and go in the community and have a job and live in the communities. So I wanted them to be able to have a conversation where they weren't thrown by words that weren't literal. And then the other piece of the the, I should only teach functional skills. That's what we know. That's what we know works. When we first when our field first started teaching students was the most complex needs functional skills, there was no research to back up that that was a good idea. We just as educators looked at the outcomes for our students and said, Gosh, you know, teaching these developmental stages, is not getting our students jobs, it's not getting them to be as productive in the communities we want them to be. It's not getting them outcomes of friends and all of these other things. So there has to be a different way. And it started looking at teaching functional skills and this idea that we should look at what is it my my student needs in the next natural setting to be successful? Those are the skills I should be working on now. So I understand the concern, and I hear that concern, but I think we need to take a step back and and look at what do we really want for our students? And how do we want to help them achieve that? And also, I think once in a while, it's good to let go of things. You know, I've been in high school classrooms where they're still working on identifying letters of the alphabet. Because the student doesn't know the alphabet and how they ever learned to read if they don't know letters of the alphabet. Well, if I'm in high school, and I don't know the letters of the alphabet, maybe it's time to give me some kind of different support to help me read and understand.
Right, exactly. I think that, you know, it's, it's very difficult. As an educator, when you have been teaching for a certain way for so long. You know, to hear anybody talk about doing a different way. Especially, you know, let you know, if, if I had been in in the teaching profession for 30 years. And cuz that's what we started to do. You know, when you first got in the field, that's what you did. You worked on functional skills, and you worked on life skills. I mean, that's what you call it, you know, life skills curriculum. And that's actually what we still call it sometimes. But how do you how do you think or, you know, what is the best way to help people change their mindset? Because I think for a lot of educators, they just don't have any concept of what you're talking about. Like, like, Okay, I'm supposed to be teaching them. You know, I'm supposed to be teaching them multiplication, right? How exactly am I supposed to do that? Well, what advice do you give teachers or what resource or what, what exactly? Do you tell teachers to help change their mindset?
Well, it's a hard question because you One of the things, so one of the other pieces of work that I do, and I really love it is I help state and school districts build inclusive systems. And one of the things that research has shown us in the practice has shown us is that you can't always change beliefs until you've changed. Which means I can, I can talk until I'm blue in the face about how important it is for kids to be included and how important it is for us to teach academics. But until teachers see, or not even just teachers, but family members who are concerned or administrators who are concerned until they see positive outcomes. For some people, they're not going to change their minds until they see those positive outcomes. So sometimes if you change the behavior before you can change the belief. So one of the things that I do is I, and often when I'm in those situations, I'm in those situations, because I've been brought in to help people teach grade level content, that's or grade level aligned content, right. And so one of the things I'll say is, okay, we can have this philosophical discussion. But in the end, the law says, You have to teach Grade Level aligned content. That's what we're supposed to be doing. So let me help you do that. I will support you in whatever way I can. I'm happy to brainstorm with you, I'm happy to talk problem solve with you, I'm happy to put you in touch with other resources. There's lots of great trainings online, there's lots of great resources online, I don't want teachers to have to recreate the wheel every time they go to lesson, especially not missing it, there's so many ways to share resources and share information. Let's do it. So if I have a teacher who's working on teaching Romeo and Juliet Huckleberry Finn, I can point you to three or four different places where you can get adapted tests online for free. To help you do that. Those lessons, both of the consortium Niksic and DLM, are building sample lessons and professional development resources for teachers on just that question, how do I teach aligned content to students with the most complex instructional needs students with most significant cognitive disabilities? How do I do that? Well, there's, there's many sources through both those consortia website on how to do that. Trying to think Well, I mean, Keystone has a webpage just filled with resources that we try to collect each time we go out on, on trainings or, or conferences, or anytime I learn things from, from other people, we try to collect all the different resources and then put them up on our website, here's some free resources on how to build communication systems, here's free resources on how to how to teach math, here's free resources on how to do science, you know, just whatever I can put into people's hands to make their lives a little easier. I'm absolutely happy to do that, and want to do that. So that's usually my approach. Just let's get down and dirty in terms of figuring out how to make this work, because it shouldn't be about should the child it should? Or should the student or should the student not, it should be about how many places and resources and technologies and supports out there. It's about how in this day and age,
it tucking a little bit, you know, or today is changing the focus a little bit to the general concept of inclusive education. What is your feeling? What's your feeling about where we are going just as educated as the educational system in the United States? Do you feel like the move towards inclusive education is kind of this just this inevitable thing that's going to happen? Or do we still need some key things to happen? Like, you know, for instance, you know, do we need more specific legislation? About LRE? And, you know, in IDA, or do we need, you know, what exactly do we need to push this forward?
Wow, that's the hard question. I'm
sorry, I didn't I didn't provide you with that one beforehand. So
I see that because I'm having that conversation. I feel like I was dealing now with the people at cash and on the inclusive Ed Committee and with various people who I'm working on some papers with, what do we need to do to move to move, inclusive practices forward, is it something that needs to be mandated from the feds? Which I'm not sure will ever happen because other country, and especially in certain states, we are very tied to this idea of local control? And, and, and also to parental choice. So, absolutely. So you can't really mandate that all kids be included. And then there are some people who, who would struggle with how does that look and and that, that's hard. So you'd have to really put in a lot of support for the full system across the nation to make inclusive practices successful. Well, what's going to happen is, we're going to mandate it, some people are going to miserably. And then it's going to become the impetus for saying, Well, of course, it's failing, it just doesn't work at all. And we know that's not true. We know that when it is done well, and and when it is done with the appropriate support and in the appropriate way, then all students do better with and without disabilities do better.
Right? I think that's, I think it's a very nuanced conversation. And it's a lot more nuanced than people give it credit for. I I've often said that, that inclusion advocates are probably one of the most misunderstood people in the education reform movement, because we kind of have this mantra of all means, all right. And when people hear that, they automatically equate it to the civil rights movement. And so you know, there are some differences between the civil rights movement and the inclusive education movement, or the disability rights movement. They're very similar, and they're parallel, and as far as I'm concerned, but there are systems and supports that need to be in place for us to be successful at inclusive education. You know, and that's something that you touched on. When we decide and we mandate, and we say, Okay, we are getting rid of all self contained classrooms, in every school across the country. Some counties, and some school districts will absolutely thrive in that in that situation. But like you said, others will fail miserably. And it's just because, I mean, there's, there's 100 reasons why, you know, so I think having that conversation and and admitting that is a really good thing, because people need to hear that. That's not what we're trying to do. Or at least I think the people that are really serious about doing it, right, that's not what we want to do. I had a conversation with this Englishman, Alan shear, who have written about, and he wrote a play called the death that I believe, I hope I'm saying this right, the death of a nightingale, and how how they went about moving inclusive education forward in the UK, was very much let's get rid of all special schools, all self contained classrooms. And let's do it now. And, and you have some parents who were very upset by that, and educators. And so I want to make sure that as as the United States moves forward, which I believe that we should, which we should do, that we need to do it smartly, and with the correct supports, and that's why I love the Swift schools, and I love you know, all the coalition's for inclusive education around the country. You know, just kind of beating the drum and waking people up to that this is this is a good thing. But I also don't want to go the way of, you know, setting us up for failure. You know what I mean?
Well, yeah, absolutely. And I think that I've been, I've been lucky to be part of some really great, exciting work in different states, one state I'm working with. One of the ways that they're helping their senators schools, see the power of inclusive practices. They're approaching it from winning Do you have to teach these new standards, we know you have to teach Grade Level aligned, content aligned to the standards and aligned to grade level, which is something that somebody who may not have done. So here's some supports we can give you and one of those supports is connecting you with content specialists, and with other schools, and through kind of pathways like that these schools or any teachers in the schools, and the administrators are starting to see how it's not that bad, it's not that scary, we might be able to do this, and I'm not gonna think that really has become concerning to me in the past few years, I have a friend who, who called me up one day and her daughter had been in an inclusive school or an inclusive class, which I thought was kind of weird, but she was in an exclusive class. And she has some language, concerns, and she has ADHD. But nowhere near as, as significant as the kids you and I would work with, I mean, typically in our day, right, and she called me one day, and she was in tears. And she said, I was just pulled aside by the principal and the teacher. And they told me, my daughter needs to go into a special ed segregated classroom next year, because she's just too not doing well, in this contract. I was floored, and I went to visit the school and see what was going on and talk to them. And the fear mongering that they instilled into this poor parents, I was horrified. Because what they kept saying in the nicest possible way they could was, if you put your child with this special education teacher, she's gonna be nice to them, to her. If you put your kids in the general ed teacher, she won't be
right.
I think that kind of fear mongering that, that some schools or teachers, and I don't know that they do it intentionally, but it's so easy as a parent to want. I mean, it's not even easy. As a parent, you want what's best for your kid. And as a relatively new parents, I'm certainly learning whole new aspects of this my life. But when somebody says to you, if you put your kid in the segregated classrooms, they're gonna get all these other wonderful therapies and all these other wonderful services. But there's, there's no reason and there was no expectation then writing the least restrictive environment, laws and statutes, there was no expectation that that had to happen in the segregated classroom. That was supposed to be a continuum of services, not necessarily early continuum of placement. And yet, some people really kind of bought into or truly believed in this idea that consumer placements, and that if you're in a segregated placement, that's where you get the most services. Right, and there's no way they can can envision putting those services into a general ed. And then the outcome of that is, is telling parents, well, they're gonna get a better education, if they're over there. No research shows, they're not going to get a better education, if they're over there, you know, they're there. They're gonna get a different education, they. But if you want your students if you want your child to have access to content, in a way Meyer, Michael Waymire, did some really interesting research on levels of and I'm blanking on the word, it's not level, but like how well students were given access to the content. And it's done much better in the gen ed setting. Well, yeah,
of course, because yeah, well, that's something that I've talked to my colleagues too is that as a as a self contained teacher, I understand the pace of my classroom. The pace is, you know, is slow. You know, I mean, I physically cannot run my classroom, like a general ed classroom, because I have, you know, I have I have things that need to happen, whether they're physical, you know, needs, they're taken care of, or whatever, I don't really go too much into detail, but but when you have, you know, one of my students in a general education room, there, it's just things are flying, you know, and the content is flying, and they're exposed to so much that they would never be exposed in my classroom, even if I even if I did teach it. All the standards, you know, all day every day, you know what I mean?
Oh, yeah. Oh, no, you've got so many things going on and in your classroom. And then I think one of the other pieces of that is, we also have a lot of teachers who, for whatever reason, didn't have to take content courses in order to get their degrees and special education. Yeah. So I know, I chose to take as an elective. I took courses in teaching reading and teaching math, but it was not a requirement in the program I went through, like, how is that possible? And then I would be in charge of teaching my kids content.
Right? Well, isn't that a problem with our teacher training? Well, I mean, okay, there's a problem with teacher training, I think, in general, right. But then there's also a problem with teacher training in, in the field of special education. And, you know, in in, I got my credentials in moderate severe disabilities, but, so that's what I'm most familiar with. But I know that there's issues when you're talking about, you know, mild disc, or learning disabilities, and how they, how they teach in the standards, you know, for the programs. Right. So, that's probably a whole other show.
Education is such a complex being. And I remember when I first started doing education research, I struggled with this idea of causal effects in education, because I can say that all these teachers went to like x professional development, and that caused them to change their teaching behaviors, and then that causes their students scores to go up and, and their knowledge about Shakespeare to to improve. But it could also be 40 other things. It could be that they all happen to take the same theater class, and that that theater class informs their understanding of Shakespeare, it could be that there was a Shakespeare Festival in their town that all of their parents took them to, it could be you know, so there's so many factors that go into a child and in their education, it's hard to say, it's just one key. And yet, we've had such clear correlational data that shows that kids with all disabilities, and kids without disabilities do better in inclusive settings. But it's hard to make that quantitative. Because you have to take in all these other variables.
Right? That isn't, that isn't only a, you know, a special education problem. That is, it's definitely not that is a just in a general way education problem, because their kids are dealing with that with just with testing, and, you know, with the different states, you know, I think that, I think then that way, we have something in common, you know, those those that are in the field of special education. We have that in common that we can go to our Gen Ed, you know, colleagues, and we can talk about the same issues that they're that they're dealing with. And something that I've really just learned, you know, in the last few years is that when you when you actually do create relationships with your general ed colleagues, that you become a better teacher, you know, it's so easy to be a self contained teacher, you know, and no one expects anything from you. You're just with those kids. And that no one knows what you do. You know, you might as well, he might as well, I don't know, be doing whatever you want. And, and they would never know it. But once you start opening yourself up to having those relationships and maybe creating those co teaching partners, and it just changes your perspective. I think so, you know, I'm for inclusive education, but also for, you know, including yourself in your school community as as an educator, because I think that is, that is huge, you know, and not just sitting at the special ed table.
No, I think you're absolutely right. It's, it's very, very big too. For teachers I'm
really lucky when I, when I first started teaching, so I had a little menu. I wasn't at that. So when I first started teaching, I didn't realize that not everybody did inclusion, because where I went to school and in all the places where I've worked, when I was teaching in student teaching and doing volunteer work, and I worked in several different early childhood intervention programs, the object inclusion. So I just naively assumed that that everybody did, right. So I got my first job. And I went into the school. And I started talking to all these teachers about when I was going to be in their classroom and how I was going to work it and all these other things. And it wasn't until halfway through the year, and I was really struggling with this one teacher, and we just were having a tough time working together. And I said to her, explain to me why this is so hard, because I'm not understanding what, what you need. And she looked at me, and she said, you know, nobody's ever done this inclusion thing before. I took these kids and let them be in my class, because I assumed I'd never see them. And that's, in fact, the other teachers I worked with, and I said, Wait a minute. You guys didn't do this last year? And they said, Oh, no, no, no, you know, everybody just took their kids and took them out. And that's what we did. And I was like, Oh, my God, oh, my God. So nobody's ever done this before. And yet, I'm looking at how much I learned from those other teachers. Strategies, I never would have thought to use concepts, I never would have thought to teach skills, I never ending lessons. But I got the most amazing lessons on how to find and I'm so lucky, I can work with one of the science teachers of the year, in our state, I got all these great science lessons from her, I worked with a woman who was like a 25 year old year veteran in teaching math, and she had fantastic strategies for teaching that I never would have thought of. And so I look back at that, and I think, thank God, I was so naive, that I just assumed to be in these classrooms. Because that that interaction with those teachers taught me so much more than I ever would have learned, if I had just gone into a classroom and cold front door.
Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. In fact, that's one of the things that has helped me in my, in actually teaching content to my kids is not looking up, you know, lesson plans on the computer, but to go to my fourth grade counterpart, and say, How would you teach this lesson? Because I have no idea, you know, and then, and they would, and they would say, Oh, you do this or this, or, you know, or this is how I would teach it to my kids. And then, and then it makes sense, like, oh, I can adapt that, you know, for, you know, this student or this student. I really wish I had the time to do that more. And I think that's part of the issue, too, is that collaboration piece, we just don't get enough time to do that. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of things that, you know, I wish, I wish we had more of that. That's definitely something, you know, that that whole collaboration. So that definitely resonates with me with what you're talking about.
And I do think that for the state's moving to the Common Core State Standards, if they're going to do that, and they're going to do it right. Collaboration should be something they're all looking into, because that's one of the big points of of Common Core is that you're supposed to be teaching literacy across content areas. That means you better have teachers talking to each other or out. What, how will you know, that you're covering all the standards? How will you know, you're addressing all those issues? How will you know that your students are getting a holistic education? And that includes special education? Right. So much to teach general ed teachers to?
Well, yeah, yeah. And I think that's, you know, it's, it's all part of it. It's getting, it's getting those conversations going and also having them see special ed teachers as real teachers. You know, I think that's, that's, you know, been part of it, and, you know, we sit we seclude ourselves, so, and I can only I can speak for myself, because that, you know, because I have done that before. Well, I want to wrap up with one more question. This has been an awesome conversation. You know, thanks again for for being with us,
thank you again for having me, this
has been fun. So I want I want to know, you know, for a teacher or educator, or even parent that is struggling to, to, to figure out where do I go to learn more about how I can give access to the curriculum to my, to my student with significant needs? What would be the number one go to place? Or two or three? I don't know. Like, where would you send? Where would you send them? Me like, Okay, you need to go check this out.
Well, that's hard for me, because I don't want to sound like I'm promoting me, but like, and our company, but like, that's what he's done assessments as me help people build accessibility acceptability and, and to the standard. But if I had to point you to just one place
there isn't some, like there's so many places you can begin, you can begin with places like cash and antique and the parent organizations, you can be going places like tasks, and UDL, you can begin with places such as
the coalition, the inclusive Coalition, which is another great place. But if you're looking specifically for content, that is definitely harder. Looking at the two Consortium for content would be a place to start looking at the National Alternate Assessment Center, math partners.org, they have some really good trainings on how how to align the content and what that might look like for students with significant cognitive disabilities. So I guess if I had to pick one, I would probably start with Mac, because I just think they have some really powerful good stuff out there. Okay. And they'll also lead you to a lot of other resources. Excellent.
Well, I'll try and put all of the, the links in the the organizations that we talked about on the show notes page, so that when people listen to it, they can know where to find those things. So, but once again, thank you, Debbie, for being here.
And you're doing such fabulous work. I love getting your updates and seeing you know the stories that you're sending in the research pieces like that it's been fabulous.
Well, it's my pleasure. That concludes this edition of The think inclusive podcast. For more information about Debbie taobh. You can follow her on Twitter at DBVTAUB or visit Keystone assessment.com For more resources on how to make any content accessible. Remember, you can always find us on Twitter at think underscore inclusive or on the web at think inclusive.us Please visit our sponsor at Brooks publishing.com and receive 25% off your order using the promo code T i n b d 25. Today's show is produced by myself talking into USB headphones, a MacBook Pro GarageBand and Skype account. Bumper music by Jose Gallup as with the song press, you can find it on iTunes. You can also subscribe to the thinking because of podcasts via the iTunes Music Store or podomatic.com. The largest community of independent podcasters on the planet from Marietta, Georgia. Please join us again on the think inclusive podcast. Thanks for your time and attention
